Young Writers Society

The Idea
Whether you are a novelist, a short story writer, or a bit of both, it's a pretty fair bet to say that you will have to, at some point, introduce characters. But how do you go about doing that? Character descriptions are hard to do. Actually, no, that's wrong. Good character descriptions are hard to do. Anybody can describe a person--but what does it take to provide a three-dimensional description that's dripping with life? How can you describe a character in such a way that the reader feels as though they have actually met this person? Well, there are lots of ways, really, from flowery to factual to caricatured, and everything in between. This game/exercise is for exploring all of them. Plus, I find describing a character can be a great way to get rid of writer's block. So this is really an all-round grand ol' idea, and loads of fun for the whole family.

How to Play
In each post, you will have to give two things: 1) a name for the next person, and 2) a description of the character who you thought of when you saw the name that the previous person posted. The name can be anything, from Fred Jones to Armadillo Inglebert--but it must be something you made up. Don't give names of real people or characters from books or movies or anything like that because the whole idea is that we are creating characters here. The character description should be somewhere between 100 and 400 words--so just a few short paragraphs, nothing huge. These descriptions can be either told from the point of view of the character being described or from the point of view of another character, or from a completely detached third person perspective. If you really want to do it in second person, you could do that too... but good luck. ^_~ Also, they can be in whatever tense you want (though good luck again if you're thinking of doing future-tense!).

Rules
~This thread is rated E, so that means nothing you wouldn't want someone under 12 years old to read. If you need to swear, please censor it with asterisks.
~Good grammar is, of course, a must. The whole idea is that your description should be the kind of thing you would want to be in the middle of a novel or short story you might write.
~No plagiarism (I'm not sure how you could plagiarize here, but I guess it might be possible...).
~Your character description must contain the name of the character you are describing.
~Once again, please make up all the character names you post.
~Have fun!



Got it? Great. Now I'll kick things off. Let's say the name posted by the person before me was Chickadee Williams. Hmm, let's see what I can come up with...




Alright. I got a little carried away with that (they don't really have to be stories as much as that example was) but I think y'all get the idea now.

Here's a name for the first, brave volunteer:

Perry Quarter

Let the description commence!

Perry Quarter, worked in a fast food store. It wasn't pretty, going to school everyday smelling like week old grease and animal fat but he did what he had to do. Perry Quarter, wasn't the brightest pea in the pod, no, actually he was... First in his family to even step foot in a senior high, yet alone college. Sometimes when he was feeling down, which was most of the time. He would think about his family and how much they sucked, compared to them he was a Greek god. Mother pregnant at seventeen. His father a constant drunk and his brother a serial pothead.

But he didn't particularly feel like a Greek god right now, serving a super sized meal to an already super sized woman. A couple of the rich kids from college sneering at him in the corner. Sometimes he wondered what he was doing here in an Ivy league school but the scholarship was a godsend, he wasn't just going to give it away. One of the rich kids was Mordred, all around British snob and department store heir. He was everything Perry was not. Mordred an athletic superstar. Perry a lump of lard that couldn't even run to save his life. Mordred with flawless skin. Perry with more craters than the moon. Mordred with perfect soft auburn hair. Perry with mousy locks as greasy as the chips he was serving. Mordred the musical genius who at the age of six composed his first opera. Mordred with more girls than calories in a cheeseburger. Mordred with the modeling contract, the million dollar smile, the abs of steal and the girl of his dreams!

Perry signed, thinking about her, smiling disturbingly at his customers. She was beautiful smart and funny. She didn't belong with that ... that... arrh... But then again, who was he, Perry Quarter compared with Mr. Bad boy himself?

I to got carried away. You description was fantastic!

New name: Jillian Wade

Have you ever met someone who is so clearly out of their mind that being around them makes even a madman sane in comparison?

If not, then you haven't met Jillian Wade.

From the second I laid eyes on her, I knew she wasn't going to be an easy case. Her face was fleshy and pinched--the face of a pug. Her hair was short and neat, and her clothes were so plain that I'm pretty sure she must have put a lot of thought into them. It's not easy to find clothes that are so dull they're painful to look at.

