When a character first introduces itself to me, we share a lengthy conversation. This usually takes place when I’m in bed, which gives me time to sleep on it. As a rule, the next morning, or sooner if I’m particularly enthused (which is almost always the case), I compose a quatrain based on the character's main projection at the point I'm first introduced to their narrative. For example:
I can still smell your leather
When you kissed me in the rain
I can still smell your leather
When you kissed me in the rain
That memory belongs to me
You can’t piss it down the drain
This is Vivian’s quatrain. Vivian is a character from a sitcom I’m currently writing. She is a middle-aged British woman living in a small town on the south coast of England with her 21 year old daughter Lucy and a Great Dane. She owns her house and has a comfortable career in the public sector. She is single, having long divorced her husband Tom; and hasn't been with anyone since. They had a short-lived romance fuelled by their mutual addiction to life in the fast lane. They got married but almost immediately faced a demoralising obstacle that sadly they didn’t make it through, each fashioning their own incompatible way of coping with the hardships it presented. Tom found respite in his escalating alcoholism and Vivian came to rely on a resurfaced addiction from her childhood. Still in the early stages of their careers, a low income threatened the arrival of their first and only child, followed by an emotional and very messy working class divorce.
This is Vivian’s quatrain. Vivian is a character from a sitcom I’m currently writing. She is a middle-aged British woman living in a small town on the south coast of England with her 21 year old daughter Lucy and a Great Dane. She owns her house and has a comfortable career in the public sector. She is single, having long divorced her husband Tom; and hasn't been with anyone since. They had a short-lived romance fuelled by their mutual addiction to life in the fast lane. They got married but almost immediately faced a demoralising obstacle that sadly they didn’t make it through, each fashioning their own incompatible way of coping with the hardships it presented. Tom found respite in his escalating alcoholism and Vivian came to rely on a resurfaced addiction from her childhood. Still in the early stages of their careers, a low income threatened the arrival of their first and only child, followed by an emotional and very messy working class divorce.
At every stage of character development, details need to be subject to change, as there really is no room for being precious. I heard Vivian's voice, then learned of her sorrow, then fleshed out her environment all in the hours preceding her quatrain. Yet after it was written, details in her environment changed multiple times.
The character chooses a title for the quatrain based on the view they hold of themselves. 'Sensibility' is the title Vivian chose. It can be any word or phrase from a sentence they might use to introduce themselves, let's say, on the first day of group therapy or any self-reflective scenario really. Vivian lifted her title from a conversation she had with her best friend and confidant Penny "I'm a bit of an Elinor Dashwood, you know, from Sense and Sensibility."
The body of the quatrain expresses what they might not necessarily vocalise but is undeniably the thought that features most heavily in their mind or perhaps even the moment in time that comes to define them. In Vivian's case, she's very much stuck in the moment when she lied to Tom about giving his jacket to charity because he wanted to sell it and she wanted to hold onto what she felt was their last perfect moment.
As Vivian is in the very early stages of development, I can’t give you more on her, but if after reading this post you have a general interest in my personal journey through the character development process, you can read about Steven, who is an entirely separate character, much further away from inception and somewhat closer to production. I'm happy to share his particular story before the end product appears in the public domain but I can’t publish his quatrain, as it would be deemed inappropriate by some readers.
As Vivian is in the very early stages of development, I can’t give you more on her, but if after reading this post you have a general interest in my personal journey through the character development process, you can read about Steven, who is an entirely separate character, much further away from inception and somewhat closer to production. I'm happy to share his particular story before the end product appears in the public domain but I can’t publish his quatrain, as it would be deemed inappropriate by some readers.