I'd argue the point with the character I used. There really is nothing more to her than wanting to be with the girl she loves. Everything else is secondary--her life, her allies, innocent bystanders, and even how the girl herself feels. What changes isn't the character, but the situation she's in, allowing her to play everything from tragic heroine to literally Satan as different things stand in the way of her goal.
This is what I realized when trying to distill Walter White down to a single sentence. Each thing I mentioned about him would make me think of three more things about him that seemed equally essential. What I finally came up with and posted above is really three sentences crammed into one, and even that omits one of the fundamental reasons why he is so interesting.
A man succumbing to his weaknesses and becoming something monstrous, but still with goodness at his core.
Someone who has been to hell and back, really. I like to think of Christina taking her nightly beatings. NO WIRE HANGERS!
@Cogito. It's a writing exercise where you try to capture their essence, like a writer's equivalent to a composite drawing. I think the people here are doing a fine job. And I actually think the characters that are hardest to describe are those made of cardboard. In surprisingly many crime dramas the main characters are like Huey, Dewey, and Louie, completing each other's sentences, lacking a personality. You're not meant to do them full justice, but if you've written a rich enough description that I could pick your guy out of a lineup, then you've succeeded!
As large and stoic as a lone mountain, his glorious aura brings light to the people and his words free the masses from the chains of sin, but behind his decades lies a spurned heart of a world-weary soldier whose path was paved in blood and tears - mostly his own.
"So limp of brain that for them to conceive an idea is to risk a haemorrhage. So limp of body that their purple dresses appear no more indicative of housing nerves and sinews than when they hang suspended from their hooks." (OK, that's two sentences).
