Character

Have you seen A Chorus Line? If you haven't, stop reading this post and look it up on youtube or something. Not the movie, the show. It's entirely based on characterization and man, does it do a good job. Here's the beginning of the song At the Ballet:

Daddy always thought that he married beneath him-
That's what he said, that's what he said.
When he proposed, he informed my mother
He was probably her very last chance.
And though she was twenty-two,
Though she was twenty-two,
Though she was twenty-two
She married him.

Life with my dad wasn't ever a picnic
More like a 'come as you are.'
When I was five, I remember my mother
Dug earrings out of the car.
I knew they weren't hers, but it wasn't
Something you'd want to discuss.
He wasn't warm.
Well, not to her.
Well, not to us…

That part of the song is only about 30 seconds long, but it tells you a ton about a character, both from her voice and from the examples she uses. Show, don't tell. This I have let to learn.

My life? Meh. In elementary school they'd have us do projects on our ethnic identity and kids would bring in food from Morocco or tell stories about their parents' escape from Vietnam and I would have to go back ten generations to find anyone out of the US. In youth group, we try to get students involved and willing to share their stories and be open about their lives- people give testimonies about nasty divorces or going to juvi or unhealthy relationships and in light of all that my life is pretty mundane. It's not that I find myself boring or think my life is actually lacking, but I'm not the kind of person I would write a story about. I can identify what characters yearn for and what a lot of people yearn for but I'm a pretty easily contented person. I suppose I yearn for excitement, for what sets me apart from the crowd, but it's not that I want other people to see me as unique and different as that I want to prove it to myself. I suppose the cliche answer would be a yearning for inner peace, but I'm pretty confident an I think I've experienced such little chaos that what I'd like is quite the opposite- this super intense life of travelling around the world and changing people and backpacking through rainforests in Chile and building houses in Rwanda and never ever "settling down" or finding contentment because the idea of that is so ridiculously boring.

Soanyway (sorry, I tangent. A lot. Have I mentioned that yet?), as I was running today I thought about characters I'd be really interested to write about- mostly characters with whom I have very little in common. I'll probably use one for Thursday's assignment and maybe one for the final story, I guess we'll see. You'll notice none of these are animals. Part of this is because we read the story about jealous parrot-husbands and I like being original, and part is just a general averion to animals of any sort. Sorry about that.

• A young child. Like 2 or 3 years old.
• Someone in a wheelchair, probably who also has difficulty communicating and is therefore very much trapped
• A homeless person
• Someone with alzheimers or dementia. Actually that could turn into a super intense storyy
• A man who cheats on his wife. I find there are a lot of stories from the wife's point of view, and a few from the mistress, but not many from the man himself.
• A former prodigy or expert who has not done whatever activity it is for a number of years... that's pretty cliche though :(
• A CEO of a major corporation. This could be interesting if done by... someone who is not me. Because I would probably just turn it into a fable about how money doesn't buy happiness or something. But because characters yearn, I haven't read too many stories with narrators or main characters who seem to have it all
• A paper boy or barista or person at a street stand or one of those "little" people who we notice for a moment while they're relevant to us and then promptly forget about