Like a Virgin?

Okay, so... late night, crappy day, just now reading blog posts, and I noticed this contest linked by several people I follow...

So, hey, why not?

I've been sitting on 'The Rules of Riding Shotgun' after finishing another round of edits a few months ago... completely because this story dredges up so many 'happy' memories that have now turned sour in retrospect. (seriously, today has been a very, very bad day).

...but since I'm a 'silver-linings' kinda girl, what better way to sweeten the sour by getting someone to slash the hell outta my first 250 words & query?

I'm not sure if I officially have made it in yet (they're cutting it off after 50 entrants), but part of this contest is a bloghop, so here are the questions, and my answers:

1) How do you remember your first kiss?

Like many others I'm sure: awkward. Though, perhaps somewhere on the upper-end of the scale. Mine was on a camping trip the summer between grades 8 & 9 with my (then current) 'best friend' and her family, and she had been... hmmm, what's a more politically correct way of saying 'heinous bitch*?' the entire week. Anyways, she had an older brother... are you seeing where this is going? Wait, it gets better... To escape her... mood swings, and the fact that all she wanted to do was sit in the trailer and complain (and actually her parents told us to go so they could fight with her in private), I went on bike rides with the brother. No ulterior motives, simply to save my sanity, and I had no idea where we were and wanted someone along to make sure I didn't get hopelessly lost. One night, after a campfire, all three of us were lying on the bed that gets converted from the kitchen table**, me stuck in the middle between two siblings, and just when I was starting to fall asleep (with no thoughts other than, 'I'm freaking tired!'), the guy starts kissing me. With tongue.***

YEAH.

AWKWARD????? Okay, not by half. Let's go with 'creepy'****.

SOOOO, trapped in a trailer, sharing the same space for another 3 days with my 'soon-to-no-longer-be-best-friend' and her older brother. That was fun... we should skip over when she told the world I was a slut who seduced her brother and alienated all my friends, then pushed me down a flight of stairs on my birthday ;)

Oh, and the fact that I think he only kissed me 'cause he couldn't get my older sister. Yeah, that does spectacular things for your self-confidence when you're 13.

Can you tell why I don't write a lot of romance? ...and why my characters (might?) have some trust issues?

2) What was your first favourite love song?

Probably 'I don't want to miss a thing' by Aerosmith, inspired by another 'first kiss'... I was sleeping/just waking up at the time. How does that keep happening?

3) What's the first thing you do when you begin writing for the day?

I often start writing while eating breakfast, and in this crazy hot weather, that's normally a salad with tomatoes, turkey deli meat, parmesan cheese, pepper, and a little oil & balsamic vinegar. Think I'm weird? Raw veggies are the best thing to re-hydrate in the morning. Then, after my coffee is done, I walk my beagle, Eva, for a couple hours with headphones blaring loud music to clear my head. After I get back, whatever I started over breakfast is usually a lot clearer.

4) Who's the first writer to truly inspire you to become a writer?

I'm going to say it's a tie between Laurie Halse Anderson's "Speak", and Banana Yoshimoto's "Amrita". I bought both books during a summer sale and read them both in a single day.

5) Did the final revision of your first book have the same first chapter it started with?

...you mean the book that is on near-permanent-hold? Nope, different beginning. I think it was changed 3 or 4 times before I moved on to write something new.

6) For your first book, what came first: major characters, plot, or setting?

A scene woke me up in the middle of the night and I couldn't get back to sleep. Three characters fighting something... invisible in the desert, and one character (female) getting beaten so bad her ribs were broken and she was bleeding all over the place.

7) What's the first word you want to roll off the tip of someone's tongue when they think of your writing?

Maybe not a 'word', but the sentence, "That made me think." I entirely blame my parents for giving me Poe and Kafka to read before I hit the double-digits. Books that don't make you think are forgettable. I don't want to be a 'beach-read-author', I want to be one of the ones that twists someone's world-view, even by just a fraction, even if I don't sell well. Books that made me think are what got me through my teen years, even strange ones like Jostein Gaarder's "Sophie's World", Douglas Cooper's "Delirium", and Simon Singh's "Fermat's Enigma".


* by the way, TOTALLY a reference to the movie, '10 Things I Hate About You'. Yeah, love that movie... 1/2 for Julia Stiles, 1/2 for 'Letters to Cleo' on the rooftop during the end credits. The cameo by 'Save Ferris' was awesome too.

** seriously, I am NOT a camper... first, and only time in a trailer EVER, I'm sure there is a proper name for what that kind of bed is called, but I have no idea what it is

*** I will forever associate the taste of 'Juicy Fruit' gum with my first kiss, and 'Green Apple Jolly Ranchers' with my second first kiss.

**** Slightly incestuous, even, considering his sister was a foot away and snoring her face off.

FFF 7.2

I've been out most of the day doing running around, doing chores, and making phone calls, and dealing with... some not so happy-fun-things. So yeah, sorry this is going up much later than normal. It's 300 words exactly:

Whenever someone’s asked me that dumb, get-to-know-you-game question, “what kind of animal would you be”, my answer is always the same.

