My Iron Lung

⏰ this is not actually a story but character drafts for the two main characters I've been working on. its my first project and a horror/romance story

Iris-, Schizoid traits,  “Which version of me is actually real?”

**disgusted by people �" wants to love/be loved**

Misanthropic �' Performative identity/split identity, lonely/alienated

Capable �'admired, confident, 

Observant �' cynical, self critical . . 

Caring(wants to be) �' depressed, brittle 

Iris is misanthropic and lonely because she still wants to care for people but experiences them as artificial and emotionally fake or unreal.  This leads her to develop an extremely split, performative identity to get people to care about her and feel genuine connection even though it doesn't work. Having such  an internal disconnect makes Iris confused, disconnected from both sides of herself and dislikes herself. Iris views everyone with contempt and disgust because she thinks they act like machines/cant imagine them as real  and she can have no empathy with them.

instead Iris mainly seeks “closeness” with skilled or popular people.  Kira is an exception because she's so unguarded and different from everybody else, it's like Iris can hear her thoughts. At first this makes iris mad because shes never felt anything but distance and dislike, she is confused about caring for anyone, especially a loser, skilless person like kira 

Kira- 

Introverted�'withdrawn,  lonely, confused   wants to create/be seen?

Sensitive �' anxious, fearful/emotionally unstable    

Imaginative �' delusional/paranoid, creative   

Self alienation(existence) �' self estrangement, Identity affirmation

Kira is very introverted and internally fragmented from growing up isolated and neglected. She often uses imagination to escape into fantasies and cope, this has contributed to her being delusional and schizophrenic.  

Kira feels very lonely but is incapable of (initiating)connection or intimacy due to chronic fear and anxiety. Kira is hyper aware of everything including her issues which makes her feel ashamed and watched, she also misinterprets many things. Having little control over her life has caused Kira to have a perceived inability to affect anything. To compensate for this Kira often tries to assert her existence by making art, self harm, explosive reactions and secretly changing/causing things like pulling fire alarms despite a great fear of being seen and known

Author's Note

NOTE: basic/core trait --> resulting trait/extreme. this is why both characters seem very dark as many traits are results of others, these are just the most integral to how they behave.
I don't actually know how to write character drafts so I kind of winged it, I don't know if it makes much sense to anyone else lol. any criticism is needed 🙏

Reviews

[JayG]

The substitutions, with the question marks were because of the em-dashes. Use 2 dashes instead.
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These bios are useful information for you, as you write, but of little interest to others.

Some things to keep in mind as you write the story:

1. We cannot use the writing skills of school for fiction because they're designed for the letters, reports, and other nonfiction that employers need. A profession, like Commercial Fiction Writing, has a set of skills and specialized tools and approaches that must be acquired in addition to the general skills of school, if you are to avoid the traps and captivate the reader.

2. We don't tell the reader a story. Our goal is to make the reader feel they are LIVING the story in real-time, and as the protagonist.

3. You will often hear the advice: "show, don't tell." And while that sounds like it's advising lots of visual descriptions, it really means point 2, above.

If you've not done any study of the profession, Jack Bickham's, Scene & Structure is an excellent place to begin, You can sample the excerpt on any bookseller site

[Yuithegreat]

sorry guys the --> were replaced by question marks for some reason, that's myb