Creating and developing character

This is a FutureLearn exercise:

Writing character

Regularly reviewing past work and any ideas or observations listed in your notebook can help you generate new ideas.
Look back at the possible story idea or ideas that you arrived at in The notebook habit, and review all other story and character ideas you have noted or started so far.
You may or may not have got very far with these but consider whether asking the ‘What if?’ question might help you to further develop any of them.
Choose one character and develop it by:

• imagining more detail
• making sure you've done any necessary research
• asking some ‘What if?’ questions
• imagining some of the reasons surrounding the character’s dress, behaviour, speech or actions.

Write a paragraph or two about this character in your notebook, on your blog or in a Word document. There’s no need to post itto FutureLearn .

The lady on the bus:

She wobbled slightly and squeezed her little chihuahua dog to her bosom as she 'touched in' exactly as the driver hit the accelerater and the bus lurched forwards. She was used to this on London buses; the drama of keeping balance whilst handling several manouvres simultaneously. With every passing year the process became more difficult but, as she put it - not bad for seventy eight. She'd been seventy eight way through her eighties.

Every driver on route one one three knew her, some dreading her, others willing her to reappear with her little bowed friend Sacha. She would talk constantly to drivers, passengers, even through the window to passers-by mostly mouthing outragious comments about their poor taste in clothing. She wore heavy make-up with the brightest of red lipstick, sometimes clown-like blusher, hair in a bun atop her head which carried her very round face with those wide green eyes. Her shoes were highly polished, heeled and often bowed too. Occasionally she wore seamed stockings and ridiculously short dresses that made her look like a pantomine dame or pier-end showgirl intermitently flashing her bloomers.