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Something like "Beth told me you were exotic but I didn't realize she meant furry and shark-headed." |
I love it!
It would not work, as her date is someone she's known for quite a while. But still a good idea. (He's also a character who came out of nowhere and made himself more important than I'd intended. I hate it when they do that!)
I think I'll go, at least partially, with the idea that she can describe herself when she's getting ready for the date. It'll probably be the easiest.
I wrote for almost two hours today.
: Set a timer for 30 minutes and kept writing once it went off, after starting the stopwatch feature on my phone so I could time myself. 1:14:57.07 My hand hurts. I got from page 47 to page 52. I got the hero introduced to the werewolves, decided to make the woman the pack Alpha instead of her husband, and got a lot of info about the main plot worked in. (I've got three plot threads--a case to solve, the hero's magical training, and a small romance plot which might get derailed by my new character.)
I'm feeling a little silly since I just got something very important accomplished. And managed to keep my own voice, even though I've been reading Laurell K Hamilton today.
Here's my favorite bit of dialogue:
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"It's far better than eating you out of hand."
Bellamy arched an eyebrow. Gerry and I gave him blank, serene faces. I was reasonably certain my old friend was joking. Werewolves, he'd told me many years ago, had just as strong a taboo against eating humans as did the Unchanging. The Changing, as they tended to call themselves, typically considered themselves to still be human, something borne out by their ability to have offspring with the Unchanging. But not with Magi, something I could never quite figure out. Perhaps the two mutations were too far apart.
The silence stretched another heartbeat before Bellamy shrugged. "Your loss. I'm precooked and everything." |
My hero has a pretty good sense of humor.
I'll need to smooth out if not do away with that exposition, but it's a note to myself if nothing else. (The precooked thing, by the way, is a reference to burn injuries.)
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The first jump, the two years, is much harder. I've debated every possible approach to it, from cutting it to making it a new section, and nothing seems quite right. Grrr. |
Does it come before or after the kidnapping? I respect your bravery in regards to time-jumping. I'm thinking my novel is going to stretch across only a couple of weeks, because I suck at even minor time jumps.
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Put me in the SF/Fantasy camp. Even worse, put me in the SFF-but-with-a-fascination-with-characters camp. Some people, my husband, for example, get into the genetics aspect to it, and the fact that it's a prolonged escape from a really bad guy, but it's all soft science - very low tech and not futuristic. It's really the story of what happens to three people trapped in an intense and isolated existence together. |
I love character-driven fiction. I'm the sort to get lost in technical details. It's taking everything I have not to have the heroine expound
too much on the magic system, at least not this early on. I'll get to do that--I'll have to do that--because the hero is actually her apprentice (even though he's older). But I don't want to shovel it on.
I'd be interested in hearing more about how your world fits together. Is it near future, or a totally different world? I'm in a slightly different version of the here-and-now, which makes things much simpler. Haven't had to create a single city yet. I'm always somewhat in awe of people who manage to have even a little bit of hard science in their novels. I'd be at risk of wandering off and spending the next six months researching string theory and never actually getting anything done.
Is anyone having difficulty avoiding cliches? My hero is an Iraq war vet with some serious physical injuries and PTSD, and I am so afraid of making him a cliche. Even some of the most respectful and well-meaning novels cast military characters somewhat one-dimensionally, and I am trying not to do that, in part by having him make fun of the stereotypical things. (He's joked about not being able to flip off other drivers anymore, because he's missing the crucial finger, for instance.) All these things are important to the character, but I don't want him to be a walking stereotype, KWIM?
Also, can we have some main character discussion? I'm curious as to whom everyone is writing about. Someone else has to be willing to share some dialogue, or I'm going to feel all embarrassed.