P.S. I Hate You

Originally posted in October:

      The girls over at Notebook Sisters are geniuses. Utter geniuses. That's all I have to say. They came up with the brilliant idea of writing letters to your characters. You know I just have to do such.

      So, while I neither have the time nor the patience to make gorgeous photo version of the letters because I still have half a presentation to complete before Tuesday, but hopefully sooner, I'll post the contents here. Be warned, I often call my characters by names that aren't quite their's. It annoys them so much, but that's half the fun.

Dear Pretty Boy,

You annoy me so much. You have that evil, dolphin laugh, that impish grin, and you hate anyone with stubby, human ears. You argue constantly with people you shouldn't argue with and one day you might get stabbed in the back because of it (literally). As far as I know, you shouldn't die, so please don't go doing something stupid. One day, you'll fall in love, and I can't wait till you meet her. You will freak out. Be warned. I'm tired of you not realizing that you are a horrid person who's accusing people you don't know of doing things you can't prove. And maybe you should actually listen to your dad. I'm not going to say anything I shouldn't, but running off like that to join the army is going to get you in a mess you never dreamed of.

Not-So-Sure-of-Love,

Silence

P.S. Say hi to Lucy for me. Maybe yell something uncomprehendable like you normally do.

Dear Three,

I'm sorry about all the pain I've caused you, and please forgive me for forcing you to live where it's cold, with only the vaguest memories of the sun. I've stolen your family, your home, and your life, leaving you a prisoner with uncaring people. I want to hug you and love you, but I know you'd cast me away. I'm a horrible not-so-much-of-a-twin to you and as an author I've ruined your life. I can't help that it has to be this way. The faeries found you and stole you, and that's all I can say. All I want is your forgiveness. There's still hope, and maybe you can set things right. Don't give into your anger. Just do what needs to be done.

I'm so sorry,

Silence

P.S. Please don't rip his heart out, and deal nicely with those two you're going to kidnap.

Dear Jef-Jef,

I know you hate me calling you Jef-Jef, but please just deal with me here. Your one word responses are killing me and I desperately want to slap you when you use them. I don't care that you're my favorite. Like I was saying to Alley earlier, it's not that odd that I want to smack Crayon (who is only the most annoying elf on the planet) when I get the desire to smack you. Don't worry, I'll be a good girl and stick to biting my pillow, but really. Do you have to be so quiet? To me? I pity you greatly, and you probably get annoyed by that, but I can't help but want to hug Mr. I-Don't-Wanna-Be-Hugged you. You've been through a lot. If it's any comfort, I think it will get better.

Hoping she doesn't sound like an utter idiot,

Silence

P.S. Please don't hate me for what happens in my Big Bang (I may have nicknamed something that will happen to you in the future).

Dear Fluffy,

As an added bonus, you get one on here too, even though you're not my character. I still can't get over our introduction. I lovethed it. Just saying. Please don't hate me over any aspect of flattering you. I called you Fluffy. No one here should know who you are. This will be between you, your author, and myself. I hope you don't take me to be one of those big mouthed, annoying, I-like-my-hair-so-much girls by doing this. You are just one of my favorite characters that I know of in your author's book. I love your sister and your friend, Z, but I really like you. I feel sad for you because you look at everything like it's the worst thing ever invented, but you have some excellent points. I can be way too optimistic. I can't always help that. According to something I read, I have one of the most optimistic personality types. Feel free to hand me a big wad of paper so that I may whack myself on the head repeatedly. I'll end this now. I've embarrassed you enough.

Not so sure she should've posted this,

Silence

P.S. I can't wait to read your story.

      Ahem. This was fun. I may have only wrote short letters, but I don't care. That was fun. I need to do the rest of my characters. Not necessarily on here (I have a lot of characters), but I'm hoping that these weren't boring to you all. Have an amazing day!

      Wondering if this post is worth it or not,

      Silence

      P.S. I don't hate you.

Magnets

Originally posted in October: 

      I don't want to write.

      I  do,  but I don't. Instead, I flick over to the ever so drawing Pinterest boards and try to find my characters because that will help me with my writing.

      Nice try, Bread (I might've nicknamed my brain). Nice try.

      Now, let us move on from this beginning that has no pertinence in this post. I had to get myself writing somehow. If that requires me talking about not writing, so be it.

      I am convinced opposites attract. I am convinced that characters are very unique and have personalities, and quirks, and beliefs. They're their own person. I'm also convinced that my psychological skills must be pretty great, but that's beside the point and I have no need to be getting all egomaniacal.

      On the first. . . I may or may not have had an engaging chat with my friend Alley's MMC (main male character) yesterday afternoon while entertaining some company. What's even more awesome? He's an ISTJ. The exact opposite of myself (if you didn't see my last post on the topic I'm an ENFP). I should've already known something was wrong when my favorite character in my own work in progress ended up my exact opposite. But, no, I didn't really heed such warnings. So, I've fallen in that little trap some characters will set in which you just end up utterly adoring them. 

