1. In your character’s world, only strong magic–users are allowed to survive past their 13th birthday. Your character has no magical ability—but even at 11 years old, they’ve discovered a way to fake it.
2. Your character is the daughter of a poor clergyman in mid-19th-century England. Without a dowry, she has little chance for marriage. Without a husband, she’s doomed to a spinster’s life as a governess or servant. In 1854 she joins Florence Nightingale’s group of female nurses bound for the Crimean Peninsula, where she discovers that the hell of war extends into the hospital at Scutari.
3. Your character has a stalker with the ability to stop time. The stalker uses this ability to manipulate your character—and their efforts are escalating.
4. A powerful pharmaceutical company recently released a new drug to market that dampens the arousal response in human beings. Your character is a private detective brought in to solve an unusual murder. The weapon? A lethal dose of this new drug, which was previously thought to be harmless.
5. After moving into a new house, your character begins to receive love letters addressed to the previous occupant. The letters have no return address, but they are so beautifully written that your character begins to fall in love with the writer, despite never having met the author.
