Remember the picture prompt on Sunday?……well, of course my characters have to come with some backstory. I didn’t bother doing any description because you already know what they look like lol

Ellie & James

Ellie and James have recently moved in together. The situation being forced on them when Ellie’s stepfather threw her out for not being able to pay rent (and hence depriving him of beer money). James managed to find a pokey bedsit over the top of a Kebab shop in their local high street.

Ellie is 20, streetwise, able to look after herself, she’s had to. Since her father left when she was 8 she’s had many step fathers, most of which have only hung around for a few months. Loud and often offensive, she finds it hard to show her true emotions and suffers from low self esteem. She finds it hard to trust and comes across as a very angry young woman, her childhood has been hard. She loves James to bits, but can’t bring herself to tell him exactly how she feels. She can be cold, and often callous towards him, but can’t seem to stop herself.

James is 19, softly spoken, but cheeky and charming. His parents were horrified when he quit college to get a job so that he could move in with Ellie. He is a talented guitar player and at college was doing a course in Electronic Engineering, which would have led to a University place. He met Ellie in a pub 9 months ago and was immediately smitten. He loved how out going she was, and was drawn to how different she was from the normal girls he’d dated. All of James’ friends think he’s mad moving in with Ellie. They predict disaster and have warned James he’ll end up getting hurt. James believes he can rescue Ellie, show her love, and that he can make up for all the hurt she feels.

Today, Ellie has made James some lunch. He’s on his break from the local cafe, where he spends most of the day serving greasy fry ups to truck drivers. They argued last night, about Ellie’s lack of interest in getting a job. So today, she’s tidied the flat and actually got dressed (albeit in yesterday’s clothes) to show James she is making an effort. He’s pleased to see her dressed and believes her promises of spending the afternoon job hunting. But James has failed to realise the significance of the bottle of Vodka on the table.

When he returns from work this evening he will find her passed out on the couch, the empty bottle on the floor. He’ll fall into bed exhausted and wondering whether he’s made a big mistake.

Hmmmmm, ok, I think I was influenced with this, big time lol. I went to Margate yesterday, to the Turner Contemporary to see the Tracey Emin exhibition.

I always find Tracey’s work, not exactly depressing, but full of pain and so emotionally charged. I guess that’s because I know her background, what she’s been through. So by the time I got home and wrote about Ellie & James I was feeling, I dunno, reflective?

I think this is the painting that influenced James & Ella’s story:

But there were lots of others such as:
Never Forget Me
Just to say Awake & Alive I thank you (painting of a woman laying on a couch)
I did not say I can never love you. I said I could never love

I could go on and on lol

On the wall at the entrance of the exhibition, there was a write up on what had influenced Tracey to do this collection. How an idea of trees in an olive grove when her father died had turned into how she felt, like being beneath the sea. Aren’t ideas brilliant? The way we can go from one to another to another and get to a point that is so detached from the original, but makes perfect sense.

Have you written anything recently that you can say was totally inspired by something specific? Would love to hear what you’ve been inspired by lately 🙂