Meet Dan and Charlotte

So I’ve been a bit lax on the creative writing front for a while. I thought I’d rectify that with an experimental fiction project I’ve had in mind for some time.

I present to you Daniel Harris and Charlotte Bristow, two twentysomethings who live in the glamorous city of Southampton. Daniel and Charlotte have the same birthday (29th August) and both studied English at the University of Southampton. In fact, they sat next to each other on a number of occasions. But they don’t know each other. They don’t even know the other one exists. Not yet, anyway.

They don’t have a lot in common. Dan is depressed, lonely and increasingly turning to drink. Charlotte is happy, hopeful and uses the word “party” as a verb. However, both of them enjoyed their study of English and are pedantic to a fault, and they do have a few interests in common. Both of them are struggling to work out what to do with their lives now university is over, and are temping to pay the rent.

This project, which I haven’t given a name to yet (working title “Dan and Charlie”) is an exercise in improvisatory blogging. I will be playing the role of both Dan and Charlie and improvising their fictional lives, perhaps with a little fact interspersed here and there for local colour. After all, I too live in Southampton and studied English (along with Music) at the University of Southampton, so after all we have a bit in common… conveniently. It will be an interesting exercise in “method acting” (for want of a better description) for me, and an exercise in self-discovery for Dan and Charlie, who are both new to blogging.

If anyone actually reads the blogs, thinks they’re real people (so no-one who knows me directly, then) and feels the need to comment or interact with Dan and Charlie (who have their own email addresses and eventually will find their way to at least Twitter and possibly other social networking sites if I can be bothered to “network” that much on behalf of both of them), that may well inspire their independent storylines to develop in particular directions. I have a few “events” in mind for the pair of them and, of course, they will come across each other at some point. What happens from there remains to be seen.

I intend to blog on behalf of the pair of them fairly often. It’ll be an interesting exercise in creative characterisation and allow me to keep myself in practice of writing stream-of-consciousness first-person narrative if nothing else – maybe it won’t go anywhere, maybe it’ll develop in interesting and unexpected directions. Who knows? We shall see.

One rule for those of you reading this: don’t let on, at least not on their sites. As far as readers of their sites are concerned, Dan and Charlie are real people, and it’d be cool to have them interacting with strangers and see how that develops their own personal stories. Comments will be moderated and anything “out of character” won’t be approved by either Dan or Charlie.

Well, this will either be an interesting exercise or I’ll end up with Multiple Personality Disorder. We’ll see. I hope you enjoy the mundanity of their everyday lives.