This is my exercise for the Scrivener’s Forge prompt on character and action to create character through action, rather than description

 

Let me tell you about Kiran. I loved her with a love that corroded the soul. Like, there was this time I took her to a friend’s party. She talked philosophy with Daniel, a practitioner of that art. He asked her if she thought it was now, now. Without missing a beat, she said ‘No, Dan, it was now then.’

She had Roddie stand on her stomach. Now Roddie was a big guy. He played rugger. She just lay down and sucked in air and told him to stand on her stomach. And that stomach remained flat.

For each and every one of them, she had something special. That’s how she was. I felt ten feet tall that she had come with me, and that she left with me. I was so proud she was mine. When we were walking home, she said ‘Wow, I did it. I dominated a whole room full of guys. I held their attention, and none of the other women got a look in.’

You’re probably thinking round about now that Kiran was a bit superficial. You’d be right. I didn’t care. She was gorgeous, and everyone wanted her, and she was mine. I guess I’m a bit superficial too. When we made love, it was like nothing, I’d ever experienced before. When we fought, it was also like nothing I’d ever experienced before. Nobody before, or since, has ever come at me with a knife.

I didn’t know how badly I loved Kiran until I lost her. I became a crazy man. She was going out with this wimp. I think she did it just to annoy me. I took to following them around. One night, I jumped out of an alley, and told the wimp if he didn’t fuck off and leave her alone I was going to kill him. Kiran really got off on that. I think she loved me more then, than all the time we were together. She had that look, lips slightly parted, grey eyes glistening. The wimp ran. She practically dragged me to her flat. We started to fuck just inside the front door. It was like coming home.

A new writing exercise every month. When you focus on one aspect of writing at a time, you can concentrate on making it the best you can possibly create. That way you can reach a professional level that may be harder with longer works. We’ll explore one aspect of the craft each month.

If you comment on other writers’ efforts, they’ll usually comment on yours. So you get lots of critiques, advice, and encouragement.

Please don’t post your entry in comments here. Create your entry on your own blog, and then click the little blue frog to join the link-up and read other people’s work.

6. Character is action

Characters act. The ways they act, and hence the stories they create, depend on their natures. In this month’s exercise, we’ll explore using action to reveal that nature.

Exercise

Create a character in your mind. Visualise her or him. Learn what their goals, mannerisms and peculiarities are.  Then write a short scene that shows us who your character is, entirely through their actions. Show us who your character is – do not tell us. Do not use any describing words (adjectives or adverbs). Make your verbs count – if a character walks, we don’t learn much about them, but if they stride we see their confidence and purpose, whereas if they slouch or creep we see their discomfort.

This is my response to the fifth Scrivener’s Forge exercise on Character and World Building. Click on the link to see the exercise details

 

Twenty-two years the barn has survived. Twenty generations of ewes lambed in it.  We stored twenty-one harvests there, smelling of summer sun and the good rich earth. I see the paint is flaking now, and one door leans askew on its hinges. When did that happen? I should repair it and repaint the damn thing. I should. And I will soon. There’s time. So much time.

The old yew stump pains my right buttock, so I shift to my left and carry on studying the barn. Hope – that’s what it stored. When you’re young, you have nothing but hope.  The future stretches out ahead of you, bright and unblemished.

Twenty-two harvests is so little time. Just adequate to build up a farm, get a wife, raise a brood. That’s only years enough to write the first couple of lines into the flyleaf of the family bible. But what a man writes slowly with his bare hands age on age, men together can erase in a second.

The barn and I have weathered as one. The door is falling off, and the wound in my leg aches me in the winter. I don’t suppose either of us are long for this world.  I don’t suppose it matters now. No need for repairs. I’ll sit a while longer.

A new writing exercise every month. When you focus on one aspect of writing at a time, you can concentrate on making it the best you can possibly create. That way you can reach a professional level that may be harder with longer works. We’ll explore one aspect of the craft each month.

If you comment on other writers’ efforts, they’ll usually comment on yours. So you get lots of critiques, advice, and encouragement.

Please don’t post your entry in comments here. Create your entry on your own blog, and then click the little blue frog to join the link-up and read other people’s work.

Character and world-building

Building a character is building a world. This may be a world of fantasy, of wizards and dragons. But it doesn’t have to be. When the physical world and the emotional world are overlaid, everyday things become new and vibrant if seen through the eyes of a character in a particular situation. How every character sees and understands the world creates their world. This is what gives a character a distinctive voice. Vivid description is a portrait of a mind thinking and feeling its way through the world. A character’s mentality is created both from the big things (someone who is fearful is surrounded by a world of threat, for example) but also from the small things (someone who is fastidious may be troubled by a neighbour’s messy garden).

Exercise

An exercise from John Gardener. Write a scene which places a character in a specific location. Use the interaction between character and description to show us a unique world we’ve never seen before and that will never exist again.  A man whose son has died in the war is looking at a building. Describe the building without mentioning the war, the son, or his death.

Hint: if you’re finding this hard to approach, consider why a character in this situation might even notice a building.