Sunday, June 10, 2012

Writer's Workshop - building believable characters - another one

After receiving some helpful comments on my first character sketch for Honey's Writer's Workshop and after reading some examples of other workshop-participants, I offer now my second try, but with another character.

This was the task:
Exercise: Do a character sketch. I found this website, click on the word here, with some great suggestions for building characters.

I now took the second main-character of "Twisted Paths of Fate", perhaps I'll do the villain, too.

Alexander Knevash has grown from a shy, pale younger son of a lord into a handsome young man who is more than sure of himself. Brown shoulder-long hair looks only half tamed, just like he has secretly slipped away much farther from his father's grasp than he is aware. The few responsibilities of Alexander allow him to be a wanderer and show little attachment to his home, neither in behaviour nor in appearance, although he likes to take advantage of his royal blood now and then. With his lively brown eyes he has charmed noble ladies at most courts and peasant girls in nearly every country he has visited. He doesn't care that they often are his weakness, too, betraying his emotions and thoughts as if he were an open book. Only few personal secrets are carefully guarded by Alexander, the true extent of the magic he has acquired and the dreams of his heart, which are the motivations for his every move. Any yet, the naive boy isn't completely vanished and can still be blinded by ignorance and lured into a trap.   

Again, I would appreciate comments and critique about this. Does it sound interesting to you? Do you see any flaws? What would you expect to get from a story with him? I tried to leave out anything that sounded like a synopsis this time, did it work or is this worse? Anything else that comes to your mind?

7 comments:

  1. I truly enjoyed reading this. Especially the '...slipped away from his father's grasp' to describe the personality of the shoulder length hair. This is keeping with the essence of the character sketch where you are doing more than describing appearance. Well done! You have me interested.

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    1. Thank you very much! I like that phrase, too, because it really describes well what I meant.

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  2. Really good treelight! I like this window into Alexander's character and I'm interested in reading more about him. Excellent rewrite! I'll have mine up tomorrow. (:

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    1. Well, I'm glad you liked it, and hope I can share more about him, soon.

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  3. Now that's a character sketch! Good job.

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    1. Thank you! It was nice to try and work in all the recommendations and take a good look at this guy.

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