character structure of scrubs

Character Bone Structure of Turk

Physiology

Sex: Male

Age: late 20s

Height: around 6 feet

Weight: near 200

Color of Hair: none

Color of eyes: brown

Skin: dark

Posture: straight

Appearance: always in green scrubs with not many noticeable qualities except for a bald head

Neat: yes

Health: good physical condition

Distinguishing marks: none

Sociology

Class: middle class

Occupation: surgeon

Education: finished school now works in hospital

Home life: marries nurse and has baby

Religion: unknown

Political affiliations: unknown

Amusements: basketball, work, home life, sports

Psychology

Sex life: active with nurse Carla

Ambition: father, surgeon, friend

Morality: no known strong beliefs

Frustrations: complications in love life and friendship relations

Temperament: gets angry quickly but is funny and quirky and always gets back to original state of melancholy

Attitude: optimistic and outgoing, positive mostly

Complexes: comes off cocky in his area of work yet follows rules very well and is respectful to authoritative figures

Superstitions:  must wear lucky surgery hat while performing surgery  

I.Q.: medically highly intelligent yet socially quirky

Necessity of a Character Arc

In most stories, the reader or audience is given an inside look into the main character or protagonist’s mind.  This means that the emotional or mental changes that the character undergoes are fully explained to the target audience and a clear character arc is shown.  Although, in some stories the audience is not given that insight into the characters mental psyche and the audience takes on the role of the second person point of view.  In these stories, a clear character arc is not shown, mostly because we are observing the character from the outside.

            I do not believe that a character arc is needed to make a compelling story come to life.  There are many cases where the main character already has preconceived ideas about life and does not undergo the mental, emotional, or even physical changes that many protagonists undergo.  Stories that are told on the subject of a criminal mind are the most likely to omit character arcs through the tale. The audience is viewing the actions of the character and in some cases the mental decisions but the character experienced no inner complications that lead him or her to make a big decision or change drastically.  In the movie The Lady Killers, Tom Hanks plays a character that, from the beginning, has a pre-conceived notion that a bank robbery would make him rich and famous.  Sure he experienced complications that set his mission back some but he never undergoes an arc of personal change or transformation that makes him reconsider his true identity.  Another example would be the movie Rampage, in which a mentally unstable young adult kills many of the members of his community out of spite and hate.  We are never given a clear explanation of why he performs this act and a clear point of transformation is never drawn for the character.  It is more the audience viewing the climax of the story and less getting to know the character during its personal transformation.

            It is true that most action or drama movies will give the audience a clear insight into the characters and allows them to follow the climax of the story through the protagonist point of view.  In these cases, it is very easy to see the clear character arc and it helps create the climax.  But the character arc is not a necessity to the action of all stories especially those that do not feature a first person point of view of the actions in the story. 

            The character arc is helpful in creating a good picture of how a person changes through the story and if the story is based on the effects of outside occurrences on the protagonist, such as a holding down a job and caring for a family in Erin Brockovich, then yes, a character arc is most defiantly needed. But to say that a strong change in character is needed to create any compelling story, is not necessarily true for all cases.   There are many good stories where we never even know the character that personally. 

Critique of the Hedgehog Story

While listening to the numerous oral stories that were presented over the last few weeks there were a few that stood out to me personally for being structurally complete and having that extra comedic factor that kept my attention. One of these stories was based on a hedgehog, told by James Wayne.  Wayne's comedic voice shone through the tragic events that unfolded as he lost a newly obtained family pet.

The way that the story was delivered held the audience’s attention through the entire three minute time period.  He was very theatrical in deliverance yet not over the top with dramatic pauses or gestures.  It was astatically pleasing to watch the deliverance as well as amusing to notice the sarcastic tone in which the story was told.

The tale started off with James as the main character telling about the numerous pets his family had accumulated over his lifetime. He did a good job of describing the setting of the story with vivid detail.  It was easy to visualize a home setting with numerous animals and chaos especially when he introduced his mother as the “artsy type”.

 Yet the introduction of the mother character and her longing for a hedgehog confused me just a bit as I could not clearly tell whom the main character of the story was anymore.  The story was being told from an omniscient third person point of view but with two main characters.  In my opinion it would have made a clearer plot line to just use one character, but I did like the depth that both characters brought to the story. 

