Dalty was a mixed up kid. He hung around with a bad crowd when he chose to be around people at all, and in the rare bits of time when he wasn't stoned beyond belief, he might have heard some of the insults that were flung at him regularly. Most of them were making the point that he looked as much like a girl as he looked like a boy. Others were about his old, worn out clothes and generally shoddy appearance.1
What the general school population didn't know was that he had more than enough reasons for the way he looked and acted. He never met or heard of his dad, and his mom had left when he was 9. Dalty was a smart boy at that age, and knew staying in school was his only chance to have any sort of future. But over the years, that plan had pretty much gone to hell.2
Dalty was mixed up in the drug scene hardly a month after his mom had left. At the end of the month he had been evicted from the tiny apartment he had called home, and in cleaning out any belongings of value, he found his mother's stash. A variety pack of drugs, if you will. Dalty took this with him, and sold most of it on the street for money to survive. But he kept some, and he wasn't sure why.3
That kick-started his drug dealing career. This was the money he lived off of. But a lot of the money went to his own drug addictions, and Dalty had no particular desire to spend most of his income on a place to live.4
As for his looking like a girl, it was true. His hair went down to his narrow chin, and he wasn't particularly big or muscular. In all honesty, if you met him you wouldn't know which sex he was.5
But this didn't matter to him. Nothing really did anymore. Dalty still went to all his classes, but he was always high, and the idea of doing homework was as outrageous to him as going out and buying a jet plane and an elephant. Even the phrase was a bit ironic, who could expect him to do homework when he didn't have a home?6
Dalty was now 16 and in between drugish hazes wondered why he kept going. What was the point? Might as well give up, he often thought. But for some reason he kept on going.7
Author notes
I am hoping to write a third story that links these two character descriptions I have now. This one might not be done, I'm not sure.
Tell me what you think, suggestions very welcome, I need some help and advice here. Comment please.
What did you think? Please comment!
Comments
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Thanks so much for such a detailed comment! That is very helpful what you said and it's gonna help me out a lot when I (eventually) write more of this story. Ya, I think I might leave him mysterious for now, and also it might be mostly from Jesse's perspective, but that might not work either. I'm really bad at developing plotlines and then writing following them, I tend to get sidetracked, so I decided to work on that by writing a story. Thanks so much for your review, as I said it is helpful!
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Okay, in my attempt to be helpful, I went and read "Jesse" after I finished this. I think you mentioned somewhere that these are both kind of like character sketches, and they both introduce your two characters very well.
And you mentioned "Dalty" might not yet be finished...I think you found a good stopping point. Not only does it leave the reader wondering what's going to happen next (the ending of "Jesse" had the same effect) but it wraps up your character sketch. The only thing that I would suggest changing would be to possibly show a little more of Dalty's thoughts. The one thing that stood out to me while reading "Jesse" was how well you captured her emotions, and her confusion, as she was relating the unsteady state of her mind, her mood swings, etc. You just don't get to know Dalty as intimately as you do Jesse. This could work to your advantage, however, if you intended to make him the kind of character that reveals very little about themselves. But still, if you showed the reader a little more of his thought processes, it'd wouldn't hurt.
But both stories/chapters/sketches were well-written and they seem to be leading very well into a bigger story, which I would very much like to read. ^_^
Good luck with this!
~Bec
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