There is more than one way to keep track of your character and their characteristics, as evidenced by the comments made in response to my previous blog entry concerning character sketches.

The previous one posted here is used by myself and my Anglo-Irish co-conspirator as an initial work up. From here, we create a one page description of the primary characters. The purpose of this is to develop the character's personality in greater detail. While this is not necessary for all characters, especially Crewman Number Six, it helps me when it comes time to write, for it gives me a feel for how the character will act when confronted by certain situations and when dealing with others.

I appreciate such an approach is not suited for all writers. Each writer has his or her own style and technique. I present this to writers here as an idea, a thought only, that they can use if they like, nothing more.

What follows is an example of this form of character sketch my Anglo-Irish co-conspirator are working from in our latest effort, The English Courtesan.

Physical Description: Red hair, piercing blue eyes and slight of frame.

Personality: Quiet and observant. He intentionally cultivates an aura of mystery and aloofness. Only Sebastian sees this for the act it is, for Alev desperately wishes to embrace life.
Habits/Mannerisms:

Background: The bastard son of Robert Stuart, Lord of Aubigny and Captain of the Garde Ecossais and the daughter of an Genoese nobleman. Paolo in Italian means small. Born in 1525.

Internal Conflicts: Like the world he lives in, one torn by political and religious strife, Alev strives to embrace the beauty of the world as expressed by the artists and poets of the Renaissance but finds he/she must master and apply the practices of states craft as expressed by Machiavelli in order to survive. In affairs of the heart, she must find away of expressing her growing love for Sebastian without betraying her secret.

External Conflicts: A desire to seek vengeance for what men of the cloth did to her as a child wars with her growing love of Venice, the enlightened manner with which it is governed, and the works of art produced by Italian masters. That many of those artists are employed by the same Church she seeks to humble in retribution to what it had done to her as a child crates a conflict that, in time, makes her realize that had she not endured what she had at the monastery as a child, she would never have been able to reach a point in her life where she could enjoy and serve as a patron for the very things she had once dreamed of. “Love and pain,” Sebastian tells her as they are parting forever. “One very often leads to the other. It is a sad truth we cannot change. We can only enjoy the first when it comes our way and endure the latter when we have no choice.”
 

Physical Description: A 32 year old. Tall, (5’11”), boyish in build. Dirty blond, grey shaped eyes.

Personality: Her doggedness and attention to detail are her greatest strength and a curse, for once she has taken on a project, she is unable to give up until it has been completed.

Habits/Mannerisms:

Background:

Internal Conflicts: At the beginning of the story, she is struggling with the need to adjust to life after GRS, for the run-up to that procedure had been so all consuming that she gave little thought to what would follow as she sought to find her place in society as a woman. In regard to the portrait, although she desperately wants it to have been painted by da Vinci, for it would make her name in the world of art historians, she refuses to compromise her professional integrity, which she is sometimes tempted to do.

External Conflicts: Megan finds working with Hackett difficult at times, for she has still to decide how she feels about what is now the opposite sex while, at the same time she finds herself being drawn to him. She also finds herself being drawn more to Tinsdal, a man who she at first despises while at the same time wondering why Barrow is behaving as he is to her efforts to solve the mystery of the portrait progresses in ways that are disappointing to him. A crisis ensues when it is Tinsdal, and not Barrow, who encourages her to follow the story of the portrait wherever it takes her.