Character Profile Worksheet (Cont.)

This is this is the type of person who...

1. Laughs when someone gets hurt

2. Doesn't look both ways when crossing the street.

3. Smokes and breathes it all in praying it will make a difference.

4. Who does not pro-actively look for ways to kill herself but stops looking for ways to survive.

5. Doesn't like to face reality.

Character Profile Worksheet

Basic Statistics

Name: Angela Arroyo

Age: 84

Nationality: Puerto Rican

Socioeconomic Level as a child: Middle Class 

Socioeconomic Level as an adult: Middle Class

Hometown: Puerto Rico

Current Residence: Park Slope, Brooklyn

Occupation: Retired/ Drug Selling 

Income: 24,000 a year from welfare

Talents/Skills: Stalking

Salary: doesn’t work get 2,000 a month from welfare + foodstamps

Birth order: Youngest

Siblings (describe relationship): 6 brothers: Rico, Tito, Nino, Pepe, Nene, Tete – unattached to all six

Spouse (describe relationship): Scrawny, old and tall. They don’t fight much but they aren’t close. His name is Ramon

Children (describe relationship): 1 son, 1 daughter

Grandparents (describe relationship): Leonela Guzman, Jose Guzman -- Paquito Arroyo, Rosa Arroyo

Grandchildren (describe relationship): 2 grandchildren – a 15 year old girl named Jiamara and a 6 year old named Diogenesis

Significant Others (describe relationship): She is heartless 

Relationship skills: strange, and doesn’t like to communicate but good at handling drugs.

Physical Characteristics: has a slouch like the humpback of Notre Dame, Curly orange hair, a wrinkly hard face, and saggy skin. Scrawny legs with a chubby upper body. 

 Height: 5’1

Weight: 138

Race: Puerto Rican

Eye Color: Very dark brown

Hair Color: Light Orange, with Grey hairs 

Glasses or contact lenses? None 

Skin color: Tan/Brown 

Shape of Face: Circular and Bumpy

Distinguishing features: Butt chin, and naturally orange nails  

How does he/she dress? Very simple, usually wife beaters and tank tops and cheap suit pants

Mannerisms: Complains a lot likes to stare at people, acts out on small things like how you put the garbage in a garbage can. 

Habits: (smoking, drinking etc.) Smoking

Health: Black Lungs, Bad liver, gets tired easily, eats little amounts of food. 

Hobbies: Dealing, TV Novelas

Favorite Sayings: She doesn’t have one. 

Speech patterns: Speaks in a raspy deep voice, like a goat. She also likes to make moaning sounds and cackles when speaking. She also talks really slowly.

Disabilities: None

Style (Elegant, shabby etc.): Simple. Looks clean but bad material clothing. 

Greatest flaw: bossy, and gets angry easily 

Best quality: Ability to not act like an invalid despite being old.

Intellectual/Mental/Personality Attributes and Attitudes

Educational Background: Elementary School graduate

Intelligence Level: Average, she never had a proper education.

Any Mental Illnesses? No.

Learning Experiences: School is useless.

Character's short-term goals in life: To die already.

Character's long-term goals in life: Become rich.

How does Character see himself/herself? A badass woman that owns the block and can order people to do whatever she wants. She feels that she’s always right and that everybody is stupid. 

How does Character believe he/she is perceived by others? Nobody cares about her and just wants her for her drugs.

How self-confident is the character? Very arrogant.

Does the character seem ruled by emotion or logic or some combination thereof? She isn’t emotional but at the same time is not logical. She does what her mind tells her to do.

What would most embarrass this character? She does not get embarrassed at all.

Emotional Characteristics

Strengths/Weaknesses: Strengths: Tough Exterior, able to multiply, divide, add, and subtract long digit numbers without a problem.
Weaknesses: Doesn’t realize that her attitude is ruining her, always in denial, neglectful, unfaithful, liar, backstabber, gossips a lot.

Introvert or Extrovert? Extrovert

How does the character deal with anger? She curses a lot, and gets revenge the best way she can without doing much effort.

With sadness? She holds it in and doesn't show it. 

With conflict? Tries to harm the person as best as she can

With change? Doesn’t care about change unless it affects her business in which she takes care of it by staying silent so she can lay low. 

With loss? Holds her emotions in.

What does the character want out of life? To die. 

What would the character like to change in his/her life? She wouldn’t want to change a thing she just wants to end it.

What motivates this character? Drugs

What frightens this character? The police

What makes this character happy? Drugs

Is the character judgmental of others? Yes, of everyone.

Is the character generous or stingy? Stingy

Is the character generally polite or rude? Rude

Spiritual Characteristics

 Does the character believe in God? Yes. 

What are the character's spiritual beliefs? She believes there is God but never follows what he says 

Is religion or spirituality a part of this character's life? No 

If so, what role does it play?

