I love reading stories about unlikely combinations of characters who are introduced through circumstance or misadventure, and end up forming found families who support each other through difficult times.

This week, when you sign up, I’d like you to introduce a character from your upcoming story. There doesn’t have to be a huge amount of detail — a name, occupation, rough age, something interesting about them; enough to make them recognisable.

Then, when you write your story, I’d like you to pick as many other entrants’ characters as you like and treat them as a found family. Each character will add 500 words to your wordcount, assuming they’re used to reasonable effect (so please don’t just namedrop everyone’s characters to write a novella about your own).

Otherwise, go nuts! Feel free to collaborate (or not!) when interpreting other characters and working them into your story. Feel free to wrangle characters into genre-appropriate versions, as long as they’re still recognisable as the original source. Flashes on request.

Usual rules apply: no fanfic*, google docs, political screeds, or erotica.