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The Adjectiveless Interview

Unconventional Writing Exercise #3

Today’s writing exercise may be a little difficult for all you solitary writers out there. It’s time to break out of your shell and try something a little different.

Step 1: Interview somebody. Anybody. It could be a friend or a stranger. Ask them things like what they like, what they hate, what they do for a living, and who their heroes are. Just be curious and play it by ear. Find out who they really are deep down inside. Don’t be afraid to ask questions that are difficult to answer.

Step 2: Write a short description of a character based on what you learned from your interview. Fictionalize it as much as you want. The character you end up describing may end up looking nothing like the person you actualy interviewed. Just make sure you use your interview as the basis for it. But when you write your description, don’t use any adjectives or adverbs. That’ll force you to think around corners.

As usual, post your character descriptions here in the comments section. I’ll do mine and post it in a few weeks.

Interview tips:

• When you ask someone for an interview, say something like: “Hey, I’m ________. I’m a writer, and I need to do an interview for a writing exercise. Mind if I interview you?”
• You don’t have to record the interview, since your character description will be fictitious, but it may help if you want to refer back to the interview later.

5 Sample questions:

• What is your name? (who are you, what do you do, what do you love, hate, etc.)
• What is your quest? (what’s your highest goal in life, who do you look up to, etc.)
• What is your favorite color? (what makes you unique, what couldn’t you live without, etc.)