Who's Your Hero?

Today's hop is hosted by J.L. Campbell and Michelle Wallace.

EVERYBODY has a hero/heroine. It can be real-life or a fictional hero/heroine.

Options...

1.  The Perfect Hero
2.  The Misfit
3.  The Grizzled Old-Timer
4.  The Everyman
5.  The Anti-Hero
6.  The Prodigy
7.  The Loner Hero
8.  The Tragic Hero

I shared a whole A to Z series about real life heroes, so today I'm going to share a fictional one--someone who has been with me a long, long time. Here we go, in 300 words or less...

I was emotionally black and blue. At the ripe old age of 10, my classmates latched onto my maiden name (Hicken...now add my first initial...) and I became the target of much bullying. (Including a group pledge to the rubber chicken.) I came home to a big brother who was also being bullied at school, so he took it out on me. At church I was the youngest girl in my age group, and in a different grade than everyone else, therefore, I was only worthy of being shunned.

Life was awesome.

It was about that time Kiri appeared. She emerged in my sketches and told me her tragic story: an orphan, alone in the world, abandoned by every decent scrap of hope. She was meant to be an heir--pampered, adored, respected--but instead ended up a foster child to an abusive man, essentially a slave who was fed for her labor. Kiri had every reason to complain. To hate her life. But she never did. 

Instead, she found people to train her with weapons. She sacrificed her nights and risked her safety to sneak out and learn. She dedicated herself to a cause--protecting and serving others who were unable to defend themselves.

Kiri didn't want the glory. She didn't want the notoriety. She didn't want the praise.

All she wanted was the family she'd lost.

Since that was impossible, she set out to keep others from losing the one thing that mattered most. 

She’s been with me since I was 12. I hope to one day share her story with the world, but until then, she remains an integral piece of my heart, a hero who helped me conquer my own dark days. 

   

Follow the blog tour for wonderful reading and (ready for this?) FUN:

Gina shares an excerpt: The Soulless are Here

Gwen Gardner introduces you to Men with Lies

Rae at A Writer's Dream shares a steamy excerpt AND me, reading chapter 1

And be sure to enter the 

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for your chance to win some amazing prizes!

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Follow the pony on to the rest of the tour. He will lead you to cheese and danger...erm, I mean fun. Yes, fun. 

Do you have a literary hero? A character who carried you through some of your dark times?

The Seven Deadly Edits

No, I am not talking “syntax” or “grammar”.

Books are long. I don’t mean that just in the number of pages or words. I mean the journey. As every writer knows, writing the dang book is only ½ the work. (More like ¼ in my case—or less.) Granted, there are people who can make magic happen in a single draft, but for the rest of us mere mortals, editing is inevitable. Forgive the title—because most of us will complete more than seven edits, these are simply editing categories.

1. The Detail-enator: I find, and you may too, that in the heat of the moment several little details, like oh, the fact the MC is wearing a sweater and should be dripping sweat (potentially blinding sweat) as he runs from the bad guy, tend to slip my mind. Therefore, the first edit is to go back and insert these relevant details—if I wish my writing to be believable. Every detail. An abundance of details—half of which will likely disappear by the final draft, but are imperative to me understanding exactly how each scene plays out. My drafts tend to grow by about 30% in this stage.

2.       The Continuity Continuum: Do all the loose ends connect? Where are the plot inconsistencies, and how to I proverbially sweep them under the mat? Did the MC have an injury in the second chapter I completely ignored the rest of the manuscript? Did Bob promise to come visit the MC’s best friend right before the conflict exploded, never to be heard of or thought of again? Excellent outlining can limit the number of inconsistencies, but inevitably, there will be a few. (Or a lot.)

   

      3. The Character Consistency: This is my FAVORITE edit—the one we examine every individual, understand truly and deeply how they tick, and why they react exactly how they do to each situation. What are they thinking? What are their mannerisms? What psychological scarring mars their actions/reactions? Usually I complete an entire edit per character on the manuscript, charting where they are at all times during the plot, and tightening their appearances/dialog to fit their exact perspective. Part of the fun with this edit is finding a character who’s lacking, and pulling from that mental shelf of quirky people I keep swearing I’m going to write into characters.

4.      Thematic Thorough-gate: Some people lay pretty heavy on the importance of “theme” in a book. Yes, I’m speaking of crazy artists whose noses are so high they can’t smell their own food. Theme is pertinent, and in some stories, paramount. The ones that stick with you forever usually revolve around powerful themes conveyed in every scene. Therefore, I include the “theme” edit. (Though most the time I’m scratching head as to exactly what I meant to say. I just wrote a story okay? Everything else is subliminal.) Hoping as I become more seasoned, this will become a deeper part of my “art”.

