> Chat rooms are better places to do acting exercises, and it's more challenging, as you can't sit back and think about your response -- you have to come up with it right then, on the spot. In writing my novels and short stories, I found that an excellent way to develop my characters -- *be* that character, enter an environment where you can't be sure of what will happen, then try to stay in character.

Heh, that's a cool idea. Personally, what I love to do is to play characters to people I know in real life. I think it's interesting to see how friends of mine react to other people. Weird story: one time I had a character that was antagonizing a friend of mine (nothing mean or rude, he enjoyed it because my character was basically an idiot and he's a weird guy). But I kept it up for some time (I even made a web page for the guy) and I had some real fun accusing my friend of making up the character himself to get attention. I've yet to let anyone else in on the joke...

Another thing I enjoy doing is creating personas when I meet new people. In real life I tend to stick fairly close to my actual personality, but I do sometimes try to conciously change the way I act. It's interesting how you can get people to respond to you just by being very friendly and outgoing (I'm normally a bit reserved until I know a person). Of course, sometimes just acting plain out weird can be tons of fun...