If I was an animal, I would be a northern leopard frog.

Like this semi-terrestrial frog, I’m all, long stringy legs, wide hands, and utterly graceless on land. In the water, though, I’m not flailing through an alien atmosphere, I’m part of it. I am it. Sometimes, I even think I breathe it.

When I was little, my mom took me to the pool everyday, and I’d lie facedown in the water with my eyes open, and hold my breath as long as I could stand it. I’d listen to my heartbeat slow, to the muffled sound of bigger kids splashing and the lifeguard yelling. He pulled me out the first couple of times, all panicky, ‘cause he thought I was drowning, but quickly learned to ignore what he called my ‘dead-man’s-float’.

I’d come up only when I needed air.

But I think I don’t need air anymore.

Frogs start out as tadpoles that breath through gills, then they slowly transform into adults with lungs.

I think I’m like a northern leopard frog, but transforming backwards. Just below my ears, it’s been itching where I swear my gills are forming under the skin. I can already swim underwater the entire length of the pool, on one breath.

The thing is, it freaks people out, so I don’t try harder.

And I think I do just need that one, final push to get my gills to break through and start working. Kickstart them.

Which is why I’m going to sneak in tonight after hours with a 45lb kettle-bell weight and the pair of handcuffs I bought on eBay.

Just one, final push.

By the way, I wrote about frogs because there were like, hundreds of tadpoles along the shoreline while I was at the cabin... so cool:

Flash Fiction Friday 7.0

Wow, I've been so crazy busy since I got home, I completely forgot about Flash Fiction Friday...

SO, since my post yesterday mentioned how choosing an animal, to 'short-hand' their characteristics, can be a good tool, how about this for today's sentence?

Whenever someone’s asked that dumb, get-to-know-you-game question, “what kind of animal would you be”, my answer is always the same.

Clarity: one word can land you in a heap ‘o trouble

There are many words in the English language that are wonderful, precise, and so chalk-full of implied meaning that you only need that one word, instead of five or ten, to give a line impact. 

The problem is when a strong word can imply drastically different meanings, depending on the context.

Here’s the first draft example I’m going to use from SCARLIGHT:

And that’s what I want to paint. Light on her body. Just that.

Not Kell, the person, but Kell, the object.

I’m not interested in anything else.

But if I want to paint her, first I have to make her agree to take her clothes off. To show me all her scars at once. To stand still and obedient until I’ve had my fill.

Now, I’m using several strong words to get my point across in that snippet. Unfortunately, I ended up over-compensating, and got myself into trouble.

Your impression of Jay, from that little bit, is probably that’s he’s creepy. A stalker. Possibly an abusive, predatory sociopathic criminal in the making.

Let’s look at the words I used in one line, then let’s look at the same piece of writing after it’s been edited for clarity.

To stand still and obedient until I’ve had my fill.

This bolded line is the heart of the problem.

Now, what I wanted the reader to get out of this short snippet was:

1. Jay has a very strong desire towards Kell.
2. As a painter, he’s looking at her as a potential model, so obviously he would want to paint her under the best conditions: good light, and her holding a pose properly/not moving.
3. Because of past baggage, he is unconsciously trying to maintain distance and only see her as a model, to the point where I wanted it to be obvious that he’s actively lying to himself.

That’s a lot to pack into 64 words, right?

Too much in fact. There are three problems with that first-draft snippet:

1. It’s too short, therefore not enough clarity/explanation, so it’s easy to leap to conclusions/misunderstand.
2. The specific word ‘obedient’ is way too strong a word. It insinuates that Jay wants total power/control over Kell, when all I really wanted to say, was that he badly wants her to be a ‘good/ideal’ model.
3. The insinuation, based on the layout of the entire bolded sentence, that Jay is not viewing Kell as a human being, that his desire matters more than what she would/could want to do. This builds on the previous lines, “Not Kell, the person, but Kell, the object.”, and blows it way out of proportion.

Now, here it is again after one edit (as in, do not consider this ‘polished’ yet). Note that I did not touch 6 out of the original 8 lines:

And that’s what I want to paint. Light on her body. Just that.

Not Kell, the person, but Kell, the object.

I’m not interested in anything else. She could be a potted plant, or a bowl of fruit. I just want her to be my model, but if I want to paint her, first I have to make her agree to take her clothes off. To show me all her scars at once. To pose under ideal lighting conditions until I’m done.

I wanted to keep the insinuation of a power-struggle, because... well, it makes sense with the characters, their backgrounds, and the fact they’re both scarred up, physically, emotionally, and psychology.

So, what did I do to try to fix? Well, first I tried to remove the possible insinuation of sexual predation by specifying, “She could be a potted plant, or a bowl of fruit.” Hopefully, that also makes it clearer that he’s intentionally trying to only look at her that way... lying to himself. Then I touched up the original middle line, added, “I just want her to be my model...” to the beginning. Finally, I completely re-wrote that troublesome ‘obedient’ line at the end, again, to make it clear this isn’t about holding her hostage, forcing her to do something she doesn’t want to do, de-humanizing her... he just wants her to be a ‘good model’ because he badly wants to paint her.

