exercise: Characterization

[CrimsonMaiden]

I found this on the Internet Writing Workshop blog and thought it would be an interesting exercise to do.

Exercise: In 400 words or less show us a character who slides from success or normality into self-destruction.

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A prominent banker, a pillar of the community earning $500,000 a year, hanged himself after being accused of sexually assaulting a 16-year-old girl; there was DNA evidence.

With headlines like this appearing in new papers, there are, unfortunately, many examples of people who appear to be successful, but who, for reasons not always easily apparent, act in ways that send them on a downward spiral. It happens to the "common man" (or woman) as well as the "superstar."

Consider the influences that lead a person to self-destruct? Is it a quest for power, a mental illness, a character flaw, or something within society itself? Why does it happen to some, but not others? Is such behavior an affliction primarily of the rich and famous, or is it an equal opportunity problem?

Consider these questions as you develop a character on the path to self-destruction.

 

[slyc_willie]

*The following is an excerpt from the final interview given by Gerald Johnson*

How did I get here? Simple. I'm an idiot. Just happened to walk into a convenience store for a Bud and a candy bar. Bought a Quick Pick on a lark. Never did that before. Sorry-ass numbers, I thought.

Then they read the numbers after the weather report. I remember thinking, "I didn't hear that right." But I did. A week later, I was driving my POS Chevy downtown to collect thirteen and a half million dollars. That was the lump sum.

Man, I figured I must've done something right. All those shit jobs, all those witless managers telling me I'd never make anything of myself . . . putting up with all that bullshit, and I got my reward. Thirteen and a half million times. I went to parties. Bought new cars, a serious fucking mansion and pretty soon, the paparazzi were on me like I was doing Angelina Jolie. Jealous shitheads, I figured. Wanted to know what the good life was like.

Well, let me tell you, the good life is eating caviar for breakfast and guzzling thirty-year Scotch just because you can. It's screwing Playboy Playmates because you gave Hef a decent contribution. It's enticing some sweet young thing to come back to your Hollywood Hills home via drugs and money and false promises of introducing her to Joss Whedon and Vin Diesel.

And then fucking her, even though she said no. Fucking her, because you figure your lawyers can beat the crap out of any dime-store attorney she might be able to afford. Because you figure it was just a game. Just some hot little tease playing hard to get.

'Scuse me. They just called my number. I'm pretty sure they're putting me in General Population, even though my thousand-dollar-an-hour lawyer said that wouldn't happen. Fucking shyster.

Don't worry; when I get out, I'll let you have my first interview. I'm already planning on writing a book about it. *laugh*

*Gerald Johnson was stabbed to death in the bathroom three weeks after being sent to San Quentin State Penitentiary.*

 

[lesbiaphrodite]

"Hey, Mister, have you got any spare change?," Hester asked politely as the tall, elegant man passed her near Union Square.

The words seemed oddly juxtaposed with her pitiful appearance. Hester was living in the alley just off the square and she looked a proper fright. Her long dark hair was matted and dirty. Her face was chapped and dry with red markings around her lips that made her look as though she had impetigo. She stank like three-day old cigarettes and her clothes were filthy and hanging on her skinny frame.

"Mister? Spare a cigarette?...No? How about some change then?," Hester inquired again politely, more like a young urban professional than a beggar on the street.

It was just six months ago that she was still employed at the university as a professor of linguistics. She had a lush apartment in the Mission district, a boyfriend, an insurance policy, a BMW and a bright future ahead.

Every night as she laid down in her cardboard box, she thought about how her sheets used to feel when she laid on them at night. She remembered the sweet sleep she once had.

And, over and over again, she kept remembering the proposition from Erika, the young teaching assistant she had liked so much. She remembered her perfumed hair and her too-close attention during office hours. And she wished she had just told her "no" when she asked if she could go down on her after class.

When the scandal hit, she lost it all....love, career, sanity, all.

"Hey Mister?"......

