Hard vs Easy Parts of Writing

Parts of Writing: Dialogue: photo of two people conversing. — Dialogue: Talking Heads vs Meaningful Conversation

This week for our How I Write series, my accountability group asked, “Dialogue, narrative, exposition, or description? What are your favorite parts of writing and why? Your least favorite and why? What do you do to make your least favorite parts more attractive or easier?”

Deceptively Easy Parts of Writing

When I am able to completely turn off my internal editor, my writing defaults to dialogue. I end up with pages and pages of talking heads with the barest indication of what’s going on around them physically. The other trap I seem to fall into is INTERNAL monologues where the character will go on forever about what they think of a situation or mull over what to do next.

The dialogue runs are fun, because it’s like eavesdropping on a conversation and taking dictation. The trick is tipping the balance from talking heads to meaningful conversation between realistic characters. The introspective runs… they’re usually a good sign I need to stop, figure out where the story is going next and how to get the hero and heroine back on the page together. When I’m stuck, if I can get them in the same place and get them talking, things usually get moving again.

The Hardest Parts of Writing

I think the aspect I’m currently weakest on is using body language to convey emotion and character. Showing character is usually a little easier, but I find myself drifting back to my online roleplaying game days and relying on a small repertoire of actions: smiling, nodding, eyerolling, and various methods of fiddling with hair.

In the first draft, I do a bare minimum of actions. They’re more placeholders to remind me of the mood at the time. I have to go back and layer in emotion and variety. This is often done by adding in thoughts and reactions as well as other physical actions.

Description is another thing I find is either on or off for me. Usually, it’s something I have to go back and add in, unless it’s part of initially setting a scene. Oh, and I suck at describing clothing. I may have researched a fair amount on it, but I’m definitely not a fashionista for either the 21st or 19th century.

Strengthening the Weaknesses

So…how do I take the things I don’t like writing as much or don’t come as naturally and turn it into something that works? I’m apparently still working on that. For me, I need to make several passes and concentrate on one aspect at a time. My current pass is turning wooden, rote actions into something meaningful for the story that paint a better picture of the characters for the reader. Reading aloud helps find the stilted phrases and roleplaying the characters makes this more entertaining for me and often brings pleasant surprises with it.

I’d say the best thing to do is run with what you enjoy and comes easy to get down the story bones, but don’t be afraid to go back and add in more details even if it takes a few passes to flesh out that skeleton. Critical reading (to see how others pull it off) and practice also makes it easier. I don’t know if I’ve been successful at strengthening my weaknesses, but I know my writing process is going to be a work in progress for quite some time.

A Different Lens

I knew I used that phrase a lot in respect to my writing, but it had never really clicked before, why. I’ve been using the phrase long before I got my dSLR camera last year, but I get it now. I’ve mentioned before that photography has always been present in my life between my grandfather and my father. I frequently had a cheap little camera in my hands growing up and got a SLR camera as my high school graduation present. I loved to play with light, natural objects, and rarely took pictures of people or buildings.

With photography, my weaknesses are definitely still in architecture and people. I very rarely luck out and get something I love. But then again, deliberate practice on these two subjects is not something I have done very often. I think where I succeed with these is when I’m able to bring in elements of nature or at least let go completely and don’t think about it so much. But deliberate practice to explore what works and what doesn’t has been a huge part of this for me. Somehow, working with strangers is easier than people I know, maybe that’s a self-conscious thing. Although that’s my husband’s brother and sister in the photo at the top.

Sometimes, I just luck out.

YOUR TURN: How do you push through things you don’t like to do and can you turn your weaknesses into strengths?

And if you’d like to read about how the rest of my accountability group answered, you can find their blogs here:

* Alexia Reed * Kimberly Farris *
* Angeleque Ford * Danie Ford * Emma G. Delaney

Teaching Moments

This week for our How I Write series, my accountability group was asked about teaching moments: “What have you recently learned from a REAL LIFE event/happening that you can apply to your writing/writing career?”

