WRITING & NEW MEDIA: Giving Life to Character

Mary Ellen Molski joined the 100 Days: Summer 2009 project a few days behind but her character studies are a lesson in drawing a face and stapling a life to a fictional character. Read this, #6 Rose, which I’ve posted here in its entirety:

Rose seeks comfort but can find none.  Her skin feels itchy, hot and prickly, like she has a rash she can’t treat.  She needs a friend.  She needs a lover.  She searches in book shops, at beaches, on trains.  There is no one who suits her tastes.

Online she shuffles her profiles, answers her messages, updates her stati.  The echoes of the husk of her life reverberate through the byte-measured universe.  She scratches her leg, taps her toe, moves the black Jack to lie atop the red Queen.  She would love a Jack, no matter what color.

Rose makes waffles and eats them alone.  On Saturday she walks to the post office and puts all the stamps upside down.  The secret message, her father said, was an upside down stamp means, “I love you”.  She thinks of the gas company’s mail room:  does Jack work there?

She walks to the market and looks through the racks, thumbing fuzz from the peaches, smelling bread, sifting nuts through her fingers.  She buys only sauce and cheese, then goes home to take a nap.  She checks her inbox for messages,  then starts to compose a note.  The cursor, a roseless stem, keeps time at the top of the page.  Rose decides there is no one she wants to speak with.

At all.

Mary Ellen’s the most grammatically correct person I know, and she’s grown into one of the most expressive with language and depth of character and narration that I’ve read in a long time. You see, hear, feel what her characters are about; understand and of course, that most necessary of literary elements, empathize.

I’m learning from ME, attempting a free piggyback ride on her learning experience.  More from Mary at her regular site here.