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Try out Thursday's prompts now to get to know your characters:

1. Suggested Exercise: Write a few character introductions! Screenplays often do this in a really economical way: it's a picture for your imagination to hook into before a character is set in motion. Here are a couple examples:

The girl walks briskly up the block in her evening dress. We get a look at her now for the first time. For all her chic thinness she has an almost breakfast-cereal air of health. Her mouth is large, her nose upturned. Her sunglasses blot out her eyes. She could be anywhere from sixteen to thirty. As it happens she is two months short of nineteen. Her name (as we will soon discover) is HOLLY GOLIGHTLY.

It is late, the supermarket all but deserted. We are tracking in on a fortyish man in Bermuda shorts and sunglasses at the dairy case. He is the DUDE. His rumpled look and relaxed manner suggest a man in whom casualness runs deep.

2. Optional Prompt: Write a party scene. At a recent NaNoWriMo event, author Jasmine Guillory offered this prompt as a way to dig into who your protagonist is. Is your character the life of the party? A wallflower? Why are they there?