Welcome to 1,000 Characters!

This is a project about exploration, into writing and into characters. The goal is to create one thousand characters, and learn more about all of them. Most days (at least twenty per month) there should be a new story snippet to keep the words flowing. Do not fret that everything (or at least most things) are short, as that is the intention.

1,000 Characters is a practice for better storytelling, improved fiction. The focus is diving into characters, looking curiously and deeply into their hopes, dreams, desires. Exploring new characters, their stories, the places they live and work, becomes a journey of fun. This process of discovery should, in many cases, lead to longer stories, possibly even a novel. Dare it be said: maybe novels.

A total of 99 works of fiction featuring 31 different Characters!

Featured Story

Published: Sep 03, 2020

Happy Unpleasant Birthday

I was seventeen at the time, approaching eighteen, wondering if I would feel different, if anything would suddenly change to mark the passage of another year. Up to that point none of my birthdays had meant anything but another moment spent within the walls, confined by time, people, rules, objects, my own thoughts. At the home, your birthday consisted of a cupcake with a single candle on the top, unlit. The other children stared with jealousy, attacking notions behind their eyes. I knew the emotion all too well, having felt the same thing.

Eighteen was different, there was no cupcake, there was no child. You were an adult, which meant you were not there. It had happened six times during my life at the home. Each time the excited talk, the questions, and the desire to break free. And that's what they did. The night before they stayed out all night, breaking the curfew, and never returning at all to accept their punishment. Adulthood meant you could leave; and six out six possible times an eighteenth birthday came that was the outcome.

Eighteen meant I could leave, but would I.

Recent Stories

Published: Jun 19, 2023

Jonesy

featuring: Harold White

Trash tumbled down the parkway, carried by the wind. Trees swayed, the crescendo of rustling leaves drowning out the sounds of the street at the end of the block. Harold watched from ...

Published: Jan 25, 2022

Email is Popular

featuring: Kroft Rodgers

I thought about writing this story last week. The plan was to type some words and see what I thought of them. Instead researched the top searched words on Google. I learned ...

Published: Jan 24, 2022

Shoveled Snow

featuring: Kroft Rodgers

I shoveled the snow this morning. It was a great workout, which is about the only reason I do it. I come into the house, covered in the white stuff below the ...

Published: Jan 23, 2022

Let's Talk

featuring: Kroft Rodgers

I just took up writing again, after many years of typing out computer code. I like sitting on my ass, getting old, wasting away. Whoever said we should all live to be ...

Published: Jan 22, 2022

Virus Blues

featuring: Kroft Rodgers

My son has Covid. Nothing more than a cold, thankfully. I'm writing this down for the future, which future or what future I do not know. Soon viruses will have to spread ...

Characters