I have been down this week, so I’m trying to do positive things, in the present, worrying less about the future or the past.

Sunday was great for that. I joined a sprint-writing session at A Seat At The Table Books with children’s author Lisa Riddiough and a group of laptop warriors aiming to write a book in the month of November. It was inspiring to see them all writing in the community of this bustling Elk Grove bookstore.

I thought I’d share the topic I introduced as a way to inspire new writing—my Daisy Method.

I use this strategy in a couple of ways. First, at the very beginning of figuring out a novel, I put a question/problem in the center of the flower, a question I think will be important in the book. Like, for instance, when is it right to tell the truth and when is it right to withhold? (A question that comes up often in my newspaper-centered novels.) The petals around the question each represent a potential character, who would answer that question uniquely.

(I often use the Eneagram to find basic personalities who might find themselves around a table having this discussion. Though the Eneagram actually has nine types, I couldn’t easily make a daisy with nine petals. So the image above isn’t entirely complete.)

Why do I do this at the beginning stages of writing? Because I prefer to read stories where the characters differ enough to make scenes complicated. I don’t want my characters all to see the world the same way. In fact, I love to read books in which I learn to see a problem or question in a variety of ways. The Daisy Method helps me build that in from the very beginning.

I also like to use it (with fewer petals) when I am writing a scene, in order to make sure the dialog and action are full of back and forth. That doesn’t happen as easily when characters are too similar.

Imagine a scene in which a few friends who’ve met up at a restaurant have not yet been served or even greeted by the waiter, who is focusing on other customers (the problem at the center of the daisy). If each of the friends has a different personality, they will react differently to this problem. Maybe one thinks they ought to storm out of the restaurant. Maybe another wants to speak to the manager. Maybe a third wants to melt into the floor because of her friends’ behavior. Maybe a fourth gets up to find a water station and set up their glasses. If all this is going on, revealing the push and pull of their personalities, while they also try to deal with the actual content they came together to discuss, a reader will get a lot more out of the scene. Both the plot and the people.

What do you think? As a writer, do you have a go-to way to build in variety? As a reader do you get bored at the repetition of similar characters or do you find it reinforcing?