This exercise is going to be more specific and prescriptive than many of the others I’ve featured here on the blog. (You can get a full list of writing prompts on this page.) That’s right. Specific and prescriptive. (Don’t worry, it won’t hurt. Much.) I was reading back through Josip Novakovich’s classic Fiction Writer’s Workshop and within three pages he captured the essence of this particular writing exercise, and it struck a chord with me because of my own experience. One

If you have two characters in a story that feel dull and lifeless, this Unblocker exercise is for you. (If you DON’T, you can still use this, in a modified form, to get a story off the ground…see the not at the end.) Unblocker #3: Have one character in your fictional world write a letter to another character. This is one of those “dear boss I hate you” letters that you never mail, so the writing character can say things she might never really say out loud; let your character