 

[satindesire]

He was leaner now, wolfish with the sharp glassy stare of someone who had seen death far too many times, a shellshocked soldier forced into a life of faux-peaceful apathy. I felt disgust like bile rise up acrid in the back of my throat but he spoke before I did, with the sort of clipped tone I’d not expected from such a gruff and unshaven face. “You don’t know a third of the shit I’ve seen since the day she kneeled over my slobbering drunk face in that corner pub. I used to have a life, a normal life that wouldn’t even make you blink twice. Suburban house, wife, kids, the typicalist kinda cliché. Playing at detective while the missus was at home making meatloaf, that whole drag. But since I found them laying in pools of empty shell casings and blood, the whole world got turned upside down into a place I’m not sure ever existed before. The whole hidden underdark of the city, fingers of malicious influence going back generations. The kind of old money and old power that didn’t show up on the headlines of the papers, the kind of string pulling that would make the UN look like a preschool playground. Don’t you judge me, don’t…don’t you –dare- judge me,” he hissed the word, exhaling through gritted teeth that glinted like bleached bone “when you don’t know the-the things that drive this city. “ Things, he said, not people. For some reason, all the hair on the back of my neck stood up, and the bourbon in front of me didn’t look appealing anymore. “I thought I’d stumbled into her world accidentally, but I was just another pawn to be moved and sacrificed for the grander scheme. My name on the other end of the phone line was worth enough for a few drunken couplings, but I didn’t count on-“ he seemed to grow thick-throated, and stubbed the rest of his cigarette out with a snarl “…didn’t count on wantin’ her this much, even after she left me for good.” The words seemed frozen in my throat, but I managed anyway, feeling them chip…shatter like icicles “That’s why I’m here, man, to make sure she can’t do this to anyone else again.” He shook his head, tossing back the last dregs of his coffee “You don’t find a woman like that, Pierce. She….finds you.”

 

[pa1ndru1d]

She was a solid student through high school, not perfect, but good. A’s and B’s marked her report card and her final GPA was a 3.8. Stephanie dated the same guy throughout her last four years of school and everyone assumed they would be the idealized high-school sweethearts that got married and had kids.

Joe didn’t do near as well in school, C’s at best. His aspirations ended with working at the local factory - a paper mill. It was an honest living, and Steph backed him because Joe had always treated her well. He never cheated on her, there were times when he’d lose his temper and punch a wall or a door, or maybe throw things. But didn’t everyone do that sometimes?

The summer after graduation, they tied the knot and Joe got his job at the mill. Thinking back on it though, Steph figures that was when things really started to go wrong. Joe started slow enough, having a few beers with his friends at the bar before he came home. Within a month, though, they had their first fight about his drinking. Joe blamed Stephanie and started treating her like shit. He belittled her and made her feel like she was so small, worthless. Gone were her dreams of college; Joe could not handle the thought of her bettering herself.

He started locking her down. Joe would isolate her from her friends and family, ensuring that his control was absolute. When she disobeyed him, his belt would come off and he would “teach that bitch some respect.” Steph spent most of her days in bed, crying over the state her life had become and she wondered if he would ever change. She loved him.

Joe came home drunk that night. He was pissed, nothing new there. The belt came off, “by God! You’ll listen to me whether you like it or not!” It came down upon her time and again as Steph lay there, curled into the fetal position. She made a mistake, however. Her hand came up to block after the buckle split her head open. Joe dropped the belt in a fit of rage and started using his hands.

By the time he was finished instructing his wife, they had to have a closed casket funeral. Their friends and family didn’t understand how this could come to pass…

 

[Acal]

He was at the top of the world, he had just received his promotion to sergeant in his precinct and his wife just announced that she was pregnant. A few months later – “Don’t die on me Lisa!” he sobbed over her after he had pulled her out of their ruined car after the speeding drunk slammed into them. She reached up and grabbed his hand and squeezed it tightly before her eyes faded and her hand dropped. A sound of pure, raw agony tore from him as he cradled his wife’s body as the ambulance raced up the street. Soon he became addicted to the drugs the doctor had prescribed him for his depression.

To feed his new addiction he took bribes from the cities criminal elements so he could get his fix, everything was so bleak and colourless since his wife was torn from him. It wasn’t long before the corruption got out and internal affairs found out and had him suspended. With nothing to do but try and block the pain he felt every waking moment he became dependant on alcohol as well as the anti-depressants. He found out the address of the drunk driver just by chance. He picked out his gun that he was supposed to have given back but didn’t, he sat outside the man’s house drinking from the bottle.