Have you ever felt like the universe is trying to tell you something?

It’s been shouting at me lately.

When the same phrases and themes keep coming at you, eventually one is going to stick. First it was, “If you never ask, the answer will always be ‘no’.” And then there was all the advise on pushing boundaries one step at a time.

Lately it’s been all about soul searching, knowing yourself, digging deeper, how your experiences mold you and using those deep core experiences and decisions to improve your writing. Now, Jodi Henley‘s been talking about core events for a while. I listened. I really did. However, I didn’t have the right mindset at the time to learn as much as I needed. Jo Leigh came to my local RWASD chapter meeting this past month and talked about “Core Decisions” — it wasn’t the most comfortable meeting for an introvert who doesn’t like discussing what makes her tick. But man, did it make the brain work overtime. Lots of ‘Aha!’ moments when thinking about what my stories have been about and why the heroines act and react the way they do.

I’ve recently had a few people look at my work and while they agree that while I can string a sentence together, something’s missing. Now, none of them came out and said this precisely, and I may be putting words in their mouths, but what I feel is missing is the ‘heart’. The emotional side of things. How does it really feel to be in these characters heads and why should we care about them.

I’ve learned a lot about the theory of why Emotional Structure works, why connections are drawn between authors and readers. But most importantly, I’ve learned that I cannot avoid what makes me “me”, not if I want to find my voice and connect with readers to bring my characters truly alive and make their stories matter.

The trick now will be opening up those veins and allowing it to bleed out onto the page. I need to abandon the theory, no I need to TRUST it, and put it into action.

YOUR TURN:What have you learned recently that it suddenly seemed like you were ready to learn?

And if you’d like to read about how the rest of my accountability group answered, you can find their blogs here:

* Alexia Reed * Kimberly Farris *
* Angeleque Ford * Danie Ford * Emma G. Delaney

7 Creative Ways to Create Character Depth

A view of the elevator shaft at The Top of the Rock in NYC. — How Far Down Can You Go?

My accountability group talked a bit before in our How I Write series in the posts on Building Character, but I wanted to take a closer look at some ways to create character depth, to make them unique, not just in your book, but in the market place.

WHY do we want to read about these characters, spend time with them and even revisit some of them? And WHY will we identify with them and CARE about their successes and failures? And, what can writers do when building characters so that they come alive on the page for readers?

1. Not just Faults, but Contradictions

Perfect characters are BORING! But in addition to giving them some quirks and character flaws, go farther. Give them contradictory details. Make the bad guy have a soft spot for small helpless fuzzy things. Too easy? Make your main character hold a strong opinion about something and then act in a hypocritical fashion.

2. Go Beyond Stereotypes & Archetypes

Yes, they exist because they’re familiar and recognizable. Are they interesting? Where’s the surprise? Where’s the mystery? Most people don’t like cardboard pizza. They don’t like cardboard characters either.

3. Go Beyond GMC

Deb Dixon‘s idea of Goal, Motivation and Conflict works well at the larger scale. But how many authors drill down with it to the smaller scale? How do those three elements color even their smallest actions and decisions? Weave it in, so it’s an integral part of the story fabric.

4. Vocations & Avocations

So your character has a job or a hobby. That’s nice. Go deeper. How does that influence their vocabulary, their insights, their relationship with others, their smaller actions and decisions? Do they live and breathe it? Or is it just another gloss coat? How does this profession or passion affect the plot? WHY did they/you make this choice? If you can swap it out easily, consequently you haven’t gone deep enough.

5. Use Varying Degrees of Focus and Distance

You know how some photographs are more interesting because not EVERYTHING is sharp and competing for your attention? Think of the difference between your mental definitions of “snap shot” and “photograph”. Good photos tell stories too. They also leave a bit of mystery and interpretation to the viewer. Writers can do similar things. By focusing on different aspects of your character at different times in the book, you can draw the reader in and let them explore what makes your characters tick. Then, only when you absolutely need to, reveal what you’ve hinted at in the shadows and the murky background to bring the whole picture into sharp focus when it will mean the most to the reader.

