This week, I’m reflecting on the scene I wrote for Conkers on Tuesday.

Having read the Not to Be post on The Daily Prompt this week, I started out by looking for passive voice and other weak verbs I could remove. I didn’t find much I could change (although I did ignore dialogue), but I still felt the scene was lacking some punch.

I suspect a characterisation issue. Most of the scene is a character not quite explaining what she wants, but when she finally does, there’s no significance to it. She leaves the scene having achieved nothing, but somehow still completely calm and confident. The other character doesn’t attempt to encourage her to talk, either.

I’m also a bit concerned about Mary-Sueism. I imagine the narrator of the scene is involved in plenty of shady dealings, but that completely failed to come up. I probably should have given him something to hide, so he couldn’t just sit back and ignore the situation.

The general problem is that I’m not remembering the different characters’ personalities. I’m not sure what specific techniques I can use to remedy that. My best idea is to give them leitmotifs — pick a particular tune for each of them, to listen to when I’m writing that character; I’m sure there must be other techniques, though.