1Honestly, this idea has been kicking my butt for several years now. I was in high school when I initially dreamed this mess up. Bear in mind, I am in the middle of embellishing and filling out this emaciated idea -that's the reason you'll see me go through so many writing exercises with these characters!
There is a mild spoiler for the story I'm working on, but no harm no foul. Brief mentions of character death but no graphic detail.
Exercise:
Write a scene that contains a physical description of your main character. They can be looking in a mirror or gazing into a pond, or you can describe them from the point of view of another character. Pay careful attention to your details…
(Thought Process)
Tenshi Kurokisa, known occasionally as Angel to her friends, had long remained a completely abstract idea to me. She has gone through a name change, a make-over, and close to three drafts of the original story (I wrote it in high school and it bears the immaturity of my writing like a burden), but Tenshi still didn't right true to me as a character.
She was, quite literally, a line in my character spreadsheet and a rather poorly filled one at that! I filled in her name, her gender, and her class (she's a Borne; the other class is Orphan), but I had no idea how old she was. I didn't even had a brief description of her filled in (one part physical description, one part psychological examination), even though I had written about her in the past! I had to flip through my (frightening) last draft from my high school days to find the single sentence I had used to describe her:
"She was tall –for a woman, anyway– with black hair and blue-green eyes that matched the ones that I (Bryant) saw in the mirror every morning."
Yeah. I didn't know Tenshi at all. I noted things about her relationships: who her parents were, who her brother was, who she enjoyed talking to, who she never got on with. I even noted what she was born for and groomed for since childhood, but I never bothered to meet Tenshi. Yet I wanted my readers –and my protagonist(s)– to love this woman.
It was one of the reasons I decided to write more about her this time around, but I fell into the same old pattern of coming up with more about Emery or Bry or Becka or Rie. I ignored her all over again!
Hopefully, this exercise will help me to get to know Tenshi better, since I will be describing Bryant from her perspective. Fingers crossed and all that.
(The Exercise)
It had been years since I had last laid eyes on my younger brother.
Most of that could be blamed on our parents' failed marriage and the horrendous state of their relationship. Our parents separated: Mother took me back to her native country and Bryant stayed with Father to be groomed for his future position. With school, training, and real work, it was difficult for either of us to find the time to sneak a phone call to our sibling.
Over the years, we made the time to chat through vid-calls, emails and voice messages. The last time I'd actually seen Bry's face through the screen had been four years ago, before our father was killed. Bry took the whole thing really hard, but more than that, he suddenly had a mountain of responsibilities fall onto his 16-year old shoulders. I understood why I never got to see him. But he still made the effort for me. Little emails and voice messages let me know he was happy, thriving, well.
But my hands still ached to touch the man my brother was becoming. I want to see him, hug him, tease him. So when news of his engagement reached me, I dropped all of my lessons and responsibilities and took the first air-ship to Mystic. By pure luck, I had run into Emery, my brother's best friend and bodyguard, on my way here. He'd recognized me instantly and he had made sure that I would get to see my brother.
Now I stood before him. Nervously, I wondered if my hair was okay, if my shirt was staying put, if my jeans were a mess. Then I shoved it all out of my head: he was my brother, and if any of those things made him like me less, he wasn't the man I knew he was. Taking a deep breath, I looked at my brother.
Bryant Akira Cavanaugh, once towered over by his best friend, was now six inches taller than him, which put him at about six-foot. His black hair had gotten longer over the years: it now covered his ears and strayed into his eyes on occasion. His sea eyes that changed with his moods were just the same as they always were, just the same as mine. His nose had a crooked bent that told me he'd broken it. Scars crossed his hands at odd places, but all of his long, slender fingers remained.
He wore a dress shirt in off white that he'd rolled up to his elbows and black slacks that bore the wrinkles of the day. The off-white showed off the tone of his skin, which had always been a warm brown. His position should have been a relaxed lounging on the couch, but the stress and the strain of his position kept his spine ram-rod straight, even when he was "relaxing".
Through all of the changes, I could still recognize my little brother. A warm feeling spread through me, as though my joy were a drug that was trying to cancel out my nervousness.
I swallowed hard and gave him a smile. "Hey, little brother. Long time no see."
Yeah... I'd like any response to these characters that I can get... Pretty please?
~Sins~