6. Go Big or Go Home

Don’t settle for making average characters do ordinary things. What can you do to pump them up and make it so the reader believes they may not overcome the high stakes they’re up against? What about your characters keeps the reader’s hope burning that they WILL succeed? This is where many characters who are deemed Too Stupid To Live (TSTL) fail the reader. The reader therefore has lost all hope for this character and may actually be rooting against them.

7. Dig Deep, Put Yourself In There

This is probably the hardest one for me to do personally. It doesn’t have to be the biggest, most traumatic event in your life, but we all share common experiences: happiness, sorrow, regret, hope, frustration, anger. Find ways to channel situations you know into your writing. The story details don’t have to be autobiographical, but use the feelings, both emotional and physical to connect your characters to your reader. For me, this is “write what you know” writ large!

YOUR TURN:
Have I missed anything? What are some of the things that make you fall in love with a character or wish you could know them in real life? What makes YOU care about a fictional person’s success or failure?

And if you’d like to read about what the rest of my group suggests for ways to deepen characters, you can find their blogs here:

* Alexia Reed * Kimberly Farris * Danie Ford * Emma G. Delaney

I’m also proud to note that this post was included in the Additional Resources for Secondary Character Development that goes along with the original NY Book Editors’s article: Your Guide to Creating Secondary Characters.

Building Character

This week my accountability group is blogging about how we flesh out/develop a fiction character for our stories. Last week’s post on our bookshelves and influential authors is also part of our How I Write series.

In order to answer the question about HOW, I think I need to share what character depth & complexity mean to me. I enjoy reading rich characters, ones who feel like real people, albeit a bit larger than life, but real. I think authors can make this happen through a variety of tools available to them. It bothers me when characters are flat or indistinguishable from one another, even and especially secondary characters. I read for the emotional journey and flat characters just don’t cut it for me as a reader, whatever the plot may be.

I was pondering how to pull this post together and find meaningful photos to use for it when I thought about my daughter’s interests in anime and cosplay (costume play or dressing up and getting into the character of your favorite roles). She’s been enthusiastically gathering materials to portray a number of different characters lately. Putting together a Halloween costume or working with big visual symbols of someone else’s character instead of coming up with your own is a bit easier, but you also employ the same essential steps. You start with the basics and then dress it up with all the bells and whistles until you’re happy with it.

The BASICS

Photo of my daughter when she first started putting together a cosplay outfit for this character. — The Basics: What Absolutely Defines Your Character

For me, the basics of any given character are those things that make them uniquely themselves. If you took any of those things away, they wouldn’t be the same person, right? At first, they may feel a bit two-dimensional and you’ll want to build on that, but you need a good base. I don’t tend to go in any particular order once I have the general idea of my character in mind. Go where your interest and whimsy take you.

GMC — I’ve never read Deb Dixon‘s Goals, Motivation, Conflict (GMC), but I’ve heard it recommended enough times that I probably should read it over at some point to get it from the source. But I do try to include some of the concepts when creating and then developing the characters for my stories. Characters have to have WANTS and NEEDS as well as CONFLICTS or at least some OBSTACLES to reach them. Otherwise, it’s not interesting or satisfying and I think these fall under the basics of what you need to write a story. Without them, well, it’s just gonna flop around on the page.

Establishing Connections — Michael Hauge recommends using at least 2 of the 5 following ways to establishing rapport between your main character and your audience:

1) likeability — a nice person
2) skill/expertise — they are good at something
3) sympathetic — the victim of some undeserved misfortune
4) funny — not always an appropriate choice, depending on your genre
5) jeopardy — they are in danger of loss of anything of vital importance

These ways are meant to be used at the beginning of your story with your protagonist, but I think they can also be useful to pull readers closer to any character, especially your supporting secondary cast who will have a lot of time on stage.

