seriouslyinventive

[seriouslyinventive]

Character Development

Character’s Major Actions from End to Beginning.

1.       Sarah (archaeological report editor) eavesdrops outside boss’s office (he’s getting bawled-out on the phone). She rolls her eyes, takes deep breath and allows herself a small, serene smile before heading out the building.

2.       Prints, binds and presents to the boss twenty glossy copies of a ‘finished’ client report that a colleague has submitted to her. It is still full of unaddressed edits and yellow highlights.

3.       Compiles a file showing the trail of blame that has led to the production of sub-standard reports.

4.       Initiates blisteringly sarcastic confrontation with mid-level manager who has instructed a colleague to do some things the way they are done at the last place he worked. Surprises herself with her own venom and bile. This is not who she is.

5.       Takes items used by Rick and refiles them randomly so that he has difficulty finding them. This is instead of putting itching powder in his bag of clothes (Rick is living at the office though this is not permitted).

6.       Locks herself in the toilet with her imaginary friend (famous, sexy actor with fruity voice) who she regularly conjures to improve her day, while Desmond bellows at her from outside.

7.       Bumps into Rick when she is dropped off late one night, near her home. She hurries away from him, only to discover a drunk man pissing on her house, which is an end terrace back of his next to a footpath. She shouts at the drunk, grabs him by the scruff of the neck and the back of his trousers, then pulls and shoves him away from her wall.

8.       Tries to calm Caroline, the illustrator (who is wound up by sexual harassment, poor scheduling, bullying) but gets it wrong.

9.       Discovers that colleagues are bypassing the editing stage and senior management are allowing them to get away with it. Caroline, Emma and imaginary actor make her laugh.

10.   Tries to stop Desmond from crossing the line with his personal comments, but he becomes more extreme, which she finds funny despite her exasperation.

11.   Watches colleagues’ ineptitude during First Aid training.

12.   Sarah and Desmond have a meeting with the bosses about prioritizing post-excavation work on a particular project. Sarah sits wide-eyed while Desmond bawls-out the bosses until they agree to his demands. She says nothing throughout this meeting but gives the bosses an apologetic smile before exiting after Desmond flounces out of the room.

13.   Takes Emma home when she gets paralytically drunk on Cider on one of the regular office nights out.

14.   Several incidents of trying but failing to get colleagues to collect and present data efficiently and accurately: amusing misappropriation of term; ‘calmly’ reiterating themes like what should go under basic headings; a site that’s only located by a grid-reference on one corner and no north arrow, digitization of the overlapping edges of the tracing paper on an AutoCAD plan of site, an incompetent colleague who passive aggressively refuses to show her his work on a large project until he is ‘finished’, etc.

15.   Arrives one morning to find Emma storming back into their room with a sickly-scented candle. The day before, Sarah put it next to the open window on Emma’s side of the room, after receiving it for her birthday, and had then forgotten about it. After apology and misunderstanding, it turns out that Emma thought it was an unwanted gift from Rick and has just returned from giving him a piece of her mind. It transpires that he often gives her childish gifts like lip-shaped post-it notes and plasters with pictures of puckered lips.

16.   Presents in-house handbook of how to do and present research to colleagues at office meeting.

17.   Back at work: usual laugh and wisecrack with colleagues. Emma and Caroline, get a bit silly when Sarah mentions a man, with whom she became acquainted on holiday, who reminded her of a certain actor. Sarah gets hot from laughing and must remove her jumper. Every time she puts it back on, her colleagues start giggling about the actor again and off comes the jumper. This is where they start conjuring the actor with “What do you think he would have to say about it?”, or “What would he do?” They also discuss, humorously, what is to be done about certain office issues.

18.   Busman’s holiday somewhere exotic with beautiful, bronzed, intelligent, multi-lingual people.

  Character’s Wants and Needs from End to Beginning. Is The character Aware of What They Want?

1.       Sarah wants her boss to understand what happens if colleagues do things his way without her intervention. She is aware that she wants recognition but is prepared for trouble instead.

2.       She needs to break the cycle that she is stuck in as, otherwise, she feels compelled to work all hours to save the company’s reputation. She feels that she has nothing to lose. She is not fully aware that she also has a vague idea of inflicting punishment for bad behaviour.

3.       It is at about this point that she has the full revelation that most of her colleagues are incompetent and not necessarily destructive or lazy. She wants to demonstrate her competence. This action shows that she is a strategic thinker.

4.       She is not trying to achieve anything by this. She is just letting go of pent-up rage. Her behaviour surprises herself as much as anyone else.

5.       She is showing Rick how his behaviour affects others by inflicting some aspects of it back on himself. This is a crooked outlet for feelings that she doesn’t full acknowledge and understand.

6.       By walking away from Desmond, Sarah wanted to show that she would not put up with his aggression, but finds herself humiliated and alone in the bathroom because he has followed her and is now making his argument public by shouting in the corridor.

7.       She is not aware how disturbed she is by Rick’s attention, which transferred to her from Emma, via Caroline, because many of the things he does are trivial but annoying. When she bumps into him on a dark night, near her home, she suspects that he may be stalking her, and she becomes frightened for the first time. When she sees the drunk man pissing on her house, she reacts without thinking. The adrenaline is pumping. This is yet another man behaving badly. Afterwards, she is surprised at herself and doesn’t fully understand her reactions.

