Question 1

The task here was to develop a fictional character based on some real-life observations.

Gilbert Fitzgerald

What he looks like

Gil Fitzgerald is 170 cm tall and weighs 95 kg. He has dark hair, a circle beard and he only shaves twice a week.

He wears glasses with fairly heavy black frames.

His gait is a little awkward. His extra weight is impacting his posture, and he doesn’t make the effort to stand up straight. When he walks, his toes are much further apart than his heels. He doesn’t lift his feet very high, and often his feet slide along the ground. When he does lift his feet, they land heavily.

At work, he is required to wear the ‘front-of-house’ uniform. This is a red shirt, with black shoes, pants, jacket, apron and cap. This is OK by him, because by choice, he wears fairly similar clothes when he’s away from work.

Gil doesn’t look happy. He doesn’t make an effort to keep his demeanour light, and has an enervating impact on those around him. It’s like there is more gravity when he’s around, making everyone feel heavier.

Where he lives

Gil and his mother (Kylie) live in the suburbs. The house is a small three-bedroom home. Gil’s mum keeps the house very tidy, but he refuses to let her into his room. It is his sanctuary, and he has it configured the way he wants. There is a computer, and X-box and some really good speakers. The bed is an ensemble with an inner-spring mattress.

Relationships

Gil’s father (Glen) died after a very brief bout with cancer when Gil was eight years old. Glen was insured, and the insurance was enough to pay out their house, so Gil and his mum didn’t have to worry too much about money. However, Glen’s absence has had a significant impact on Gil’s life. Gil doesn’t tell anyone that his father is dead; rather he says that his father left when he was eight. He doesn’t want to have to put up with condolences, and it seems like most people have had a parent leave, so that’s a pretty normal thing to face. His imagination sometimes runs away with him, and he feels that there is dad out there who might want to come back and get to know him.

Kylie (Gil’s mum) has got on with life but has never tried to strike up a relationship with another man. She is very particular about her environment and is a bit of a ‘neat-freak’ without being clinically obsessive. She has tried not to lean too hard on Gil for emotional support, but well-meaning friends spoke to Gil about being the ‘man of the house’ soon after Glen died, and she’s concerned that he’s taken too much weight upon himself. Gil doesn’t talk to her very much, so she’s not sure how he really feels about that. Kylie has read ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’ and is pretty sure she can’t make him share his feelings with her but doesn’t know how to get him to open up safely. She cooks and cleans but has no idea what to buy him for his birthday or Christmas.

Superficially, Gil ignores his mother. She’s like part of the furniture. Although she has tried to be both mum and dad, Gil classifies her mostly as ‘not dad’ and when she nags him about his physical or emotional health, he shuts her off. He understands that this is rough on her but does it anyway.

Gil’s boss is James. James doesn’t care very much how Gil feels, he just wants the job done. From Gil’s point of view, this is great. James lets Gil do the work without getting in his way, and when the job can’t be done or isn’t clear, James will take the time to find out why and either educate Gil or fix the situation. Gil likes the boundaries and his expectations are managed well.

Megan is a co-worker at McDonalds. Gil has not kept in contact with anyone from his school days and is generally cocooned by his gaming and technology. Megan, however, has taken a shine to him and tries to engage him in conversation. She’s a year younger than he is, and in his own mind, she’s ‘kinda cute.’ However, he has no real model for relational behaviour. Without seeing his mum and dad interact, his role models for relationships are TV, games and online pornography (which he classifies in his mind as ‘erotica’). He doesn’t really know how to respond to her.

Character traits

It turns out that Gil could get by quite happily without his glasses but wears them for two very specific reasons. The first is that his eyes are quite wide-set, and without them, he thinks that his face looks a bit like a plastic doll’s face when someone has pushed the bridge of the nose in. The second is that he discovered over time that people took his input regarding technical matters more seriously when he wore them.