Strengths/Weaknesses — Knowing your character’s strengths and weaknesses are ways to make sure you’re taking them on a story arc that changes. Not all characters have to, but it’s often more interesting to me if either the hero, the heroine or both of them learn something and grow as people during the course of the story. Knowing their strengths and weaknesses also makes it easier to test your characters and place effective obstacles in their path.

At Least 5 Whys — This tool is most helpful in figuring out motivations for goals and so many other things. Never stop at the first answer you think of. One way to avoid writing clichés is to brainstorm and dig down deeper, don’t settle for the first thing that comes to mind. Let your inner toddler have free reign with this one!

Biggest Fear & how you will make them face it — this one is a bit more tied to plot development, but I think it’s important when you’re fleshing out the character. This may be part and parcel of the next item, but knowing it before you get too far along can be helpful in figuring out ways you can torture your protagonist that will actually move the plot along in ways that should engage your reader in that emotional roller coaster.
Finally, Jodi Henley‘s idea of a Core Event is another concept that I’ve come to view as essential to character development. She explains this much better on her blog and in her workshops, but it is essentially what happened to make this person who they are when you begin their story. It is NOT the inciting incident. It’s most likely backstory that colors their perceptions of the world and the people around them. It is what drives how they make decisions and react under stress.

BELLS & WHISTLES

Another photo of my daughter after she'd put the finer touches on her cosplay outfit for this character. — Bells & Whistles: What touches add depth, complexity & believability?

This is where the fun comes in. Also the depth, the complexity and the versimilitude. Oh, yeah. I used that big word. The sum of all these little details are what make the characters even more unique and memorable. I’m sure we all have friends who have “THAT” laugh. You know the one. Or that aunt or uncle who has always used that same tired greeting that makes you cringe since you were old enough to remember?

Tics, expressions, rituals, habits — These can be nervous or verbal tics. Pick a few from each category and ONLY use them for one character. Give them each their own voice and personality.

Friends, possessions & pets — Who was it who said we are defined by what and whom we surround ourselves? Definitely have friends and acquaintances make observations about your other characters, especially your main characters. Are they showing their true selves to the world or does the reader get a special perspective on them?

Some of these things may seem small and frivolous in comparison to the items you use when building your character’s identity, but little things we can easily picture in our heads are sticky. Think about Sherlock Holmes’ deerstalker and his pipe. And no one would ever mistake Wolverine with his claws out for Cyclops. Ok, those are swinging back into the world of comics, anime and cosplay, but it’s an easy visual example.

WHAT I DON’T USE

Character Sheets — You’ve seen the ones: star sign, height, weight, occupation, model of car driven, all full of useless trivia that probably won’t make a difference in how your character will react to the things you need them to. Oh, and I always read them with much amusement considering I write historical fiction. I don’t think I’d find them very useful even if I wrote contemporaries.

Stereotypes/Archetypes — Ok, I TRY not to use stereotypes and I was re-introduced to the notion of using archetypes again this summer, but I’m not sure that I’ll ever dig too deeply in that direction as something to build a foundation on. Some people may find them useful, but I also think the temptation to slide back into stereotype is too strong for me.

And if you’d like to read about how the rest of my group develops their characters, you can find their blogs here:

* Alexia Reed * Angeleque Ford * Danie Ford *
* Emma G. Delaney * Kimberly Farris *

A Writer’s Style & Voice

Writing as Art Icon: Writer's Style This is one of those topics where I can’t claim any expertise. In fact, I’m not sure very many people could. A writer’s style and voice are very subjective things. What appeals to one person may turn another completely off reading past the first page. Then, you also can’t confuse the author’s voice with the voice of their narrators.

Ok. I can see your eyes glazing over already. How about I define these words instead of just throwing them around.

Writer’s Style

Wikipedia defines writing style as “the manner in which a writer addresses a matter. A style reveals the writer’s personality or voice. It is the result of the choices the writer makes in syntactical structures, diction, and figures of thought.”