As we approached the action of the tale suspense built as the hedgehog was taken to the vet to be treated.  The comic relief Wayne threw in there was much needed and a great way to lighted a sad situation at the time.  Also the way he delivered the part about his sister imagining that the hedgehog was wearing a tiny oxygen mask was very well done and had the audience laughing, but I felt that he stayed away from the comedy a little too quickly as he abruptly switched tones to end the story.

The ending did well in summarizing the story but I felt it was a little to inconclusive.  We were not given personal emotions of the characters and how they felt about the hedgehog passing away.  The story did a great job in building suspense but then sort of dropped off at the end with no ties back to the mother, setting, or even main character.   This may have been due to a shortage of time while telling the story, which is understandable.   If ever made into a short screenplay, I would love to see the emotional sides of the characters and maybe even how the death of the hedgehog affected the story as a whole or led to a higher meaning or teaching. 

Overall I felt the story was very well put together in balancing comedy and tragedy.  Maybe narrowing the choice of the main character and giving a little work to the ending would make it easier to develop as a short film.  But Wayne did a great job with keeping the audience attention and telling the story of a fallen family pet.

Word count: 546

Never Tell a Lie

High school, for most, is a time to discover a identity and push your limits. It was in my junior year at age 16 that I found out very quickly exactly what some of those limits were.

            It was a cool November night in Niceville FL and my two girlfriends and I decided to watch our schools men’s soccer team play their first game against our rival school. It was a great game and we were having so much fun that we decided we didn’t really want to go home after our teams victory and that camping out would be a much better way to spend our Friday night. So we invited three boys from the soccer team to camp out with us in a nearby neighborhood with a huge deserted baseball field perfect for pitching a tent. We formulated the perfect plan to perform the signature teenage lie and tell our parents we were all staying at another friends house. I mean we had to there were going to be BOYS there and our stickler parents would NEVER approve of that.  We agreed to meet in the Wal-Mart parking lot at 9 sharp to begin our adventure and went our separate ways until it was time to put the plan into action.

            That night, sitting across from my mom at the dinner table made me feel like Satan in a church. I was sweating and biting my nails. I couldn’t look her in the eyes or my heart would stop. I mean how was I supposed to lie to her? She would never believe me! Every time I started to tell her what my plans were for the night I froze up. Finally I worked up the courage to say…. well yell, “Mom in sleeping over at a friends house!” I had done it…I looked up at her as she nonchalantly said, “alright that’s fine be home in the morning.” I couldn’t believe my ears! The first part of operation camp out was a success and I raced up the stairs to pack my bag.

            The parking lot of the Wal-Mart felt like an old western ghost town as I waited for the others to arrive. Finally they pulled up and we decided to take two cars to the campsite.  This is where we encountered problem number one; there was no room for the cases of beer! So we decided to improvise and finish them off in the parking lot before we set off on the adventure. When we got to our campsite, we started to pitch our tent as rain began to pelt the sides of it. It was only a minor setback but we were forced to improvise once again as the rain began to flood the abandoned baseball field. We decided it could be just as fun to try to fit six people in my friends Honda CRV that was parked in the cul-de-sac across from us so we quickly grabbed our basic survival necessities (which consisted of Doritos and a case of water) and raced across the field. 

            When you have six teenagers in one small car camping out at night there is really only one good option of keeping entertained; stip poker. So we decided to try our hands at a couple games just to test the limits of our luck. Im sure you can imagine that after six games of strip poker not a lot was left to the imagination clothing wise and we decided to switch to truth or dare. This game got heated pretty quickly and it wasn’t long before we had each other running across the baseball field in our underwear.

            Now in a small town like Niceville you wouldn’t expect police officers to be out patrolling neighbor hoods on a routine basis. Or at least see something that would catch their interest enough to make them chase one down in a patrol car. But I guess there is always that chance.  Maybe the limits of our luck really had run out and as the six of us jumped back into the CRV and tried to find our previously shed clothing two cop cars pulled up with spotlights and sirens flashing.