Additional Notes on This Character:

She is a cranky lady who is always looking outside the window of her apartment and stalking everyone. She only comes out in the summer and just sits on her porch still stalking everyone. She tries to run the block and at the same time deals drugs in her apartment which passersby’s notice but stay quiet so they won’t get into any problems.

Reflection #3

Unnecessary actions and unexpected events always catch my attention when wandering around the city. Interactions between people are what interest me the most when observing my surroundings. And similarly to the text “If You Invent the Story, You're the First to See How It Ends” by Roxana Robinson relationships between two people grab my concern as well. Like connections between loved ones or families. It is thought-provoking when you contrast two different families. It always makes you wonder why they formulate the habits that they have. It is also appealing because just like Robinson said “Family connections -- between parent and child, brother and sister, husband and wife -- form the strongest bonds we will ever know. These are the people who can make us happier, and angrier, than anyone else on earth.” These strong connections are the type of things that I notice in my surroundings and make me ponder over what I can write about.

The thing that I could observe that could make a good story is basically anything that catches my eye.
“I write about the things that trouble me. I write about the things that disturb me, the things that won't let me alone, the things that are eating slowly into my brain at 3 in the morning, the things that unbalance my world. Sometimes these are things I've said or done; sometimes they're things I've heard about or seen. Sometimes they're only sentences, sometimes scenes, sometimes complete narratives. I carry these things around inside my head until I'm compelled to write them down to get rid of them. I sit down and begin.”
Anything that I am passionate about or makes me wonder is the kind of things that could make for a great story. Even the basic act of stalking an individual you never had a conversation with can make for an interesting piece of writing. Another key component is writing with detail and showing what you are trying to say but never demanding what the reader should feel. I could observe things with have a lot of meaning for example the relationships between two people, and anything else that makes me exude curiosity. There is no specific topic that I can pinpoint but I feel like what I like to write about that I observe has to come out of me randomly. Some things that spark interest for me may sometimes not be the case for another. Everyone varies in what kind of observations make a great story. But it’s how you feel about it that makes the execution of the story good enough to attract an audience.

Throughout the text the author tries to relate the story with the golden retriever to how she comes up with what she writes. I feel like I would never let a golden retriever licking its owner become something that sparks me into writing, but something as simple as that if it catches the authors mind enough can catch a reader’s eye as well. So what interests you is mighty important in how you write because things a person does not care for cannot be written well. If you can’t have a personal connection or don’t know well enough about the topic how can you possibly believe that you can grab the reader’s consideration to what you are spelling out to them?

Any kind of theme can be addressed based on your observations. The theme is all dependent on what you notice in your surroundings. “If I can set down these moments and make them a whole within a context that explains the scene and characters whose behavior I can forgive, the moments become comprehensible to me.” Basically any event or thing that you notice can be turned into a story that is filled with themes, and a story line that you are glad to have written. Observing and taking note is one of the most important things in writing because with that you can create a whole bunch of characters and an eye catching tale that can etch in someone’s mind.

Source: Robinson, Roxana. “If You Invent the Story, You’re the First to See How It Ends”.Writers on Writing:Collected Essays from the New York Times.Smiley, Jane, and John Darnton.156-160.Print.

Journal 7 - 6 Sentence Fiction

Karen walks down to the florist and orders a bouquet of flowers. When she returns home, she arranges them on a small vase placing it in the same place. "Oh, they look beautiful," she said with a smirk on her face. The door bell rings and she jumps excitedly  as her date comes through the door. "Who are those for?" he asks. She picks up a frame and sees the smiling baby in the photo is a contrast to her own face, which turns away eyes sad and humiliated as she whimpers "It's for her." 

6C - 6 Word Memoir

My sorry eyes can not see.

Journal 6A - Back Story: For Sale, Baby Shoes, Never Worn.

Alicia sat up quickly as the doorbell randomly rang ignoring the pain that she was feeling from walking for so long with a 5 months baby in her stomach. She saw that her ex boyfriend was on the other side of the door. Before she could get there, her husband opened the door and asked who he was. 

"Hey, man. Ma name is Kelso I heard this biddie is prego? N' I might be the father." Brian's face suddenly became flushed and started to ponder how he let Alicia trick him into thinking the baby was his and leading him into a marriage he never even wanted. He started to throw his fists and Kelso's face became as distorted as his grammar. He rushed to Alicia and punched her stomach. He frantically, as well as hurriedly packed his stuff to leave. 

Alicia's stomach turned purple and black as she lay there paralyzed in shock. Blood began to sputter out of her mouth like a dysfunctional water fountain. She finally regained consciousness around a week later only to find out the most heart wrenching news. Once she arrived to her home she wanted to get rid of anything that reminded her of the preceding incidents, and to come up with money to maintain herself now that her husband was gone and all she could think of was to create a garage sale. "For Sale: Baby Shoes, Never Worn."