So style is how you handle the mechanics of writing. It includes all the punctuation, the types of sentence structures you favor, your experience and education in life that forms your word choices.

Holly Lisle has a great article titled “Ten Steps to Finding your Writing Voice” that discusses the differences between style and voice on her web pages. In the article, she says the best way writers have to sell themselves is to put themselves on the page.

This is what is known in the writing business as developing your voice. Voice isn’t merely style. Style would be easy by comparison. Style is watching your use of adjectives and doing a few flashy things with alliteration. Style without voice is hollow.

— Holly Lisle, “Ten Steps to Finding your Writing Voice”

So, a piece of writing can be technically perfect, yet it just sits there on the page, dead. What can you do to liven it up? Infuse it with your voice. When you’re telling your friends a good story that has them laughing and maybe even crying right along with you, would a transcription of your anecdote be technically perfect and lifeless on the page?

Probably not. What’s different? Should anything be different?

Writer’s Voice

The difference is voice and many would argue that your speaking voice and your writing voice are essentially the same, and if they’re not, you’re being inauthentic. (Remember, this is authorial voice, not a character or narrator’s voice.) I’m not sure if I believe the inauthentic part, but it may be that you’re not confident about what you’re writing yet.

Let’s go back to Holly Lisle’s article on steps to develop your voice a minute and see what she says about voice and why style without voice is destined to flop lifelessly on the page.

Voice is style, plus theme, plus personal observations, plus passion, plus belief, plus desire. Voice is bleeding onto the page, and it can be a powerful, frightening, naked experience.

— Holly Lisle, “Ten Steps to Finding your Writing Voice”

Voice, then, is all the author’s technical style along with all their choice of themes, emotions, and personal truths that colors their writing and show through in every book of theirs that makes it possible to pick out a snippet from the middle and read it aloud and the people familiar with that author will just know who wrote it, in the same way that great musicians can play the same piece of music on the same instrument and sound completely different.

Developing A Writer’s Style and Voice

Why can’t anyone agree what “style” and “voice” are? “I’ll know it when I hear/read/see it” is a common response when agents and acquiring editors are asked what they’re looking for. What’s an unpubbed author to do? The problem with all arts is that they’re subjective. There are a few objective and quantitative aspects to them, but for the most part they’re all about what emotions the piece of art evokes from its audience and are completely qualitative (where quality is in the eye of the beholder).

How can less experienced writers improve and develop their voice? Holly Lisle’s article covers many techniques and exercises for doing so, but the most common suggestions I’ve seen are:

Read everything you can get your hands on, especially the classics
Write. Write. Write. And then, write some more.
Record yourself telling a story. Record yourself reading your writing. Compare, contrast. Keep what works.
Write. Write. Write. And then, write some more.
Don’t be afraid to take risks and give yourself permission to write an awful first draft. You may end up keeping more than you thought without revising the life out of it before the story is completely on the page.

I’ve been told I have a nice Regency voice. Do I consciously employ a certain voice when I write? Not really. I try to throw in a few archaic phrasings and terms, but maybe my diction and vocabulary just naturally fit well with this genre. Do I think I need to work on my voice and style? Absolutely! It could be a matter of perspective and personal bias, but my writing often feels pretty lifeless on the page, but I know I need to write. Write. Write. And then, write some more.

What are you actively doing to develop your voice and style? Do you feel you’ve found your “voice”?

Adjust Your Volume

volume Just like a piece of music won’t sound good if it’s played at all the same volume, writing needs to ebb and flow in its power and intensity as well. This isn’t always about the plot and intrigue, but sometimes it’s about your characters. Are they always running full tilt toward those windmills you have them chasing or do you give them a break and let them breathe a little?

They need to be larger than life, but if you also have them run full tilt all the time, they don’t get a chance to catch their breath nor will your reader. I mean, what will you do when you need that extra.. push over the cliff… if you’re already at 10, where can you go from there? Listen to Nigel — you need to leave a little room to get to 11!

