“Table for one, please.” He says in a crowded Saturday morning where all the hungover kids scarf down their breakfast in an attempt to calm their stomachs.
Kevin Reowl’s six foot frame follows the waitress to the table and slides into the seat and stares at the other chair across from him. She hands him the menu and places a neatly wrapped fork, spoon, and knife beside him. “Anything to drink?”
“Water for now.” He says and opens his menu, green eyes lazily scanning the pages. He hated waffles and eggs and skillets. He just liked bacon and the odd orange juice. He’s kept one ear piece in and the other dangles around his neck. He’s supposed to, though. That was the plan. Go in, scope it out, and leave.
Kevin Reowl takes his position seriously. He works for someone who knows exactly when targets will be arriving at certain places. Then he’s sent out. Soon, she’ll arrive and the waitress has placed him in the exact spot he needed to be. Of course, the Boss knew that, too. He set an elbow on the table and rested his jaw in it, fingers brushing his short, curly, brown hair. He enjoyed sitting alone on missions like these. He was able to have some alone time to himself and think about his life.
He ended up with this position when a good looking woman entered his life and told him that he would be perfect. He must have looked confused. Perfect for what? Marriage? A doctor? An all-star quarterback?
Nope. An spy.
And so here he was sitting in a restaurant waiting for the next target to come into play so he could get the details he needed and leave abruptly. Maybe he would buy an orange juice. if the waitress ever came back with the water.
Whatever. He wouldn’t care either way. it was just something to make people think he wasn’t a creep or something.
Kevin heard her voice and his looked up above his menu. He glanced down at his watch and nodded. Right on time. Now he could finally complete this.
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There’s a short answer to that assignment for DS106: http://assignments.ds106.us/assignments/creating-your-own-character/. I could go on for a lot longer but I believe I covered the majority of the criteria of the assignment. I really enjoyed this little assignment. This prompt came from actually hearing a guy ask for a table for one. I found it very interesting and decided to write about it here. Any feedback would be great on it. Can you tell I’m an English major? This might actually spin into a longer story for another class of mine.
Something like this I will definitely do in an ELA classroom of mine. I would love to tell students to just listen to conversations around them and something might spark a story. I’ve had this happen to me several times. Just seeing what a person looked like had a story spinning in my mind and I ended up writing it.
Writing about a character’s likes, dislikes, appearance, backstory, personality, and what their place is like in their world is definitely a great place to start for a character. If I were to continue this story I would add in more details about him but this will suffice for now. Again, an assignment like this is a great way to get students thinking about characters for stories.
Another great place would be to ask students to think up questions they would like to ask a character who lives in their mind. Tell them to think up ten questions and not just basic “What’s your favourite colour” ones, either. I’ve also had to do that for a creative writing class this semester.
Overall, I love writing exercises so whenever I get the chance to do them, I’ll do them. I’ll definitely continue writing some DS106 Fanfic or Writing assignments.
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