She nodded at me when I came in--a minute nod, more noticeable by the way it made her jowls quiver than by any actual head movement. Her small, round eyes flicked over me, dark and so murky with insanity that they were utterly unreadable. We sat there for a moment, eyeing each other. Her expression remained exactly the same--a frowning, sneering expression. Her yellowish skin clashed miserably with her blue-grey hair, which was plastered to her round head, with only narrow slits to let out her enormous ears. I decided right then that she was the ugliest person I had ever met.

She didn't ask any questions, like most of them did. She didn't want to know how I felt about this or that or what my deepest desires were, or how I thought of myself. She just said one word: "Kaleidescope."

"Pardon?" I asked, a little hoarse.

"Intuition," she replied.

"I don't get it."

"Foreign."

Her eyes were staring off into space and her face wore exactly the same, repugnant expression as before. Her pencil hovered above her clipboard for a moment, then with a small yelp she chucked it across the room.

"Dr. Wade?" I asked, but she was apparently oblivious to my presence. I wanted to call 911, but then I remembered that I wasn't allowed to have a phone. No, I could have nothing potentially dangerous. Because I was crazy. Yes. I was crazy--remembering that made me want to run out of the room with my hands over my ears, and go hide in a closet somewhere. That's what I usually did.

But then she started writhing around in her chair, mumbling and squeaking like some deranged rodent. And then I realized that I couldn't afford to be crazy. I had to be clear-headed and calm. I had to save my shrink.



Next name: Lance Pomona

Saturday's excitement spread throughout the school for days, and Lance was the center of it. Pats on the back, tackling in the halls, and a few more girls cornered him no matter which way he walked, and you know what? He loved it. That kind of victory would get him team captain next year. In fact, he'd go so far as to say their current captain was slacking on the job. Their victory was definitely because of his leadership and athletic abilities.

"Lance. Lance! ...Lance Pomona."

That was probably the fifth teacher today interrupting his in-class conversations. He turned around to face the front and pretended to listen to the teacher's lecture over the Grand Depression. Wait... that's Great Depression. Whatever. He didn't care. He leaned back in his chair again, catching the eye of that petite cheerleader not so far away. One wink, aaand... bingo. A blush. Outside of football, this was his game. It took a good player to win.

His pal offered him peanuts as subtlety as he could (basically, not at all), but Lance gave him the dirtiest look, threw his hands out, and said out loud, "Dude. I'm allergic." His pal shrugged and took back his offer. When Lance looked back around, the teacher was standing in front of him. "'Sup."

"Detention, Mr. Pomona," the teacher said. "A winning game doesn't get you special privileges."

"Miss Tail would disagree." His pal laughed, and they exchanged a high-five. Lance noticed that cheerleader staring at him with a giggle, though that smile never faded. He was sooo going to have a good day.

"I suggest you stop before it becomes a Saturday detention."

----

Name: Rosalee Oakwood

Rosalee had once been the prettiest girl in town.

She'd tell stories- to anybody who would listen, or even just the people passing by in the day room- about her glory days. How her father used to have to turn lovesick men and boys away from their grand, white house. Rosalee herself would be inside, demurely working on her embroidery, or perhaps out on the back porch with a pitcher of lemonade and a parasol. Her would-be suitors would do anything for a glimpse of her, to see those gold waves of hair, that slender back, or be caught in the spell of those magnificently blue, blue eyes.

Rosalee would say that, without an ounce of self-consciousness, sigh and sit back in the pink chair where she resided in the day room. She would finger whatever sampler she had in her hands, she had never given up on embroidery but now she found her hands knotted and tired and slow to do as she asked. What may have taken a day, an hour before could take her weeks. The nurses would smile and tell her to be patient, just as she had been patient her whole life. Just as she had waited for her father to find her the perfect man, then waited forty years later for that man to wake up in a white hospital bed and when he did not, to go to the mirror everyday and see her hair at last fade to flossy white, her skin darken, collapse and crumple over her famously high cheekbones. She swapped her lovely shoes for carpet slippers, her pristine clothes for a dressing gown, her make-up lay unused and at last, she swapped her house for her pink armchair.

