- IMAGE:What does your character look like?
Mayor Geraldine Hanover is in her late fifties. She is aging gracefully. She has short, businesslike gray hair. She dresses professionally at all times—even her pajamas are courtly, like flannel versions of her signature pantsuits. She thinks her style makes her look dignified and official, but it has the unintended (and politically dangerous) consequence of stuffiness and artifice. She knows that the public, and her critics, will hold a much sharper magnifying glass to the way she looks and dresses compared to her male counterparts, so she always puts significant effort into planning out which shade of pearls to wear or which heel size is appropriate.
- VOICE:What does your character sound like?
Behind closed doors, the mayor speaks in a more relaxed, sometimes even blunt, tone. She only lets go of her politically savvy inhibitions when speaking with her most trusted associates (her family and a few of her staff members). In all other contexts, she speaks with authoritative, orthodox, stately carefulness. Decades of political and legal experience have conditioned her to behave almost robotically, but lately her shell of decorum has started to crack.
- DESIRE:What does your character want?
She wants to put an end to the crises plaguing her town. Her handling of a devastating storm last winter and its impacts on local infrastructure was the subject of merciless ridicule, and it set many townspeople against her. There have been several deaths due to opioids. She wants to improve the town’s education system, because the district has been lagging behind in academic test scores in recent years. She earnestly desires to solve these issues, so her care for the well-being of others is a major factor in her desire to remain in power, but she would be lying if she claimed re-election and a lifelong hunger for recognition have not also come into play.
- CONFLICT:Who/what gets in the way of your character getting this want?
For the first time in twenty years, she is facing a challenger in the upcoming primary election. Her competitor is younger, friendlier, does not have all the hefty baggage that comes with a decades-long political career, and is more adept at connecting with citizens in a way that seems genuine.
Recency Bias has caused the public to forget about Mayor Hanover’s previous accomplishments—helping the town recover from the 2008 recession, increasing awareness of mental health in schools, and championing environmental causes since the 90’s—and focus solely on her current fumbles. Her public image has never been spottier, and she needs to overhaul her entire persona if she wants to maintain her people’s trust (and coveted ballots).
- ACTION:What does your character do? This can be quite literal—what does the character physically do in the text? Or it can mean figuring out how your character tries to achieve their want.
She is weary of trying to be “hip” like her competitor because she worries it could make her look even more tone-deaf and out of touch than she already appears, but she has made some concrete efforts to be more attuned to the changes that are affecting her town. She has hired more diverse, people-oriented strategists and staff. She has been doing more groundwork, speaking directly to the residents and workers of the town to listen (or at least seem to listen) to their concerns. She is walking a fine line between cringeworthily clinging to relevance and coming across as a real human being who understands her constituents and their livelihoods, anxieties, and complexities.
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