An Exercise in Character-Round 1

I always struggle with characters in my writing. They either all sound the same or they all sound like me. Granted, I'm pretty funny, and somewhat interesting at times, but eight of me gets real old, real quick.

As I finish up season 4 of Babes in Spyland, and I'm gearing up to go back into novels, I thought I should perhaps take some time to learn about building characters. Facebook gave me the greatest idea, so I thought I would share it.

Join me over the next four days while I go through this exercise to see if I know Agent Bunnynose (Babes in Spyland) as well as I should. Do you know your characters?

Last night a friend of mine posted the following on Facebook:

If no one reads my wall, this should be a short experiment. Lol. If you read this, leave one word on how we met. Only one word! Then copy this to your wall so I can leave a word for you. Please don't add your word and not bother to copy... You'll spoil the fun!

First exercise in character...what would the main character of your latest project do? Assuming that they were active on Facebook, of course—don't get all technical that in some fantasy world without electricity that Facebook doesn't exist; use your imagination. Let's also assume that your character views this person as a real friend.

Would they:

Leave a word and re-post it as instructed?

Ignore it?

Scoff?

Roll their eyes.

Get teary from the memory of the first meeting?

Leave a whole sentence just because the directions say one word?

Or something else entirely?

And, most importantly, why?

Super Secret Agent Bunnynose would glare at the message, noting that she would not use lol in that context, and sigh. If she was in a good mood, she might leave a word. Probably something snarky. No sentimental nonsense. Her goal with the whole thing would be to make her friend laugh. A good snort would be ideal. Bunnynose would probably not re-post it, because she's got better things to do than have her phone go off every six seconds with Facebook updates. She's trying to save the world from a mad genius at the moment people. If she did re-post it (due to a chocolate milkshake induced euphoria) she would probably change it to “Leave one word describing the first time we got into a fist fight.”

What about your character?