But sometimes, you would catch a glimpse of those eyes, magnified by dainty-framed reading glasses. Those eyes, bluer than blue. And you could see what she had once been.

Leah Goldsmith

Leah Goldsmith didn't remember her name. She didn't even remember her age, her family and sometimes even her gender. All she ever saw all she ever remembered was that terrible terrible color. WHITE, it was everywhere! everywhere! on the floors on the walls. The lights, the door, the terrible jacket she had to wear. Worst of all the ghosts, in their long white cloaks, their white masks, their white shoes. Sometimes when she began to remember, that her name was Leah not No.224 they would break in press sharp sticks into her skin. Some times she could see her own reflection in those terrible masks. Dark skin, dark irises, dark hair. No white, only her teeth and eyes. She smiled. She was not white... and they could do nothing to change that.

Name: Kore Heller ( female i believe but that's your choice to make)

I pull my knees into my chest and rest my head against the cool glass of the window. Outside, I can see the crocuses and snowbells starting to pop up around the meadow, little specks of life amid the mud and melting snow. The buds on the trees are starting to swell, and the migratory birds are starting to come back to fill the air with their sweet song.

I hate spring.

Living in the middle of the wilderness is okay when it's winter, because everything is dead, but once the weather starts livening up the woods, that's when things get nasty. It's not the bugs I mind, or the thorns or poison ivy, or the mud and the slugs. I do dislike those things, but only because of the connotations they have. You see, when the bugs and brambles start coming out is also when the faeries come. You're probably thinking faeries would be cool, right?

Wrong.

They're just so fluttery and glitter and dumb, and they're everywhere. Dad got me two for my birthday, thinking I'd like them, and they were alright, but it turned out that he'd forgotten to check their genders and now they've taken over the whole town. And they all think I'm some sort of queen, which is the annoying part. "Kore!" They say, in their tinkly voices, "Kore Heller, we bow down before your luminance and glory! What can we do for you?"

The sun comes out from behind a cloud and bathes the meadow in glittering light. And that's when it happens--I see the little blue and green heads popping up out of the dirt.

I bury my head in my knees. Maybe if they don't see me, I hope wildly, they will forget about me.

"Kore! Kore Heller, we bow down before your luminance and glory! What can we do for you?"




Next name: Armiel LinAtar (either masculine or feminine, whichever you want)

Looks like most of you guys are doing something akin to a flash story rather than an actual description. Well, I'll give it a shot. Since you wished me such massive luck, here's a description in second person, future tense.

"...and so it came to pass that you died. But death is not the end, nor is it a beginning - it is but a doorway to your next stage of life. When you leave here, you will be known as the angel Armiel LinAtar, right-hand to Michael the Spear-Bearer, General of Heaven's Army. Your eyes will be like the lakes reflecting the moon; but woe unto the enemies whom they beguile, for your heart will be as fierce as a dying star.

Know that this is not the Christian heaven, nor is it the Islamic one. It is Heaven; a world just like the one before it and the one after it, with its own pleasures and tortures. The enemies you face will not give you pause, and the enemies that overwhelm you will never be as fast as your wings of diamond. But beware - those things you knew as sins - they have a special place in heaven, and one may be the end of you.

In the darkest gloom of the blackest night, you will one day fall from the sky. Out of the inky blackness shall step forth an aetherial presence: his heart a radiant flame, his soul glowing like a translucent jewel. He will spark your feelings with his captivating touch. He will soothe your sorrows with his enchanting eyes. If you remember this, you will be safe. If you will be drawn closer to him, you will seal your fate with the kiss of true death."

...wut

Next name: JOHN FIST

First person, past tense...anecdote/story as description?
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Obviously, his name wasn't John Fist. That would just be stupid--like a hot-tempered, loose cannon detective that shoots first and asks questions later. He did have the strong jaw line and rippling biceps that might remind you of one such character, though. I remember seeing that impressive figure of his for the first time back in 1923.

