brain. fried. mmm, fried brains.
Originally published at Dark Territory. You can comment here or there.
I wrote 6,000 words yesterday, all told, if you count the early early morning and then a new wordcount during the day proper. After a brief misstep in a setup scene that had me scratching my head, I deleted about 300 words and fixed the lead-in to the middle of the book. I think we’re officially in the middle now, because things are starting to look saggy. Fortunately there’s the OMG GHOST APOCALYPSE coming up to move the narrative right along. And I’m back where I should be as far as wordcount. Only four days until the Iron & Ice revision..
I’m really concerned that one of my two POVs is dull. Vincent is a rather more quiet character than I’m used to, one who defers and avoids confrontation and doesn’t want to understand his damage, he just wants it to go away. But it won’t. So he gets emo. I think, though, that even though Vincent takes a lot of abuse in the story, he’s the more stable of the siblings. Dee is broken in deep, fundamental ways that she masks with her bad-girl, badass front. And she has to keep eyes on Vincent all. The. Time. It wears a person down. She may not snap in Death Wish, but definitely in Book 2. And then shrinking, introvert Vincent is going to have to pick up the pieces. Damaged characters, I have them.
Since I’m an only child, I also struggle somewhat with the brother-sister dynamic. I worry that I’m making it too cutesy or angstful. And Dee and Vincent aren’t a normal set of siblings, either. They’re the product of a broken home, virulent parental abuse, and a host of other factors designed to fuck a family right up. That and the whole seeing the dead thing. So in addition to the abuse-survivor mentality we have the special-gift-slash-curse mentality and, for Dee, a somewhat criminal mindset, since if she couldn’t steal, con or bargain necessities, her poor vision-having brother would be SOL.
Oh, it’s fun to torture your characters. Speaking of which, I should get back at it.
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Death Wish
New words: 2,582
Total words: 31,022
Dee: Cracks the case again, has to break the news to a normal person that ghosts exist and a bad one is after her
Vincent: Saves the day, has a bad feeling
Ghosts spotted: Big Bad, poltergeists, the dead-world equivalent of the entire living-world town
Research topics: None
Random sampling of text: “You are not welcome here,” it screamed at her, with a thousand voices, one for every link of the chains around its neck, wrapping its wrists and ankles and spiking through its heart.
Other work: None, it’s Sunday…and I have to go pack soon for an overnight trip.
Reading: A Great and Terrible Beauty, Libba Bray
Viewing: Ugly Betty