Creating and getting to know our characters is one of the most joyous parts of writing. It's also an area where we easily slip into habits or rut, without realising. This Writing Skill, UNJUDGE, is a lovely character-creation tool for developing more unexpected characters in a way that ducks around our habitual thinking. So give yourself the gift of 10–20 minutes writing time, grab your notebook, pen, and a cuppa, and curl up somewhere comfy.
For this skill, you'll use the site This Person Does Not Exist. It's an AI-generator that creates wholly convincing photos of people who – like it says – don't exist. Though they really, really look like they do! Each time you press refresh a completely new image is created. So the first thing you're going to do is choose your character. Remember, refresh means it creates a new image: you can't go back to a previous one! So I suggest you allow yourself a maximum of 3 "refreshes", to choose your character, and make sure you screengrab each one, cos once it's gone, that's it.
Important note for screengrabbing on a computer: If you right-click and say "copy image", it doesn't copy the image you're looking at! It generates a new one and copies that. To save the picture you're looking at, use the Prt Sc (print-screen) button and then paste it into a document. You can also use a screen-snip tool.
Part One
Once you've chosen your character, study their face and spend half your time (five minutes, if you want to keep this a ten-minuter) making up what they're like: their personality, their job, their hobbies, their relationships, whatever comes to mind. Go completely with whatever comes to mind; don't worry if it seems an obvious choice, a bit cliched, even a bit judgy. It'll be fine, trust me.
I suggest you don't scroll down to Part Two until you've done that bit.
Part Two
Now that you've got your character fully described, generate ONE more "photograph" by refreshing the site. That's the person you've actually been inventing! Everything you've just made up gets reassigned to the new face. Make sure you screengrab your new character, then spend a couple minutes more making up additional details. The only catch is: you can't change any of the details you've already made up.
When we're working on our own from a photo, it's often easy to slip into rather judgy and prejudiced character creation. We can fight like crazy against our own biases, but that often means we're spending most of our creative energy on batting away the biased choices, or making the exact opposite choice instead. By doing a switcheroo with the photo instead, none of those judgements came from the person's face, and the new identity is often an unexpected fit for our inventions. The disjuncture also leads to fresh ideas.
If you'd like to explore more ways to create unexpected, original characters, the Characters Unlike You workshop is on 25–26 October, live online, and open to bookings from anywhere. Read more and book your place here.
