Objective: Develop a deep understanding of a character’s background, motivations, and voice.

• Task: Write a 500-1000 word character sketch of someone who would live in one of your solarpunk worlds. Explore their desires, fears, daily life, and how they relate to their environment. Be detailed—what do they carry in their pockets? How do they speak?
  • Reflection: What did you learn about this character that surprised you? How does their voice differ from yours?

Pre-Exercise Reflection

It's interesting that ChatGPT started with a character sketch. It knows I tend to focus on worldbuilding, so did it "decide" to challenge me with focusing on a character?

I don't necessarily want to only write solarpunk, but I'm digging it right now, so I'll go with that flow and adapt as I go.

Exercise

Name: Echo

World: TBD
#charactersketch
Echo lives in a desert divided by canyons that are honeycombed with caves. She chose her name on her Naming Day, the first Full Moon of her 12th year. Her father was a Spirit Master and she'd felt most at home down deep in the canyons where she could shout her prayers and hear them spoken back to her over and over again. She has a knife with her always; a staff, too. For witching the water - a skill that makes her valued among the people of the sand.

Her best friend is a pack mule named Sticks. Her mother had given him to her on her Naming Day, a tradition among her mother's people. He'd been just a colt, born of her mother's own mare and a donkey from her father's holdings. Sticks carried her solar panels, a few battery packs, and other essential supplies she'd need as she wandered the canyons from cave settlement to cave settlement offering her services as needed. Water witching. Spirit tending. Mediation.

She sometimes took lovers in settlements. As a Spirit Master, she was bound to no settlement, to no family, to no kin. But she enjoyed the occasional companionship and even had some favorites she liked to visit often.

She has a phone that connects to the net, but the screen is cracked, so she's on the way to a settlement that specializes in manufacturing various glasses from the standard sorts of window glass to more specialized nanoglass. They'd take the old glass screen off, recycle it, and put a new one on. She'd already messaged ahead that she was on her way - the screen was still usable, but barely.

She lived well as a nomad. The packs that Sticks carried had cooling compartments for fresh food. She could run her stove on fire or on solar power. Settlements always loaded them up with enough food and water to make it to the next settlement, and Echo could always find water if she ran out of that too fast. Most settlements were a day's walk away from each other - leave in the morning, arrive at night in time for feast.

But one day, she'd tackle the Stretch. A six-month journey across the wastelands, two weeks between oasis, to reach the shore. She'd have to earn a mare before then, so that she could ride. Maybe an extra mule or two as well. But she was going to make the lone journey - it was the way of her people, to do that at least once in their lifetime.

It wasn't necessary. They had solar vehicles that did very well across the dessert. But the journey was sacred. She was working towards that as she traveled from settlement to settlement, offering her services, building connections, and learning the skills she'd need to make the journey before her 30th year, which was only three years away.

Tamar is a frequent lover and occasional travel companion, and is urging Echo to begin her trek across the wasteland dessert, though Echo is hesitant for reasons she's not ready to share.

Echo is reserved in her speech, expressing only what is necessary to fulfill her services or communicate her needs. She feels most free in the empty canyons where she can sing the songs of her people, the echoes reverberating to create beautiful choral effects. You had to know right where to stand, how the wind would affect the sound even, and hit the notes just right for it to work, but when it did, it was magic.

Post-Exercise Reflection

Her name came to me first, and then the rest of the details followed. She definitely has a story to be told. I'm already mulling that over.

I've only got a rough idea about the world she lives in. Is it Earth in some far distant post-apocalyptic future? Or some other world? Haven't really decided yet...

But she's definitely a compelling character for me! I don't usually start with a character. I often start with an idea for a world and then create the character that fits in that world and let them tell me more about their world and their life. Here, though, I started with the character and have no idea the rules of this world she inhabits, which is a new approach for me, and I'm liking the stretch.