           5. Speaking of art, the Beauty Check: By the time I get here, I know I’m nearly done. Scanning through my document five to seven times, I identify any location where “show, don’t tell” applies. And what I mean by show, is painting the world with words. Rather than saying, “She saw a dog”, I might change such a statement to read, “A schnauzer’s stench caught her dander-sensitive nose.” Paying attention to all five senses, here is where reality begins to feel like the moon—well rounded. (Or not.) This is where language becomes art.

6.       Language Litigation: How many times can you use “bounded” or “gasped” in a single chapter, or book? This is where we identify trouble words and root them out. See, it’s easy to subliminally think, “Oh I like effervescent”, and then use it five times in the next page—without realizing it. During this edit, the thesaurus does laps while I bang my head and scream about cutting one more “was”, “that”, or “look”. Language also means sentence structure. Action sequences demand jarring sentences—short and exciting. Thoughtful, or calm scenes call for flowing strings of words that gleam in the candle light. The end of this edit includes syntax, misspelled words, grammar (or the absence thereof—depending on the character), and typo’s. All of this builds into the last, and sometimes most consuming edit,

.      7. Flow. When I met my first literary agent, she spoke of writing being “prose”. I scratched my head. Prose? No, this is just story telling—not poetry in every page. Since that time I realized the validity of her description. When someone reads my stories, I want the expressions to move naturally. I want each sentence to spill off the reader’s mental tongue so smoothly they forget they’re reading. Therefore, I spend agonizing hours pouring over every word, every paragraph, every page until I almost have the entire book memorized. By the time I’m done, I have literary gold. (Until my husband tells me otherwise—which he does, every time. *sigh*)

And by the time I finish, either the story is dead, or I am.   Is it a wonder it takes years to turn out a single book?

Well, there’s my editing process—in case you were ever curious. Thoughts? What do you differently? The same?

Crazy Uncle Henry: Getting to Know Your Characters

The debate goes on: which came first, the characters or the story? This of course depends on what kind of writer you are. Do you come across a stellar story idea and plot until Agatha Christie would be jealous, or do you meet someone (in reality, in a dream, etc) and suddenly realize, they have one heck of a story to tell?

I lean to the latter, or a combination, but have done both. Regardless of the method, one thing is obvious early on: there is no story without heartrending, bizarre, loveable, or otherwise stellar characters. In that vein I’m getting to know one of mine—one who is taking me by surprise, and I'd like to bring you along for the journey. Meet Crazy Uncle Henry.

Me: Say Hello Henry.

Henry: (stares squinty-eyed at me)

Me: I hear you are as diabolical as you are talented.

Henry: Who sent you here?

Me: (clearing throat) Says here you live in Lakeland, Florida, on an island, in the middle of a lake. How may I ask, did you come to own this particular piece of property? And why would you wish to live so far from civilization?

Henry: You don’t have any chocolate chip cookies, do you? The milk chocolate kind?

Me: No, Henry.

Henry: Oh good. Proceed then.

Me: You don’t like cookies?

Henry: Nasty things. Did you know on New Years Eve in 1984, the Toll House Inn—original birth place of the chocolate chip cookie, burned down? Mischievous things. And Massachusetts had the audacity to name the chocolate chip cookie its state cookie! Disaster, heart attacks, and coconuts thefts. All because of that *3$^ cookie!

Me: Interesting.

Henry: But I suppose they are no worse than the lizards.

Me: The lizards?

Henry: Well yes. That’s why I went into hiding. They never leave the coconuts alone!

Me: Wow. So, tell me, do you have any family?

Henry: (giving me a suspicious frown) Why?

Me: Because people have family…usually.

Henry: Posh. Electric charge, now that’s something everyone has. Static, I believe you call it. Build up enough of that and you could permanently damage your optic nerves. Quite unsafe I tell you, all this “static”.

Me: I’ll have to keep that in mind. I hear you made your fortune at a very young age. Would you like to tell us about that?

Henry: I am a scientist, madam. My work is for my-eyes-only.

Me: Sorry for prying.

Henry: Rightly so.

Me: Is there anything you would like to tell our readers, Henry?

Henry: Never wear rubber shoes.

Me: Okay. Thank you. That concludes our…one and a half minutes. Now um, security?