For the last stream’s exercise, we tried something new: interviewing a character to get to know them better.
When writing a story, it’s all to easy to fall into the trap of writing two-dimensional characters. If you have a fun idea for a plot, then you may get so caught up in progressing it forward that the characters are just cardboard cutouts.
In order to make them feel more human, it’s important to get to know them better. Then you can use that information to influence how you write them to make them feel more realistic. And the best way to get to know someone: interviewing them.
So for the exercise, we had chat vote for a character to interview. They ended up choosing the Twitter bird.
Here’s what we came up with:
Watch a quick video of us coming up with
the topic and writing/reading the story here, or read it below.
Today we’re interviewing: The Twitter bird
(Note: each response is 280 characters or less, just like on Twitter)1) Tell us about yourself. What do you look like?
Oh, I’d love to tell you about myself! I look like a state of the art, multifunctional non-linear social media engagement platform. I’m optimized for any sort of interaction, from friendly to business to entertainment to even politics! How about you?2) Uh, that’s not really what I meant. I meant tell us about you, yourself, the bird.
Oh! Of course. Well I was born the runt of a blue songbird litter, and because of that I always had to tweet the loudest to get mom’s attention for the regurgitated worms. If I didn’t send out a tweet every few seconds, then she’d forget about me. I still remember the hunger….3) Sorry to hear that. What’s your relationship like with your parents today?
Well, my father flew the coop long ago and my mother grew tired of my constant tweeting, so I haven’t spoken to them in years. Let’s just say I don’t follow them, but I don’t block them either. But I don’t like to dwell on the past! I’m always trying to be #LivingMyBestLife4) And your siblings? Do you keep in touch with them?
Every now and then I get tweets from them. Asking for followers, begging for money… honestly, it’s quite annoying. They didn’t listen to my cries for help when they were hogging all the food and I couldn’t breathe underneath their feathery bodies! #totallynotbitter5) Why don’t we move away from the family questions. Tell me, what do you believe is your greatest strength?
Of course, my greatest strength has to be #networking. I bring people together all over the world, not only geographically, but socially as well. Never before have normal people been able to chat with their favorite celebrities, but I let them do it as easily as catching a worm!6) I don’t know if I’d call “catching a worm” especially easy….
Sorry, bad comparison. How about as easy as flying? Or landing on a power line? Or pecking a hole in the wall?7) Hmm, not sure about any of those. But let’s move on to the next question. What is your greatest weakness?
Coming up with analogies, apparently! Haha, but let’s get #serious here for a minute. Ever since I was just peeking out of the egg, I’ve had one problem, and it’s stuck with me my entire life. (Silence.)8) And that problem is…?
Oh! Sorry. It’s my short attention span. Sorry, I just got a tweet from my mother. Haven’t heard from her in years. She’s usually only on Facebook. I… I’ve always wanted her to join Twitter. So she could see what I’ve created. So she would finally be… never mind.9) So she would finally what?
It’s not important. Do you have any more questions?10) Sure thing. What is your dream for the future?
I want to continue to give a voice to all the other little birds out there who, like me, were the runts of their own groups. I want them to tweet loudly and proudly, so that all the big mother birds of the world will hear them and know that they matter. #inspiration #makingadifference11) And what would you say is your greatest fear for the future?
Censorship. There are a lot of big brother and sister birds out there who will happily squash their runt sibling if it means they get more of mom’s regurgitated worms. I can’t let that happen. Every bird has their own unique song to sing, and I want to hear them all.12) What about hate speech? Do you believe in censorship for hate speech?
All I’ll say is this. If I had been censored when I was a child, I would’ve starved to death. My tweets were annoying, but being ignored would’ve made it worse. It was only through feeling like someone cared about me that I finally changed, and I think the same goes for others.13) Interesting answer. Let’s stop with the heavy questions and switch over to a lighter one. If you could have any pet, what would it be and why?
Oh thank goodness, I was almost over my character limit for that last one! Anyway, I’d have to say a fish. It’s a very e-fish-ent pet. #punny You don’t have to walk it, feeding it is easy, and then after a few years when it bellies up, you get a tasty snack! #recycling14) Okay then. What is your favorite song?
It changes all the time. For a while it was Despacito, then it was Shooting Stars song, and now I’m in love with Africa by Toto. But honestly, anything by The Birds is great. And I eat up anything by The Beatles. Oh, and Rockin’ Robin, of course. Reminds me of my first crush.15) All right, that will about do it for our interview then. Any parting words?
(Silence, then looks up.) Oh, sorry. Just got a DM from mom. She… she wants us to get together. She says she has… bad news. I’m sorry. I’ve got to go. Thanks for taking the time, but I’ve got to pick up some grasshoppers from the store. They’re her favorite. Bye!
It’s fascinating how we started out with a literal two-dimensional character and fleshed it out into something that feels totally real. We had no idea that the Twitter bird would have such a sad backstory, until we started interviewing it.
Now, having interviewed the bird, I want to know more about them! I feel like we could easily turn this interview into a great story full of heartbreak, familial conflict, and trying to prove to the world that you’re not the runt of the litter anymore.
After that we did a writing prompt and chat voted for this image prompt submitted by ethanbrecke: Click here to see the image.
It’s a very simple image, and subsequently it was hard to write. We needed something that would both justify the supernatural feeling of the image, but also not overcomplicate it.
In the end, I really like where we ended up. We wrote it in a somewhat abstract way, but it’s fine to get out of our comfort zone and try that every now and then.
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you. We stream on Twitch every Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday at 7:30pm-10:30pm (U.S. Eastern Standard Time).
And you missed the stream, you can still watch Rubbish to Published, the writing exercises, or the writing prompts on YouTube, or watch the full stream reruns until Twitch deletes them.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Scott Wilson is the author of the novel Metl: The ANGEL Weapon,
forthcoming November 2018.
Featured image: GAHAG (edited by me)