Beautiful People ~ Echo

“Respect your characters, even the minor ones. In art, as in life, everyone is the hero of their own particular story; it is worth thinking about what your minor characters’ stories are, even though they may intersect only slightly with your protagonist’s.”

Sarah Waters

Beautiful People, is a blog event created by two people: Sky and Georgie. They post ten questions each month, for you to answer about your character[s]. So you can know more about them. This is helpful if you want a well-developed character people can relate to, in a way.

I’ve seen it around a few blogs a couple of times and looked at the questions once or twice. It wasn’t until now that I’ve decided to do the writing meme. The only reason why I wanted to do it was because I’m bored and I want to get to know my Camp NaNoWriMo characters better. Plus, I’m quite curious about what their favorite color/book/flower/etc is.  

For this month, we got to choose our own questions by either making up our own or using a set of past questions that were already used in their archive, because Sky and Georgie were busy over the summer. So I decided to use the very first set of questions that they posted, considering that, I’m new to the whole thing. So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, here is the first character.

Quick info on the story world: In the year 2200, America is literally silent. You get rich for having no words come out of your mouth but if you talked you go into poverty. The chitchats* are tired of it so some of them starts riots while others slip in and join the tawel** community determined to break down the silent system on the inside. Meanwhile, the tawels are also doing the same thing; trying to break the chitchat’s system down by sending some of their own to join the chitchats community. So it’s a constant war between those two using technology that are far too advanced than our modern ones and something else, something quite wrong.

1. What is their full name? Echo’s full name is Anastasia Amsel, but she would rather be called Echo.
2. Does his or her name have a special meaning? Echo’s real name Anastasia doesn’t have much meaning other than the fact that her parents wanted to name their daughter after royalty. Her nickname has special meaning though, from Echo repeating questions and phrases back instead of answering them.
3. Does your character have a methodical or disorganized personality? That’s a hard question considering that I don’t know Echo that much, but if I had to guess, her personality would be somewhere in between. She breaks down at night when no one is watching but during the day she’s kind of snarky but she hides it by being charming especially with this certain guy. ;)
4. Does he or she think inside themselves more than they talk out loud to their friends? (more importantly, does he or she actually have friends?) It depends on the friend but she is more likely to think to herself than to actually talk out loud.
5. Is there something he or she is afraid of? The two things that I can think of right now are spiders and her mom. She’s afraid of spiders because they’re small and can easily crawl up your leg without you noticing it. She’s afraid of her mom because of certain reasons but she’s angrier with her mom than scared because of the things that she did in the past.
6. Does he or she write, dream, dance, sing, or photograph? Out of the choices listed here, Echo is more likely to dream than dance, sing, write, or take pictures. However, her dreams are more nightmarish than the happy, odd, and/or normal dreams.
7. What is his or her favorite book? (or genre of books) She doesn’t really read but she likes to look over the latest fashion magazine.  
8. Who is his or her favorite author and/or someone that inspires him or her? She doesn’t have much people that really inspire her but one of them would include a girl named Lana (a tawel).
9. Favorite flavor of ice cream? She likes this zebra striped ice cream that has blackberries and vanilla in it.
10. Favorite season of the year? Echo really likes autumn because of the slight chill in the air and the need to wear jackets that aren’t too heavy or too light.

Well that’s it, also if you want to know what Echo looks like go here. The drawing was drawn by fudgemonkey from the YWP Nanowrimo forums.

*Chitchats – People who talk.

**Tawel – People that is quiet. (The name may change)