I promise I won't
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Copyright © 2012 The Office of Letters and Light :: All posted novel excerpts remain copyright to their authors.
Have anyone offer anyone a cup of tea for at least another 10K words. It's already happened half a dozen times, but in my defense, it is Scotland and it is raining a lot. And it was early afternoon which seemed too early to have a pint, although they did mention whiskey and getting a pint, but they're being good and waiting until after five local time.
Is there anything you want to promise that your characters won't do - at least for a few thousand words?
You're on!
No shrugging
No nodding
No shaking their heads
"Words, people, I need words!" I want to tell them. I need dialogue, not mute mimes!
(Great job on the word count, Katherine! :) YOU ROCK!)
Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall. ~Ray Bradbury
Please? I have to have shrugging. And smiling. They need to smile. So I can do a replace-all in December of 'X smiled' with 'X did something less creepy and more meaningful than a half-hearted smile.' So then I fix it. Or I cut it. I bet I cut half of them. :)
How about one shrug per chapter then?
Smirking, grinning, and leering are allowed.
But the nodding really has to stop. These are my characters, not bobble-heads!
Jump, and you will find out how to unfold your wings as you fall. ~Ray Bradbury
Ugh, I'm the same way. All my characters are smiling...a slow smile creeping, a knowing smile, a smile playing at the corner of their mouth. UGH!
Someone stick out a tongue or something. :P
Yeah, the number of meals that I've gone through in my meager 6K is ridiculous. Why, no, I am not writing hungry at all! Why do you ask? Oh, wait. Breeding. I'm ALWAYS HUNGRY. #$%@%^$%&@%&
Do not be satisfied with the stories that come before you. Unfold your own myth. Rumi
Smiling is something I usually overuse and am horribly conscious of because I had a creative writing professor whose pet peeve was characters smiling--"There are so many BETTER actions they could do. A smile doesn't MEAN anything. It's just cheating." Which I think is an exaggeration, although I get his point.
But this conversation made me think about it. "Hey... has anyone smiled at ALL in this story yet?" So I did a search, and the answer is no, no one has smiled yet. The word "smile" has been used twice, though--once because a character was sort of CONVEYING a smile without actually moving his lips, and once because another character was listing physical characteristics she'd inherited from her mother.
That said, if my main character does any more TREMBLING or SHAKING in the next thousand words or so, I may have to scream. Sure, she's traumatized and scared for her life and convinced she's hallucinating and all that... but SERIOUSLY? I think all she's done so far is to tremble and shake! And she's hardly said anything. Alright, so she's been cowering in a bathroom during an armed robbery, which doesn't leave much room for talking... but still!