Saturday, April 7, 2012

An Introduction to My Writing Insanity

Yep, it's that time again!  Welcome to the Teens Can Write Too! April blog chain.  This month's prompt is:  What are your writer's habits and eccentricities?

A good prompt indeed!

Well, during NaNoWriMo I always wore a pair of greyish wool fingerless gloves that my mom made.  They're cool because they have cables on them.  Cables are cool.  I wore them  'cause they kept my hands warm and kept tendonitis at bay (mostly), but they looked good too.

Something I do on a regular basis is talk to myself.  Or, rather, my characters talk to me through me.  That sounds a bit bonkers, but 'tis none the less true.  Letting them borrow my voice gives me insight as to how they would say something.  It may be something as simple as "My name is Viola" (that one's been going through my head A LOT lately) or an entire monologue.  It's like I can hear them say it.  The tone they use, the voice inflections, the sarcasm, the smile that comes from their words as well as their facial muscles, the disgust, etc.  It makes me look crazy, but the strange looks are worth the payoff.  Of course sometimes I start talking to myself without realizing it or using the hand motions my character is using, which can get a bit awkward.

Sometimes I act out the scene that's going through my head.  This can be weird, since about half the time I do it without realizing it.  I'll be plunging a dagger at a bad guy when I realize that my fist kinda hurts from hitting the sheet cabinet (the "bad guy") a little too hard. Or swinging a cheese grater around like a sword only to turn and see my sister giving me a weird look.  Yes, I turn cheese graters into swords.  I've turned just about every kitchen utensil my family has into a weapon of some kind.  It's quite fun. 

A habit I just recently discovered I had is to open a story with a bit of back story.   This one can be a bit problematic, since the current trend is to start in the middle of the action.  We'll see how that turns out.  I may just have to find clever ways of employing the use of a prologue.

Something else I just noticed is that lately I have a thing for redheaded warrior princess type characters.  Weird huh?

Another thing I like to do is to mash two things that don't usually go together together and give them to a character as a quirk.  Like Shakespeare and spray paint.  Or wearing purple Goth style clothes and playing lead guitar in a country band.  Yes, I've done both of those, and they're some of my favorite characters.

Well, I think that's enough of my brain for you today.  Be sure to visit the gift shop and come back soon!

Here's a map of the blog chain, day by day:
(Sorry about the white background.  The BFDs [Blogger Formatting Demons] have done something weird)

April 5– http://correctingpenswelcome.wordpress.com–Comfy Sweaters, Writing, and Fish
April 6– http://towerofplot.blogspot.com — The Leaning Tower of Plot
April 7–http://lilyjenness.blogspot.com–Lily’s Notes in the Margins. YOU ARE HERE!
April 8–http://weirdalocity.wordpress.com– From My Head
April 9–http://insideliamsbrain.wordpress.com–This Page Intentionally Left Blank
April 10–http://thewordasylum.wordpress.com–The Word Asylum
April 11–http://rachelsbookreviews.com–Rachel’s Book Reviews
April 12–http://noveljourneys.wordpress.com–Novel Journeys
April 13–http://delorfinde.wordpress.com–A Farewell to Sanity
April 14–http://swordofink.com–Sword of Ink
April 15–http://thedreamersadventures.blogspot.com–The Dreamers Adventures
April 16–http://incessantdroningofaboredwriter.wordpress.com–The Incessant Droning of a Bored Writer
April 17–http://herestous.wordpress.com–Here’s To Us
April 18–http://teenscanwritetoo.wordpress.com–Teens Can Write Too! (We will be announcing the topic for next month’s chain)

14 comments:

  1. Good post. You're very strange. (I will be going around saying that to everyone in the chain this month, so you aren't the only one.)

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    1. Darn. I forgot to participate this month. You can't call me strange. *sadface*

      Weird...I was wearing fingerless gloves during Nano because my main character wore them all the time. And they were grey too. Weird...

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    2. Liam: I know I'm strange. Something would be seriously wrong with me if I was *gasp* normal.

      Erin: Weird...

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  2. I have conversation with my characters a lot too. I have this hand hold recorder, and I was listening through it the other day and after awhile I came across this like radio show version of a book that I had made when I was like 8. It was hilarious. :)

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    1. Glad to know I'm not the only one!

      Ha ha. When I was about 10 or so, my sister and I took the computer microphone and recorder program and made dozens of fake radio things. I think the recordings got lost in the last computer switch-over, but I imagine they would be pretty hilarious too.

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  3. "I've turned just about every kitchen utensil my family has into a weapon of some kind."
    That's a sentence you have to hope never comes back to haunt when you when you're wrongly accused of murder or assault - your lawyer might suddenly have a lot more work to do. Ha ha ha ha :D

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    1. No kidding. I thought something similar when I wrote that. :)

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  4. Awesome post! I usually don't talk aloud as or with my characters, but I always test out the facial expressions I'm trying to describe. Often, this happens when I'm not actively writing. Hopefully no one noticed that time in history class when I was practicing all of my protagonist's usual expressions during a lecture on the Compromise of 1850.

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  5. I talk to my characters all the time. I also stare off into space and workout two or three paragraphs ahead only to realized I haven't typed a thing. Yeah. I do that a lot.
    And, anytime I'm stuck on what to do next, I always get a story idea that sounds like the next Hunger Games in my head.
    ~Sarah F.

    www.inklinedwriters.blogspot.com

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    1. I forgot about staring into space. I do that too.

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  6. Turning cheese graters into swords...oh, I love it!
    I haven't acted any scenes out, though I see it all in my mind. And I talk to a lot of my characters and have them talk to me. I recently let one of my characters get his own Facebook account; my family REALLY thinks I've gone off the deep end now ;)

    Chazak,
    - Hannah

    www.swordofink.com

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    1. LOL! Giving a character their own Facebook sounds like fun.

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