This is my entrance to the fast and furious task of the sixth day of the Theinkwell festival. The festival challenges writers to write a post based on a creative stimulus.
The task this day is:
Day Six Prompt - Character Development
In this post, we looked at using dialogue to create characters. Today, we are going to imagine ourselves as a character.
Character Name Generator
You can have lots of tries until you find a name that you like. You can use the generator to get ideas for names and then adapt them to ones that are more appropriate for where you live or who you want to write about.
Imagine what this new character is like, start to describe them or their surroundings, their likes and dislikes, what they want ... but in the voice of the character. So use the first person "I" and write as if you are the character. Take them for a walk, meet someone...
What do you notice about your character? Did they develop the way that you thought they would? What is their voice like? Is it different to yours? Include your thoughts about your character in your post.
Taken fromm: Theinkwell
My work:
Olivia M. Newton
My mother was a constant complainer to my father. Every time she wanted to reprimand me she would point out my similarity to him. I didn't get to know him very well. I have few and vague memories of when I was a child. Before he left for Iraq in 2003 never to return. However, from the photographs I still have, I can tell that he was big and stocky, strongly built, shiny black, and a face whose genuinely African features were characterized by an expression of steady, serious reasonableness. There was something beautiful and attractive about his appearance: a curious air of assurance mingled with shyness.
According to my mother, he was a bad man; but in the physical and temporal distance, I cannot but feel nostalgia and fondness. How to hate a dead father? It's easier, with a mother like mine, to be a kind of New York Electra. Although many of our acquaintances pointed out that my mother and I had the same dark, expressive eyes with long eyelashes, and similar figures in our round faces, with dimples in our cheeks included; the truth is that we were quite opposite in several respects.
My mother went on and on, on every subject, about my father's wickedness. And it seemed that she will never be able to put her life in order if she is not able to overcome this subject that drags her like the flood of a river. Our house was always a mess. My mother had me so neglected that I barely changed clothes three times a week and, necessarily, I had to match them with the only pair of shoes I wore to school. My hand, always delicate, as small as my feet and ankles, is still crossed by a white scar left by a dog bite. That is why I still dread them; and there are those who point to me that it is a phobia developed by that trauma.
In my childhood and adolescence, my hair was always short, which no one seemed to like. This was my main reason for standing out in school and getting a scholarship to go to college. I wanted to feel, even once, some power over myself; to be excited about the beauty that could flow from my body. I always wanted to have hair, as I have it now, silky smooth and jet-colored, falling in shiny curls around my face.
Now I am a lawyer. One of the best in my profession. Right now I have several proposals from the best law firms in New York. I look at myself in the mirror and although I feel some pride, I think I have a ways to go. My dark complexion glows, while my big black eyes, full of fire and sweetness, peek out from under long and full eyelashes; and my dress fits perfectly to my body, highlighting its harmonious shapes.