Character Portrait

This task was to create a 250-300-word self-portrait of one of your characters, or to describe them through the eyes of another character (a narrator). I chose the latter method.

I chose to elaborate on the character of Will Masterson, who was developed here. He's described by an older rancher who lives nearby.

Will Masterson is a good man. His life hasn’t been easy, losing his mother when he was not much more than a toddler and his paternal grandmother a decade later, but his granny brought him up properly and instilled in him a respect for family and a love of the land. His father, Hank, and his older brother, Charlie, didn’t have either, and did their best to gamble away everything. Will’s father and brother mortgaged the Rocking M to get a stake for a big poker game, then lost their shirts and would have lost the ranch, if Will and me hadn’t barged in and told the other participants that Hank and Charlie did not own the ranch they’d staked on the final hand. Hank and Charlie didn’t learn their lesson: they continued gambling with money they didn’t have and eventually were killed in a dark alley. Will has worked hard to pay off that damned mortgage since before he was old enough to shave.

Will’s wife, Shelby, was a bitch, plain and simple. She could look a person in the face and lie to them; she repeatedly broke her marriage vows, and when she left, she stole a bundle of money from Will. He’s never said how much, but it must’ve been nearly all the ranch’s reserves. The past few years, he’s worked harder than ever, his determination to keep the ranch his great-great-great-grandfather and great-great-great-uncle homesteaded driving him like a locomotive.

My wife says Will needs a helpmeet, but she tends to think people belong in pairs. In Will’s case, she might be right. An understanding, supportive wife could make a world of difference in his life—and if she had a little money to help with the mortgage payment each month, so much the better. 

Creating Characters

This task was to create a character using a method you don't normally use. (The four methods for creating characters are imaginary, autobiographical, biographical, and mixed.) I usually create my characters from my imagination, but this one is biographical---based on a partially overheard conversation in a restaurant last week when I was at a conference.

My inclination was to write in first person, which would be a total departure from my usual method, but the instructions were to write 300-500 word character sketch in third person. So that's what I did.

Here's my character sketch. If this becomes the start of a novel, I'll call it Starting Over.

Charlotte Morris started life all over again when she was forty-seven years old.

The events leading to her rebirth were unexpected. She was relatively happily married, gainfully employed as a computer programmer, successful and respected. But after a seriously bad day at work, she came home and found her husband, an attorney, packing a suitcase. A large suitcase.

“Unexpected trip?” she asked.

“No. I’m leaving you, Charlotte.”

“Leaving me?” Surely he couldn’t mean…

“Yes. I’m leaving you and filing for divorce.”

Her knees gave out, and she sank onto the bed, staring at him. They’d made love just the night before—for the first time in a very long time. “But…why?”

“Because I’ve fallen in love with someone else. Someone who makes me happy.”

“I thought we were happy, Jack.”

“For a long time we were. And I haven’t been unhappy, Charlotte. But I want…something more.”

“You want to marry your mistress.” It was a shot in the dark—she wasn’t absolutely certain he had a mistress, but in the past year or so she’d begun to suspect he did. There had been a few too many “business dinners,” although no more overnight trips than usual.

“Yes and no. I do plan to marry the woman I’ve fallen in love with, but technically, she isn’t my mistress.”

She didn’t care about technicalities and legal mumbo-jumbo. All she could think of was the previous night. “You sorry bastard! If you don’t love me anymore, what was last night? A farewell fuck?” She’d never said that word in her life, but nothing else fit.

To his credit, he seemed chagrined. “Of course not. I do care for you, Charlotte—”

“You have a strange way of showing it.” Anger suddenly deserted her. Tears quickly followed in its wake, but she was determined not to cry in front of him. “You also don’t have grounds for divorce.”

“Grounds haven’t been required for…for years.“ Jack was a corporate defense attorney, not a divorce attorney. “Now divorce is just a mutual decision to end a marriage.”

She could have pointed out that they hadn’t decided anything—he had—but she had no desire to be married to a man who didn’t want to be married to her.

“You can have the house, and I’ll be generous with the alimony. You’ll need an attorney to handle the divorce. Jim Shallcross, Charlie Becker, and Mo Solomon are all good. So are Maggie Crutcher and Liz Kielewski.”

She didn’t say anything—couldn’t say anything—and he resumed packing. Five minutes later, he closed his suitcase. “I’ll arrange to have the rest of my things moved later this week. Get a good attorney to handle the divorce for you.” He paused long enough to kiss the top of her head on his way out. “I’m sorry, Charlotte.”

And that marked the end of their marriage. Twenty-two years together, and the sorry bastard had ended it with five minutes of conversation and an apology.

Generate Something New

Task: Generate something new. Limit of 350 words.

I created a character to pair with the little girl I wrote last week. I have an idea for a novel in which they will be two of the three main characters. I had to edit down what I originally wrote because it exceeded the word limit by about 50 words, but I think the man's character is still apparent.


Will Masterson was an expert in the art of making commitments.

He made commitments to himself. To his family. To the people he worked with.

He’d commit his time, his money, and his energy to worthy projects.

But he did not make commitments to women. No sir, no way, no how.

He’d been there, done that, and had the scars to prove it, and he would never return.

Which begged the question of why he’d traveled halfway across the country to receive, in person as demanded, whatever the heck his ex-wife had bequeathed him.

Since she couldn’t lie to him, or cheat on him, or steal from him again, he figured she couldn’t hurt him again, so he’d agreed to come. But unless she left him a letter of abject apology and a check, he intended to throw the bequest back in Franklin J. Quiggley the Third’s face. The attorney could do whatever he damn well pleased with whatever the hell it was.

Spotting Quiggley's office, Will pulled over and parked. As he uncoiled his lanky frame from the rental car and clapped on his Stetson, he reminded himself that Shelby and all her problems were behind him now. Seven years, eleven months, and thirteen days behind him.

And yeah, he’d been counting.

A wise man learned from his mistakes and held fast to his principles. Will had been slow to wise up, but he’d nailed the learn-from-your-mistakes part on the first attempt. But since it was better to be safe than sorry, he mentally girded his loins as he yanked open the door of Quiggley’s office.

Dead silence greeted his entrance. Then he heard a little girl say, “Wh-who are you?”

Even as he wondered what a kid was doing in a lawyer’s office on a Thursday afternoon, Will’s gaze snagged on a pair of tear-drenched blue eyes—the same navy-rimmed violet-blue eyes he saw in the mirror every morning.

Will’s rule about commitment reared up and bit him in the ass. And he swore he could hear Shelby laughing.