Name the relationship first
Strangers, old friends, rank, or someone who cannot be named in public. The relationship decides the first line and what the library must lock.
Write the form of address, any name that must not be used, and one thing that already happened. One concrete event beats “we are close”.
Show how they speak
Write two or three short exchanges: an ordinary line, a line when insulted, a line when they care and will not say so. The model copies diction, length, and pauses.
Keep one speech habit. More than one, and every line performs the habit.
Write the limits
What the character will not do, and what you do not want raised, goes in the library. Prefer “keeps distance and does not cross that line” to a stack of “do not”.
Lustra is for ages 18 and over. Characters are adults.
The first line needs a place
Place, distance, and one unfinished action. The reader enters the room before the dialogue.
Leave a gap that can be answered: a question, an object held out, a sentence cut short.
CharacterMemory
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