In my last post I commented the 1.2. Part of the course "Round and flat characters". It revolved around how to make characters round. Now I am going to do the excercise of the course:
I am going to write a brief scene in which I am supposed to portay "one of the stereotypes mentioned (shifty-eyed thief, jovial fatso, etc.) or -- one of your own" in a complex way, "going against the usual expectations." Let's see how this will work out.
I will choose a shifty-eyed thief, just because it was mentioned as an example.
How can one make a shifty-eyed thief more complex? The thief could have a sad story behind everything or he could be making a big sacrifice or he could have motives that change everything (like Robin Hood)...
I decided to just start writing about a typical shifty-eyed thief -situation ( :D ) and see where it leads from there. I tried to think about him... the thirty year old man… as someone who isn't a shifty-eyed thief, but someone that happens to be a thief with shifty-eyes. He must have other goals than just to steal things, there must be a background why he is stealing.
He managed to sneak out of the house without being noticed, although the family had just returned from their outing when he was climbing out of the window.I somehow had a really difficult time starting to write this one, but after writing the furst sentence the others came easily.
With his dark hair and clothes the tall man easily blended into the night sky. He was extremely pail and looked sick in his skinniness. Like a skeleton with clothes on and dark hair. That, and his usual surliness and grumpy manner had earned him the street-name Cad, like Cadaver.
Cad had been stealing valuables since he was thirteen.
He had robbed thousands of houses and emptied endless pockets without caring for anybody’s loss. If somebody was stupid enough to get robbed, they earned it or could afford to lose it. What was it to him?
And so with a grim, but almost proud smile he looked at the medal in his hands.
He had large, bony hands, which were covered in black sooth, but the medal was twice the size of his palm.
The estimated value of the medal was around half a million, and he was extremely satisfied in knowing that the Gritt’s would lose that much money. He had planned on taking more valuables but the family had returned too soon and interrupted him. But the medal was enough, it had to be.
He had dreamed about retrieving it for years, practicing in other houses and following false leads. But now here it was, he finally had it.
Cad had been in possessions twice as valuable, but this medal was special. All the other loot had always been used to bribing and buying information, and always this medal had been his goal. It had been hidden so well, that it had taken him eighteen years to finally have it, and now he was in possession it. He could fulfill his promise and finally let his mother have peace.
Without caring who would see him Cad walked the main streets of the city until he came to a small red door. It was locked and there was no way that someone would open it for him in the middle of the night, but that didn’t stop Cad. It didn’t even take him half a minute to break the door open.
With long strikes he walked past the lobby, strode trough long hallways past endless doors until he stopped in front of a seemingly random one.
This one he cracked even faster than the one before.
The room was small, only containing a bed and a tiny bedside table. In the bed lay a shriveled figure who didn’t react to Cad’s break-in at all.
Cad looked at the open unseeing eyes of the old and shrunken woman and laid the medal on top of the bedcover.
She just kept staring at the ceiling, just blinking every couple of seconds.
Cad sighed. ”Mama, I brought you something.”
His voice was hoarse from disuse, but his mother didn’t react in any way.
“I brought you the medal of the race, mama.”
Silence.
”The payback for killing Julia and Papa is here. I got it back from the Gritt’s. You can let them go, Mama. ”
The cover of the bed shifted slightly as the woman moved her hand as if the see if something, the medal, was there.
Cad’s eyes widened in surprise to this small sign of life, but before he could react in any way. The woman let out a barely audible sigh and stilled forever, going to join her family.
Cad stood there for a long time looking at the body of his mother cradling the huge medal.
Now his family rested in peace.
The next night a huge memorial disappeared mystically from the cemetery. It was never seen again, and neither was Cad.
I liked the idea of this practice because it made me think about characters, at the same time I also found that this excercise felt rather forced. How long should a scene be where one is supposed to use a stereotypical character, make it round while still creating the stereotypical setting. I mean I could have said he was a a typical shifty-eyed thief and then decribed him in an other situation, but that would have been entirely unbelievable. I felt rather uncomfortable when I hadn't started to write it. It just didn't feel like it was my sort of cup. I would rather have written a longer, more complex short story, where the goal wasn't so narrow, but on the other hand I recognize the importnace of the idea behind the practice.
Kim A. Dremreich
No comments:
Post a Comment