not just for clandestine meetings

character sketch 1: charlotte sullivan

gyzym:

First character sketch! These’ll be me getting to know the characters, more or less; some of them will involve me dicking around with dialogue and pieces of their pasts, etc. Some of them will probably be straight exposition. I’ll probably do a few of them for each main character; I’ve realized I’m a character-driven writer, so I’ll be building plot around these people, as opposed to the other way around. ANYTHING WITHIN THESE SKETCHES IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE. Some of what’s within these sketches may end up in the novel verbatim! Yaaaaay no idea what I’m doing, lalalala. 

That said! This is Charlotte Sullivan, our heroine. If this was a movie, I’d cast her as Lizzy Caplan, to give y’all an approximate image of what she looks like. She’s 24 at the start of the story proper, hates her first name and goes by “Char” almost exclusively, and works at a local TV news station. If anyone has worked in TV news, PLEASE contact me; I’d love to ask you some questions in the name of research. 

Charlotte Sullivan grows up the kind of girl who finds mysteries in attics where there aren’t any; Charlotte Sullivan grows up the kind of girl who could find a history in a grain of sand. When she’s eleven, she and her brother Jason learn to burn hours on family road-trips spinning tales about the people in the cars that drive by, huddled together in the backseat. Jason’s only eight that first year, and he doesn’t do much more than laugh while whispers the untold truths hidden in the bumper sticker on a passing Saab; by the time she’s sixteen, he’s thirteen, and it’s a more communal process. 

“Hey, what about that one,” Jason whispers one night. It’s nearly one in the morning, and their father is passed out in the passenger seat; they’re somewhere near the Illinois border, and their mother’s grip on the steering wheel is white-knuckled. She’s listening to talk radio to keep herself awake, and Charlotte and Jason both know better than to bother her. 

“What,” Charlotte whispers back, “the Ford? Looks like a family, mom and two kids—” 

“Yeah, but those kids don’t look anything like each other,” Jason says. Charlotte bites her lip against pointing out the obvious; her dark hair clashes with his sandy blonde, and no one ever believes they’re siblings. “So maybe friends, then?” 

“On their way back from a birthday party,” Charlotte decides, and Jason grins at her, egging her on. “The one who’s asleep—it was his birthday. He ate so much cake he threw up all over the Chuck-E-Cheese—” 

“Do they have Chuck-E-Cheese in…uh. Whatever state we’re in right now?” 

“Illinois,” Charlotte says, “and yes, totally. They have Chuck-E-Cheese everywhere, dummy, that’s what makes them so insidious.” 

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Posted 3 months ago — 74 notes