Years ago (and still applies today), the experts were telling fiction writers that in order to really know their main character, they must come up with a character profile sheet for them and definitely applies to all your characters as well. This is a good practice because once you know all the ins and outs of all your characters, the book flows better and allows the author to get inside the head of each of their characters.
We decided to ask authors if they would like to come up with a character sketch of their main character, throwing in a few unique questions to make it really fun!
Today we have Kathleen Shoop stopping by on her blog tour with a character sketch of her main character, Bella Darling. Enjoy!
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Learn more about Bella!
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Name of Character: Bella Darling
Age: 22
Eye Color: Blue
Hair Color: Dark blonde/light brown with natural blonde highlights (It's 1893 so no artificial dyes for hair!!!)
Birthplace: Pittsburgh, PA
Marital Status: Single
Children: 0
Place of Residence: She lives in the loft of a barn on the estate of the wealthy Mr. Westminster (she saved his life and he rewarded her with a place to live)
Description of Home: An older, unused barn on the estate with a cozy loft and a stone floor downstairs. Bella creates a lovely home with the hens she tends and her cat Simon. The estate home houses a maid and butler who become Bella's friends and part of her found family that develops as the story goes on. The Westminster family has fled to Europe as a means of dealing with the financial crises in America (bank collapse, panic, and Depression)
Dominant Character Trait: Optimism
Best Friend: She doesn't have a best friend but is a friend to everyone she meets. She's capable and willing to help others anytime they need it.
Enemies and Why: She doesn't have enemies, but it is Bella against the world, the harsh world in an 1890s steeltown where women have little agency in terms of society's hierarchy. Bartholomew Baines who she meets early in the story becomes an adversary, but she believes in his core goodness.
Temperament: Joyful, indefatigable, but has an emptiness that keeps her from "having" everything she wants in life. She is satisfied with herself but wants someone to love and love her.
Ambition: She wants to live in a home with a library, to have a husband to adore and adore her, and she wants the world to reflect the goodness she believes it embodies.
Educational Background: No formal education. But she is a reader and she makes up stories. She's street smart from living alone since she was a little girl, but she has that part of her that yearns for a husband.
Philosophy of Life: Bella believes a person can't be fully rich or content if he/she doesn't have a favorite book or a favorite story. She tells Bartholomew "Sounds like each of us is half rich. Me with my books and you with your money." Of course he's lost everything in the bank collapse so this hits hard.
Bad Habits: Overly independent and impulsive in ways that can be good or bad. She sees herself as powerful even in the face of a world structured in every way against her.
Talents: She coaxes eggs out of spent hens and has a knack for giving the eggs to the person who needs them. They make more food than they should, they change the way people who eat them see the world and each other--some even fall back into love. She's magnetic and uses that to lift others up, bring them together and create something from nothing.
Hobby or Hobbies: Reading and writing stories, emptying and adding little messages into eggs to surprise people who buy them.
Why is Character Likeable? Although there are elements that seem too good to be true and that can make a person unlikable sometimes, her warmth and view of the world gives people the chance to become the best version of themselves. People might get frustrated with her but they can't help but like her even if they don't admit it. She's sort of a female, 1890s Ted Lasso.
Favorite Pig Out Food: Egg pie and sweets
Character Mini-Interview:
Every New Year’s I resolve to: find the love of my life
Nobody knows I am: deep down, lonely and aching for someone to love me the way I love everything around me.
I wish: For the world to reward goodness and not just greed. I am content but want so badly to have a small home with a room just for books in it.
The worse part of my life is: I can't take away everyone's pain and loneliness.
I want to teach my children that: Life is magical, books are a portal to other worlds, and kindness is the greatest gift a person can own.
A good time for me is: A late night reading in my loft with my cat, moonlight streaming through the window, knowing my hens are safe from foxes and coyotes and now... there's Bart. He's the best time I never knew existed.
The worse advice my father gave me is: I never knew my father, but I suppose part of him is in me and whatever bad advice he may have given me had I known him, his goodness is in me too.
When I feel sorry for myself: I write a little story and give it to someone.
My friends like me because: No matter what happens I find a way to work out problems.
My major accomplishment is: Bringing my hodge-podge found family together for Christmas 1893. We made magic and will forever be connected in ways that changed our very lives.
My most humbling experience was: Realizing that life ends at some point but the love you shared can live on. I never had anything to call my own until the hens and the cat came into my life, and I thought I was truly magic and could save people. That's part true, but not totally. Sometimes people can't be saved by me or anyone else.
Meet the Author
Sign up for her newsletter at www.kshoop.com.
Visit her website at www.kshoop.com or connect with her on X, Facebook, Instagram, BookBub, TikTok and Goodreads.
Cinder Bella is available at Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble & Kobo.
Inside the Book
She never had anything.
He lost everything.
Together they create a Christmas to remember.
December, 1893–Shadyside, Pennsylvania
Bella Darling lives in a cozy barn at Maple Grove, an estate owned by industrialist Archibald Westminster. The Westminster family is stranded overseas and have sent word to relieve all employees of their duties except Margaret, the pregnant maid, James the butler, and Bella. Content with borrowed books and a toasty home festooned with pine boughs and cinnamon sticks, she coaxes the old hens to lay eggs–extraordinary eggs. Bella yearns for just one thing—someone to share her life with. Always inventive, she has a plan for that. She just needs the right egg into the hands of the right man.
Bartholomew Baines, a Harvard-educated banker, is reeling in the aftermath of his bank’s collapse. With his friends and fiancé ostracizing him for what he thought was an act of generosity, he is penniless and alone. A kind woman welcomes him into her boarding house under conditions that he reluctantly accepts. Completely undone by his current, lowly position, and by the motley crew of fellow boarders who view him as one of them, Bartholomew wrestles with how to rebuild.
With the special eggs as the impetus, the first meeting between Bella and Bartholomew gives each the wrong idea about the other. And when the boarding house burns down a week before Christmas it’s Bella who is there to lend a hand. She, Margaret, and James invite the homeless group to stay at the estate through the holidays. But as Christmas draws closer, eviction papers arrive. Maple Grove is being foreclosed upon. Can Bella work her magic and save their Christmas? Is the growing attraction between Bella and Bartholomew enough for them to see past their differences?
Read a sample.
Cinder Bella is available at Amazon, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble & Kobo.