His name was Johannes Pfist. That's "Pfist," like "pfennig." He hailed from post World War I Germany (but, obviously, in 1923, we didn't call it World War I), on a steamer to America. Among his possessions were bags and bags full of useless German marks that he clung to even while he was sleeping. It was well known that the mark was essentially worthless after the war. The children would use thousands of them as toy building blocks. Despite this, Johannes was fierce about the money his father had smuggled him at the outbreak of the war. So he lugged the things to the mess hall, to the bathroom, and to his bed--all day. He didn't necessarily value the 14 American cents that they amounted to; he valued the sentiment of a father that wanted a better life for him.

Rumor has it, when they docked, he went into the first bar he found, looking for a decent beer. He was disappointed. Johannes ridiculed their beer in his broken English, learned from a few deserters of the British army. He spat it out across the bar and overturned the glass. Weeks on the sea had made him testy.

When the barkeep asked him to pay and leave, Johannes attempted to give him German marks. Needless to say, between the barkeep's refusal of the worthless, foreign currency and the German's angry bellowing, a fight broke out and Johannes floored seven men.

Halfway down the street, a scout caught up to him and convinced him to join an underground boxing ring. Supposedly the words "defeat America's best fighters" plucked at a nationalistic chord in his heart.

But he wasn't a fighting man, really. He had run a mercantile shop back home and had a wife and impressed children with feats of strength before telling them stories about his days as a kid.

That is, he didn't use to be a fighting man. But losing his wife to an air raid last year had awoken something hideous in him. Something with fists the size of a man's skull.

And that's when he adopted the stage name John Fist. With his two-ton fist, he crumpled scores of men to the ground. He never gloated. After winning a match, John turned, collected his winnings, and disappeared into a backroom.

I'll admit, though, everything I have recounted here is merely hearsay. No one ever knew John Fist truly. He was a mystery right up until he vanished into thin air in 1925, when he simply threw in the towel during a match and walked away forever.

-----
And now, I will write my own story about John Fist. Sorry I went a little over the word count!

----
Name: Xu Chen

Xu Chen sat quietly in the background, to the left of the Minister's high backed chair, to the right of a minimalistic sculpture, legs crossed at the ankles, hands folded patiently. Xu Chen watched the meeting from eyes deep and round like wishing wells, shimmery black bangs shadowing her heart shaped face. The remainder of that soft, long hair had been pull back into a tight knot on the back of her head, allowing full view of the graceful column of her neck. Her understated attire, black skirt, black shirt, black stockings, black shoes, exaggerated the creaminess of her skin. Eyes hooded, lips in an uninviting line, Xu Chen absorbed the scene before her, brain quickly filing away the appearances and respective names of the wealthy businessmen seated around the long ebony table in the center of the meeting hall.

She did not tap her foot. She did not yawn. She did not readjust. Her focus made her silent, still as death, allowed her to disappear into the background. The men currently assaulting the Minister with complaints and excuses and lies paid the young woman at the back of the room no heed. But that was unfortunate for them, for when their times came--and they would come soon she imagined by the way the veins stuck out in the Minister's thick neck and whiteness of his knuckles--they would not even realize that the one who would end their lives had been sitting in the same room during this very meeting.


Don Matteo

Don Matteo was no Don Juan, as much as he wished. He was more of a Don Quixote. He lived on the shore of reality, sometimes dipping his feet into fantasy and sometimes diving in wholeheartedly. His dreams would wash over him, find his most intimate secrets, and threaten to drown him.

Don Matteo. Don Matteo. Don Matteo. He would lay out on balconies at night and murmur his own name.

He felt that he loved all women, but what he really loved was himself with these women. He loved his confident smile when he wooed them. He loved the exotic roll of his R's when he spoke words like "veranda", "rendezvous", and "unrequited." He loved love--but not his lovers.

It should be mentioned that, if interviewed, few--if any--of his past paramours would say that they loved him. Instead, their feelings were more akin to fleeting nostalgia. They said Don Matteo reminded them of someone they once knew, but none of them knew exactly how to put it into words.

