Road Trip Influences

If you didn't know already a hockey mom spends a lot of time on the road.  This hockey mom is no exception to that rule as my kid's travel all over the Midwest looking for teams to defeat.  On our road trip this weekend I paid special attention to the drivers or passengers in the car sharing the road with us.  It always amazes me at the things you see on the road and I ofter wonder what stories the other car could tell me.

It made me think about a great exercise that I did at a conference once.  It is on the subject of character building.  As writers we often focus on the story instead of building our characters and when we are done at the end of the book we have a great story but the characters are flat.  So here's what we are going to do.  As you drive today pick two people that you noticed in the other cars.  Pay attention to what they are doing or wearing.   Take a piece of paper and draw a line down the center of it.  Each column is for a different driver.  For each driver write down ten different characteristics.  Make half of them ones you know about them like they wear really big sunglasses and make the other half ones you make up as in snorts when they laugh.

Keep those for tomorrow's blog as we will need them for tomorrow's exercise.

Enjoy your Tuesday and keep writing!

-Veronica