First of we all had to write down three words that expressed how we felt that morning. Since I was looking forward to the session and had woken up on the right side of bed as it were I wrote down 'excited' and 'cheerful' for my first two words. My final word however was 'indecisive' as I was sadly suffering from writers block that morning.
Afterwards we then made a list of things we felt made a good character. Such words that were added to the list included mannerisms, charisma, background, entertaining, their actions and making them more human by giving them human flaws.
When talking about mannerisms I decided to use Batman's villains as examples of such characters. For example, Two-face flips his coin, the Joker laughs a lot and the Penguin has both the stance and movements of a penguin.
We then talked about how characters develop throughout numerous stories depending on the situations they are put into and shared example characters from movies. Therefore our lecturer used John Mcclane as an example since he wants to get on well with his family (a human side to him), but has to stand up to the bad guys and learn to work well with others (the side to him that stands for what is right).
Finally we moved onto the main task of selecting one of the characters given to us and then putting them into one of the provided story settings.
I first of all started of with Carlton Taylor who had this original descriptor:
41 years old, 6 ft tall, with sea green eyes and blond hair. He is resourcheful and dependable but can be self centered and is scared of commitment.
I then continued his description with the following:
Carltyon came from a poor background and was brought up bootlegging things off the back of vans and doing the odd job for cash. His mum having left him after he was born he was brought up by his father who cared more for antiques and people who had been dead for a thousand years than him.
I was unable to write anything else about this character after these first few lines as it was clear to me that I wasn't interested in him and therefore didn't have a clear idea of who he was. I was debating between making him an explorer at first, thus making the comparison to Indiana Jones and his father more obvious as I used that as inspiration. The other idea however, was that he killed his lover by accident and as a result went into hiding for years, thus explaining his fear of commitment.
Deciding to change my character I chose Chris Saunders who had this original descriptor:
19 years old, 5 ft 6' tall, with pale brown eyes and mousey brown hair. He is sentimental and reliable but can be boastful and is scared of thunder and lighting.
I was perhaps more interested in this character because of our similar ages so I continued his description with the following.
Being brought up by a single father, Chris was always told that loyalty and friendship were the two most important things in life. Therefore Chris has done all he can to fit in. Whenever something needs to be done or a secret kept Chris is the one to rely on. He also developed a fondness for old trinkets and gismos people would otherwise throw away. Therefore his room, which is situated at the top of his house in a tower, is filled with gears hanging on strings, old autumn leaves in glass jars and even a tattered button eyed teddy bear that he owned as a child. However, even though he is full of good intentions he finds himself not so subtlety proclaiming his high grades to his class and even his neighbors.
He also wears a collection of badges on his jacket which, if asked about he will describe in detail how he got each one. His biggest fear however, is thunder and lighting and therefore whenever it strikes he finds himself clinging to the nearest thing possible. Living in a tower doesn't help this fear. Therefore he finds himself hiding in the cellar when storms approach the quiet little island that he lives on. With not much to do on such a small island Chris has gone into opening an 'odd jobs' shop. 'Does something need fixing or found? Then Chris is the man for the job!'. Although business is slow he finds the odd job here and there that opens up a whole range of adventures for him.
Thinking of the above as a Studio Ghibli character and imagining that he would live in an environment similar to the one in 'Kiki's Delivery Service' I enjoyed writing this piece more than the last. You can tell that the film and myself had an influence on the character as Kiki delivered goods as a way to make money (a contrast to Chris and his 'odd jobs' business'. Whereas I came into the character as I am a big fan of steampunk and even though I don't collect as much stuff as I made Chris out to, I just thought it would be cool for him to have lots of cool gears and such scattered around his room.
Looking back over what I wrote, I think I did a good job and that I must have had a block on Wednesday when I was feeling unsure. Odd, but I should be fine next session (I hope).
After writing we shared our ideas with one another. I decided not to for this session as I personally felt that my writing wasn't up to scratch on that day since I was suffering with writer's block. However, we were all provided with sheets that look useful in terms of creating characters, therefore I will use these in the future to help me when I have another day like today.
Other notes on the session are as follows:
- Writing down how a character feels or may feel during certain situations may help us write a character's personality and reactions more easily when it comes to those scenes e.g. do they dislike confrontation and how do they react when put into that situation?
- From an opening scene you can sometimes tell what a character will be like during the rest of a story. This can also provide build up and foreshadowing for later scenes.
- Environment should have an impact! It shouldn't just exist for the sake of existing.
- "Its always too early to quit" was a nice quote and decided to copy down.
- Someone in the group was praised for using voices when reading his work. Therefore I could do this when I next read my stories.
- Try and decide on the story that I definitely want to write during the rest of this module in advance. That way I can become my usual confident self during the rest of complimentary studies.
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