[Spam for Erik]

[Charles had been on his way back from the soup kitchen to his apartment late. Really late. He'd almost taken Mrs. Turner up on her offer of just spending the night in the spare bedroom at her apartment, but ultimately decided he'd rather just be in his own room tonight.

So he'd headed off, sticking mostly to the well lit streets and trying to keep an eye out for anyone suspicious, and it seemed like he was more or less home free when he heard what was unmistakeably a fight, probably in one of the alleys near by, maybe twenty or so paces ahead.

He knew he should probably stay back, that this was a really good way to get himself killed and it wasn't like he had a weapon on him or anything, but he couldn't. He'd never been great at looking the other way when someone was in trouble, so instead of just walking past, taking another route, putting his head down and pretending he hadn't heard anything, he quickly ran towards the sound of the fight and stopped for a moment in the mouth of the alley, really not sure what he was planning on doing, exactly, but needing to do something, and he quickly ran in.]

Hey! [It was dark, and he could make out maybe two or three figures, probably two, and another pushed up against the wall and half slumped on the ground.] What the hell are you doing?

[Charles has set himself up in a corner of the soup kitchen at one of the tables, with some papers and notebooks tucked off to the side from the device. It's a quiet day at the Salvation House soup kitchen, but then during school and work hours, it usually is, and so he's taken to trying to pen out another story for an upcoming deadline while having a smoke, anddd promptly got a little bored with the ideas he'd been coming up with and decided to do this, instead.

He's a bit younger than his Barge counterpart, but looks fairly world weary if still polite and friendly and hopeful. He's gained a bit of a reputation around town as someone always willing to go out of his way to help someone in need, which means a fair amount of people probably find him preachy or a nuisance, so feel free to assume that sort of thing if your character's not very well off/a criminal.]

Someone asked me the other day what the trick is to writing a good story, and I thought I'd share my answer with the rest of you in case you've been horribly misled by a teacher or some other adult in the past. See, I once had a teacher who tried to tell us that it all depended on how we structured everything, grammar wise, and everything else would just come to us as long as we kept that in mind.

[He laughs a little, and he looks somewhere between genuinely amused, frustrated and a little sad as he continues.] Admittedly my classmates and I were about seven at the time, so I think she was more concerned with us being able to string a coherent sentence together let alone a novel, but I've always thought it was ridiculous, to think being a good writer depended on where you put the commas. What matters is if you can tell a good story, and the best way to do that is to be self aware of the world you're living in, find ways to make it interesting to talk about with someone else, and put it down on paper.

Obviously if you plan on making a living out of it, you might want to change some things - names, setting, that kind of thing - but honestly, that's just about all it takes to write a good one.

[He stubs out his cigarette in an ashtray off camera.]

Anyway, I'm sure you've all had enough of me rambling. I know Officer Arthur's already let you all know, but we really could use a few more volunteers down at the Salvation House. I know it's a time commitment, but there are people who need help in this town, and if you're in a position to help out, we'd be more than glad to have you. I've been told the work's good for the soul. [He says it as sort of a dry joke, smiling a little as he does, but sometimes it feels like that's why he does it. Not that he's ever really talked to anyone about it, but there you go.]

[ooc: So I had a minor change in plans for Charles. He fought in WWI at eighteen for about a year, came home and wasn't really the same partying wealthy kid he used to be, so a couple years ago he up and left and came to Redemption. Basically he turned into Ernest Hemingway meets Edith Keeler for this breach idek He spends a ridiculous amount of time volunteering at the Salvation House soup kitchen, looks out for the people who frequent/should be frequenting there and is a writer for the local paper and a few other The New Yorker type publications. They're usually sort of sad-but-sometimes-uplifting stories about the human condition in the modern period, and he never talks about the war and rarely says much about what he did before coming here. I'll be tagging with amongstrangers and am open to spam if anyone wants to run into him!]