An Exercise in Character Exploration - Fiction Friday #200

Fiction Friday for me is a way to explore the characters in my head. These characters practice the art of insidious whispering. What these characters have to say is nearly always strange but sometimes wonderful. These characters usually end up the host of short stories or novels.

Much of last year my writing was dominated by the exploration of the character Jax from my second MS Jax@theinceptionofchaos. I have now finished plotting the first of the many adventures I am sure Jax has planned and I find my attention has turned back toward my first MS Elysium.

My plans over the next few months are to explore the characters from the tentatively named Elysium. This novel is a series of short stories linking many different characters. I am yet to decide which character is the main character.

The characters – Angel, Joslin, Sara, Chelsea, Faith, Khai, Wynn, Beatrice, Grant, Dan & Jules

My hopes are that Fiction Friday will help me to explore each of these characters in turn and discover just who’s story it is that I am trying to tell (or which character resonates most with my audience). Please feel free to comment, blatantly shout down or barrack for your favourite. Cheers.

Now I’ll stop rambling and get to it.

***

Fiction] Friday Challenge #200 for March 25th , 2011


For some extra fun each month, we are utilising ”Story Starter” die. Look at each face of the dice, ponder on its significance to a character, setting or plot you may have bubbling away.. now write – using these as your inspiration.
 Die - 1.Lightbulb
       - 2.Little harmless human with big scary shadow

ANGEL



 Jacqueline McKenzie to play Angel in the  movie.





“Who is Angel Grace? What does Angel Grace want? When--”

“Seriously? What is this, some sort of character profile?” Angel strained to see over the guy’s touch pad. “Where am I anyway? And why do you look so familiar?”

Angel decided to ignore the lopsided grin he gave her and tried to work out where she knew him from. It wasn’t recently, that much she could work out.

“You’re having trouble placing me?” He grinned even more, so annoying! “Should I give you a hint?”

Angel shook her head and looked around. Maybe she was dreaming. The wall to her left looked kind of blurry and the floor felt spongy beneath her feet. The last thing she could remember was climbing out of the car and the phone ringing then, bam – the light bulb in the sun appeared to go out and next thing she knew she found herself standing in the middle of this room.

Holy crap! Maybe she was dead! “Am I dead?”

“No, you are not dead.” His stupid smile stretched into a wide smirk. “You can’t be dead.”

“Uh, and why not?”

“Because you have to first be alive before you can be pronounced dead, and you my friend, are not a living kind of gal.”

“What does that mean: I’m not a living kind of girl? How would you know what sort of girl I am?”

The boy shrugged and checked his touch pad again. “Look, it says right here.” He turned the pad around so she could see the front. On the screen tiny writing scrawled by at a pace too fast to read and a row of fast moving pictures appeared to be photo’s taken from her private album. He tapped the screen and the tiny writing jerked to a stop, “See here? It says – Angel Grace, not a living kind of girl.”

A chill ran up Angel’s spine and made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Her chest felt tight, kind of like after her mum died and she had the panic attack that had everyone rushing around trying to help but this time she didn’t panic. As crazy as it sounded, it all felt strangely familiar, like she had heard it all before.

"You look a little pale, do you want to sit down?” The guy waved his hand and the blurry walls melted away. Green grass curled up beneath her bare feet and the blue sky stretched out to the horizon. He offered Angel a seat at the small table and chairs which appeared miraculously in front of them. Angel sat with a thump.

“Whoa.” The guy stepped back, his eyes fixed on something behind her.

“What whoa?” Angel twisted to see what he was looking at and caught a glimpse of her shadow. It was huge and fierce. Angel blushed, “Oh that.”

“Oh that? Does THAT happen often?”

“Sometimes.”

“Huh.” With one eye on her shadow and one on her he typed something into his touch pad and then sat down beside her. “So you really don’t remember me huh?”

She shook her head, “Sorry.”

He laughed, “Don’t be sorry.” Offering his hand he said, “I’m Grant.”

Angel shook his hand. His palm was soft and warm and it felt really nice, like a...

No. Stop. Angel pulled her hand away quickly and he grinned again.

“Are you some sort of kidnapping weirdo kind of guy that is going to mess with my head and convince me to do your evil bidding?”

Grant’s shoulder’s shook with laughter, “My evil bidding?”

Angel flushed furiously and he laughed harder. “Look buddy, just tell me where the hell I am so I can work out how to get home.”

He stopped laughing and put on a mock serious face, “Well, you’re not in Hell that’s for sure and as for home, you’re already here.”

“What?”

This time his face was seriously serious, “This is Elysium, welcome home Angel.”

***

How Fiction Friday works. It’s easy to do.

• Check this page for this week’s theme or challenge. Prompts are published each month to give you plenty of notice
• Spend at least 5 minutes composing something original based on the theme or challenge. (and keep writing…)
• But, remember, no editing. This is to inspire creativity not stifle it.
• On Friday, simply post what you wrote to your own blog.
• If you utilise social networking, Tweet your story using our hashtag of #fictionfriday AND post it up onto Facebook.
• Then come back to Write Anything and leave the link in the comment section below.
• Consider recording it using AudioBoo and submitting it on Sunday for our Spoken Sunday Prompt
• You may also like to Tweet other peoples links from this site as they are posted using the hashtag #fictionfriday afterwards.
• To participate further, just go visit some of the other links left by other participants, read what they wrote, and leave a comment. Just be sure that your comment is constructive—this is, after all, a meme to give us all a little writing practice.
• You may also like to Tweet other peoples links from this site as they are posted – and our hashtag of #fictionfriday