      I'm sure we've all found such characters in books and such. I'm just stuck sitting here wondering what on earth happened. He went from a character I'd heard a lot of and sounded awesome to being a character I find awesome without much  help. I don't care if he's twisted and messed up. He's hurting and needs help and I just like him.

      Opposites attract. Just saying. Thought that might be some sort of epic pivotal point for your stories. I completely was not just talking.

      No, seriously. Think about some of your greatest friends. You're not exactly the same, are you? You have tendencies which are no doubt completely opposite than those of you BFF across the street. What about your character's friends? We can't expect them to be the same. Sure, they'll have similarities, I mean, how else would they become friends in the first place? But they'll be different enough that the friendship can work.

      Some of my best friends? We have so much in common, yet at the same time we don't. Those differences keep what we have in common from making us hate each other or something. I mean, two north magnets are going to repel each other.

      But at the same time, opposites can be hard to get to know. You have to get down on their level. You have to see it through their eyes. I could sit back and look at my MMC, Jeffery, and I could spot all these things I don't agree with or understand. Why would he do that?  You have to look through their eyes. How do they see life? We're writing our characters, not ourselves. Even if pieces of our being end up in them (I might write something on that sometime. . .), they're not us. They work differently. 

      If you want to get to know your opposite, you just have to find your common ground. Whether it's an emotion, a shared interest, a similar family member you have to deal with, or something completely different. Find something you can get along on. Then it's easier to get on their level.

      I have to do it all the time with people around me. I can just throw up my hands and say people are weird and walk away, but I like to try and get to know them when I can. I don't like opening myself up too much to them at first, but I've found that sometimes in those people you're sure you'll dislike, there's something that can be found that you will love. Common ground means everything. Whether it's with people, your characters, or that annoying character named Josh in that book you're reading.

      Opposites attract, but they can repel if you're not careful.

      Do you have any opposites in your writing?

-Silence K. Grulkey

Broken

Originally posted in October:

      CLARIFICATION: If you don't know, Cheerwine is a kind of soda. The bottle tops are quite fun to take photos of, though. And pennies may or may not be fun to throw into the bottles.

      One thing I love, and my friend Alley will be one of the first to mention it, is broken characters. Characters with interesting pasts. Take this time to decide on whatever you think interesting entails and go with it. There, blog post complete.

      I like a character with a past. I mean, what's the point of having an utterly perfect character? Not saying you can't have one, but observation has shown me that readers/viewers tend to go for the broken characters as their favorites.

      Unless you're a so called "hot" Edward Cullen. Then you'll get a bunch of screaming fan girls along with the solemn mix of gagging girls and guys who don't get the draw.

      Take Avatar: The Last Airbender as an example. Popular cartoon that draws in young children, teens, and even some adults. Why? The characters rocked and the storyline was epic. Just saying. But can anyone guess who most people's favorite character was? The broken one.

      Zuko, was, as one of my friends says, a character you knew you should hate but you can't help but root for. He came from a nation that claimed was bringing other nations greatness. AKA: Warfare. His mother vanished when he was young, and he had to live with a father who rather disliked him and claimed that "he was lucky to have been born." He also had to deal with the "perfect" sister who, though younger, was a prodigy and excelled past him. But, at the age of thirteen, he had an accident in which he spoke out of turn over something he knew was wrong. According to the laws of his nation, that meant he had to duel the man he had offended. But the man he had truly offended, if you went up the line, was his father. When he found his father being his opponent, he refused to fight. His father called him a coward and burned the side of his face, leaving him with a permanent scar.

Not the photo I would've preferred putting, since he doesn't usually smile, but I didn't have a large selection.

      After this, his father banished him (oh, his dad might've been the ruler of the nation. Forgot to mention that. *shakes head at herself*) saying he was a disgrace and that the only way he could return was if he found and captured the Avatar, a man who had vanished for 100 years.

      In all honesty, and in a way that I assure you is not creepy, he was one of my favorite parts of the show. In books, and in my writing, I like broken characters. Characters who've had hard lives. Lives that might not be figured out at first glance, but make them who they are. They're those characters that you just want to reach into the pages and hug because they're so hopelessly lost/unhappy/hurt/varies_per_character.

      So, all I'm trying to say is don't forget your character's past. The way I've seen it, Ms. Perfect probably isn't perfect. You may find that out about two years after you met her, but she's got a past. Some dark secret. Something that's changed her life forever. Maybe nothing visible like an external scar, but those inward scars on your heart that you can't erase, even if you can hide them.

      What past does your  character have?

      Peace out.

