Voice

So here we are again, having some problems with the Work in Progress. And how better to sort it out than to write about it? And then I’m going to be smug. Don’t say you weren’t warned.

So I’m writing the sequel. It’s five years later, so my characters have changed a bit, of course. BUT and here it is, am I writing them with the same voices they had before? In particular my beloved Ilfayne, who is a snarky, sarcastic bugger. He’s even worse if he doesn’t like you. Only this time around he’s not getting much snark in. He hasn’t melted anyone’s eyeballs for agggges. He’s hardly even blown anyone up. He doesn’t sound like him. And he’s nowhere near as much fun to write. Now this was bad enough, but now I have what is actually a rather cool addition to the problem. This is where I’m going to be smug. Because I got my cover art through.

There he is, in all his glory. Tasty isn’t he? Oh yes, my copy is soggy round the edges where I’ve dribbled on it and I’m totally in love with my cover. Only now I can no longer see my picture of him when I write him, I see this (although there are benefits to seeing him in my head a lot. Just sayin’). The voice is different. ACK! So now I have to work out a few situations where he gets to be sarcastic. Just because it’s more fun that way. And I still have to figure out where the exploding turnips go.

Hopefully the little git should settle in a few days and let me know who he wants to upset.

Inappropriate Inspiration

So, us writerly people ( I tentatively include myself there) get inspiration from all kinds of places. Agatha Christie got the inspiration for a book by overhearing someone in a bus queue ( iirc) say ‘But why on earth didn’t they just ask Evans’. I wish I could do that. E L Doctrow got inspiration for Ragtime from writer’s block. No, really he did. He sat and stared at his walls till he could take it no more, then he started to write about the walls, then the room, then the house, then he wondered what the house and its neighbourhood looked like when it was built…and then the book just kind of wrote itself. Oh, how I wish I had a book that would do that.

So inspiration struck me today. I’ve been having a knotty little problem of how to ’sort of’ resolve a row between two lovers. Well, there’s the obvious way, isn’t there? The post row bonkathon. Only I’ve never written a sex scene before. There weren’t any in the first book and if I have someone who reads that and, gods forfend, want to read the second obviously I don’t want it to suddenly be erotica. So, how to go about it? How to insinuate it all without any ‘And then Tab A was inserted in Slot B, and everyone was sweaty, a little sticky but above all happy’

So to take my mind off it I go back to reading ‘American Gods,’ by Neil Gaimen. An excellent book btw, and I love his depiction of Odin. Shame about Thor, he’s my favourite god. So there I am, reading about a zombie blowing maggots out of her nose when BOOM, it hits me. Inspiration for a really quite sweet / tender / passionate making up after a blazing row though still pretty pissed at each other love scene with very little Tab A and Slot B action.

Zombies and their nasal maggots make me think of sex scenes?

I’m starting to think I may need medication.