Friday Flash: "No."

"Do you love me?"

"No."

"Is it because I'm a man?"

"No."

"Do you love her?"

"No."

"But didn't you tell me you wanted to get engaged to her?"

"No."

"Are you just saying that now to soften the blow of not loving me?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"No."

"Aha, I got you!"

"No."

"You're more agitated than usual tonight."

"No."

"Is that all you can say?"

"No."

"Then say something else."

"No."

"No?"

"No."

"I love you."

"No."

"How do you know how I feel? Are you me?"

"No."

"Do you want to be me?"

"No."

"Do you want to be with me?"

"No."

"I thought we were at least friends."

"No."

"Do you want me to leave?"

"...No."

"You hesitated."

"No!"

"Then here, why don't you be with me?"

"...No."

"You hesitated again."

"..."

"Do you like that?"

"N...no."

"Are you sure?"

"No..."

"I thought so. You told me you liked that before."

"No..."

"Is your memory cloudy?'

"No."

"You know what else you told me before? That I was the only person who could understand you. That I was the only one who saw you for who you really were inside. That you would stop the world if it meant keeping me near you until we were old and gray and fading away. You tell me lots of things when we're alone, like now. And I will tell you now, that I love you. I love you so much that I put up with your stubbornness and your hateful ridiculousness because it's better than being without you."

"..."

"Do you love me?"

"Yes."

"I'm Hearing Voices" Blogfest Day 2: Dialogue Introduction

It's day two of the Blogfest hosted over at Live to Write...Edit When Necessary and Reading, Writing, and Lovin' It! Today's challenge is:

"Dialogue Introduction: Have two characters introduce each other using only dialogue—no backstory, no internalization, just dialogue between the two. Max 250 words. "

All I'm going to do to introduce this is tell you that I'm using "CROSS//" characters Danielle Cromwell and Miranda Hotler, because if you ask me to write an interaction scene, it has to be them. (Also, warning: they swear like the sailors they could be, but no slurs.)

If I showed you the actual "best screencap ever" of them, I would be spoiling everything.

“It appears that we have company.”

“Good. Maybe they can distract you from me.”

“How rude. I was merely keeping you company.”

“I never asked for your company. Hey, why aren’t you looking at me? What are they saying?”

“Hm? Oh, they were wondering if we could introduce each other.”

“Ha! You go on ahead, I need a drink first.”

“All right. Well, the one quaffing her beer here is Danielle.”

“It’s not even good beer, honestly.”

“She’s a bit stubborn. And insubordinate towards me.”

“Pfft. Like you deserve better.”

“Well, go on. It’s your turn now.”

“Eh? Hm. Well this one who is…smoking. Really? You have to smoke now?”

“It’s a free country, so says we in the military.”

“This one destroying my lungs with second-hand smoke is Miranda. If I’m insubordinate, then she’s insufferable.”

“You left out the part where I’m your commanding officer.”

“No, what I left out is the part where you’re always trying to conduct special ops. missions into the dark recesses of my pussy.”

“Subtle.”

“It’s true though! I’m telling you! Even though she’s my commanding officer, and I’ve already told her no, she still comes on to me like tigers onto meat.”

“Face it, Danielle, you only say no because I’m your commanding officer.”

“Fucking you would be unprofessional. And stop smiling.”

“Stop drinking.”

“Stop smoking!”

“See how she treats her commanding officer?”

“Go fuck yourself!”

“I would love to, but I’m afraid that would be rather, ah…unprofessional.”

“Fucking lesbians.”

“I always try.”

Once again, a perfect 250 words =P

Technicalities, Vol 3: Who are you? Why are you in my novel?

All of this is true. Well, not the dress. Or the hair.

Over at Published In A Year, "The East Coaster" wrote an entry about how she gets to know her characters. I of course chimed in with a comment and, being me, attempted to write a freakin' dissertation because my process is as weird as my obsession with Pikachu. Soooooo I decided to move my rear over to my own dang blog and sort my thoughts out.

I have always been a character author. This means that I come up with characters and their relationships to each other first, plot second. (Usually the plot is fleshed out by the characters...not the other way around.) First and foremost I am writing about how my characters get through the plot, not what actually happens and how it affects everyone else. I often write about saving the world/universe, but I write it from a very personal level. The entire world/universe may hang in the balance~, but you don't care about Earth surviving as much as you care about so-and-so finally confessing their love to so-and-so...while Earth crumbles in the background. How romantic!

So my novels and stories come from the characters that come to me. Usually when a story starts out for me, all of the main characters arrive at the same time. This includes the way they look, sound, and probably even who they like and don't like amongst the other characters. Very rarely have I come up with a secondary character of my own effort later who ended up being just as important as the initial main characters, although this has definitely happened.

How do I "get to know them"? Well, as I wrote in the comment on the other side of Blogger, my brain is always going. I'm never just NOT thinking about something. But of course there's only so much worry I can allot in one day, so all the other time my brain is in "novel mode". It's really kinda scary and ridiculous, but it's how it's been my entire conscience life so I don't know anything else. When I'm not thinking about the "real" world I'm thinking my novels. And I'm not even always necessarily thinking about plot or logistics (although that's definitely popping up from time to time). Usually I'm thinking about my characters and how they would react in the most mundane of situations.

(warning: incoming "wow, you're sad".)

Tonight after work I went to a local cafe on the way home to get dinner. As I sat there playing my DS (um, Pokemon, of course) and waiting for my food and...being hyper aware of the Creeper Man in the corner staring at me while his girlfriend slept in the seat beside him...my brain, for the most fleeting moment, imagined that two of my characters were in that cafe booth instead and mumbling about Creeper Man. In the span of five seconds these two characters had a dialogue in my brain of what I was thinking: "Ugh, that guy is so creepy, isn't he." "Yes, he's kinda weird. Why is he staring at us?" "Ugh so gross. I wonder which one of us he's staring at?" "Both of us. He's imagining us having sex." "He probably wouldn't if I didn't look like such a dyke." "Hell he's probably wishing he could get his girlfriend there to have a threesome." "Hey, by the way, next time your lesbian friends want to have an orgy, give me more than a two hour warning." "Where the hell did that come from?" "I'm just sayin'." "You're actually not saying anything."

And then my food arrived and all I could think was om nom nom nom.

But in the span of those few seconds I learned a lot about my characters. (Well, I actually knew most of that already about them, but you get my point.) Probably the most valuable thing I learned is that one of them needs a bigger advanced warning for orgies. Duly noted.

I've written before about how I talk to myself all the time to work out dialogue but this is different. This is just flat out pretending. The dialogue thing is done on purpose as part of my writing job. The sitting in a cafe and pretending that my characters are sharing my experience while I omnisciently mess with their feelings just happens naturally. I can't say if this is "normal" at all. But as I said before, it's how my brain has worked since I was about ten, so there.

What about you all? Do you just have a bunch of people living vicariously through you or do you take the more ~normal~ routes of writing up characters sheets and writing out scenes to get to know your characters?

(I'ma go to bed now and go to sleep while thinking up nonsensically boring and mundane scenes with my characters in them. Odds are they'll be trying to sleep too. Man, my life.)