            Obviously we had scared the cops a little, because they went into instant defense mode and pulled guns on us as they pulled us out of the car and onto the wet pavement of the cul-de-sac. They took us one by one and interrogated us, with extremely colorful language I might add, to find out exactly why there were six teenagers running around naked in the rain at 2 am. The police officer yelled and spit with each word as he tried to muscle out every last bit of information from me but I still was not as scared of him as I was the consequence of my mother finding out where I was.

            The police officers searched the car and threatened to take us all to jail for “out past curfew, loitering, and finally…. public indecency” and we all knew that it was an act of divine intervention that we had not had room for the beer because we would be arrested for sure. But the cop deemed another form more acceptable and called all of our parents to pick us up from the cul-de-sac at 3 in the morning. 

            As my mother pulled up I could see her talking to the officer behind the rain and an extremely bright spot light and I will never forget the face she made when the officer explained to her why her daughter was out camping in a cul-de-sac in nothing but her underwear instead of being at a friends house like she was told. I have never been so scared in my life. All of Cuba’s nuclear weapons could not have frightened me more that my mother as she approached me in the dark. I was shocked at how calm she was. She simply said to me “Katharine, get in the car and wait” and I jumped in her car like my life depended on it.

            I guess the terrible thing, aside from being grounded for two months, was that my mother never yelled or lost her temper. She was just quiet with disappointment. This cut me deeper than any knife could have and regret and remorse filled my heart, not because of the fact that I was almost arrested, but because I had lied to my mother and it was going to take years to gain her trust back.  I don’t regret getting caught running around in the rain in my underwear, or even giving the police a good story, but I will ALWAYS regret betraying my poor, overworked mother and I probably always will.  I haven’t lied to her since. 

-Kathrine Paton

A Trip to Turtle Pond

Deep in the mountains of north Georgia there is a quaint little pond hidden by a canopy of trees and mountaintops. The pond belonged to my grandfather, Darwell F Davis. It was his pride and joy. Being a man of strong Alabama tradition, there was nothing in the world he loved more than fishing, besides maybe a little green johnboat and a dog named Spankey.

 One summer I was invited up to the greenbelt to spend a weekend on the pond fishing with my grandfather.  I was thrilled by the invitation and squirmed in my seat the entire 3 hours up the mountainside to the secluded pond.

            When I finally got there I could see my grandfather standing like a soldier prepared for battle armed with fishing line and rod with Spankey at attention by his side. We quickly boarded the vessel boat and set off across the glassy water hanging a trotline from one side to the other.

            When we reached the first hook the next day, I was literally shaking with anticipation and excitement. Spankey and I rushed to the side of the boat to see the water splashing about. We had caught something! I watched bug eyed as my grandfather slowly lifted the line out of the water. “Damn turtles eating my fish!” he hollered as he threw the line onto the boat and a tiny turtle fell at me feet. It squirmed about as my grandfather reached for a 9mil shotgun that had gone unnoticed by me in the hull of the johnboat. I sat in shock unable to comprehend what he was about to do as he slowly raised the weapon and a single shot echoed off the mountains. The innocent creature lay at my feet now in a pool of red as it twitched against the tin of the boat. I was speechless.

            Everyone has that one moment in their life when they are forced out of the comfort zone of innocence as an event throws them into reality. In the book To Kill a Mocking Bird, the protagonists Scout and Jem experience the same revelation as they slowly realize that their quaint hometown is plagued with racism and false accusations. The real world around us is a harsh place bereft of compassion and kindness.

            I am not saying that an event so small as killing a turtle is worth loosing sleep over, but to a 9 year old it can shatter the allusion of a safe and comforting world. It provides insight to the harsh reality that surrounds us. My idea of a fun fishing trip colored with green trees, fresh mountain air, and a sun kissed pond soon turned into a gray sketch of a now silent turtle and a man still holding a smoking gun.  My grandfather continued to pull of fish as if nothing had happened as the wind up the pond cut a tear down my cheek and caught me still staring at my fallen friend.

            As I packed up to leave the following Monday I felt differently about the world I lived in. I felt as if there were scarier things out there than the monster under my bed. I boarded the car, (pocketed the rest of my grandfathers fishing line,) and headed back down to my childhood home as the gunshot still rang in my ears and turtles danced on the sides of the mountains.