Character Idea Packet:
Contents:
Character Idea
Writing Experiment: James Thurber’s Father
Writing Experiment: 5 Easy Pieces
Writing Experiment: Dear Diary
Writing Experiment: Bad to the Bone
Girl by Jamacia Kincaid
Minstrel Man by Langston Hughes
One for Old Snaggletooth by Charles Bukowski
The Sawmill by Richard Brautigan
Cemetery Polka by Tom Waits
dm 6/27/08
Character/Persona Sketch Writing Idea:
Create a short piece in which you capture the essence of a person’s character. You can
use a person you know or create one. Use only the physical details that help create the
aspect of the character you want to focus on. In fact, for some persona pieces, the writer
may choose to use a very limited amount of physical details. In the 5 Easy Pieces idea,
you focus on a person’s hands to help tell us about the person. In the Dear Diary idea,
you create two characters – the one based purely on a visual description of the person vs.
the actual person as revealed in the diary. Another interesting way to create a persona is
to use a photograph to trigger your imagination. For instance, let the person in the
photograph speak or speak to the person in the photograph. You can use a ‘found’ photo
or a photo of someone you know. It’s ok to combine a few concepts from the writing
ideas – for instance, using a description of your grandmother’s hands from an old photo
from a family album. Or have your grandfather speak to you from an old photograph of
him when he was twenty-five. The main thing is to try out as many directions as you can,
using the writing ideas.
Character Sketch Idea:
James Thurber’s Father
Unlike a biographical sketch, which focuses on significant events in a person's life, a
character sketch concentrates on revealing personality and character. In other words, it
creates a vivid impression of a subject rather than recounting a life story. James Thurber's
character sketch, which follows, uses techniques of description, narration, and exposition
to let us understand the kind of person the father was.
James Thurber in Gentleman from Indiana
One day in the summer of 1900, my father was riding a lemon-yellow bicycle that went
to pieces in a gleaming and tangled moment, its crossbar falling, the seat sagging, the
handlebars buckling, the front wheel hitting a curb and twisting the tire from the rim.
He had to carry the wreck home amidst laughter and cries of "Get a horse!". He was a
good rider and the first president of the Columbus Bicycle Club, but he was always
mightily plagued by the mechanical. He was also plagued by the manufactured, which
take in a great deal more ground. Knobs froze at his touch, doors stuck, lines fouled,
the detachable would not detach, the adjustable would not adjust. He could rarely get
the top off anything, and he was forever trying to unlock something with the key to
something else.
Now You Try It:
Write a character sketch of someone you know. Avoid telling everything about the
person, instead, select two or three outstanding traits to illustrate with incidents and
examples. You may find it helpful to follow the pattern of the model by beginning with
an incident showing the person performing a typical action. As you relate the incident, or
soon afterward, give vital information about the subject - name, age, and occupation, for
instance. Is it important that the reader see the person? If so, give details of physical
appearance. After finishing the sketch, reread it to be sure that it creates a vivid
impression, making any revisions that you feel will make it more effective.
Character Sketch Writing Idea
5 Easy Pieces
This is an exercise in thinking visually and creating a piece by building on visual
fragments. The first step is to remember a person you know well or to invent a person.
The second step is to imagine a place where you find the person. Then you are ready for
the five pieces.
1. Describe a person’s hands.
2. Describe something he or she is doing with the hands.
3. Put them in a place.
4. Ask them a question based on 1-3.
Have them answer your question in an unexpected way – for instance, disregarding your
question and telling you what they need to tell you.
Writing Idea: Character Sketch:
Dear Diary...
Part of the fun of creating a character is getting inside his or her head, being
granted access to his or her inner-most thoughts, his or her hopes and dreams, fears, and
even darkest secrets.
Imagine that you are waiting at a train station, and, sitting on a bench on the
platform on the opposite side of the tracks, is a person writing in a journal or diary. When
a train passes going the other way, the person vanishes. You notice, though, that the
journal is still sitting on the bench and you make your way around to the other platform
and retrieve it. What do you find inside?
Character Sketch Idea:
Bad To the Bone…
Sometimes the best character in a book or play or film is the villain. From Iago to
Dr. Evil, the gallery of villains who've stolen the show is long and infamous. But what
makes a good villain so appealing? Does entering a villain's point of view allow us to live
out our darker fantasies? Or maybe it's just the opposite. Maybe the fun of villains is
watching them get theirs in the end because it reassures us that at the end of the day the
world is just and the bad get what they deserve. Whatever the reason, villains can be the
most fun to write, as well.
