Character Development - Week 6

You may have noticed we did things a little different this month. Usually, one week is dedicated to Character Development and one week is dedicated to Writer's Block. This week we are combining them both somewhat in this challenge. Last week we toured history with the Ghost of Christmas Past and today we are going to do something similar with the Ghost of Christmas Present.

One of the best ways to really build a character is just to look at them as a person and really peak in on their life randomly to see the little things. So this week we are dropping in on a character. And what we are going to do is write what that character is doing at that exact moment and what this tells us about them.

So I dropped in on my character Amanda. Amanda is a teacher in Toronto, she has two children, twins. And a young grandson. They all live with her in her Victorian House on a small cul-de-sac. Her children are both very athletic and outside of high school enjoy many activities. So she is a very busy mom and grandmother to a 2-year-old boy.

At 11 o'clock on a Friday, she is sitting in her large queen size bed. The only lights on in the house are the one in the kitchen, the lamp by her bed, and the nightlight in her grandson Patrick's room. She is trying to get some papers corrected tonight for school on Monday. Her students had a big quiz Thursday so that she could go light on the homework for the weekend. She saved the quizzes to grade tonight because she knew she was going to be alone tonight, the kids were going to a party, and so she poured herself a glass of red wine and enjoyed it in the bath once the baby was down. After that, she poured herself another and settled into bed to start her work. She likes to wait for the kids to go to sleep before she gets her work done. She doesn't like taking time away from Patrick and her children are so busy it is just simpler to set time aside before bed to get it done.

Tonight she has her long brown hair tied up in a bun on her head and she is in her comfy cotton pyjamas. She has the fan on in her room but from the look of her bulky sweatshirt from her University days, it is still chilly outside. She has opted for her glasses tonight. She took her contacts out after her bath and slipped the black frames up her nose. Somehow she still looks like a college student like this instead of the 40 something-year-old she actually is.

She has her papers spread out all over her bed. If her husband was still around he would complain about it and gather them all up, disrupting her chaotic sorting system. But he is gone now. And though the realization that her husband was leaving her for another woman had hit hard, slowly, Amanda had become relieved. She had lost herself trying to play wife to a man she didn't love and slowly after he moved halfway across the country, she started to find herself again.