Tags
#freedomtolearn, character development, character sketch, Future Learn course, Start Writing Fiction, writing exercise
This character sketch is for an assignment and created for the character from the Five Finger Pitch.
Enjoy and let me know your thoughts.
MELODY
Melody loves her life. She has two children, who have inherited her chocolate locks, emerald green eyes, freckles and slim physique. What they don’t share are the premature wrinkles, silver strands and shadows under the eyes. She has her dream career as a children’s author and a beautiful stone cottage, complete with vegetable patch she and her children created, and a rose garden she planted after her divorce; recommended by a pagan friend to bring luck in love. Melody doesn’t believe in such things, but the roses always make her smile and something about the idea gives her hope that one day she will find someone, who will accept her wrinkles, post babies body and share her want for cosy nights in, over alcohol drenched nights out.
As much as Melody loves her children and work, at the moment she’s feeling as if everything has been duct taped together, and the tape is starting to lose its grip. Younger authors are coming in with fresh ideas (yoga bums and no children make them even more appealing) and now Melody has been told “if you don’t come up with something new, you’re out of here”. Without her work she can’t keep the house, the house her children have always called home, with the vegetable patch and rose garden; and she really loves her work, it’s all she’s ever wanted to do and has done. If she loses it, well, she doesn’t know how to do anything else.
To rub salt in the wound, Melody’s ex husband has announced his engagement to his much younger girlfriend, oh and she’s pregnant, beautiful (wrinkle and grey hair free), and her cheery disposition is unavoidably contagious. As much as Melody wants to dislike her, she can’t and likes how this one has fitted in with the children’s lives.
Melody always takes pride in her appearance, clothes always pressed and smart, shoes polished, make up as appropriate, hair away from the face and combed, shoulders back and back straight, but her head naturally hangs low to match her self esteem. It’s difficult to keep your chin up when everyone in your life puts you on the shelf for the newer models.
All she wants is to live her life, and for someone to come along, put their arms around her and say “everything is going to work out, you’re not alone”. All she needs is a little belief in herself.