Imagine yourself as the hero or heroine of your own novel and then describe yourself. But wait a minute; before you get started, think what kind of novel it will be. Begin by casting yourself in a romance and write a paragraph or two along those lines, then switch to a sci-fi fantasy and see if that suits you, then change to thriller mode, then chic lit, until you have sampled a range of different genres.
Tthis may help you in a couple of different ways. Firstly, you might discover a facility for a kind of writing style which would not otherwise have occurred to you. Secondly, it will help you to explore how the presentation of a character is affected by the setting in which you place them. It is self evident that the hero of a science fiction story will behave very differently from the protagonist in a romantic comedy, but you need to understand the nuts and bolts of how that works. Your characters will have different qualities, applied in different ways. You will learn about appropriateness. You might also discover that you can cross-pollinate and take something that you would normally associate with one genre and subtly insert it into another: humour into a thriller, or suspense into a romance.
It's like trying on a new outfit - you might find that yellow isn't your colour after all, but you won't know until you try...
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