This writing prompt is inspired by Stephen King's "On Writing." King's portrait of his large, volatile babysitter "Eula-Beula—excerpted below—is a character sketch.
It's not a pretty picture, but it's a picture. Below is a brief excerpt.
“Eula-Beulah was prone to farts – the kind that are both loud and smelly,” King wrote. “Sometimes when she was so afflicted, she would throw me on the couch, drop her wool-skirted butt on my face, and let loose. “Pow!” she’d cry in high glee. It was like being buried in marsh-gas fireworks. I remember the dark, the sense that I was suffocating, and I remember laughing. Because, while what was happening was sort of horrible, it was also sort of funny. . . ."
Many writers use character sketches regularly as writing exercises. They write about someone they know or knew. Sometimes they quietly observe a stranger and describe their appearance and behavior as well as the personality and biography these things seem to indicate.
Pick someone interesting and describe them "to a T." Change their names and a few details if you are concerned that your assessment is too personal or too brutally honest.
An interesting character sketch that draws the reader in can help you craft or describe characters as a larger work, or stand on its own as flash fiction (a very short story, usually ranging between 100 and 1,000 words).
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