Kristin Ross. Showing her life in the ordinary and later how it gets turned upside down. |
Lesson Three Exercise - Character Study Create a profile for the main character of the story you will be writing. Motto: sometimes weird things happen to nice people Kristin Ross, 4897 Spinnaker Lane Sycamore, IL 60178 Mother's maiden name: Erickson SSN: 347-42-XXXX Phone: cell: 815-746-4620 Country code: 1 Birthday: October 15, Age: 38 years old Tropical zodiac: Libra Online Email Address: Kristin.Ross@teleworm.us Username: Fooper Password: Roo7ohchoo Website: cremedelaart.com Browser user agent Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_10_5) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/47.0.2526.111 Safari/537.36 Finance MasterCard: 5187 5417 4809 7711 Expires: 8/2017 CVC2: 592 Employment Corporate: Witmark Law Offices Occupation: IT Specialist Hobby: City League Softball/Corporate baseball team Physical characteristics Hair: long, Blonde curls Nationality: American of Norwegian descent Marital status: married, 3 kids Eyes: Green Height: 5' 2" (157 centimeters) Weight: 211.0 pounds (95.9 kilograms) Blood type: B+ Tracking numbers UPS tracking number 1Z W81 038 62 1774 794 3 Western Union MTCN 8586052013 MoneyGram MTCN 92605700 Other Favorite color: Green Vehicle: 2000 Ford Explorer, silver GUID: 69673b93-0f71-4402-a2f2-a704142875e4 Oddities: Cannot find the right word when she is pressured. In these situations, she will often ask: 'do you know what I mean?' Or, 'what word am I trying to say?' If you just met her, you may get the impression that she is dumb, but she is really quite intelligent, and is the go-to person in her department. Has a hard time being on time, but no problem at all working late or through breaks to get the job done on time and correctly. Family Background: Oldest of four girls. Mother was a stay at home mom. Father was a high school history teacher and coach of the boys’ baseball team, and expected each daughter to be athletic. Owned a hobby farm so they could have horses. Parents were strict and religious, though not necessarily strict about going to church. Relationship: Husband is her high school sweetheart. He joined up and was stationed in Germany. Friends thought she was nuts for making two trips to Germany to meet him. Had to elope because the families on both sides did not think it would work out. Married for 20 years. Three kids: one boy and twin girls. Son is named after the father, but is not a junior. Honors/Disappointments: Graduated 12/136 in her high school, but only made the Dean’s list twice in college. She knows how to do her job and is the best at it, but does not have the academics to prove it. She has no trouble getting and keeping a job, but she has to go to a different company if she wants a pay raise. Fun Did You Knows: Despite her girth, she can run the bases faster than the other women on the city’s softball team. She is actively recruited by other companies not only because she knows IT, but because she has one of the best batting averages of the corporate co-ed baseball teams. Can bat and throw equally well with either hand. Can still play the French Horn. Home/Finances: Modest home. Live within her means. Minimalist tendencies – she needs to know where everything is. Youngest sister (Cindy) is not married and no kids, so Cindy stays with Kristin when the husband is deployed to help out with the kids and expenses. Does not complain about finances. They are not poor, but they do have to stick to a budget. Raises the kids in a relaxed and practical manner in most cases, but demands the kids participate in music and sports. Lesson Three - Writing Assignment - New Character Using your Character Study and the concepts covered in this lesson write a short scene (300 to 500 words) in which your character is introduced into your story for the first time. Kristin could hear the snickers of the men from the opposing team. There was a time when she would have taken the mocking personally. Not anymore. Now their fat jokes were merely noise she could ignore. Her father raised his daughters to be athletic powerhouses. This mocking only made her more determined to win. As she did her power walk to take her turn at bat, she surveyed the field. She could hear the buzz of the three twitters (her nickname for the cheerleaders that barely paid attention and were only at the games to date the corporate jocks). It took all of her concentration to ignore most of the taunts from the opposing team bench. Kristin watched with inner delight when the pitcher's smile slowly fadeed as she stepped over the plate to hit left handed instead of right as he expected. Any serious player knows baseball is rigged for southpaws, especially when the pitcher is right-handed. Kristin took an instant dislike to the pitcher. Just by the smirk on his face, Kristin wanted the next hit to drive the ball does his throat. “Ball two!” This pitcher was going to walk her. She was not very good with trash talk, but she had to try. “Come on, Babyface. Didn’t your papa teach you to pitch?” Well, it got a good laugh if nothing else. “Ball three!” Up to this point, he was going low and outside. If his pattern held, the next one would be a fast ball, high and inside. Kristin knew the second he drew his right hand back that he would instead deliver a stunning curve ball. She stepped in and put every bit of her 211 pounds into her swing. The crack of the bat connecting with the ball was enough to silence the jokers on the opposing team. She could still feel the vibrations up and down her arms as she rounded the bases. She could have been nice, but she didn’t want to. She did not just cross home plate – she jumped on it and did her happy dance on it. The catcher stood back and patiently watched in barely contained irritation. With a twinkle in her eye, Kristin just had to say, “You are welcome.” (She wasn’t much good at rubbing it in either.) The catcher, Pete, and Kristin were old friends from when they worked for the same company. “Yeah, yeah. You were just lucky.” He smiled and waved her off. Kristin's delight was replaced with disbelief. Mr. Levine, the senior partner for her former employer, was making his way over to her team’s bench. Kristin would get Round 9 of his pathetic attempts to get her to come back to his law firm … and league team. Maybe one of these times he would realize the price tag went up $1,000 per year with each failed negotiation session. Maybe he would realize Kristin was just playing and that she got special delight in watching him crawl and beg – and embarrass his team with his inept and coarse mannerisms. . |