I am now working on another short story (I'll return to Descartes in a year or so). The thing with short stories is there is not enough time to bring characters to life, like there is in a novel. The characters have to be vibrant and alive (screaming for a birth certificate, as one author said, but I can't remember who it was) by the first paragraph in which they are introduced. There simply is not time in a short story to develop characters beyond the development that is taking place in the story itself. It has taken me this long to realize that, but better a little late than never.
I wrote a couple character sketches as an experiment. I don't even know if I did it right. I mean, are they proper character sketches? No idea. They served the end for which they were created, though, and that's what matters. They helped me to bring my characters to life, for my benefit, so when I write them into the actual story, they will already be alive. It's like I took that extra time to Pinocchio them outside of the story, where that time is available. I won't know if it worked until I write the actual story, but as far as I can see, it was a success. Definitely worth doing again.
For your reading pleasure, one of those character sketches (the first one, actually):
Gabrielle was peeling carrots when Nicole came home from school. “Dinner?” Nicole asked on her way through the kitchen to her bedroom.
“You got it,” Gabrielle said. She was sitting on a chair, hunched over a garbage bin. Her sleeves were rolled up and bits of carrot skin were in her hair because she kept reaching up to push her curls out of her eyes. There was a bag of carrots on the ground next to her chair, and she was placing the peeled carrots on a wooden cutting board which rested on the counter near her. Over the music coming from her laptop, Gabrielle could hear Nicole dumping her backpack on their bedroom floor. “How was your day?” she called.
“Meh,” she heard. Placing another carrot on the cutting board, Gabrielle pushed her hair out of her eyes again and was about to reach for another carrot when she thought better of it and came to her feet, putting the vegetable peeler on the cutting board. She went to the sink, washed her hands, and went to the bathroom to find a hair clamp. Nicole was in there. Gabrielle knocked, requested the clamp, waited, and then took the clamp from her younger sister as she opened the door a crack and held it out.
She put her hair up as best she could on her way back to the kitchen, then stretched for a moment before sitting down again to peel more carrots. She was making honey lemon carrots, a recipe she had found just that afternoon on Pinterest. Glancing at the recipe as she started peeling another carrot, she tried to calculate when she should start steaming them so they would be finished around the same time as the mashed potatoes she already had on the stove. There was some leftover ham in the fridge, and she was just starting to figure out when to start heating that up when Nicole came into the kitchen with her homework.
“Anything fun?” Gabrielle asked, getting up and putting away the garbage bin.
“Not really,” Nicole said. “Just math.”
“It’s Gilbert, isn’t it?”
“Yep. Best time ever.”
“Hey, he’s not that bad. Sure, he may almost fall asleep during his own class, but he’s a smart teacher. I learned a lot in his class.”
“Like what?”
“Like … like how to knit a hat.”
“See! Nothing. He’s hopeless, Gabrielle.”
Gabrielle raised her hands in mock surrender and came to lean over Nicole’s homework. “You’ve got carrots in your hair, Elle,” said Nicole, reaching out and starting to root through her hair for the vegetable strands.
“It’s the newest thing,” Gabrielle responded. “Carotene. Directly into your hair, it’s supposed to work miracles.”
“Right. Do you want me to put them back in for you, then?”
“You scared all the carotene away, so don’t bother,” Gabrielle sighed, grinning. She walked away to check on her potatoes, and her sister turned back to her homework. The laptop continued playing music and Gabrielle danced a little as she grabbed a fork and checked the tenderness of her potatoes. Deciding they were close enough that she should work more on the carrots, she danced around the kitchen and pulled out the other ingredients she would be needing. She sang as she went, making up words when she couldn’t remember the real ones.
“It doesn’t say ‘Looking for the Superman inside of me.’ He’s singing, ‘Looking for special things inside of me,’” Nicole said.
“So?”
“So it’s not hard to understand him and you’re being weird.”
“But it makes you smile! Ha!”
“Hey, could you help me with this problem, Miss I-fudge-lyrics?”
“If I fudge the lyrics, how do you know I’ll help you right? After all, I only learned how to knit hats in that class.”
“Because even though you spent all your time knitting hats I never knew existed until today, you still managed to get an A in Mr. Gilbert’s class.”
“That was three years ago!”
“Can you at least look at the problem first?”
But Gabrielle was already bent over Nicole’s homework again, munching on a carrot and tilting her head to the side as she read the problem and compared it with Nicole’s attempts. After showing her where she’d messed up and explaining why, Gabrielle put the carrots on to steam and told her computer that yes, she was still listening to the music. She checked the potatoes again, turned down the heat a little on the stove, and was just going to the fridge to pull out the ham when her cell phone rang.
“Hello, Brandon,” she said as she tried to figure out how to pull the ham out from underneath a couple tupperwares with only one hand.
“Hey Gabrielle, I was wondering if you’d done our reading for 2010 yet,” said Brandon.
“Nearly,” she said. “I have about ten pages to go. Why?”
“I’m thirteen pages in and I have no idea what this guy is trying to say. I mean, I understand the words he’s using, and I feel like I understand it, but then I go to put it together and it’s just -- it isn’t working for me, let’s put it that way.”
“He’s saying that girls are better than boys because they have a higher reading comprehension level.”
“Funny.”
Gabrielle had managed to wrestle out the ham without dropping anything. She put it in the microwave and leaned against the counter, bringing her hand up to her hair to undo the clamp. Placing it on the counter, she rubbed her hand through her hair and massaged her neck.
“You still there?” Brandon asked. “Hello?”
“Yeah, I’m still here. Umm...look. Why don’t you come over here tonight in a couple hours and I’ll go over it with you,” she suggested at last, letting her hand fall from her neck.
“You’re awesome. I’ll see you around 8.”
“You should bring me cookies.”
“What?”
“I was kidding. See you later,” she said, then hung up the phone after hearing him say bye.
“When are Mom and Dad going to be home?” Nicole asked without looking up from her homework.
“I think Mom said they were going to leave work at 6:30,” she replied. “Did you figure out that problem?”
“I think so, but could you come check it for me?”
“Sure.”
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