The man’s car arrived and he stepped out. He got out of his car and walked up to the man pulling out his gun he shot the man in the chest and head before walking back to his car and driving off. A few hours later the police broke down his door and arrested him for first-degree murder. A few weeks after he was sentenced to ten years jail his ex-boss received word that he’d killed himself the wardens had found him on the bed with his wrists slashed.

He sighed and thought to himself. He had a bright future ahead of him, it was all taken away by just one act of fate.

 

[RyanBlack]

"That BITCH! "

He slammed the car into drive and backed out, grinding his six year old son’s bicycle under the rear wheels. The training wheels he had promised to take off rent from the bolts in his fury. He barely noticed.

The 22 year old slut had dumped him by text; said he had become too possessive and she didn’t like living the lies and the thought of being with a married man so she had thrown him to the side of the road.

The apartment he had picked out for her, for their hidden meetings was his destination. The secret afternoons of her satisfying his every need was history now. He was going to show her that no one dumps him. She was his fantasy she was going to stay that way!

What did she know of his life, his family, his marriage? She belonged to him and he was going to make sure she knew it. Maybe she would change her mind and take his cock in her mouth again.

Things would go back to normal, he really only wanted to see if she was there, if she was alone or if there was someone else. The Fucking slut! God he loved fucking that slut. And he would tell her the way things were going to be—she was not going to make him old news. “No one changes the script for him without his approval” he yelled at the passing cars.

Could he leave his life for her, “Hell NO!” but she couldn’t leave his life either—everything was perfect. Plenty of money in the bank, wife and kids happy and all he wanted was his piece on the side. It wasn’t too much to ask was it?


The Police reported that a man was found at 125 Wilder St. holding the broken body of a young woman who had been beaten to death tonight. He was covered with her blood and endlessly telling the lifeless woman that “No one edits my life”.

Neighbors reported hearing shouting and breaking objects and called 911 when they heard a woman’s screams.

The unidentified male is reportedly the news anchor at our sister station channel 13.

Name of the deceased is being withheld pending notification of next of kin.

Now to Dan Daily with the Weather.

Tell us what is in store for us this weekend Dan. . .

 

[Katyusha]

Her company offered her a position managing her own store after she'd been working for them as a secretary for three years. They sent her through an extensive eight-week training class, which she talked her fiancee into taking with her. Together they would run their store, they would raise a family, they would live where they wanted and have no cares in the world. And it worked this way for quite awhile too; shortly after their wedding she got pregnant, and gave birth to a beautiful set of twin boys.

She was floating on top of the world when he walked into their back office one afternoon with a letter from corporate. In short, it read, “We regret to inform you that your services will no longer be required. You have three days to clear out your office.” They sat together in silence, absolutely crushed. How would they care for their nine year-old children? For each other?

Soon thereafter she found another job, a stressful and tedious job in customer service, while he took another, much lower-paying position with the company that had pulled their lives out from under them. They could no longer make ends meet and while she blamed herself, she blamed him more. They had debt collectors after them, they were facing foreclosure on their house, and all of this could be made at least a bit better if he would just go get another job. But he was too lazy and too selfish, in her opinion.

All of this was going through her head one evening as she came home from work...and found him in bed with another woman. Without a word, she turned, walked out, went down to the neighborhood bar and got very, very drunk. She stumbled home and found a note taped to the door. It read, "I know you’re hurt, but she makes me feel good. She doesn't belittle me, doesn't make me feel unworthy or like less of a man the way you do. Goodbye, Sarah."

Blind with grief and uncontrollable rage, she raced into the house, past the sofa where he slept, and into their bedroom and pulled their handgun out from under the false bottom of their nightstand drawer. Loading it with only two rounds, she crept back out into the living room and put a bullet into his cheating brain. The next one went into hers.

ETA: This kind of thing could be summarized, I suppose, into the following type of news blurb: "Police found a suburban couple dead in their home after responding to a 911 call from one of their teenaged children. The cause of death appeared to be murder-suicide. The couple had once been one of the more well-to-do families in the area but had fallen on hard financial times in recent years, and while the police will not speculate about motives, interviews with neighbors suggest that this may have been the result of some of those problems."

Or something like that.