The purpose of this exercise is to attempt to get you out of your fictional comfort zones in terms of the creation of characters. Your assignment is to create a protagonist who is not like you. One of the best ways to develop a fictional character is through his or her own words. Let your characters speak for themselves. Speech always, always, always reflects a character's background and, more important, inner reality.
Language is lived from within.
Write a story which begins and ends with dialogue. Use as little narration as possible to tell the story. Moreover, use as little attribution as possible with this story. Recollections of childhood Attempt to tell a story dealing with the activity of play, or a toy, in which a child matures, develops, throughout the course of the piece. Because I believe that we all have stories from childhood that we only now have the words to write.