Educators at "Start Writing Fiction" has asked us to make a character that uses one of the four methods of making character sketches—with a twist. A "classmate," Patricia Ciruelos Martinez, has accurately summarized these methods:
[1. Ideal method: you work from a purely intellectual creation, an idea about a character whom you have not observed and who is not you.
2. Autobiographical method: you project yourself into the fictional characters.
3. Biographical method: you use people you have observed (or researched) as the starting points for your fictional character. You turn a real-life character into a fictional one. Here, writers often compose their characters from the traits of several people.
4. Mixed method: combining the other methods]
I decided to use the "Autobiographical method," but educators added that we have to make that character have a "dramatic external alteration," giving suggestions of changing our sex or making ourselves younger or older. I chose the former.
The result: Ali the Escort.
Alison Mason isn't me in the most accurate sense; she is a unique character from out of my ass who just happens to have some traits similar to mine (bitter, cold, tired, anti-capitalist, etc.).
I'm quite contended of what I came up with, especially because this has some personal aspects to it.
——
Since when did my resentment towards the world start? That is a question that Ali likes to ask herself every time the clock ticks to midnight. Devoid of intimate romantics and belief in gods and fellow men alike, she likes to think that her suffering is the result of being free from the grasp of Ignorance. Whether that is true or not, one thing is certain.
She is miserable.
It shows in her face. Her eyes used to be alluring and sharp, and the looks it gave were meaningful. Now, they just look baggy and tired, not even possessing the half of their former beauty. Chapped lips are the result of either dehydration or her addiction to cigarettes. Her black hair has been neglected; the ends already have reached her hips but not in an elegant way.
All of the imperfections would have been perfectly shrouded once she stood up on the “choosing platform.”
Fair-skinned but riddled with blemishes, her body, surprisingly, looks striking. The lack of exercise and staring at a computer screen all day have not made her limbs weak; her arms and legs look appealingly muscular. However, she does not showcase it—unless she is on the job. Whether unintentionally or not, she has a poor sense of fashion, wearing outfits that some would say are bizarrely plain.
Aside from her closest friends, nobody bothers to ask her how she is faring. It is just as well, she convinces herself. I have nothing to show them, nothing to be proud of. To her, her life decisions are a cause for withdrawing herself from social interactions. It is distressing for her, knowing that even her juniors are way ahead of her in terms of employment. Whenever she mutters “screw it” to no one in particular but the cigarette in her hand, it is both directed at her current state and the current state of the world.
Capitalism expects regular men to fulfill their role as salarymen, and rotting away her potential, uniqueness, and time in an office cubicle is a notion that both frustrates and terrifies Ali. Is it pride? Stubbornness? Enlightenment? Or is it just denying the fact that nobody is an exception to what society dictates? The correct answer has long escaped her, or was there even an answer in the first place?
She landed on a job that would guide her to the path that ends in a pot of gold, perhaps at the cost of her dignity. No, dignity is an unempowering idea which would only get me stuck in the quagmire that is the middle class, she declares. To her, escortism is not a shortcut to get rich; it is an attempt to rebel against the world one more time—albeit futile.
A snap of a finger sends her back to reality, and she knows what is coming next as a hungry-eyed patron points at her behind an aquarium: a barrier that represents the gap between the rich and the low.
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