Take some time and think up a villain to write about. Keep in mind that a villain doesn't
have to be a person; it can be an animal or even an object: a prison, a wall, an icy lake. It
can be a house that a character wants to escape, or a street or even a city. The villain is
the story's conflict. It's what challenges the main character and/or the reader to overcome
his or her fears. Either write about a villain --use one in a story or poem or essay-- or try
writing from the villain's point of view. Use a villain as the main character, or speak in
his or her voice. You can use someone from real life or a story we've read, or you could
just make a villain up, plain and simple. Have fun. Be bad…
Girl
by Jamaica Kincaid
Wash the white clothes on Monday and put them on the stone heap; wash the color
clothes on Tuesday and put them on the clothesline to dry; don't walk barehead in the hot
sun; cook pumpkin fritters in very hot sweet oil; soak your little cloths right after you
take them off; when buying cotton to make yourself a nice blouse, be sure that it doesn't
have gum on it, because that way it won't hold up well after a wash; soak salt fish
overnight before you cook it; is it true that you sing benna in Sunday school?; always eat
your food in such a way that it won't turn someone else's stomach; on Sundays try to walk
like a lady and not like the slut you are so bent on becoming; don't sing benna in Sunday
school; you mustn't speak to wharbfflies will follow you; but I don't sing benna on
Sundays at all and never in Sunday school; this is how to sew on a button; this is how to
make a button-hole for the button you have just sewed on; this is how to hem a dress
when you see the hem coming down and so to prevent yourself from looking like the slut
I know you are so bent on becoming; this is how you iron your father's khaki shirt so that
it doesn't have a crease; this is how you iron your father's khaki pants so that they don't
have a crease; this is how you grow okrbafar from the house, because okra tree harbors
red ants; when you are growing dasheen, make sure it gets plenty of water or else it
makes your throat itch when you are eating it; this is how you sweep a corner; this is how
you sweep a whole house; this is how you sweep a yard; this is how you smile to
someone you don't like too much; this is how you smile to someone you don't like at all;
this is how you smile to someone you like completely; this is how you set a table for tea;
this is how you set a table for dinner; this is how you set a table for dinner with an
important guest; this is how you set a table for lunch; this is how you set a table for
breakfast; this is how to behave in the presence of men who don't know you very well,
and this way they won't recognize immediately the slut I have warned you against
becoming; be sure to wash every day, even if it is with your own spit; don't squat down to
play marblebsyou are not a boy, you know; don't pick people's flowerbsyou might catch
something; don't throw stones at blackbirds, because it might not be a blackbird at all;
this is how to make a bread pudding; this is how to make doukona; this is how to make
pepper pot; this is how to make a good medicine for a cold; this is how to make a good
medicine to throw away a child before it even becomes a child; this is how to catch a fish;
this is how to throw back a fish you don't like, and that way something bad won't fall on
you; this is how to bully a man; this is how a man bullies you; this is how to love a man;
and if this doesn't work there are other ways, and if they don't work don't feel too bad
about giving up; this is how to spit up in the air if you feel like it, and this is how to move
quick so that it doesn't fall on you; this is how to make ends meet; always squeeze bread
to make sure it's fresh; but what if the baker won't let me feel the bread?; you mean to say
that after all you are really going to be the kind of woman who the baker won't let near
the bread?
Minstrel Man
Because my mouth
Is wide with laughter
And my throat
Is deep with song,
You do not think
I suffer after
I have held my pain
So long?
Because my mouth
Is wide with laughter,
You do not hear
My inner cry?
Because my feet
Are gay with dancing,
You do not know
I die?
by Langston Hughes
One for old snaggletooth
I know a woman
who keeps buying puzzles
chinese
puzzles
blocks
wires
pieces that finally fit
into some order.
she works it out
mathmatically
she solves all her
puzzles
lives down by the sea
puts sugar out for the ants
and believes
ultimately
in a better world.
her hair is white
she seldom combs it
her teeth are snaggled
and she wears loose shapeless
coveralls over a body most
women would wish they had.
for many years she irritated me
with what I considered her
eccentricitieslike soaking eggshells in water
(to feed the plants so that
they'd get calcium).
but finally when I think of her
life
and compare it to other lives
more dazzling, original
and beautiful
I realize that she has hurt fewer
people than anybody I know
(and by hurt I simply mean hurt).
she has had some terrible times,
times when maybe I should have
helped her more
for she is the mother of my only
child
and we were once great lovers,
but she has come through
by Charles Bukowski
like I said
she has hurt fewer people than
anybody I know,
and if you look at it like that,
well,
she has created a better world.
she has won.
Frances, this poem is for
you.
The Sawmill
I am the sawmill
abandoned even by the ghost
in the middle of the pasture.
Opera!
Opera!
The horses won’t go near
my God-damn thing.
They stay over by the creek.
by Richard Brautigan
Cemetery Polka
Uncle Vernon
Uncle Vernon
Independent as a
Hog on ice
He’s a big shot down there
At the slaughterhouse
He plays accordion
For Mr.Weiss
Uncle Biltmore and
Uncle William
Made a
Million during
World War II
But they're tightwads
And they're
Cheap skates
And they'll never
Give a dime to you
Auntie Mame
Has gone
Insane
She lives in
The doorway of an old hotel
And the
Radio's playing opera and
All she ever says
Is go to Hell.
Uncle Violet
Flew as a pilot
He said there
Ain't no pretty
Girls in France
Now he runs a
Tidy little
Bookie joint they say
He never
Keeps it in his pants
Uncle Bill
Will never leave a will
And the tumor is as
Tom Waits
From: Rain Dogs
Big as an egg
He has a mistress
She's Puerto Rican
And i heard she has
A wooden leg.
Uncle Phil
Can't live without his pills
He has emphysema and
He's almost blind
And we must find out
Where the money is
Get it now
Before he loses his mind