Character Scenarios

[Yuliya]

This is an exercise to better get to know your character. You can choose any character you might be writing about.

Basically, I'll repeatedly post random scenarios, and you must write what your character would do in that situation.

Also, when replying, don't say, "My character would do..." Actually write out what they would do as if it were in your story.


Your character is sitting on the curb of the sidewalk. They have been there for a little while, and just fives minutes ago, a tall, muscular man showed up on the other side of the street, and has been pacing back and forth since then, occasionally looking at your character. He has a glass bottle in one hand, but your character can't see it very well. Here's the problem: your character has to get by him to return home.

[Peregrine]

I was not happy. No happy at all.

It was so not cool for Ariel to just run off like that. I mean, who lives their brother in the ditch to chase after a girl? How is that right? And since when was he going all Romeo? Ariel is a sophomore, which means that last year, he was a freshman. He was always at my side, backing me up. He was my partner in crime, but lately, he wanted to see less and less of me. He was more interested in his own...interests, for lack of a better word. We were inseparable and he cut the cord. How could he do this to his own brother? Whatever, this was the last straw.

So there I was, sitting on the curb, silently fuming to myself when I saw a hulking outline not to far away Macbeth or Demetrius roaming the streets at night. I stood up, intending to make my way back home. No need to get tangled up with a mindless, probably drunk jock is I didn't have a trick up my sleeve and, my stomach clenched angrily. Ariel at my side.

I took a step forward, but then I heard a sloshing sound and I peered into the darkness at the dark figure, where I could barely make out the form of a bottle in his hands. It was less than half empty.

Yes, half empty. Don't start.

So, he was drunk, something else to add to my long list of difficulties. I supposed that if I darted out quickly enough, he would be too sluggish to notice me. I started forward, but his voice stopped me.

"Well, well, well, if it isn't Puck?"

His speech was slurred and I froze, not needing to see his face to know who he was, now that I had heard is voice.

"Falstaff." I spat, putting on my best contemptuous tone. "Long time, no see." I had made certain of that.

"Just where are you going, little f*g**t?" He grunted.

I rolled my eyes. So he was still convinced I wasn't hetero. How lame. Not my fault I didn't have a girlfriend.

"Really, there are better ways of insulting people, ignoramus."

"You listen here, you son of a pregnant dog, I think --." But then he swayed sideways, the liquid in his bottle splashing loudly, and fell to the ground with a loud crash, unconscious.

And that pretty much took care of that.

Stepping over his still form, I picked up the bottle and raised the mouth to my noise. Gin, or something like it. I don't drink myself, but when you dad is king of the faeries, shadows and a match-maker for mortals, you tend to know these things. Making a face, (though there was no one there to see it) I set the bottle back down and ran off into the night.

It was thirty miles to my house and I was there in one hundred twenty seconds.

[Yuliya]

Sometimes a girl had to back down.

Sometimes a girl had to kick him in the crotch and then get out of there as soon as possible.

But for Yuliya, the former was never an option, so it was the latter that had happened, but really, Amri deserved it. He wouldn't admit that she had saved his life. He wouldn't admit that he had been a "dude in distress." All he would talk about was that he had once saved her life, as if she didn't regret that had ever happened. It was one of her worst memories for numerous reasons. Almost drowning isn't exactly the best thing for anyone, and it's especially not a happy time when that person is deeply afraid of deep, dark water. And to top it all, the person who had saved her had to be him, and in the process, he had found out that she was afraid of deep dark water. Could it get any worse?

Okay, maybe she didn't hate him as much as she used to, when they had first met and he was a sullen, irritable thing, but at least that had better memories. She had gotten the better of him from the first moment, pulling his hair before he had even known her name. Happy times, happy times. But as he had opened up to her and her friends, they had grown into bitter rivals, even more vicious than her previous feud with Theo, the resident fire elemental. Only, Amri didn't control fire, instead, he controlled fire, air, earth, water, life, and death. Yuliya had never been one for choosing her enemies wisely.

So many things had happened that summer. Roasting marshmallows, riding horses on the beach, that motorcycle ride, the trip to the smalltown (During which things happened that Yuliya could still not explain), and of course, the trip into limbo during which she had saved Amri's life.

But now, they were on their way back to the Academy, or in Amri's case, going there for the first time. They had stopped in a hotel, and there was only one room left, so five teenagers, and, of course, Ravute, had to share the same room. It might've turned out okay if they had just said goodnight and turned out the lights. But they decided to take advantage of the cable TV, and so they watched a movie, one which involved a damsel in distress.

"Ha! The guys are always saving the girls!" Amri had shouted amusedly, only, Yuliya was less than amused.

"Excuse me? Are you forgetting something?"

It had only gone downhill from there, and ended in a physical fight that ended with her kicking him full strength where it would hurt the most. Ravute was just about to scream at her when she booked it out of there.

How long had it been, at least an hour had passed since then. After wandering the streets for awhile, she had finally sat down on the curb, and let her anger wash away like rain into a drain. It was true, she hated Amri, but there had been times when their interactions weren't deadly, like the motorcycle ride, and the sunflower "incident" as she liked to call it.

It was around midnight, and she was starting to feel tired. The bed backs there had been so squishy, but maybe she shouldn't even go back so that in the morning they'd really feel bad. Or would that be too selfish?

But, Yuliya decided in the end that she didn't want to delay their trip. Her kitty was at the Academy, and she hadn't seen her the whole summer. She wanted to get back as soon as possible.

Pleased that she had finally come to a decision, she stood up and started towards the direction she had come from, when she froze. There was someone in her way, someone big...and most likely drunk...

She looked left and right. There was no one there, she could just whip him away in a small tornado that she could conjure...or would that be too obvious? Maybe she could summon her familiar...but no, making a horse appear out of thin air wasn't exactly what you'd call "lying low."

"So...come here often?" she asked, the first thing that popped into her mind. Angrily, she knew that if Amri had been here he would have just waltzed past this man and gone on right ahead, but in her defense, Amri was a year older than her, and almost a foot taller than her, and he controlled life and death, something had to be said for that.

The man muttered something incoherantly, so Yuliya squared up her shoulders and walked straight up to him and looked him the eye.

"I'm going to walk past you, okay?"

She was starting to do just that when he reached out a hand and grabbed her. Without thinking, she reached down and bit him, making him shriek. In that instant, her eyes widened and she ran, not daring to look back, all the way back to the hotel, where, out of breath, she opened the door and collapsed on her bed.

"Thought you'd be back," she heard in Amri's voice as he rolled over and sat up.

"Waiting up for me?"

"As if."

Yuliya didn't care anymore. As far as she was concerned, she had won this argument, and so she let sleep come upon her. She dreamed about kitties and braids and half-full bottles.