Blogs by David A. Schwinghammer
Dressing Arnie Vogel
8/18/2009 9:44:55 AM
What does your main character wear? Take a look in his/her closet. What pictures, lucky pieces etc. does your character own? What does your character's room look like?
Any habits?
The next step is to dress Arnie and create little habits and such that make him identifiable as somebody you might actually know.
1. Arnie wears a Navy peacoat and watch cap. When it’s a little warmer he wears the blue Navy work coat. He owns a half dozen blue chambray shirts, and a half dozen flannel shirts of assorted colors, three pair of jeans, and a couple of khaki pants for dress up.
2. Wears engineer boots.
3. There’s no closet in the motel room he’s staying in, so he lives out of his duffel. What’s in the duffel? A dozen pairs of black socks, a dozen pairs of briefs and t-shirts, yellowed and frayed. A wool sweater he got in Ireland, green. A dozen blue bandanas. There’s a pair of dogtags and a scapular that he carries as a sort of lucky piece. He’s not that religious.
4. His most prized possession is a digital camera he got in France for a hundred dollars. There’s an envelope full of pictures and some letters he got from his grandmother.
5. Buys a laptop computer when he starts writing for THE INQUISITOR.
6. He keeps a little journal. His grandmother had hounded him to write her about what he saw in Europe and in the Far East.
7. There’s a twin bed in his motel room and also a king-sized one. He sleeps in the little one. There’s a coffee maker and a jar of Sanka. There are Renoir prints on the wall. He takes them down. The walls are painted blue. The bed spread is a yellowish-white, braided. He hates it. There’s a window on the back wall overlooking a dumpster. The thermostat doesn’t seem to work. That’s hardly any water pressure in the shower.
8. He carries a switch-blade knife.
9. He keeps a picture of Bernie he got from her when she was sixteen. Bernie is now married to a loan officer at the local bank with two children.
In the picture she’s wearing a dress for a change. Her chin is cupped in her hands, her elbows braced on her bare knees. She looks bored.
10. Arnie has a sweet tooth. He especially likes Mars bars and Lifesavers.
He smokes Luckies, non-filtered.
Next step. Rituals.
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