How was your writing week? What are you focused on now and what do you hope to be focused on next week? What are your writing concerns? What writing activities have you been involved with this week? Did you have any successes, breakthroughs, realizations?
As always, any topic that will help us improve our writing is fair game in these discussions, so feel free to bring up any of your writing concerns.
Let's talk.
The group No Whine, Just Champagne will meet here at this article for a live discussion about writing and the writing life on Thursday, June 14, 2012 at 9:00pm ET (8pm CT, 7pm MT, 6pm PT). Hope to see you, but if you can't make it then, the discussion will continue during the days afterward, so please stop by and tell us what you think.
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Comments: 38
The sound of weeping woke Jeremy. He turned his head toward his companion and saw one trembling shoulder and a tangle of gleaming hair.
He stretched luxuriously. The red hair hadn’t lied. The girl had been all fire, kindling a passion in him he hadn’t felt in years. The memory of it made him hard.
He reached over and pulled the girl into his arms. He smoothed back her hair and kissed away her tears, murmuring, “Honey,” and “Sweetheart,” and “Dear.”
“I’m such a terrible person,” she said, sobbing.
“Shh. Shh,” he whispered between tiny kisses.
Her arms stole around his neck, and her lips sought his. In a surprisingly short time she bucked beneath him, calling out his name.
You’ve still got it, King, he thought exultantly. Then, after one final thrust, he tumbled into oblivion.
That scene might not be very graphic, but it did what I wanted it to—define the characters, Jeremy especially. Pippi called out his name, but he didn’t care enough about her to think of her by name. He cared only about himself and his performance. It shouldn’t come as any surprise that, during other times of vulnerability in the story, he also thought only of himself.
If your character has a foreign accent, you don’t have to bludgeon a reader with it. All that is necessary to portray an accent is to say the character speaks with an accent. If you wish, you can use phrasing to remind the reader of the accent, such as, “We will go to the store. No?”
This snippet from Daughter Am I shows Crunchy’s difficulty with English:
“Mary’s trying to find out about her grandparents,” Kid Rags said. “His name was James Angus Stuart.”
Crunchy shook his head. “Don’t know no James Agnes Stuart.”
“What about Regina DeBrizzi Stuart?” Mary asked.
“Don’t know her neither.”
"Down the street where she's goin'" would give the impression of dialect and is easy to read. It took me a few moments to translate your sentence, and that is no good.
This is our second collaboration. The first one, Rubicon Ranch: Riley's Story is finished.
Since I'm going to have to recreate my life from scratch, I'm thinking of writing my future into a book. See what I can make of me.
Pat has left us with such a great idea...
"Since I'm going to have to recreate my life from scratch, I'm thinking of writing my future into a book. See what I can make of me." ~ Pat Bertram
At this point in my life, I'm trying to SEE what is left of me to remake, reshape, and stimulate. But I do so like your idea Pat, especially the way you've worded it.
Let us know when the book of your future is completed. I'll be the first in line to buy it!
Blessings to everybody ~
René
For myself, at the moment I'm focusing on editing the WIP I finished writing (something of a psychological thriller novel), book reviews, and have started a chapter book series for my kids.
The bit of research I've done suggests there is no market for chapter books, and that if it isn't a series it's even less marketable. Once they're done and polished, I'm considering self-publishing them in ebook form and offering them free to promote literacy and encourage reading for grade schoolers.
The hardest part might be the recipe. I don't do recipes much. Mostly I wing it and just toss stuff in, or if I really don't know how to make something I research a bunch of recipes then put parts of them together. Sometimes its edible (even good sometimes), sometimes not so much, lol.
That's how I cook, too -- just toss stuff together. A few times I've checked the ingredients on several brands of a particular canned food, and cobbled together a recipe. That's how I discovered that oregano is a common ingredient in Mexican food. Who knew?