From the Internet Oracle
--- 1218-01 --------------------------------------------------------------
Selected-By: Ian Davis <Ian.Davis@ludwig.edu.au>

The Internet Oracle has pondered your question deeply. Your question was:

I humble myself before you, for I am but a lowly community college student on a perilious quest to seek and obtain the pinnacle of CC achievement, the sacred parchment known to the initiated as the Associate of Arts degree. I have not as yet, officially, declared a major, but I intend to make a meager living as a writer, perhaps as a junior copywriter at some two-bit ad agency or submitting short story after story to literary journals only to be continually rejected and wind up working at Illuminations, the art-of-living candle store in the mall. Because I will have no medical insurance, I will no longer be able to afford my Zoloft, and will spiral into a depression that leaves me unable to take care of myself or pay rent. I will wander the streets of downtown Portland with my shopping cart filled with my works dating back to 4th grade and give public readings to the pigeons and statues in the park blocks while the Portland State University transfer students point to me and say "Yeah, that crazy chick was in my creative writing class at PCC." And all because I could not concieve of an idea that would justify the use of 4 pieces of computer paper. Please, suggest to me a character to build upon, a situation, what-have-you, so that I may snap out of this fog. In receipt of this, O' Oracle, I will name my character after you. Bless you, Generous deity, Guide of lost souls and Creator of all fictional characters.

KerouwackedOut in Portland, OR

I too know the heartache of having writer's block. At least you can write what you like! Imagine if you could only answer questions someone else asked...

This how-to document should give you near-infinite characters and situations for your writing. Hopefully this will lift you out of your impending Zoloft-bereft depression. It might help if you lift you out of Portland as well.

How to create a new fictional character in three easy steps:

1. Select a famous person from history (must be deceased).
2. Select a famous person currently living. This second person should not have ever had the faintest possibility of meeting the first person.
3. Combine the two into a single person and see what develops.

For example, I will pick Genghis Khan and Martha Stewart. Now I put my new character into a situation and start writing!

Martha Khan stepped lightly through the field of wildflowers, pausing occasionally to disembowel one of the attacking Mongols with a melon baller. "How badly these invading rabble dress!" she thought to herself after deftfully removing the spleen of a particularly hairy swordsman. She applied lemon rind to the organ and placed it in a hand-woven urn basket decorated with eucalyptus and white baby's breath as a warning to others and turned her attentions to cutting a fresh flower bouquet with a dagger pulled from the back of an unfortunate bowman. Her freshly painted nails glinted in the morning light and matched perfectly with her hand-woven sun dress dyed with natural onion-skins and printed with potato halves cut into patterns and dipped in human blood. "Ah, it's good to be alive," she said to no one in particular, reaching down to even the sideburns of the decapitated head lying at her feet. Her pace quickened as she passed the stakes of severed heads and headed for her yurt to prepare breakfast for the rest of her Mongol hoard. "I think we will attack in the salmon turtlenecks today Gonthar" she told her second in command as she entered the dwelling. "And freshen up the heads in the yard with mint leaves. It will help keep the flies down." He bowed, trying to hide the fact that he was missing several fingers on his right hand, and backed toward the exit. He was exceedingly careful not to wrinkle his newly pressed doeskin tunic, for he knew better than most the punishment for being inappropriately attired for a formal ambush.