This is because he was a dream. He moved like the seasons and spoke like a whisper through the bricks of a wall. He had little substance of his own and, instead, depended on these relationships to give him symbolism. Don Matteo was a mirror--if he had none in his embrace, then he was empty. Downtrodden. Prone to despair and drunkenness. When he succumbed to these emotions, he would waste away alone in a rented room, sending down money for more alcohol. If the one who brought him his drink happened to be a fetching lady, however, his crippling ennui would snuff out like a candle.

Don Matteo was acutely aware of his own vacuity. However, he wrongly blamed it on a lack of love. To fill the void in his dreaming soul, he loved and loved and loved and bled himself dry with that single, crushing word.

Next name:
Murphy Murphy

It wasn't his parents playing a joke. Murphy Murphy had been the name he had chosen, for better or worse. Born an orphan in New York City in the early twentieth-century, he had no name. At the orphanage, they found it amusing to call him Patrick -- him and the rest of the parentless boys of Irish descent that littered the rooms of the harsh, broken building they called home. But he didn't want to be just another Paddy. When he was twelve (by his own count), he escaped in the celebrations of Christmas Day and fled into snowy Central Park. There, he overhead two policeman bemoaning their luck. One of them said it was "Murphy's Law."

A name was taken. Patrick became Murphy, and Murphy became Murphy Murphy when he bought a ticket on a ship bound for Dublin; the booking office required a family name. The tale of how he found the money was a delightful adventure of daring and reportedly some illegality, but Murphy Murphy refused to tell anybody about it, not even his closest family, and he died with the secret safe.

It was with some peculiarity that Murphy Murphy sailed to Ireland from the United States when most of his compatriots were doing the complete opposite. But as Murphy himself liked to say, "I make my own law." He set up a modest bar on the outskirts of Dublin where the regulars weren't too violent and the prices were good. Modest fame came his way when he created a cocktail that was colloquially named the Double Murphy, which involved whisky and far too much fruit, which became wildly popular for a few years in the 1950s in cities such as London and Paris.

When he retired, he sold the bar and set up his own orphanage. None of the boys were called Patrick, but his son was called Sod, due to his discovery that on this side of the Atlantic, Murphy's Law translated as Sod's Law.

Next name:
Albert Snowball

Albert Snowball. Mention the name at a Society ball and you will see a collective shiver run down all those tuxedoed spines. You'll notice ringed fingers clutching the stems of their wineglasses a little too tightly.

Of course, nobody will admit to their reactions. They will keep smiling, laughing, keep speaking delicate, aristocratic words that have no meaning. Their perfect, powdered faces will not show signs of shock or distress or tension, but underneath their coiffed hairstyles, their minds will be working faster than the fingers of the violinist who serenades them. Underneath their pearls and bow-ties, their hearts will beat out the rhythm of a rabbit escaping from a fox.

Mention the name in the filthy run-down markets by the marshes and you will feel the spark run through the miserable crowds. Nobody will say anything, not out in the open. Merchants will keep announcing their wares, shoppers will keep bartering for prices. But the excitement will be tangible, bringing life to the acrid, foul air. For here, in the decrepit part of the city, where the streets are coated in rot and filth has settled in the cracks on the buildings--here, they are all Albert. Here, they are all waiting for the right time to come, when they will set the snowball rolling down the hill. As it gains speed so, too, will it grow in size. Rolling, rolling until it is so enormous that the pretty Society people will be forced to bow down to it.

Albert Snowball. The name of the Revolution.


Next name: Dybbuk Lilith

The blue light of the monitors flashed across the Head Doctor's rectangular, rimless glasses as he entered the room, hands stuffed into the deep pockets of his lab coat, thick lips pressed in a scowl. He passed the chairs of his colleagues, glancing over their shoulders as heads bobbed to record endless streams of numbers from their logs onto pristine files or adjusted the influx of various vitamins into the subject from only five square buttons or conversed about the progress being made in that cold, weirdly lighted, spacious laboratory.