Gil has an almost mystical rapport with machines. He’s the go-to guy whenever some piece of technology plays up. It’s almost embarrassing when people ask for help, because when he shows up, the machines generally just start behaving. The person who asked for help usually starts trying to convince him that there really was a problem, and he believes them, but doesn’t know how to put them at ease. He usually just mumbles something inane (he thinks) and goes back to what he was doing. He doesn’t know why or how things come together when he gets there … it just does. Oh, if the problem persists, he can figure it out almost every time, but usually things straighten themselves out. This is why he’s given the responsibility for the kiosks at work. Under his supervision, they just work. When someone else takes over, it seems like one is breaking down every second day.

He calls himself ‘Gil’ rather than ‘Gilbert,’ because that’s how his parents abbreviated his name. Children in the first couple of years at school took no real notice of this until one of them realised that this sounded like ‘gill’, and fish breathe with gills. So someone started calling him ‘Fish-breath,’ which evolved into ‘Stinky.’ He doesn’t consciously remember this, but he always chooses to buy more expensive deodorants and aftershave products. He won’t go anywhere without cleaning his teeth.

A typical day

A typical day for Gil is to wake at 7am, have breakfast (toast and cereal). He works a day shift at McDonalds, eating lunch in the restaurant. He comes home and plays his X-box until dinner time, then he leaves the table and either continues gaming or watches Netflix. Then he goes to bed around 11pm or midnight.

Question 2

This question was to take a brief factual description of some space, and then develop an atmospheric evocative description of the space. I chose my home office.

The factual description

This room is a top-storey three by three-and-a-half metre bedroom, repurposed as an office. There is a south-facing window that looks out over the top of other houses and trees, out to a hill with a cell-tower on top.

Looking around the room, the salient features are a mattress lying on the floor in front of a built-in wardrobe, a couple of chairs, a desk and computer equipment. There are also several stacks of paper, boxes and bags. One of the stacks contains loose paper, and old keyboard, a cylindrical plastic half-full CD container and a frypan.

Of the chairs, one is larger, positioned in front of the desk, and has no armrests. This is clearly the work chair. The other has a cloth nappy on it. Both are good-quality office chairs, and they stand on heavy plastic carpet protector mats that have been patched with gaffer tape where they’ve cracked.

The desk has moulded aluminium supports instead of legs, and the top is a board with a white enamel veneer. It is cluttered. There are cables and more cables, a keyboard, mouse and mouse mat, a laptop computer and two large monitors. The computer tower sits on the floor beside the desk, because clearly, there isn’t space for it on the desk itself. There are also some toys: a ForeverSpin dock with five tops and a ForeverBase; a pewter statuette of Yoda with a lightsabre; and a folding knife with a five-inch blade.

The computers are of high quality, and both monitors are 4K displays. There is an uninterruptible power supply behind the computer. The quality of the equipment seems at odds with the general clutter.

The atmospheric evocative description

Dust. That was his first impression. All of the surfaces were lightly coated with dust. Here and there, someone had made an effort to wipe a surface, but clearly, the dust was winning. It was not the dust of abandonment—it was the dust of not caring.

There was evidence of activity in the keyboard’s shiny keys and the worn mouse buttons, but it was due to the requirements of duty, not delight. Lights on various devices flashed and flickered in a desultory fashion, resigned to conveying information that would never be acknowledged. Admittedly, the computer and its peripherals were of high quality, but they were old enough for it to be obvious that the occupant didn’t care enough to update. Similarly, the pewter statuette of Yoda and the ForeverSpin tops were quality items, but like everything else in the room, they were succumbing to the insidious advance of the dust. No-one had picked them up recently. And the rest of clutter on the desk? It seemed that the occupant was in the habit of picking things up, and then just putting them down instead of putting them away. It was not the clutter of creative activity, and it held nothing of interest.

There was no artwork on the walls, and the light grudgingly admitted by the windows seemed pale and somehow bleak. The mattress on the floor appeared lifeless and uninviting, as if it offered a short and shallow period of death instead of the opportunity to rest and be revived. Whatever was in the wardrobe itself remained hidden and unregarded, and maybe it was better so.