At the same time, you’ll lose readers just as quickly if you start out with everything turned down mellow to only 3 or 4. There are times when basic actions are required, but other times understatement or blowing something completely over the top will work better.

That’s the current exercise in the Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook by Donald Maass. The exercise was a familiar one since it was along the same lines as one introduced in Margie Lawson’s lecture on Deep Edits.The fun here is to take a random action in your manuscript and empower it so it’s stronger and makes a bigger impact or to take that action and trim it down until it’s so muted that it also created a strong impact on the reader.

Which one will work best? Trial and error baby. Sometimes you can get very silly with these and it shows. Don’t use that one. 😉 I loved the two classes I took from Margie and gained a lot of useful tools and ideas from them. I think it is possible to carry it too far, and that all things in moderation are necessary.

It was great to see Jodi‘s comment the other day about “sometimes–yeah, it does take a year or so for things you think you should know, and really do know, to soak in and become part of the way you look at things.” It’s always reassuring when she thinks I’m heading in the right direction, even if she’s not sure about my method of getting there. Is there anything better than when different approaches click together and you realize that you’re managing to run some of these processes in the background?

Inner Conflicts

ripples I’m sure everyone is going to be sick of the Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook by Donald Maass by the time I’m done, but I’m finding it useful to think about these topics from outside the point of view of thinking only about my characters and I hope it provides someone else some insight along the way. So, thanks for putting up with it.

Looking back through some of my previous posts here, I think this is one of the areas where I need work. The idea seems simple enough: find a goal for the character and find something diametrically opposed or at least mutually exclusive to it and make the character want to strive for both equally. For romance novels, this seems to work best when both the hero and the heroine’s goals are mutually exclusive as well. Finding this sweet spot is proving elusive for me.

I went back and reread parts of On Writing Romance: How to Craft a Novel That Sells by Leigh Michaels mostly just to remind myself about how the hero and heroine need to be forced together into the same problem and writing this post led me back to the post I wrote reading this book the first time: Ker-Snap!

Now, it’s annoying to realize that I wrote that post last March and that I still haven’t managed to pound these ideas into my head, let alone make it work in my manuscripts.

So what’s this have to do with “inner conflicts” and my current manuscript? Both my characters have inner conflicts. Check. Do they have a problem that they’re trying to solve that threatens to keep them apart? Not particularly. The problem is the hero currently is just along for the ride. He’s very reactive, not proactively seeking anything at all.

So… back to digging deeper and figuring out not only what makes this guy tick, but also how what he wants creates conflict between him and the heroine that needs to be overcome. It’s not simply the fact that they like to inhabit very different social roles, but what exactly that is, I need to work out.

24,777: Almost Half-Way!

Photo of a set of stone stairs that was taken by the author. — Halfway up the stairs…

The kids are feeling a bit better. The boy’s likely going to school tomorow. Neither have strep, so that’s a relief.

Not having to stop and run back and forth to school has helped with NaNo productivity. Once I’ve gotten everything out of the way, I can sit down and pretty much write until I’m ready to quit. At this rate, I might get to take Thanksgiving day off so I can cook. 😉
My hero’s been behaving the last couple of days. I didn’t want to write any more last night so I did weird things like figure out how many words I was averaging per page so far and took and colored all the scenes in her POV pink and his in blue… then zoomed out to be able to see 6 pages at once and boy, that was a lot of pink! I can see I’m gonna have to go back and add some insights into his life/story in there.That big, blank, gaping hole at the beginning of ACT II is a great candidate for that kind of filling in. It’s surrounded by an ocean of pink.

Writing today went a little easier as with these scenes, I’m able to work in some of the other material from the original short story. I’m having to rewrite most of it, but there are useful bits. I’m nearing the bottom of the page of notes I have for Act II (probably 22 pages worth) and it’s a strange feeling. I’ve never gotten this far in a story before. I did manage to cram 25k words on another ms this summer, but it’s going to need completely torn apart and redone at this point.

