Tag: writing

Sunday Scribbling: “Flashback”

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This weekly prompt comes from the Sunday Scribblings web site. The prompt word for this week was “flashback”.

~*~      ~*~     ~*~

Alison peddled her mother’s bike carefully. Her nine-year old legs weren’t long enough to reach the pedals if she sat on the seat, so she stood while she rode. There was also the danger that the flare on her pant legs would get caught in the spokes, bell-bottoms being what they were. So, she rode looking down a lot.  At least her hair didn’t get in her way. It was cut short, very short and layered in the back. But the sides “feathered’, which made it a ‘girl cut’.

She was just completing a circuit and turning around in the driveway of her mother’s best friend when she noticed the approaching neighbor. He was a couple years younger and was riding down the sidewalk on a Big Wheel. His name . . . was Bubba.

Oh no. Here he comes. Maybe I can get turned around fast enough and I won’t have to talk to him. Scary little kid. She tried to turn faster, but she lost her balance and had to stop the turn, putting her foot down on the driveway. She looked up and there he was at the end of the driveway, a six-year old cloud of menace and spite. What kind of name is ‘Bubba’ anyway? He looked up at her, cocked his head sideways, and asked a simple question.

“Are you a boy? Or a girl?”

~~~~~~~~~

I haven’t cut my hair that short since.

Saturday Centus

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Saturday Centus Rules: A prompt is given (from Jenny Matlock’s blog), and you must write 100 words about the prompt.

Normally the prompt doesn’t count in the word count, but this time it is a visual prompt so it obviously doesn’t.

“How about this pumpkin?”

“No. Too small,” she tipped her head sideways to look.

“This one?” He asked, desperation creeping into his voice.

“No. Do you see that soft spot underneath? It will rot too quickly.”

“I found the perfect pumpkin!”

She gasped, “Are you kidding? That one is way too big.”

“How can it be too big?” He wrinkled his nose.

“Because I know that I will be the one cleaning out all the seeds,” her shiny black nose and whiskers trembled, “and we certainly don’t need all that space for our furniture.”

(Alphabe-Thursday: B) B is for Betrayal

Alison15 Comments

(Note: I am writing this for a blog prompt on Jenny Matlock’s Blog. I missed the letter ‘A’, so I am starting with ‘B’)

B is for Betrayal

“You’re going to hate me,” Tiffany said with a pout, “I just know it.”

Carly, eyebrows raised, looked over at her best friend. “Oh really? And why is that?” Carly waited for a response, but Tifffany sat fidgeting and not talking. Not talking? Tiffany never stops talking. She must be serious. “Tiffany, what happened?”

“Well . . .,” Tiffany stretched out the word, delaying the inevitable. “Mike and I were talking. And, well, we decided that we like each other.” She bit her lip and looked up at Carly through her eyelashes.

Mike?! As in the Mike I am dating?! As in the Mike I have had a crush on for as long as you have known me? That Mike? “So you . . . talked.”  Breathe Carly, breathe.

“Yes. We talked and decided that we wanted to, you know, try out ‘us’.”

Us? What am I supposed to say? I think I’m in shock. And why is she crying?! It’s my life she is destroying. “How?”

Tiffany looked up quickly, brow furrowed. “How? What do you mean how?”

“I mean, how did it get to the point where you two would have this ‘talk’?”

“Oh. I guess I hadn’t told you. I have been going over to their apartment almost every night and hanging out with Mike and his roommates.”

“The nights you and I would go dancing?”

“I would drop you off and go over to his place.” Tiffany was looking at the ground now, softly sniffing.

“And my date nights with Mike?”

“I was at his place when he would come home.”

My best friend and the boy I had wrapped all of my heart into? This has got to be a joke. Are there cameras somewhere?  She knows how much he means . . . meant to me. Is the room spinning?

“Carly? Carly. Say something.” Tiffany slowly reached out and softly touched Carly’s hand.

Carly sat. Her shoulders slumped. “What do you want me to say?”

“Aren’t you mad? Aren’t you going to yell at me?”

Carly looked up at her best friend. “No. I’m not going to yell.” That’s what you want. You want me to yell and scream. Then you can sit back and be self-satisfied that I’m a jerk that doesn’t deserve him and you had every right to take him. No. I will NOT give you that out. You will choke on your guilt. “I don’t own him. I obviously don’t control him.”

“I would have yelled.”

“That’s where we are different.” I am screaming- on the inside. I’m bleeding and breaking and collapsing on the inside. But I won’t give you the satisfaction.

“You are a better person than I am.”

You better believe it. “So you guys had this talk and then he sent you to talk to me?”

“Yeah, because we’re friends.”

“Too bad you two didn’t think about that before you decided I was only worth betrayal. Do me a favor.” Carly stood, wiped imaginary crumbs from her lap, and rubbed the back of her neck.

“Yes?” Tiffany looked up with hope of redemption in her eyes.

“When he betrays you with the next girl – which he will – don’t come crying to me.”

Perceptions of Beauty

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In the interest of full disclosure, I want to point out that all the photos in today’s post were taken by my brother, Kevin.- http://www.kmillerphoto.com/ Thanks Kev 😉

I think everyone should try photography. Not that I think that everyone should become “A Photographer”. That’s not what I’m saying – it doesn’t even have to be photography specifically.

There is something that changes in you when you look at your surroundings with the intent to frame it, capture it, or reproduce it in some form.

I have always “taken pictures”  of events and occasions without much thought other than to preserve the memory of the moment. When I changed the way I wanted to take pictures I noticed a change in my behavior.

Even when I wasn’t carrying my camera I was looking around and seeing a difference.

I could look at something I had seen a million times and be awestruck by its beauty. It became easier to appreciate my surroundings. Beauty became not only “things that are new and exotic”, but also “things that are familiar and comfortable.”

