Tuesday, 5 April 2011

character development

 We then had a bit of time to come up with ideas for our own characters to develop, to come up with a character and a secret. The character which i came up with was a happy jolly fat old postman named john.
His secret was originally that he was wanted for tax fraud, however after developing this character within a group by asking each other questions i decided that John's secret would be that he witnessed a murder on his early morning paper round.
These are all the characteristics of John which got developed through this exercise, to 'deepen the iceberg under our character;

  • he is middle aged, around 50ish
  • overweight
  • speaks in a strong yorkshire accent
  • single
  • one son from a previous marriage
  • his son is in his late 20's and now lives abroad, he rarely hears from him
  • has a dog, Labrador called Dylan
  • everyones friend
  • happy and friendly, however the happiness was just a front over his depression
  • fake
  • constantly nervous
  • as nightmares every night
  • contemplates suicide

This was a very useful exercise to develop our characters, really helping us build up a complete profile so we can really get into the mind set of this character in order to write a more believable, creative story. After completing this i have since used it within my graphics work, for a group task the brief was to tell a convincing lie, so to do so we invented this fake professional graphic designer with a full portfolio to come in and give a presentation to the third years about his career and giving advise to them for after they leave university. In order to fully develop this graphic designer, which would be played by one of my group members, i used this techniques, questioning him on all aspects of his life which proved to be very successful as we really worked out the personally of this fictional character and all of his traits that helped us successfully fool the third years.


The next day we were asked to do 40 minutes of free writing based on our character and his secret, we were given the opening line of our story which was; 'i was just getting out of bed after another sleepless night,' then asked to just write and write and write without stopping. However this time at certain points throughout the 40 minutes Gary dropped in some sensory detail which we would have to include within our story at that point. These are the sensory detail which we had to incorporate, "it felt like yogurt", "it was blue and orange", "there was broken teeth crunch", "the smell of a old dishcloth", "a taste of bananas and diesel".


I was just getting out of bed after another sleepless night, I sit on the edge of my bed with my head in my hands, just thinking, i cant seem to get it out of my head. 20 minutes pass while i am completely lost within my own thoughts and i realise that i am going to be late for work. I skip the shower and breakfast and end up leaving for work looking homeless like i always seem to dot these days. I used to really enjoy my job, walking around on my own all day, lost in my own thoughts, however with all that on my conscience its all i can think about nowadays ...it felt like yogurt... dripping all over my mind.
I noticed on of my old friends out in the street. i put my head down and tried to walk straight past, avoiding conversation, pretending i never saw him. I almost manage to sneak past before i feel a tap on my shoulder and loud shout, 'John, how you been?'. Fuck, now i had to spend the next 15 minutes of my life pretending everything is perfect and making awkward conversation about things i don't even care about. This guy was really starting to do my head in, going on about his new car for 10 minutes like i had never seen a fiat punto before in my life, even his coat annoyed me, ...it was blue and orange..., he looked like a tit. I finally managed to escape the never ending rambling of him by saying, 'well i best get back to work eyy.', although i already knew i had no plan of doing any work today. I just float around from place to place, with a full bag of letters which people were depending on me to deliver  even though i had no aim of doing so, I hadnt delivered a single letter in about 2 weeks. As i was walking around i stood on a poor snail, ...it was a broken teeth crunch... as i crushed its poor little shell, feeling bad for the snail however kind of enjoying it.
Perhaps t was my subtle revenge back at the world, not delivering people mail, for making me go through all this trauma and stress, but i knew i couldnt keep doing this forever. As i carry on walking the same route i walk everyday a strong smell came over me, knocking me back slightly, ...i could smell an old rotten dishcloth..., it took me back, i looked around trying to find the source of this horrible smell before noticing.. and old rotten dishcloth, just their right infront of me, so yeh it all made complete sense. I booted the dishcloth across the road and continued my walk.
As i waled i came up to my old favourite tea shop, i hadnt been in for a while, i could bare the thought of taking to everyone again. However today i though i would brave it, i stopped outside the door for a second gathering my thoughts together and took in a deep breath as a walked in nervously. I went straight up to the counter expecting to be greeted by the same old woman that used to serve me everyday, we used to talk for hours acting like we were best of friends and we went way back, although in all honesty id only known her for a couple of weeks, never saw her once outside of the coffee shop and didnt even know her name. Luckily i wasnt greeted by the smile of the old lady, she must of been away that day. The coffee shop must of recently hired a new staff member, a young miserable girl who clearly hated her job. She never once tried to make conversation with me, not even a hello, she just kind of grunted as she handed the coffee over to me. Sipping the coffee it tasted like ...bananas and deisel.., this new girl would be working here long, disgusting, i threw it straight in the bin and got out of the shop, not even bothering to ask for a refund, couldnt be bothered with the hassle.
Soon i was to be coming up to the place i hated seeing everyday, however even though i could go anywhere on my walk, even walk around it, i actively made sure i passed it everyday, im not even sure why, its kind of like when you see a dead pigeon, as disgusting as it is you cant stop yourself from staring, Cold shivers ran up my spine as i came closer to the spot, everything i saw on that day comes rushing back to me and replays over and over in my head.


40 minutes of non stop free writing was exhausting, at certain points i felt that i could just no longer write anymore which caused me to just start writing nonsense. I was fun though, trying to fit the sensory detail in, i cheated i think a little on the dishcloth one however all the others i managed to squeeze in somehow, even though i had to kind of move away from the story for a split second. I had to read this story out to the class, slightly embarrassing as it kind of goes abit weird at certain points, however i think it went down ok, the class seemed to enjoy it.

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