-Silence K. Grulkey

Jack-In-The-Box

Originally posted in October:

      I love water. I love pretty docks on the water that aren't so rickety that my feet will pop a hole in one of the rotting boards I failed to pay attention to because I was so intent on watching someone kayak down the river.

      Let's hope that never happens.

      Yesterday I didn't post. I had no idea what to write. I hate those days. I did a lot of thinking last night or this morning (not sure which. Either way, I was in bed), though, and after thinking over the stuff I'd watched on TV recently, it occured to me what topic I could and most definitely should write.

      SURPRISE!

      Ahem.

      I want to be left guessing. Sure, it's fun to exclaim, "I KNEW SHE'D TRANSFORM INTO A DRAGON!" much to your friend, Cupcake's, dismay, because you haven't told her you started book two, but there's a different, more interesting satisfaction from having no earthly, sunly, or pluto-ly clue what's going on.

      I don't normally get into love stories. Actually, scratch that. I don't really at all. You want to impress me? Don't give me the cliche love triangle in which I already know exactly who the main character will end up with. However,  in a random Japanese show I started watching (because I'm weird like that and have this idea that if I watch Japanese TV, I'll automatically learn how to speak Japanese) they take things to more interesting levels:

      Girl A is in love with Boy B. But Boy A and Boy C are in love with her and she doesn't notice. I like this love triangle. Naturally, I think Boy B is a good choice for her, but then I also feel bad for Boy A. And Boy C would just be a hilariously unexpected match. You see? You leave the viewers without any clue as to who'll end up with who, and no one's being pulled back and forth. Girl A likes Boy B. No tug of war. End of story.

      Another example I have is from Hero by Mike Lupica. The main character has an uncle who he's known for years and automatically trusts. But another man shows up, claiming to be a close friend of his now deceased father and telling information that is contrary to his uncle's. Honestly, this could be cliche, but Mr. Lupica did it very well. I was constantly second guessing myself over who was right and who was wrong. I was horribly, horribly confused.

      Which is an odd feeling for me. I tend to have an idea to some extent of what's going to happen. Doesn't mean it's right, but I'm not all confused.

      Hmm. I need to get going, so I'd better wrap this up. Ahem. I want to be surprised. Do me like a jack-in-the-box--jump up and startle me when I least expect it. Make me so confused that I don't know which way you're taking me. Could your villain really be good? Could you convince me that he or she is the nicest person on the planet and then shock me with the world's largest bolt of electricity and show me otherwise?

MUAHAHA!

-Silence

In Which We Meet Dorian Gray

Originally Posted in October:

      . . .And I take photos of a random someone's Pepsi can.

      I'm not kidding. It was just sitting there. No owner. But it was positioned awesomely. All I had to do was snap some shots and look weird to everyone around me--which, if you think about it, isn't that different than the norm.

      But I'm ashamed to say that I'm here with no plan. At all. I tried to figure out what I was going to do in bed and ran into a big, blank, black wall. And that's fine. We all get Writer's Block (which, coincidentally, I decided not to write about after I had that thought. I'm in no shape to be a-chattin' about that). As I keep writting, however, thoughts are coming to mind. Thank you for starting to move, my dear mind molecules.

      We just have to get out and live a little. Hardest. Thing. To. Say. To. Me.

      I'll have the desire to just hide like a hermit in my room all my days, writing whatever words come to mind, seeing what my friends are doing on Facebook, reading good and not-so-good books. The thought of moving to standing in the middle of the living room sounds boring. I need to be doing something and I won't want to do it unless I find that something interesting.

      But we need to get out and take some breaths of fresh air, feel the dew on our arms, and smile at those shiny stars. How are we to write it if we don't live it? One of the scariest things I ever read came from a passage I saw fromThe Picture of Dorian Gray:

"Basil, my dear boy, puts everything that is charming in him into his work. The consequence is that he has nothing left for life but his prejudices, his principles, and his common sense."

      Honestly, it became even scarier after that since he went on to say that the bad artists were the ones who were amazing people to be around and in life, so I don't fully know how to take that, but I found the passage scary. In more than one way.

      I sit here. I write. I don't live. Does that make me a terrible person elsewhere? And if I'm good elsewhere, does that make my work bad? We need to live. We need to smell the coffee beans. We need to stop and smell the flowers that happen to not have scents.

      I'm also a worry-wort who shouldn't take a passage from a book she hasn't read seriously. It's a book. But it made me think. What if there's a grain of truth in it?

      I don't like to think of myself as an irritable person. I most likely am, though. Especially if you interrupt my writing time. I love my writing time. It's my passion, and I'd rather you not disturb it. I'd rather write and not live.

     But at the same time, how can we write without living? How can I describe the feel of the linoleum floor so-and-so walks on in such-and-such kitchen without walking on linoleum floors of similar feel? How can I talk about dancing with bunnies realistically if I've never done such?

