Sunday, December 19, 2010

GNO!! An exercise in character development... :)

Happy Sunday to all my fellow bloggers, friends and random readers!!

I'm going to break down my title for you first:

GNO (aka Girl's Night Out) = a MUST for the entire female population!!  If you aren't scheduling these at least once a month with your best gal pals - START NOW!!

Exercise = the writery type, of course.  But, also the literal type.  I think I seriously laughed part of my arse off last night!!  Can't complain about that ~ :)

Character Development = it's all about the games, here.  In particular - Boxers or Briefs.  If you haven't played this one - pick it up.  Seriously.  It's hilarious!!  And insightful.  Find out what your friends REALLY think about you... and link together some quirky character attributes at the same time!

Last night, my sisters and friends and I celebrated our annual Christmas GNO!!  We brought a fun $10 gift to exchange via the "left/right" game (you can google this), an appetizer to share for dinner (shrimp cocktail, bacon-wrapped l'il smokies, queso dip, spinach dip, jalapeno poppers, cheese and crackers, meatballs - num!), and also a homemade treat to exchange:


white choc chex mix, pumpkin choc chip mini loaf, butterscotch haystacks, mint brownies, creative take on cannoli, peanut brittle, and a cookie brownie - *drools*
We also, of course, had to play games and gab the night away (yeah, I got home at 3am...)  I LOVED it!!  Soooo much fun!  Did you know that getting together with your girlfriends is actually good for your health?  Seriously - look it up!  AND of course you've heard that laughter is one of the best ways to lose calories (and with what we ate last night, we needed to laugh A LOT!).

As we played our games - a hilarious round of Boxers or Briefs, in which you roll a die of I's, I want's, I have's, I dont's, etc...and your friends get to pick the best random phrase to describe you - I realized that this is a really fun way to get to know people.  It's also a great way to pick fun.  By the end of the game - I was "a whole lotta woman", who was "too much to handle", and thus became a "master debater".  Yeah - not sure I'll live this one down anytime soon - but, I'm a good sport!

We also ended up with a "Jedi Master" who loves "pink fluffy bunnies", a woman who's apparently an authority of all things "Teletubbies" and "Barney", a gal who's "good with her hands", "gives a great massage" and "wishes to run a marathon...naked", and a *warning!!  bowel movements involved* long-time sufferer of "constipation", who's addiction to laxatives has left her dependent on "Depends".  (yeah, my friends are sweethearts, no?)

Afterwards, we all wrote down a deep dark secret and an embarrassing moment to throw into a bowl.  We passed the bowl around, picked a paper to read and tried to guess who wrote it.  I'll just say I learned some interesting tid-bits about everyone!

But, seriously.  Isn't this kind of a fabulous way to do some character development for your MCs and/or supporting characters in a novel?  People's pasts, their quirks, their secrets, the things that embarrass them, etc., it's all part of what makes them who they are today and motivates the things they do, speak, think, eat, all of it!

So - my suggestion to you....if you're ever stuck wondering what you need to make your character as unique as can be?  Have a night out with good friends...



And TAKE NOTES!!!  :)   DO ANY OF YOU HAVE SOME CHARACTER-DEVELOPING GAMES TO SUGGEST?   Happy writing!

5 comments:

The Happy Whisk said...

Glad to read you had such a nice time. That's the good life.

Jess said...

What a fun post! Sounds like you ladies had a fabulous time. I had a girls' night with my besties a few weeks ago. It's amazing how much fun can be had when four grown women share a hotel room and have chocolate, twizzlers, chips, and Sex and the City 2 (maybe not a critically acclaimed movie, and we talked through a lot of it, but it was a ladies' night, darn it...we followed it with Monty Python to even things out). Thanks for relating GNO to writing--I can justify more of them to my husband this way!

Ava Z. said...

I can't wait for my next GNO! We will be getting together for dinner and drinks after the first of the year. It sounds like you had a great time and I never thought to dig for character traits and expressions through my GNOs but I will definitely keep that in my mind from now on.

Abby Minard said...

Oh yes, I have to have my GNO once a month! I go out with some great co-workers (well, one used to work with us and now works somewhere else). But there's 4 of us and we've been going out once a month for years now. (Of course my hubs gets to go once a week because he goes after work or after we're in bed...I can't do that because none of my friends stay up that late ;p) But it's still nice to gossip, laugh, or whatever. Glad you had a nice night to just let go!

Unknown said...

Dude, I just saw that you won over at the "Truth is Stranger than Fiction" contest! Congrats!

(Also, I apologize for calling you "dude"--that's my go-to direct address exclamatory noun. :) )