6B - 6 Word Fiction

Through the door, comes Satan's daughter.

Journal 5 - In Medias Res

2 characters: Sean- 42 years old, Hong - 5 years old
2 objects: cell phone, and pacifier
location: grand central station
abstraction: worried


"I FORGOT OUR SON'S LUCKY PACIFIER IN MY BRIEFCASE!" Sean screamed on the phone in the crowded station to his wife.
"Oh no! How could you! You know that without it he convinces himself that he cannot win a single game!" yelled Baojia. "I hope Hong doesn't notice." Baojia quickly packed her son's lunch. She kept tripping all over the place as she tried to look for her car keys. "Honey, are you ready?" she said with a big sigh. Hong came recklessly down the stairs and yelled "Mommy, I cannot find my bobo!" with tears flowing down his eyes."Now I will lose the game and we'll never be city champs and it'll be all my fault!!!"
"Could you grow up already! And stop calling it a bobo it's embarrassing; you're embarrassing!" yelled Baojia. Hong became red faced as he scurried back into his room and cried until his mother gave in, and came upstairs to give him an apology.

Reflection #2 - Fiction VS Reality & Self-texting

The use of experience is always a good technique to provide emotion into one's writing. But distancing from reality and fiction is what allows one to paint a pattern that permits the reader to get in touch into the mood that they are trying to bring to their writing. Miller and Hoffman both mention the autobiographical components of their text. Sometimes one can dramatize an event that happened last week using emotions from somebody they met in their childhood. And that in its own can be fiction just because in fiction you could put yourself laughing at a joke relating to your mother dying but in reality you would probably have a cut throat feeling that fastens the pace of the beating of your heart. Hoffman shows that using experience is not creating an autobiography in the short story Sustained by Fiction While Facing Life's Facts. "When Jo Ann asked me to find her a gravesite, a heart breaking mission if ever there was one, my characters from 'Local Girls’ made a similar trek in the very same day, although they were far wiser than I and more optimistic," [95]. Using one’s experiences gets changed a little in fiction making your work not autobiographical. But at the same time talking about past experiences can make your work more relatable and feel more real.

Throughout fictionalizing an actual event in my life it felt very grand that I was capable of making fiction out of a small event. I exaggerated the whole situation by including sentiments that were not present, and actions that did not happen. I also changed the setting and the results of the story. Although I used my experience the writing was the least bit of what happened in reality. In Miller’s story - Virtual Reality: The Perils of Seeking A Novelist’s Facts in Her Fiction it is said that “The writer’s job is to make relevant the world she wishes to write about,” [159]. This concludes that you can use an actual experience but your end result is not your story but the connection that it has with your writing. So I just used events in my life to make it appropriate in my writing. In doing this I felt spectacular.

It was not that hard for me to distance myself from my work in order to fictionalize it because the idea was already there. The only thing I had to do was make the story unreal by changing the characters, the settings, and maybe alternating an event here or there to make it interesting. Changing the story to make it fiction was not that difficult. But adding in details to make the reader more engrossed was tough. I had to include the five senses in order to make the reader more attached to the writing. A quote that shares my exact sentiments was one that was in a vignette written by Miller. “The shaping, after all, is what it’s all about… It is that struggle for meaning that lets the writer escape the tyranny of what really happened and begin to dream his fictional dream,” [159]. Translating your story is not as hard as making it express the meaning that you want it to demonstrate. So distancing my work in order to fictionalize it was not the hard part but adding the rhythm such as imagery, and to actually make it make sense was the difficulty that I faced writing this journal.

I feel that a part of me must be in my work at all times because then I can bring the necessary emotion in order to captivate my reader. If I do not add my feelings about a particular situation the story will seem dry and uninspiring. I must write about every physical sensation, every external action, and every internal feeling. I must add why my heart beats so quickly when an event occurs, or in what motion does my blood run. If I include myself into my writing it makes it all the more easier for my reader to relate. Alice Hoffman was a great example of someone who used her knowledge of life to create a fascinating fiction piece. “What was real and what was imagined became braided together. I live in my own world and the world of my book simultaneously,” [p. 97]. Hoffman is a very successful writer and since she was able to include her sentiments, and life into her fiction she was able to grab an audience for her literature. Hoffman and many other writers have been successful in creating works of art for the world to read by using this technique which is why you must make reality and fiction intertwine to be successful in your road to fiction writing.

Work Cited:

1. Hoffman, Alice. "Sustained by Fiction While Facing Life's Facts". Writers [on Writing]: Collected Essays from The New York Times: 1st ed. By John Darton.95-98. Print.

2. Miller, Sue .“Virtual Reality: The Perils of Seeking a Novelist’s Facts in Her Fiction”.Writers [on Writing]: Collected Essays from The New York Times: 1st ed. By John Darton.156-160. Print.