I’ve also decided that having a wonderful, rich, detailed and interconnected world for you characters is great, but man is it a lot of work. You need a REALLY big chunk of time to write down all the relationships and details that you think of as you’re writing. I know, I should write it on an index card and toss it in a box and move on. However, I’m a digital pack rat. The file is getting unwieldy. Sounds like a project for December!

20,014! And Colds Suck!

I’m back at on target for NaNoWriMo!

Luckily, I’m not the one suffering from the stuffy head, sore throat and cough flavored nastiness that’s going around my house this week. Both kids began to run fevers this afternoon. High enough to keep them out of school tomorrow. Joy. DH also left for the EastCoast today armed with Tylenol Cold & Cough caplets. I hope he made the right decision.

BTW, somewhere floating around my house are: cough, flu, black death, and ebola. No, not the REAL ones… the PLUSH ones. DH couldn’t resist. *sigh* We may have to get this guy, he’s kinda cute.

Anyway, the writing the last couple of days has been easier than last reported. I find it interesting that the scenes where the heroine is with someone else but still reacting to the hero are easier than the ones where they’re there face to face. The worst ones have been the ones in his POV.

I was talking with MamaDivine this afternoon about it and she asked if his POV was necessary (it is) and what all I knew about his backstory (she’s probably sorry she asked *grin*). Thinking out loud like that helped some, and made one of the things that has to happen near the climax clearer in my mind. However, I’m still not looking forward to writing tomorrow when I have to start out in his head, especially with the monsters underfoot all day again.

I suspect one of the problems is how I always seem to shift into his head when the characters’ emotions come into conflict. I also realized I don’t have very many scenes where he’s the sole focus. That might be part of the difficulty too. I’ve allowed myself to explore how she reacts with her friend and parents, but, with one exception, he’s only on stage when she is. Definitely something to note down and think about.

I know, Bria, less thinking and more writing, right?

Woah. I may have just figured out what was missing a couple days ago. His contemplation. *headsmack* *sigh*

Anyway, my TLC is being demanded, but I wanted to post progress. Glad I did with that realization. Phew!

14212: Like Pulling Teeth!

Progress has been slow and painful the past couple of days. I’m at the beginning of Act II and I think I may be missing a scene or two. The problem is, I’m not sure which ones. The last couple of days I’ve been trying to fill in what I thought was missing.

I’m not explaining this very well. The scene I hit requires a lot of emotion. However when I first wrote it, I dashed it down. I didn’t want to face those emotions any more than the heroine did. The scene and the sequel had the barest minimum to carry the characters through it. In and out, cut and dry. So the first pass was to go back and add internalization around the dialogue. What were they thinking/feeling as they said these lines.

Better, but it still felt glossed over. Yes, there’s a lot of sexual tension in this part too… Or rather there should have been. Went back to add that in. Imagery? Oh yeah, that might be helpful too, they don’t exist in a vacuum or on an under-funded community college theatre stage.

It still feels like it’s missing something and that the pacing is off. According to my plan, I’m about 10 pages short of what I was thinking. Definitely missing a scene or two or at least a POV shift at this point.

The good news is that we’ve found a fantastic dentist here. DH has a bad history with dentists, including taking off his own braces. Anyway, he had to get a filling and a vertical fracture in another tooth repaired yesterday. After multiple shots of novocaine, he was still feeling pain when the dentist touched his gums. The dentist did what he could on the teeth themselves and said he’d reschedule and put him under general anesthesia to finish up the deep cleaning because he refused to hurt him.

Now, if I could only get this NaNo thing rescheduled…

No, I just need to jump back in and see if I can hit 2400 words or so today. I can do this! Forward progress is the key. Don’t look back… keep going.

Although, I bet some nitrous oxide would help with life beyond NaNo… Hmmm…

Tag: Emotions