Friday January 5th, 2018

The exercise:

With the four lines of prose you have to work with, write: a character sketch.

4 comments:

Greg said...

A four line character sketch? Without you showing us how it's done?? I feel challenged and intimidated....
Well, in keeping with the month's aim of revisiting old characters we're dusting off Professor Guildenstern today since I think she only made the one appearance and there's clearly more tale to tell there.

A character sketch
As Professor Guildenstern set The Jester's Journey down on the mahogany coffee table her trembling fingers twitched and she knocked a small stack of other books to the floor. Build your own exoskeleton bounced off the cat (a near-blind Tasmanian tree-cat she'd smuggled back from a field-trip) while Nuclear bunkers and backyard crack houses landed face-up next to the fireplace. She cursed softly but fluently, a stream of Walpiri flowing from her cold-cracked lips as though it was her native language. As she picked the scattered books up the grandmother clock in the hallway, also smuggled home on a field-trip, started to chime, the tone and pitch warning her that at least three people and up to seven were approaching the back-door of the house.

[Trying to fit enough detail to tell you about someone in four lines is especially hard. I hope you do show us all how this should be done, Marc!]

Marc said...

Greg - I was actually going to do one myself, but I ended up being too sleepy to do it at the time. I shall try to get there in the next couple of days.

This is a fascinating little sketch. I'd say you did very well with the prompt, and I appreciate the reference to The Jester's Journey :)

Marc said...

Screw it, Miles isn't sleeping and Kat isn't home yet, so I shall attempt mine while he's sitting beside me 'reading' one of his books.

Mine:

He knows that what he has lost - no, what has been taken from him - is gone forever. This does not stop him from wandering the streets of Crimson Falls in the middle of the night, listening for a voice that will never speak to him again.

This knowledge does not deter him from badgering folks, both friends and strangers, at the grocery store, at the bar, at the bank, with the same old questions: have you seen him, do you know what happened to him?

He is certain that one of them knows... and he will not stop seeking and asking and listening until he finds what he so desperately needs.

Greg said...

Hehehe, I think I know who this character might be :) I look forward to seeing more of him, and definitely enjoyed this introduction. Thank-you!