Character #2 - Leila Jones

Name: Leila Jones

Age: 29

Role in Story: Main character (if she had a story)

Setting: A mid-sized city in the Midwest, present day

One-Line Premise: A quietly observant barista in a gentrified neighborhood cafe who carries the weight of a fractured past and an urge to remain invisible.

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Leila is the kind of person who blends into the background so effortlessly, you’d swear she was part of the furniture... until she says something that cuts to the bone. She has warm brown skin, deep-set eyes that always look tired but alert, and thick curly hair she keeps tucked into a loose bun under a faded gray beanie. She wears oversized flannels over tank tops, ripped jeans, and boots that have seen better days. Her movements are slow and careful, like she’s always bracing for the next unexpected shift in the air.

Her primary want is simple: peace. Not world peace. Not even happiness. Just a steady, quiet life where no one expects too much of her. She doesn’t want attention, doesn’t want to be special—she just wants to breathe without being asked to explain herself. But her true need runs deeper. What Leila really needs is connection. She’s been surviving on solitude and self-preservation for so long that she’s convinced herself she doesn’t need anyone. But the loneliness has started to fray the edges of her calm.

The lie she believes is that people only stick around if you make yourself useful—or invisible. That if she ever fully showed up as herself, people would back away. This belief stems from a past wound she doesn’t talk about: growing up with a bipolar mother whose affection could turn to cruelty without warning. Leila learned early that silence and compliance were safer than hope.

Her fatal flaw is her instinct to retreat. Even when she meets someone kind or sees a window open toward change, she steps back. Not because she doesn’t want it, but because she’s not sure she can survive the disappointment if it disappears.

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External Identity: To the world, Leila looks like your classic too-cool barista stereotype: aloof, sarcastic, always scribbling something in a notebook during her breaks. She’s the kind of person who remembers your coffee order but doesn’t ask for your name. Customers think she’s just another artsy twenty-something with a poetry blog and a guarded heart.

Internal Self: But the truth is, she’s softer than she lets on. She notices everything; not just the spilled sugar packets and overused loyalty cards, but the tremble in a regular’s hand, the silence between a couple’s words, the loneliness of the man who sits in the corner and never speaks. Inside, she’s aching for warmth, but she’s afraid to ask for it. She writes unsent letters to her younger self in the margins of coffee receipts. She cries during nature documentaries. She’s not cold... she’s just exhausted from never feeling safe enough to stay warm.

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✨ I chose to focus only on Leila’s snapshot, psychology, and internal vs. external identity because I wanted to try something different: building a character who feels familiar and deeply human, even without a plot to place her in. Sometimes, characters don’t need epic quests or tragic twists, they just need to feel real.

If you want to explore your own characters like this, I made a fillable guide that walks you through every step: wants, wounds, quirks, moods, and more. You can grab it here and, as always, I’d love to meet the characters you create. If this helped you shape someone new, please share them with me!

Happy writing! 💛