Now, did I accomplish those three points I was aiming for, and remove the three problems that took it too far?

(Please go ahead and tell me... I very much want to know. I know at this moment it's super repetitive sounding, which will be fixed later, but for now, it's enough if the 'bad connotation' has been removed.)

Strong words make for great writing, but you should always look at how they could be taken wrong. A potential agent, or reader, might misunderstand one word on your first page, and you’ve lost your one chance with them. Usually, it’s a word, like ‘assault’, that twists a sentence down a very dark avenue.

To take one step further, think of how many online write-ups/articles vilify authors, or certain books, simply because of a few choice lines taken out of context. I’m always struck by that during ‘Banned Book Week’, which is sometime in the autumn.

Remember: words absorb new meaning over time, but the older, less-used meanings are still lurking around in the basement, possible gnawing bone splinters and crunchy spiders.

Don’t let your words be used a weapon against you. Clarity is your friend :)

Strong words, and blah ones

One quick thing before we start:

For those brave souls who are going to submit, let's stick to the usual 250-ish words, and your piece will go up the week of the 23rd after these nerdy posts are over and done with. I already have 2 in my inbox, so those that want in, get in while you can. After the series is over, I'm closing it down :)

A while back, I wrote a guest post for a site that no longer exists on the implied meanings of words.

I don’t really want to repeat what I’ve already said in that linked post, so let’s pretend you’re all interested enough to have clicked the link, and read it before returning here, and focus on moving on.

You don’t actually have to read it ;) It’s more that I’m trying to consolidate (potentially) relevant information, and someone in the industry recently posted about the same thing. Her annoyance of 'flowing hills' is like mine when an author uses 'bloated' to describe a sharp, pointed, metal knife.

The thing about choosing strong words, is that it overlaps with voice and description. How a character views the world is going to impact the words he/she uses, and the importance he/she puts on things.

This is precision. Instead of a vague word that could relate to any character, you're narrowing the field to one specific to your character.

Jay, who is an artist, is very quick to notice visual information, but is less quick to pick up on other sensory information. His frame of reference is going to gravitate towards art-related terminology, anatomy, light/shadow, etc. He is also arrogant, and entitled, so his focus is self-centered, and his actions self-serving. He can be very manipulative when it comes to getting what he wants.

We all know the usual ‘weak’ words to avoid, ones like ‘walk’ or ‘run’. Stride, skip, slink, skulk, saunter, these are all better words that give a much more visual description of how a person could cross a room, perhaps they even give you different ideas of emotional state, age, purpose, etc.

What does 'walk' give you? Not a whole heck of a lot.

I think visually (yes, you know this), so this might be easier for me to do naturally. I’m not really sure how to teach someone how to think visually, but I suppose a few things I try to keep in mind are:

What is the character’s emotional state? Physical state (hot/cold/hurt/tired)? Is their goal/desire in front of them/in the room, or elsewhere? If elsewhere, what, in the room, is the biggest influence on the character’s emotional/psychological state? How does the character see the people around him/her (enemies? friends? frenemies?) Does he/she care what they think of him/her? If the character was an animal, what would he/she be?

Does that last one sound weird? Perhaps, but I often use animal characteristics to draw from in terms of moment/behavior/etc. Animals we are familiar with can be very powerful ‘short-hand’ to imply many things about a character, their state of mind, their moral/ethical state, etc. You’ll see an example in a later post how I use a robin.

Now, vision is only one of the senses... so, strong words will hit the other senses as well, but be careful. Like, if you read that linked post, you would never think to use a ‘sound’ word to describe something ‘visual’, right? ...there is a correct answer here ;)

...and I often say, that any good vomit reference should make the reader a little sick to their stomach. 

Here’s a quick set of words, with similar meanings, progressing from weak to strong:

Hit, attack, assault.

So, why is assault stronger than attack?

Because ‘assault’ has the added meaning of ‘rape’, so it implies, not only a physical attack, but an emotional/psychological attack as well.

So, if you wanted to use a strong word to describe your character being bombarded, verbally, you would want to ask yourself, do I want the added implication bagged up in ‘assault’, or should I stick with ‘attack’? Well, that would probably depend on your character’s state of mind, and what the verbal bombardment was about.

Say, it was a woman who had just miscarried, and someone knocked on the door to survey her about abortion, or starving children dying in Africa, or giving money/support for babies born to alcoholic/drug addicted mothers... well, that might feel like an assault rather than an attack because of the personal/emotional aspect.

If, instead, your character is a middle-aged bachelor... you could stick with ‘attack’, or even downplay it further because there’s likely not a huge emotional connection between him and the subject matter, so rather than take it personally, he’s probably just shut the door and forget it even happened.

The thesaurus is your friend, just don’t blindly accept one of the suggested counterparts... check the dictionary function, pay attention to all of the meanings, not just the first one on the list. Words carry baggage, and even though we don’t routinely read the dictionary, because words have different meanings, we associate them with other contexts, and we bring that chain of knowledge with us when we read.

One misused word can have unintended repercussions.