Doppelgänger

A character that serves as a double of a character. A doppelgänger will often have foil qualities as well. (Handbook to Literature)

Foil

A character that serves as a contrast to another.

Doppelgänger Writing Exercise

Choose an important character from a work you are currently revising. This character could be a protagonist or antagonist within the overall work or the main character within a single scene. Open a new document and write a scene where the character meets her/himself, the doppelgänger. 

In meeting self, what does the character learn about her/himself? 

You might decide to add this scene to your main work OR maybe you use this side exploration to enrich scenes already written within the main work.

Submit Your Work for Individualized Feedback

Please use Universal Manuscript Guidelines when submitting: .doc or .docx, double spacing, 10-12 pt font, Times New Roman, 1 inch margins, first page header with contact information, section breaks “***” or “#.”

Sources

The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the PresentEric Kandel.

A Handbook to Literature. William Harmon.

“Cogito et Histoire de la Folie.” Jacques Derrida.

Eats Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation. Lynne Truss.

The Elements of Style. William Strunk. 

New Oxford American DictionaryEdited by Angus Stevenson and Christine A. Lindberg.

The Norton Anthology of World LiteratureMartin Puchner, et al.

The Norton Introduction to PhilosophyGideon Rosen and Alex Byrne.

Woe is I: The Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English. Patricia T. O’Conner

Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft. Janet Burroway, Elizabeth Stuckey-French & Ned Stuckey-French.

Writing the Other. Nisi Shawl and Cynthia Ward.

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