Crafting a Strong Character Voice // Part One
Exercise One - Me
They were mountains. I knew they were. You could tell by their jagged cliff faces. The deepening of valleys and the rising of peaks. Like the crinkled surface of a scrunched up piece of paper once it's been flattened out.
If they didn't look so dusted in saw dust and speckled with black dots of mould, I could've been convinced otherwise. Maybe if it'd been spread with dark blue icing and sprinkled with white, fluffy fairy floss, I'd instead assume it was the ocean. Cool and inviting, waiting to welcome me into it's expanding weightlessness.
Exercise Two - Theron
The only thing that rendered familiar was the rich, royal blue sky, that deepened in colour the more I looked upwards, towards space. The mountains were the flattest I've ever seen, even more so than the ones that expanded out into the fields in the East Region. They looked futile, and while from this distance all I can see is sand, I wouldn't surprised if I came across clusters of dried, perishing bones.
Deirdre's breaths tickle against my neck, growing faster and more desperate. I tighten my grip on her waist as we begin to descend across the flat plain. While the level ground works in our favour, it's cracked soil reaffirms that finding water is going to be our greatest problem.
Exercise Three - Evita
I stamp my foot into the slippery sand, taking one last push so I can finally see what lays on the other side. I try to imagine the city that once flourished, clusters of glass buildings expanding for miles. I've always been told it was a beautiful place, but with every photo of it being destroyed in the war, I've never seen it for myself. It's always sound, luxurious, a place that I could call home and honestly mean it, but with the heat that's pounding my skin and the glaring sun that burns my eyes, I'm starting to believe its grandeur was being amplified.
I'm almost relieved when I don't see the blinding sun reflecting off the glass walls. Almost. The reality of what lays ahead begins to sink in though. Just more and more of what we've already seen. More of nothing. A scorched plain outstretches briefly ahead of us. Just after, a wave of mountains barely threaten to obscure the horizon, but they look even more dire then the deserted climbs we've just endured.