Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Reality bites

Create a reality show around a favorite character, or, if you're doing NaNoWriMo this year and have a story idea, your main character or main antagonist. Putting them in a high pressure situation is bound to bring out some new personality quirks and conflicts.

Perhaps one of your NaNo characters is the central figure of the show and the other competes to win an opportunity to be a partner or be mentored. Or the protagonist and antagonist compete against each other.


If you have only an unwilling knowledge of reality TV, there are far more types than you might imagine. (Wikipedia has a good list of subcategories of reality TV shows with examples of each.) Some cribbed from there:

Documentary style shows: Selected strangers required to live together. Recording a celebrity's or unusual person's home life. Or the daily doings of someone in an interesting profession.

Contest style shows: Competitors face a series of physical, intellectual, skill based or creative challenges and are eliminated by the host or the audience. This includes dating shows and career opportunity shows.

Improvement shows: Someone or something is made over.

Swap shows: Someone is inserted into another person's life to sink or swim.

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