Good evening, got to this a little later than I meant to last night, but still earlier than I have some nights, so there is that! Here is my daily writing exercise and I am going to try *fingers crossed* to actually stick to 10-15 minutes (I had a couple good days in a row but then went a little long yesterday..
Please leave your feedback and your own responses to the prompt. If you like what you are reading here, I would encourage you to check out not only my other Writing Prompts, but also my books as well!
Prompt: Your character is in their early forties and comes from a wealthy background. Your character is a dancer, who is the life and soul of the party in their spare time. By nature, your character is reserved and formal.
Genre: Character Study
Source: Character Generator
Time Spent: 20 minutes
Word Count: 859
Prompt: Your character is in their early forties and comes from a wealthy background. Your character is a dancer, who is the life and soul of the party in their spare time. By nature, your character is reserved and formal.
Julian Casana sighed heavily as he sat down in the changing room. He was tired and getting old for such entertainments, but it was also the only thing he truly loved doing. He wore a loose white shirt, billowing at the sleeves and well fitted black pants tucked into blue boots with a short heal on them. A sash of the same color was wound around his waist. The open front of the shirt revealed a toned chest of one who kept in shape. His face was long and regal, with a mustache and beard cut short and well on their way to being fully grey. His hair had a similar salt and pepper quality which added to the overall effect. A wide brimmed hat, also of blue sat upon the table in front of him.
He had once been regarded as the most talented and energetic dancer across the Three Realms, as his father and grandmother both had been. They had trained him, taught him, and the wealth they had amassed over their careers had funded his start, but a creativity and innovation flowed through him that neither of them could boast of. He was sought after by rulers and lords and anyone with the money to pay his fee and taught any pupil he thought worth his time.
He still had the talent, but the energy was lacking, sapped by decades of nonstop touring and performing and teaching, not to mention 7 tumultuous marriages and twice the number of affairs and scandals. His creativity was no longer what it was either but in some ways that hardly mattered. He had more wealth than he could ever spend in three lifetimes, and it was well invested, the parties that he attended, often at his own expense, such as this one, was purely for his love of dancing and entertaining.
Many people, individually, found Julian to be cold and distant but always polite. A lifetime of navigating the highest circles of society had given him a very diplomatic and direct, but eloquent, way of speaking and he rarely engaged much with people individually. The many demands on his time and talent had left him with the feeling that everyone who met with him wanted something from him. He wasn’t often wrong.
A chime played from outside the room and Julian stood up, swept the hat up from table and placed it on his head with a practiced flourish, and walked through a swinging door and out onto the stage at the center of the vast amphitheater which he had built on the side of his primary villa. Thousands upon thousands of spectators packed the stone tiers of seats rising beyond his sight. Common people from the surrounding area packed the upper levels, and the lower levels were filled with the wealthy and powerful from all three realms. His performances were never poorly attended, but the rumor that he would perform one of his masterpieces, The Azure Rapture, for the first time in nearly a decade had drawn them all in.
This was what Julian Casana lived for, and if he was honest with himself, the only thing he had ever truly loved. These moments on stage where with the gesture of a wrist, a leap, or a twist of the body could spellbind thousands, raising them to cheers or reducing even the hard hearted among them to tears. A hidden orchestra began the slow intro to the melody he would dance to, a composition of a dear friend of his and a minor masterpiece of music in its own right, and occasionally he felt bad that was not what it was remembered for. He was standing in the lights, still as a statue with his head bowed. The orchestra flowed from the intro and that first note hit and his body began to move in its practiced rhythm and the audience drew in its breath as one.
The movement were so practiced and precise that he left himself feel the music and flow into it. Time and audience and even the stage disappeared. Only himself and the music existed. Finally, the music came its furious conclusion and with a final twirl, perfectly time to the last crashed from the drums, he was facing the audience. The audience was, as always, enraptured by the performance, and it took several seconds after he had finished before the audience rose to its feet in thunderous applause. Julian new that a feeling of euphoria would soon spill over into a wild and energetic party, which he would join in. Private feelings and reservations and enmities would be forgotten for a night, and few would remember the party itself, except that it was the night of their life. Julian had created this feeling, and would flit around the party with a charming smile, stoking the flames where needed, and he would play it like a conductor. He would probably sleep for three days afterward and it would be at least a month before he performed again, maybe two, but in the moment he didn’t care, he was doing what he had been born for.
I really hoped you enjoyed this little character description. I had some fun with it. Let me know your thoughts and also post how you would right such a character.
Hope you enjoyed and that you are having a wonderful day and get to do, or experience, something creative.
– Jon
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