One of the first things that you would do when establishing a new story/world is determining who the main characters are and their backstories. Over the past week, I have spent considerable time building up the characters so dialogue can come easier and so I can write them more as a human and not as a flat two-dimensional deity.
To that end, I am pleased to share the two biographies of primary characters, and some names/descriptions for side residents.
Paul Stanton
Codename: Merchant
Paul Stanton can be described in just two words: simple and homely.
He was born in the 1970s to James and Jane Stanton, the owners of Stanton’s General Store in Weslin, Vermont. From a young age, there was an expectation that he would inherit the store and thus the de facto position as Town Manager. During his youth, Paul became friends with a group of townies, including Douglas Moseby. But his first and foremost allegiance was to his family’s store and to the Town as a whole.
After barely passing high school, Paul enrolled in business classes at the Vermont Community College, and attained enough certifications and credits to sufficiently manage the store.
He formally inherited the General Store at 26, and then married and had two sons and a daughter by age 40. His tenure saw the General Store expand to the adjacent storefronts and put up an impressive display that garnered the attention of tourists who managed to pass through.
For a period of time, Paul was on the Town Council, but elected not to remain on due to differences on how to let the town survive given the dying agriculture and tourism industries.
Though he wasn’t in the government, Paul found himself to be the youngest of the town elders and used the position to improve his family’s business and expand Stanton’s to compete with the larger stores out east. Stanton found himself good at marketing to tourists, convincing others to take the journey to the village.
Now, in 2025, Weslin’s decline was all but certain, and it was only a matter of how many more years until they were resigned to the dustbin of history.
That was, until his old friend Douglas appeared at the door, with promises of a new University that could upend the world, with Paul having a say in the practicalities behind the curriculum.
For the outsider: Paul Stanton is your average American middle-class citizen, part of a dying demographic. But his say and voice can create a real impact. Combining that with his newfound abilities through Douglas, there might be something greater coming their way on the horizon.
While not one of the “main” characters per se, this other character proves key to the greater plan at stake. (The first paragraph was removed to keep some things secret still.)
Jesse Hoffsfield
Codename: Professor
Born on the edge of World War II, Dr. Hoffsfield grew up in a blue-collar family in Charleston, West Virginia, where his mother worked as a secretary while his father was off in the mines. After decades of hard work and saving, the pair was able to send their son to Auburn University, where he initially majored in psychology. About halfway through his second semester, he had an epiphany in his introductory mathematics course that this is where he belonged, and promptly switched his entire field of study.
After graduating with his Bachelor’s early with summer and winter courses, Jesse was able to use his connections to bounce around different colleges to take doctoral-level classes with a variety of different experts and perspectives. He attained his PhD in mathematics from the University of Chicago in 1966 with a diserative focus on new fixed-point theorems in nonlinear functional analysis for operators lacking compactness assumptions. It was considered so advanced that many of the peer reviewers — Nobel laurates and PhDs themselves — had to be recused due to not understanding the materials.
Following Chicago, Dr. Hoffsfield was hired at a T25 school where he taught thousands of students over the decades, including intermediate topics such as improper integrals and the uniform convergence of sequences. However, despite the challenging topics, he was immensely popular and achieved abnormally high pass rates because he could break complex issues down into simpler concepts. In addition to the classes, he personally mentored two dozen students with their own PhDs and studies. He also researched alpha-level non-linear equations and graphing mechanisms. In the 1980s and 1990s, Dr. Hoffsfield also served as a Visiting Scholar at various institutions, including Dartmouth College. It seemed that his career was set for life.
Until the Great Recession hit and the subsequent drop in enrollment.
Dr. Hoffsfield found himself on the losing side of the debate over what and how students should be taught. Administrative bureaucrats believed the answer laid in work prep, while he argued that they are only in school for a limited time to be educated and enlightened, and the workplace should come afterwards. While unable to be fired due to his tenure, he found every single string against him, with colleagues not willing to support him and students becoming more closed-minded.
Disgusted with what he saw, Hoffsfield left the University and spent the better part of a decade running independent lecture circuits and speaking on the state of academia. He didn’t think he would have a chance again in the traditional classroom.
Then an old student of his reached out with a wild idea. Becoming the first faculty member of a new institution in Vermont, and oversee a retroactive academic style that harkens back to the good old days.
For his benefactor, it was perfect. For him, it made everything go full-circle.
Dr. Jesse A. Hoffsfield is the epitome of the ideal academic, but years of lectures and research have dulled him to the social world, and he prefers to keep to himself. But when asked, he will give you a new opinion.
Not that academia seems to care all that much on that anymore.
I wrote out Jesse Hoffsfield’s backstory without properly adding him into the outline, but that’s what makes this more interesting!
Finally, here are a couple more characters that will be involved in some capacity:
- Mr. Lubarda – The butler to the Mosebys, but how much does he really know?
- Helen Irwin – The local innkeeper, she has eyes on all of her guests. Both for their safety and for her own.
- Codename: Shopkeeper – The second mother to the Stantons, and the sassiest woman ever known.
- Me! Currently TBD.
That’s all for now, I look forward to sharing more of this amazing concept soon!
-z.a.