{W}rite-Of-Passage: Two Very Brief Attempts at Character

Find a person in public today and study their character. Make a story surrounding them. Build them in to your shorty essay.*

Brief Attempt #1:

She stood in the hallway just beyond a shadow from the dresser, warmth rising from her skin to fill the stillness around her. A knotty fist in her lungs kneaded breath in and out, then back in. She pressed the long bones of two toes into the gray of the doorframe, trying to keep tears from pooling in her lower lids.

Dark, inky clouds filled her eyes. She mistook her fear for guilt. Thoughts are oblivious to the stretch of skin across bone.

She wanted to say she hadn’t meant it, she wanted to be comfortable. But neither of these things would be true again, if they ever had…

Brief Attempt #2:

She was round and soft, and she had doe eyes. Doe eyes and doughy limbs. The way her belly clung to her body, like a baby. Or a monkey. It was as if it could be lost, as if a flood might carry it, weeping, away from her at any moment.

Her eyes, round too, were framed by short, sticky eyelashes. Her cheeks puffed over the sweet spots between her cheeks and jaw. The pads of her cheeks created roundness that wasn’t there in the hollow spaces below.

Her teeth were straight and manicured, and framed by thin, pink lips, lighter in shade than you’d expect from her eyes. Her nose was smaller and came to an attractive point, the tip almost calling to mind a sliver of moon.

She stood very still, not because anyone expected her to, and definitely not because her mind was calm, but because she believed deeply that movement meant violence. Extending an arm to shake hands, walking to a car, tapping a foot; all of these things…

* This post was started (and neither character completely completed, heh) in response to the first “official” prompt for Mrs. Flinger’s Writing Well Challenge, {W}rite-of-Passage.

Read others’ attempts at character here:

Tagged as: Bloggery, Writing