Illustration by Ana Hinojosa.

As a character-driven writer, I love this month’s theme, Cast of Characters, and I thought we’d play with it in a Creative Prompt. Today I am giving you a cast of characters to create a story with. As always, I would encourage you to tell this story in whatever artistic form suits you best, whether that’s fiction, poetry, or a visual representation. Now, ahem, *drumroll,* please. Your characters are…

A dog, a bird, and a clown.  

You can take this literally, or you can think of what traits those three words bring to mind and build characters from there. Keep in mind that multi-dimensional characters who break the mold are what make for an interesting tale, so what un-doglike, birdlike, and clownlike things might your characters do, and what challenges might that present for them? Another thing I like to examine when I’m building a story based on a character is what their strengths are and what conflict could arise because of them. So, for example, is your dog character so loyal and trusting that they are blind to when someone might be taking advantage of them?

Play around with character traits in whatever way is most fun and interesting and send us the written or visual tale of your furry, feathery, funny cast along with your first name, last initial, age, and location to [email protected] with the subject line “Creative Prompt” by Monday, October 10 at 6 PM EST.

Last week we asked you to collect moments throughout the week that inspire you. Here’s a peek into your world…