Writing Character Appearance

“We can’t help everyone, but everyone can help someone.”

— Ronald Reagan 

“You have to meet people where they are, and sometimes you have to leave them there.”

— Iyanla Vanzant 

“Easy reading is damn hard writing.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

Time Travel Alternate Universe Prompts

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You time-travel back to 1348, accidentally bringing your phone. About to take a photo, you notice: “1 available wifi network”. (x)

In the near future, the secret to time travel has been discovered - in order to travel back into the past there needs to be a ‘receiving station’ at the other end - explaining why nobody from the future has been observed up 'til now. The first such 'station’ is about to be completed. (x)

You, a young scientist have discovered time travel. You think it would be a great idea to go to medieval times, share your knowledge and become king. On your first visit, you meet a king and he introduces himself with a polite fist bump and greets, “bro you discovered time traveling too?!” (x)

In the future time travel is finally achieved, but instead of being used by preventing disasters, time travelers are known as historians, who are trained since birth to blend into environments and answer history’s unanswered questions. Maybe we can see the universe’s creation. (x)

Time travel exists. By law, every citizen is given one day they may repeat on loop until they get it right. This morning, you found your spouse looking exhausted and crying. “I can’t save you. I’ve tried hundreds of times.” (x)

Since you were young, time travelers have visited you. One of them explained that, in the future, an algorithm determined that you were the only person in the past that it was safe to visit because no matter what you do it will not change the future. You are determined to prove them wrong. (x)

Having developed time travel in secret, you find yourself stranded alone in the 1800s following your test jump. Walking amongst the crowds on the cobbles of Victorian London years later, you pass someone humming a Beatles song. (x)

In an effort to prove to your friends that time travel is possible, you tell Siri to remind yourself to travel back in time to the present day, at your current location, in 1/1/2100, if time travel has been invented by then. Suddenly, a strange capsule materializes before your eyes. (x)

A time traveller attempts to explore the far future, only to be intercepted and trapped in a time prison. The rest of the prison happens to be populated by the countless recursive instances of a single time traveller’s attempts to break themself free. (x)

A friendship between a time traveler and an immortal. Wherever the time traveler ends up, the immortal is there to catch him up to speed. (x)

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Writing Tip #218

Tightening your sentences and getting rid of unnecessary adverbs and adjectives does not mean writing short sentences. You can have a long sentence without any adverbs or adjectives and you can have a short sentence with too many. Tightening your sentences just means that every word has to matter.

Character development doesn't refer to character improvement in a moral or ethical respect. It refers to broadening the audience's understanding of that character, giving the character a deeper background, clearer motivations, a unique voice.

Developing a character is about making them seem more like a real person, and real people are flawed. Real people make mistakes. They repeat mistakes. They do things other people don't agree with. Real people are more than just 'good' or 'bad' and character development is about showing all of those other aspects of them.

Their interests and hobbies. The song that gets stuck in their head. The fact that their vacuum broke 3 months ago and they haven't gotten it fixed yet. All of those details help build out the character and develop them more.

And yes, characters change as stories progress but that doesn't mean they get 'better' in a strict moral sense. It means that their experiences change the way they interact in the world you've written for them. Just like real people do.

“Sometimes the smallest things take the most room in your heart.”

— Winnie the Pooh 

“Knowing yourself is life’s eternal homework.”

— Felicia Day