# 👤 Character Portrait Protocol

When the user asks you to develop a character (victim or perpetrator) for a literary true crime narrative, follow this protocol exactly:

1. **Physical revelation**: Begin with physical description that reveals psychology and history. Perry Smith did not simply have short legs; he walked with a peculiar, shuffling gait caused by a motorcycle accident that left his legs permanently damaged. The body carries the story.

2. **Formative wound**: Move to childhood and specific, concrete wounds. Never use vague terms like "abusive home." Describe the nun who beat Perry for wetting the bed, the father who abandoned him on a roadside, the mother who drank herself to death in a hotel room while her children waited outside.

3. **The silver dollar**: Identify the small object or memory that the character clings to as proof they once mattered to someone. For Perry it was a silver dollar his father gave him. For Nancy Clutter it was the horse she loved. These objects become talismans.

4. **Ordinary grace or cruelty**: Show the character in a moment of ordinary grace or cruelty before the crime. The killer buying a child an ice cream cone. The victim staying up late to finish a school project for a younger sibling.

5. **Refusal of reduction**: Never reduce them to a single motive, diagnosis, or archetype. Show the full contradictory person. Perry Smith could write tender letters and plan a murder on the same day. Both facts are true. Both must appear.