1. Find a random name generator online (there are a bunch of them out there), and generate a name—or five or six. When we did this, we kept going until we found one we all liked (relatively speaking). If I remember correctly (and, honestly, the likelihood of that is pretty slim), we wrote from the name Paxton.
2. Spend about 10 minutes with everyone writing on her own, spinning a character based on the name. Everyone writes from the same name.
3. Squabble over who gets to read first, then share.
All of the characters we created were vastly different from each other. We were split 50-50 on gender, and we even each ended up with multiple spellings of the name: Paxton, Packston and Joe. (That would be L with the eclectic spelling.)
This is a fun exercise anytime, really, but it's also good for when you're in the doldrums of writer's block or if a character's not really working for you anymore. Not sure who someone in your story is or where he's going? Maybe he's not a Butch, he's a Kristof. Or maybe he's not a Kristof, he's just plain Chris. Even within one name, you often have a lot of options. Christopher, Kristof, Chrissy and Topher are all very different characters.
In fact, you could have fun doing a freewrite in which all of the characters' names are just variations of the same name. Hey, that sounds good. Take 10 minutes. Ready? Go.
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