Last night I went to see “Kill the Messenger,” a film about an investigative journalist starring Jeremy Renner as a writer vs. the CIA. I enjoyed it, particularly the details about writers and their lives. My current novel project “Kept” also has a (mostly) plucky reporter character, but let’s admit right here that she’s not going to be giving Woodward and Bernstein agita about their day jobs. So, returning to character bios from “Kept” (here is another and another).  I give you:

Nancy Argento

Sex: yes, Female, and born that way.

Age: 31, 5-5, thin, blond (born in that direction but enhanced). Blue eyes.

Nancy tans easily.

Overall appearance – she’s good looking but not striking. A nice blond girl from the Midwest.

Physical defects: none apparent on inspection.

Heredity: well, she’s got allergies – which makes spring and fall in the desert challenging for her.

She drives a silver Ford Focus, and it’s a new model! Congrats on the wheels, you reporter you!

 

Social class: Middle class, college educated, bachelor’s degree.

Occupation: Newspaper reporter. Hungry for recognition and to land the scoop! She’s quite competitive.

Nancy’s home life: she is single, straight, dates guys in PS. She likes golf pros, it seems. Jocks. She’s found one named Ernst, who is German and often traveling. Originally, she’s from Cleveland. Nancy’s parents very straight-laced, Midwestern background, traditional values type people, the backbone of the old Democratic party in big cities. Nancy tries to pass herself off as a California girl with mixed results.

Religion: she’s Catholic, she goes to church on Sundays or Saturday afternoons at Our Lady of Solitude in Palm Springs.

Despite being a newcomer to town, Nancy is respected in the community.

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Politics: of course she doesn’t say, since she’s a reporter. Our hunch is that she’d lean more liberal in her personal views.

Amusements: She’s kind of bored in Palm Springs. Sometimes she golfs with her boyfriend; occasionally she might go to one of the outlying casinos or make the drive to L.A. or San Diego. She’s a voracious reader and spends a lot of time both physically at the library, and on the internet. She’s also a self-published mystery novelist, and had just done a reading when this story unfolds.

Professional ambition: she wants to get scoops so she can move on to a bigger market, the L.A. Times perhaps, she’d like to win awards. At the paper, she’s still referred to as the “new girl.”

Frustration: She hates it when people lie to her, and she doesn’t always know, but she’s getting better. But she still has some naivete, a real liability for a reporter.

Temperament: Nancy’s easygoing, again perhaps too much, it’s like she turned the “guarded” button to off.

She’s kind of an ambivert – she can force being extroverted when her job demands it but — she’s a writer.

Abilities: she’s fluent in Spanish; pretty much a requirement for her job.

Other qualities: She is poised, she has good judgment mostly, also has a vivid imagination about the motives of people and is always open to changing her mind on something, when presented with new evidence. She is very suggestible that way.

IQ: High