1I'm working hard on a novel... but sometimes, the best tools to help you get to know your character is a writing exercise. This will probably be the first of a series of exercises I post here ^^
Oh, as a note: I don't have this actually happen in the story, but this event did actually happen to my protagonist.
This might be ideologically sensitive, since it does mention violence from a parent toward his child... Bear with it?
Exercise:
Write a brief fiction in which your main character somehow breaks his thumb. What are the repercussions? How does it change how their life works? How do they deal with the pain? You don't have to use this in your story, but pay attention to details that may become significant for your story later…
I wasn't the one to break my thumb: my father was.
I could lie and declare that he did it in a fit of rage, but, truthfully, he did it with the same frighteningly calm expression that he always wore when he was trying to teach me something. I was thirteen when it happened. Vividly, I remember trying to decide what sort of lesson I was supposed to get from a broken right thumb. It stumped me for days, even weeks after the fact. I could see no lesson that breaking the thumb on my dominant hand could teach.
Determined to go about life as if it were normal, I went to lessons with Emery but found I had difficulty holding a stylus, let alone turning an actual page! I'd wrapped the thumb myself and I could tell something wasn't right from the crooked angle it maintained, but I refused to go see Aaron. I had trouble dressing, eating, writing, and even shooting. One thing I gained from the whole situation was a proficiency in deception, yet I was still certain that I hadn't learned the lesson.
I grew used to the pain quickly, yet that didn't stop my squeak of surprise and pain the day Emery grabbed me. He pulled me down the empty corridor by my shoulder, his grip so tight and so strong that I found myself afraid that he might dislocate my shoulder. Nothing could have stunned me more than when he pulled a syringe from his pocket with his other hand, pulled the cap off with his teeth, and jammed it into my thigh through my jeans and drove the plunger home.
Loopy on whatever he'd injected me with, I only vaguely recalled being tossed over Hikaru's shoulder and carried into the clinic what Aaron patiently waited. The rest of that part was a blur of pain meds and sedatives.
When I woke a few hours later, I found my thumb to be less painful, properly set, and wrapped tighter. Only one other person remained in the clinic, propped up in a chair beside the cot I lay on.
"Why did you do that?" my best friend demanded.
"Huh?"
"Why did you hide your injury? You're the heir to this syndicate: your people need to know if you're not well." His answer seemed regurgitated, like someone had yelled it at him several times. "Bry, you're one commodity on this planet that can't be replaced. Why can't you just rely on others more? It's what we're here for."
And there, out of the mouth of my best friend since birth, was the lesson my father had been trying to teach me.
So, I'm not sure how I really feel about how this is written... Care to offer an opinion?
~Sins~