Topic:
Outside of Fridays, I spend a LOT of time working on this story. I managed to finish Izzy's chapter between weeks, and now I'm onto Connor, but I will still talk about Izzy, because, why not. She hasn't attained the spotlight for a while.
Example:
I was surprised that I hadn't worn a ditch in the carpet, I had been pacing so much. Sure, Levi had not even been gone ten minutes, but I was still worried.
Levi had been an idiot, yelling at Connor like that. I understood that he just lost his best friend, and from what he had said, had a bad experience with his father, but saying all those awful things to Connor wasn't going to make anything better. It would make everything worse. Worse than it already was. Since the moment we shared that ravioli in that dark closet back at our hellhole of a school, the three of us had been a team, and had decided to make it through all of this, whatever it was this was, the apocalypse, the end of the world, or just an extremely traumatic experience, we were going to make it through this together, whatever it took. And Levi shouting at Connor the way he had for no reason, could tear the three of us apart.
Just then the back door opened with a clicking of the hinges and swooshing of the hydraulics. with a sound of elation I rushed to the hall, and froze.
“What the heck!” I was so taken off guard by what I saw it just slipped out. They both stood in the doorway shivering, the cold wind from the outside sweeping over my bare foot as the door swished to a shut behind them. Connor handed Levi his purple jacket, teeth chattering.
They looked horrible.
Levi’s eyebrow was split and bled freely down the side of his face. His jaw was swollen and a large lump was forming in front of his temple. In one hand he clutched his shoulder, wincing and one side of his face was covered in soil.
Connor’s nose was a bloody mess, his lower lip was split, and one of his eyes was blackening. He didn't look as bad as Levi, but they both looked as if they had taken a hard beating.
“What happened?”
“What do you think happened?” Connor asked, sounding entirely too cheerful.
“You beat the crap out of each other?” I suggested.Analysis:
Basically the rest of this chapter is just her fixing their various injuries. Honstly I'm not sure how I got ten pages out of that, but that is really all that happened. They seriously hurt one another. Luckily, no one broke anything.
Meaning:
I can write Izzy's chapters way faster than the other two and I think that's because, out of the three, I have the most in common with her. Plus, I'm not putting on nearly as much of a persona. Fifteen year old girl is easier for me that 15 year old boy or 17 year old boy.
I think that it is good you can chanel a character like that. If you have trouble writing from Connor or Levi, you can write from her perspective. That could help you flow into their chapters.
ReplyDeleteFirst the good stuff:
ReplyDeleteThrough these snippets we get a great view of a story that has well conceived characters embroiled in an interesting plot. I especially like the thought given to the personas. If you ever need to get inside a persona and are having trouble, don't forget that you can ask people how they think about things. You do know 17 and 15 year old boys and they might occasionally have flashes of insight about their own thought processes.
Now the other side:
This entry is much easier to read than last week's. Last week was dark brown text on light brown background (HTML fail). Also, in this one the grammar is also much better, seems like you are finally writing and proofreading somewhere else before you bring it in here. However, I must note that there still are one or two sentences that seem to be an infinite string of comma-connected phrases.
I have the opposite trouble--describing a female character, especially a teenaged girl. They always were a mystery to me.
ReplyDelete