I imagine it as a room with a big screen television but instead of comfy chairs for viewing, it has bean-bag chairs. Sure, it feels comfortable at first but, before you know it, you're all hot and sweaty and you realize it's almost impossible to get out without assistance. And despite all that, you know you'll go back again.
Sure, dude. Sure. You sit in my brain for five minutes and tell me how lucky I am
interesting...Only once. The sad part is that the character's personality didn't really work for that story, so I kind of went back and gutted her, replacing her with a somewhat more (at least outwardly) demure character in the original one's body. That story is still in WIP status, and I haven't managed to recapture the original character anywhere else since. Talk about killing your darlings...
Otherwise, I do get the anticipation you describe, but mostly because I tend to identify with my characters and am eager to share their experiences vicariously. I've talked elsewhere on here about how my sexuality is often confused as to whether I want to be sexual with someone or experience their sexuality from their point of view... so I kind of end up doing that with my characters as well.
It sounds like you've at least been able to retain her voice, even if she doesn't yet have somewhere she belongs. In my case, I lost her voice when I gutted her dialogue, and haven't been able to get it back. She's so different from who I am that I don't know if I'll ever find her again.
So unfortunate- the challenge of writing somebody who is very different from who we are is such a pleasure when it works out right.
Oh yeah, that's different and a pity and probably the essence of 'killing your darlings'.
hopefully, this darling is not dead, maybe just locked away somewhere like the basement of his brain?
Did you mean to reply to someone else? Because it looks like you're talking to yourself.
How did that happen? Yep was replying to @TheExperimentalist reply to my earlier comment.
It's cool. I figured that's what happened. Seems @sirhugs followed it as well:
I gotta point out though, and hopefully I can do it gently, without making you feel too called out, that "his" is an assumption. I've been pretty careful about not revealing my gender on here, for reasons I can elaborate on (and have mentioned in passing elsewhere), so I imagine it was based on the fact that my lost crush character is female and a presumption of heteronormativity. I realized shortly after posting that I'd meant to include the clarifier "of all genders" in my original comment to pre-empt that sort of thing, but didn't think it was worth the edit once I'd forgotten it.
Thank you for the clarification. Being a Boomer, I still have some dated programming hiding in the reaches of my own brain that unfortunately seeps out ocassionally no matter how much I try to bury it. A friendly reminder always helps.
Don't we all? Thanks for understanding.
Remind me never to let you have a crush on me
...ouch. Not what I meant.Remind me never to let you have a crush on me
That was me, the real me, speaking directly through my character to Mark, my male romantic lead. And the funny thing is, I added that line after I had already finished the story. Why? Because by then, I was completely in love with this fictional man, and that was my way of admitting it out loud, both in my world and in his.
Same (but women, not men). Many of my characters are portrayals of women I have met, either at work, in the street, casual acquaintances; and there's always a sentence or paragraph in those stories where they segue from reality into fantasy, and the emotional kick-in can be intense. If it's not, what's the point of writing these stories?