8.       Sarah does not understand exactly what has got Caroline so enraged. She is aware that she is not fully able to empathise, but cannot fathom it, as the office experience is shared by them. Sarah doesn’t seem to be able to understand that they can have such different reactions to similar stimuli and this causes further offence to Caroline who already has a head of steam.

9.       She is assailed by incredulity and disgust, but the blow is lessened her friends’ support.

10.   She feels both frustrated and amused. She knows will never win this argument.

11.   This is the beginning of a dawning realization of how incompetent many of her colleagues are and that maybe they are not as deliberately obstructive as she thinks. She is not fully aware that this is the beginning of the thought process that leads to that conclusion.

12.   Sarah is powerless and she knows it. Desmond takes over the meeting and his approach is not remotely like hers. She doesn’t want to undermine Desmond, but she does not want to insult and bully her bosses. She suffers a terrible sinking feeling but does not yet attribute it to the wider implication that she is stuck between passively aggressive employers and an openly aggressive colleague.  

13.   Sarah feels disappointed with Emma for making such a fool of herself in front of everyone but wonders what has prompted her to get herself into this state. Sarah is the only one to offer to look after Emma. This shows that she is caring and responsible, in line with her mother-like role withing the organization.

14.   Sarah’s patience and credulousness are tested increasingly throughout this. She thinks her colleagues are deliberately trying to wriggle out of doing their jobs properly, because they enjoy their easy life and expect her to ‘mop’ up after their errors and omissions. She believes this to be a lack of respect and does not understand that they have their own personal codes of conduct, and perhaps don’t understand or care that their laziness is taken as an insult.

15.   Sarah is surprised and embarrassed because she has been blind to what has been going on and because she, unwittingly, caused more trouble. Rick is in his late fifties, so Sarah finds it a little shocking that he is behaving like a coy, lovesick schoolboy. Sarah is also a little saddened that her friend did not confide in her before, but she is only aware of this later.

16.   The handbook is received well by some quarters, so Sarah is hopeful that they will be able to put all the processes in place and work more seamlessly together. She is grateful for the apparent approbation she receives from senior management and thinks that her career may be turning a corner. She is unaware of how most of her colleagues view her as evangelical and overzealous with regard to perfecting their work.

17.   Sarah is initially ambivalent about her return to work. Her holiday has allowed her to forget all the unnecessary stress she’s been put under and the lack of thanks that she gets. She is soon reminded in a light-hearted way. Together, the women come up with a plan which makes them all feel a lot more positive.

18.   Sarah is content and revitalised by being in an environment where the volunteers care about the work, which they perform diligently and with initiative. She is also revitalised by the presence of the actor look-a-like, who reciprocates the attraction, though Sarah is so focused on other things and humble, she doesn’t allow herself to acknowledge her own feelings or recognize that they are reciprocated. This makes her appear aloof or on another level of which she is, again, unaware.

 How the character thinks: Her Basic Psychology.

Sarah is intelligent and intellectually engaged. She is a very strategic thinker when it comes to getting practical tasks done. She tends not to think of herself as an individual, but as a cog in a greater mechanism. She feels good being part of something bigger than herself and feels she has a lot to offer. In this way she may be obsessively compulsive, but not debilitatingly so. She is a true team-player. Perhaps she is overly sensitive, but she protects her feelings by rationalising everything. She begins this phase of her life as a positive and enthusiastic person, not yet cowed by what has gone before. She wants to make the people around her happy and has a personal code that, initially, she relies upon for this. She is also slightly naïve and gullible, believing that colleagues are as great as they make out and trusting them on the basis of this. All she wants as an individual is to be accepted, respected and thanked, and to make others feel like this. In the last half of the story, Sarah’s feelings of jadedness and anger increase. She starts behaving in ways that are out of character because none of her other strategies work, she is stressed and doesn’t know what else to do. By the end, she has concluded that she is unique in a world where every other man is for himself. Logically, she must let go of her misapprehensions and her feelings of responsibility for the workforce. She does not see this as a satisfactory answer, but what else can she do?  

��Character’s superficial affect: How Might a Casual Acquaintance Describe Them?

Colleagues might describe her as a neurotic, work-obsessed, pushy control freak and tiresome perfectionist.

Casual friends might agree with that to some extent, but they would also see her as a little reserved (or possibly shy), caring, knowledgeable (very desirable team member at the pub quiz), witty, dryly humorous and energetic. She’s someone who can fix almost anything and parallel park in the tiniest space.

 Important Physical Characteristics

Slight but with surprising, wiry strength (outdoor enthusiast). Early thirties but looks in her mid-twenties (bit of a baby face, which may be why some people don’t take her seriously). She sees her body as a vehicle for her practical causes. Despite or perhaps because of this, she is very fit, healthy and naturally attractive, seemingly without effort. She has ‘niche’ sex appeal, but it’s not high in her thoughts, so she tends to be surprised when people are attracted to her. She looks edgily fashionable because she gets cast-offs (which she throws on her fashionably angular frame without much thought) from her mother’s friend’s daughter who works in fashion and she has never met.