      And I havent. I don't have a bunny to do it with. Shame really. I love how soft they are. Even if they might begovernment spies. . . *grins at Alley*

      So, who's up for the challenge of living?

-SILENCE, WHO FINALLY GOT HER USERNAME TO SAY SUCH

The Older I Get

Originally posted in October:

      Clarification: No, it is not my fantabulous birthday. Actually, this has nothing to do with me at all. Sure, I could bore y'all with the story of my life, but who really wants to hear that?

      This is about the folks on the other side.  .  .of the page.

      Any guesses? Anyone? Anyone? I'm reffering to character age. One thing that irks me so much is when you have a character who sounds a different age than what he or she is without any reason. Take Holly Hook's Rita Morse and The Sinister Shadow--The main character was about 14/15. Before I learned she was going into highschool? I waspositive she was twelve.  Her complaining, her voice, and just everything she and her friends did, seemed so much like what a 11/12 year old would do.

      Somehow I made it past that and still finished the book, but stuff like that just annoys me. The readers want to relate to the characters. We need them to be real--like us.  Part of  real includes making them sound like their age, unless some other reasoning prevents that.

      I'll totally go for it if the character had to age up because their parents were like the dad in Silver Spoons (I'm not the only one who's seen that old TV show, am I?). I mean, if you went to live with your parents you'd never met before in your life and they turn out to be the ones acting like kids, you'd probably grow up some. After all, someone has to get something done.

      Examples for aging down are escaping me. . . Aging down just tends to annoy me. Under the right circumstances, it can be done, I believe, but no ready examples are coming to mind. Just wait and see: Something will come to me later when I'm the farthest possible distance from my laptop. If so, I'll try to mention it in my next post.

      So, I'm sitting here ranting while your eyes are bugging out wondering what on Mars I'm doing. All I want is for everyone to have characters that act their age unless by some weird coincidence they're aged up or down. Don't worry, it's not going to be that hard.

• Read. What better way to see what other's have noticed in different age groups? Especially if you're an adult writing for children or a teen writing for adults. You've got to get to know them personally.

• Watch. People watching's fun, isn't it? As long as you don't get too creepy about it, and hopefully don't grab your subjects' attentions, you can stare at them and see how they work. I tend to find restaurants to be the best place for me. You might find somewhere else. The park, work, JC Penny's. . .

• Talk. Talk to people. Get to know them. See how they're tongues work. What kind of stuff do they talk about? What sports are teenage guys into? What does the average working mom chat about when she's with her friends?

      As writers, we need to have our five senses open to the world. See what the people are actually like. Get in their heads. After all, won't we be better off that way?

      If not, at least you won't irritate me when I'm reading your book. *sheepish smile*

-Silence K. Grulkey

Unwritten

Originally posted in October:

      I may or may not have went on a rant involving fruit yesterday. Particularly strawberries and possibly pineapples. But that's for you to decide. For me, it's just fodder to think on. My favorite character? It's utterly pointless for me to know his favorite fruit. How's that supposed to get involved in a story where there are much bigger things going on?

      We now interrupt this program to make you sniff the strawberries.

      *Ahem.* But the strawberries are important to me. I force people I know to "throw strawberries" at me. I know whole, long, backstories. Some of which may never have any reason being in my story. Sure, Eve may have sent letters to her mother and her sister while she was under cover. Will they all end up in the book? Of course not. 

      Unwritten stories make our characters more real than they could be without them. You're not cardboard. You've got stories you're not willing to share with others, or stories that shouldn't be told. And lets face it: Knowing you ate pancakes for breakfast on your fifth birthday probably isn't going to have any revelance to us. Let's not make our characters cardboard. We see them as real people, and they are. To portray them as real? They'd better be as real as possible.

      Don't be scared to ask stupid questions. Sure, your characters might raise an eyebrow at you and gawk like they can't believe what's come out of your mouth (granted, mine do that even if the topic seems more important. I don't usually do one on one talking with them. They don't like me doing that, really), but it's completely worth it. Would you like being in a grocery store? Why or why not? Is it too cold for you there? Some questions even lead to great ideas you never would've thought of before. Check it out: That irrelevent question just became relevent.

      Sometimes you have to focus a little less on your no doubt fantastic plot and take a look at your characters. More often than not, they wouldn't really do what you wanted them to do. I might plan out a whole love story to look at my character and find out that he just doesn't see his "love interest" in that kind of way. Or maybe your main character isn't so insane as to run off to see the elves over the death of someone she didn't really know (gags. And why did I see that as a perfect plotline?).

      We all have stories that are unwritten; ideas, thoughts, and emotions that we don't dare to write in a diary; feelings that can't escape our lips. Our characters are that way too. All we have to do is dive in and see what's unwritten.

-Silence K. Grulkey

P.S. Webs keeps changing my name back to Hotsauce. I'm still working on that, but yes, I'm Silence.