As the Head Doctor made his rounds, his silent passage acknowledged with nods and vocalized welcomes, the graying man came to the portion of the room furthest from the door, four steps down from the maintenance platform where the other scientists and engineers were working. On the lowest level, he stood, looking up into a massive glass tank from which sprouted multitudes of tubes and wires and pipes that spilled out in organized chaos across the cement floor to disappear into the shadows and their respective control panels. The warm yellow light illuminating the glass tank threw the Head Doctor's shadow behind him across the ground as he gazed upon his creation, his greatest achievement.

"Dr. Lilith, sir?" He glanced to his right to find a young woman looking up at him with a clipboard nestled in her arms against her chest.

"Yes, Blank. What is it you need?" he asked coolly, his voice very low and unenthused despite the excitement sparking like severed wires inside his chest.

The woman tucked a wayward strand of brown hair behind a round ear and held out the clipboard. "The Board asks that you fill these out, Sir. They would like specifics on the subject."

"Sepecifics?" he asked, taking the papers from her without hesitation.

"Like a name, perhaps?" Dr. Blank offered in turn, stepping back from him with a muffled clack of her heels.

Dr. Lilith's frown deepened. A name? Already? But the poor creature hadn't even achieved full consciousness yet. How could he name something when the most he knew was its potassium levels and heart rate? Gender was no longer a question, but had he considered giving a name like Princess or Honey to his prized creation like some purebred Schnauzer? Of course not. But a name...

"Fine then," he acquiesced a bit reluctantly, taking her proffered pen and scratching through the papers he held. When he came upon the spaces asking for last name, first name, he paused, looked up.

He look up into a face surrounded in a halo of clear tubes and multicolored wires and long ebony hair suspended in fluid. Its eyes were closed tight, and the rest of its face was obscure with a mask attached to more tubes, but Lilith knew beneath the mask was a mouth crafted sweetly, softly below a straight, delicate nose all wrapped in warm caramel-colored skin. Underneath censors and more tubes, the being's magnificently crafted body floated almost motionlessly, only the light rise and fall of its endowed chest and the periodic twitching of elegant fingers giving visible sign that it was alive. Dr. Lilith absorbed the view of his creation with pride and deep admiration but also a grating longing, for this fabricated woman suspended behind the glass, palms open as if in welcome, appeared to be no stranger--it was the reincarnated image of his beautiful wife.

For a moment, the desire to reach out and press a palm to the glass of the tank was overwhelming, but he refrained, lowering his head back to the papers.

Lilith, Dybbuk, the Head Doctor penned, knowing that the bestowal of such a weighted name could prove costly in the future when this being before him awakened.

But really, hadn't this been his plan all along?


Mortimer Cross

When I came out of the locker room, I expected to be the first one there so I'd have the whole pool to myself, at least for a few minutes, so I could practice strokes without distraction from the others and maybe win this stupid competition. But no, Mortimer Cross is already here. Of course. He sees me come in and quickly hurries to climb to the highest diving board. He plummets of it, laughing like a freak.

"Hi!" He bellows at me when he surfaces, his red hair clinging messily over his eyes. I laugh but don't say anything to him, wondering why he doesn't have a swim cap on, or has cut his hair like coach said he had to. He doesn't say anything to me, and I know why; he probably doesn't see who I am, as he isn't wearing his glasses and his eyesight is incredibly poor without them. For some reason, he insists on wearing the big square kind you'd see on nerds in obnoxious 80s movies. For some reason I think of his name; what kind of parent would name their kid Mortimer?

I sigh and do what Mortimer did, climbing the highest diving board. I've always been afraid of heights, and he knows that; he was being a show off, telling me that he's going to get the gold again and I'm going to come in with silver. I try to ignore my fears by closing my eyes as I jump down. It's hard to describe how I feel next, as I'm falling through mid air, but I can make out the faint sound of laughter as I hit the water.

"Wow, shucks, that was awful," Mortimer said. "You looked like a scared chicken."

I could really slap him right now, dunk him under water, but instead I say, "Don't talk to me, Cross." Then I furiously start to front crawl as fast I can before he can go on any more about how awful I am and how great he is.

Erika Ela.