Open a telephone directory to any page containing residential listings. Select a name at random from the page, and then ask yourself, "What sort of person would have this name? What would he or she look like, sound like, talk like, think like, think about, feel, do? Drawing on the direct and indirect methods of character presentation that you’ve learned about from reading your Burroway text, write a scene in which your character’s actions, speech, thoughts, and appearance typify her or his name. Feel free to write your scene from first person, second person, third person, or omniscient point of view. Alternatively, choose a name from the list that appears below and base your character sketch upon it. Some of the names on this list are drawn from characters in literature, so if you’re familiar with the literary reference, don’t choose that name:

1. Artameo Cruz
2. Stanley Fisch
3. Aunt Augusta
4. Jong Parc
5. Barbara Allan
6. Mrs. Doorstop
7. Amos Pig
8. Yuko Tushima
9. Terry Drinkwater
10. Jennifer Skull
11. Professor Nemouth
12. Janolla Spoonhour
13. Chad Newsome
14. Lizbeth
15. Old Mrs. Harris
16. Auntie Lindo

For a sample character sketch based upon a name, go to the link Susan Schulter’s Name Exercise.

If your created character inspires you, try keeping a character journal in that character’s voice or through her point of view for an entire week. Every day for five or ten minutes, write a journal not from your perspective, but from the perspective of your created character. This way you’ll get to know this imaginary person, so that if you ever do write her or him into a story, her-his actions and thoughts will be convincing to your reader. You might start character journals for two or three of the names on this list, or from telephone directory lists. You’ll thereby begin creating a character bank upon which you can draw when writing your stories. Who knows? You may find that some of your characters’ lives intersect and fin their way into the same story.