As a writer I believe it will become an important asset. To write you must be able to capture a story and describe it. Relaying that beauty is a skill I am still working on developing. You have to see the beauty of something and share it with others. In sharing, it is good to keep in mind that there are different types of beauty. Beauty doesn’t have to be shiny and happy.

There is a sense of poetry on the profound or even the tragic.

I find that a nice, blue sky is . . . boring.

I like clouds.

I think clouds are beautiful and add dimension and depth to a picture. Much in the same way, a story without challenges or dimension is boring.

As a human being I find that being able to appreciate the beauty around me makes me happier.

I can enjoy the breathtaking moments along the journey

rather than just waiting for the view at the summit.

Grammar is our friend.

Alison1 Comment

Grammar. Huh-

If you haven’t read ‘Eats, Shoots and Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation’ by Lynn Truss – you really should. I didn’t think I would find myself laughing out loud at a grammar book, but I did.

I find that without any formal training I am having to do a lot of digging on my own. My big grammar issue now is punctuation for dialogue. Technical writing courses (the classes I took) do not involve a lot of witty banter.

I think my problem with punctuation is that when I read, everything disappears except the story. Even when I was trying to look specifically at different books to see the punctuation I would get caught up in reading and miss how it was being punctuated.

Like this gem- when your quotation goes on for more than one paragraph – you don’t place quotation marks at the end of the first paragraph (which I knew), but you do place quotation marks at the beginning of the next paragraph to indicate that the quotation continues. I had no idea.  I think I noticed it one time and just thought that someone had dropped a quotation mark.

Sad how one can be very educated in one field and completely ignorant in another. I’ve got a road ahead of me.

Time to go edit dialogue.  What is your worst grammar stumbling block?

Character motivation / emotional response

Alison3 Comments

I’ve been thinking a lot about believable character motivations and emotions lately. I read a book recently that reinforced what I had been working on in my own writing.

It was a fun book- really cute idea and character voice. My issue was this: there was a really cute boy that the main character (MC) was drawn to. Problem = he was a jerk. Not just a ‘one time, maybe he was having a bad day’ kind of jerk but a serious jerk. -Including a humiliating bet-

But of course, within the space of a few pages he went from ‘Hot Jerk’  to ‘Hot Boyfriend’. Whaaat?

I didn’t buy it (or the step-sister’s turn-around) and the rest of the book I was in disbelief. I didn’t understand her motivation to trust him. I didn’t feel like she reacted like a real person.

In my own writing I had run into something similar. My MC was thrust into a situation completly different from everything she knew. Now I knew she was safe, and I knew the people who were there were nice so I had her responding slightly suspicious but accepting the explanations easily.

The editor that looked at it asked me a question that changed my approach. “Is this how a seventeen-year old girl would really react in this situtation?”

Woah. She didn’t know she was safe. That requires a different reaction entirely. Now it rings more true as a ‘real’ emotional response. The funny thing was, that as soon as I saw the question I realized if it had been someone else’s book I would of totaly responded with a ‘No way she would be doing that!’.

So, now for a question. How do we make sure that our character’s emotions and motivations are realistic? And if they aren’t what you would think of as the ‘normal’ response, how do we set it up so that is is believable to a reader?

Endings

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I changed my ending.

I was never really fond of the original ending. But I thought it was necessary because it was the way that my MC (male) would have responded due to his background and childhood. So it sat. And I still didn’t like it much.

I was struck as I went through the revision with a realization.  It may have been how He would have thought it should end, but not my MC (female). The first ending had her respond the way she would have at the beginning of the story, before she had gone through everything and grown.

So, my new ending is how the new She would respond.

I like it better 🙂

Writing

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I had put away my story. It had been months since I even looked at it. Not that I haven’t thought about it, it is always bouncing around in my skull. I just hadn’t a chance to dive into it.  Well, yesterday I opened it up again and wrote. And wrote. For more than four hours I was lost again in my world. It was fun!  I’m excited about polishing it and moving on to the next step – an agent.

Of course, waking up this morning to get the kids to school after falling asleep at almost 3:00 in the morning – not so fun.

Combine to one?

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October nears its close.  Which means November is around the corner. You may be thinking “So?”  But what November means is NaNoWriMo.  I have been excited for November for a while. Turning over the story beginnings from my writing notebook in my head. It’s like taking samples at the candy counter, you want to make sure it is good before you invest in a whole package.

However, yesterday I was struck by an idea. My WIP – in order to fix some plot issues – needs to go from the ‘two or more books’ to a stand-alone novel.

Can I do that?

Can I condense the plethora of ideas into one book? I’m pretty sure I can, and it will be a richer – more engaging story. And it will have that satisfying moment at the end of a complete finish.

So, now my dilemma. Do I do NaNo, or do I dive into my WIP and work on re-plotting the story there? Hmmmm.

 

Dilemma

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True confessions:

There are so many amazing websites out there on writing.  I start reading them and I get excited about my story, about what I can do with it, about what I should do with it. And then I spend so much time reading about what I need to do that I don’t have time to do it. I need to find some balance.