**The first Monday of every month, I let my muse take over the blog. I apologize in advance. **
Sarah wanted to write a
quick little paragraph to introduce this post but guess what? I get one post a
month and it’s MINE. So no. No no no. I’m plenty good at explaining things.
But first, holy shit I
haven’t posted since we finished the book! No one has given me any credit! You
know it’s not entirely my fault that it took so long, right? But we won’t get
into that. I mean, yeah, the end was tough, but I don’t think everyone is just
peachy spilling their guts over how they lost their virginity. So there. But
yeah, it’s done! I won’t get into the second draft woes. She’ll probably write
about that on Wednesday. *heavy sigh*
So I guess we’re taking
a break to write about VAMPIRES. Ugh. Whatever. It’s only a month. But it’s
kind of like being in a relationship with someone for a while and then they
turn to you and say, “Oh by the way, honey, I love this super lame thing and
you have to love it, too!” And you’re stuck.
But anyway, we’ve been
writing away on this thing for only three days and she’s already having doubts
about it. I mean, like, put on the brakes and give up sort of doubts. Because
she’s got good ideas, but they’re just not translating to the page the way she
wanted. As usual, I figured out the problem right away. And it’s all about
voice.
The problem is the
narrator, Alex. He’s a wimp. He’s not even a good vampire and he can’t decide
who or what he’s attracted to—boys, girls, or just someone whose blood smells
tasty. He refuses to kill anyone and that’s really what gets him into trouble
with the bad guy, who’s still nameless, by the way. Needless to say, I don’t
like him. And I had absolutely nothing to do with creating him, thank you very
much.
The other characters
are cool. Jackelyn is the best—she used to be a slayer who tried to kill Alex
and when he beat her instead of letting her die he turned her into a vampire.
So since they’re eternally linked or whatever, or because she just wants to
annoy him to get revenge, they live together. And she kinda still wants to kill
him. Benny, the love interest, isn’t exactly a strong character, but he’s well
developed. He’s sort of fragile and naïve, and he was abused as a kid and is
afraid of the dark. I mean, come on, you’re dating a vampire and you’re afraid
of the dark? That’s some complex stuff right there. Oh, and the baddy is just sadistic
for the sake of being sadistic. Who doesn’t love that?
I’m getting off track
here. I’m supposed to be talking about voice. Your character’s voice is never
gonna come to you instantly. No, not even mine. When Sarah first wrote the short
story about me, guess what? It sounded like a girl’s voice. It takes a while to
craft a unique voice. The first step with me was to just throw in a bunch of
f-bombs and then we worked from there. Now it’s hard for her to NOT write in my
voice. It’s like second nature. It’s probably because I’m so awesome. Does my
voice annoy you? I’m not as bad in the book, I swear.
So I know why this book
is bothering her so much. Alex doesn’t have his own voice yet. Sure, it’s fine
for the character to be wishy-washy because that’s something for him to
overcome. But his voice shouldn’t be, and right now it is. There’s nothing very
striking about it, nothing to distinguish him from anybody else. But honestly,
we’re probably not going to make it perfect AND get the whole book done within
a month. The best thing we can do is make the story interesting, and then if
she wants to go back and edit, then we can craft the voice into something
better.
But if she keeps
WORRYING about it, then nothing is going to get done. Nothing. We just need to
go with it.
JP