All About My WIP

I grabbed this meme from Chantele Sedgwick a few weeks ago (I took out a few questions) and thought it would be great to get to know our readers styles better. Answer the questions in the comments to help us plan posts that are relevant to YOU. 

1. What is the name of your book?

2. Where did the idea for your book come from?

3. In what genre would you classify your book?

4. Give us a one-sentence synopsis of your book.

5. How long did it take you to write your book?

6. What other books within your genre would you compare it to? Or, readers of which books would enjoy yours?

7. Tell us anything that might pique our interest in your book.

Voice #1

Title: Brake Fluid, Blood and Body Bags
Genre: Contemporary
***

So, While Triss was warming warmed up Spence and Fay, I was stuck on drunk-duty with Kate. I’d have to say, it was not wasn't (just sounds more natural) a lot of fun. The girl was ripped-out-gone, even though Fay had been shoving her full of bread, banana and bottled water. She would slowly blank out and then just kind of keel over to one side, and every time I’d catch her, I’d be rewarded with a sharp, vomit-baked laugh and a stream of gibberish. She couldn’t sit up on her own and the weight of her hot skin pressed against me was revolting, like I had disturbed a nest of insects and they were skittering up and down my arm. (I love the way you show us everything from the MCs eyes. This is great voice in these sentences too. The last two sentences are wonderful in that regard, but both are long compound complex sentences. You might want to try breaking one of them up, but maybe not.)

When she started crying a couple of times, I almost left her for the wolves right there.

And we were surrounded by them, guys, I mean. Ones bored with video games and tanked up on enough cheap beer that their morals were about as loose and clumsy as their hands. I could have left her there, but I promised Triss, so I sat guard beside Kate and let her wheeze questions and complaints into my shoulder. She asked my name eleven times and was only able to repeat it back once correctly. Most of the time she just broke out in hysterical laughter and gushed about what a nice person I was and how she had always liked me. I wish I believed her.

When Kate asked, for the twenty-third time, when we were going out for pizza, I saw Jackson speed past into the kitchen. Less than three seconds later, Triss had her hands on my shoulders.

“Okay, dump the drunk and help me get Fay upstairs.”

I looked at the eight guys sprawled over the other couches and back to Triss. “You said not to leave her.”

Triss’ eyes narrowed, just a little, as Kate sank into my chest and mumbled something about spandex, gym class, and g-strings. Triss’ tongue shot in and out, quick and purposeful. “And now I’m saying it’s time to dump her. C’mon, we have a bet to win.”

So I left Kate in a heap and didn’t look back.

Other than a few things at the beginning, there really was nothing to critique here. Your writing flows beautifully and the voice is THERE. As I mentioned above, you are also a great example of how to show the world through the MCs eyes instead of telling. Good internalization. 

Thank you for sharing!

Do the rest of you agree or disagree? Did you catch things I missed? Please chime in with a comment.  

The Problem with Accents

Yesterday we started talking about how to give our characters a unique voice. I didn't talk about accents at that time, so let's cover it now.

There is a fine line between giving your character voice by writing accents and dialects and completely killing your story. For instance, I remember reading a certain "classic" as a teen where I spent more time in the back of the book looking up translations of the dialogue than reading the story. I hated that book.

This is not that story, but another example I found online:

“W’en old man Rabbit say ‘scoot,’ dey scooted, en w’en ole Miss Rabbit say ‘scat,’ dey scatted. Dey did dat. En dey kep’ der cloze clean, and day ain’t had no smut on der nose nudder.” Uncle Remus – A Story About Little Rabbits

Feel free to shoot arrows at me for not liking the way Uncle Remus wrote that. I'm unapologetic. And most readers today don't have time to figure out what language you're writing in. They want to sit down and disappear into a readily accessible world.

Here's an example that I like and could read without tearing the pages out of the book:

Think Eliza Doolittle singing, "Just you wait, 'enry 'iggins! Just you wait!"

The accent is a bit more subtle. A little bit will go a long way. If you focus on the rhythm and speech patterns instead of the phonetical spellings, things will work better.

For example, we have a few phrases where I come from that may not be used elsewhere.

"I'm a fixin' to go to the store. Do you need anything?"
"I'm gonna..."
"Well, bless her heart..."

And so on. Most of the time you can suggest the accent in other ways and the reader will hear it even though you don't 'write' it. For example, “her honeyed accent melted off of her tongue, slowly, sweetly, and with the same elongated syllables that her mama used.” (from Writing Dialogue, see below.)

One quick note. Listen to your characters. Sometimes they all ready have a voice of their own and you don't need to figure out what it is. And sometimes it doesn't make sense. I'm working on this first draft and my male MC keeps saying ma cherie. I love it when he says it, but it bugs me too. You see, the whole novel has a Celtic vibe running through it, and he does use several Celtic phrases, but ma cherie is so French. *sigh* That's something I'll have to figure out and address before I call this new WIP finished.

Are you ready to share some of your Voice segments? Remember they don't have to have an accent. Just share something that sounds like your character.


Email them to unicornbellsubmissions@gmail.com with Voice in the subject line.


Helpful Links:
Grammar Girl: Writing Accents and Dialects
Writing Dialogue in Accents and Dialects
Using Slang and Accents When Writing Fictional Dialogue

Senses #3

The pit of his gut roiled.  He rubbed his rain-soaked sleeve across his mouth.  The rain sent the tart odor of half-digested food down the nearby drain but hadn’t rid his palette of the taste of copper and bile.  His teeth chattered, mists of air rising from his tremulous lips, one particularly pained from the air bag’s deployment.  

His baby, his pride and joy hugged the lamppost, crunched metal accordioned around the base in a fit of desperation.  He flipped his collar and yanked it high to shield against the pelting drops turning his hair into a straggling veil over his eyes.  Dudes with muscle cars weren’t supposed to cry so he passed his sniffles off as the rain and cold settling into his bones like a thousand needles burrowing deep for marrow and the blur of his vision rested squarely on nature’s shoulder.  Worst of all, he couldn’t see the umbrella-wielding unicyclist that jumped off the curb into his path, landing him in this wet situation.  If he was going to pass off anything, first would be his fist across the unicyclist’s jaw, if he could ever find him.

Senses #2

Agony wars with my despair. Alone, except for the red-barred snake that makes lazy s-curves toward me from one slope of the ravine. I twist away but pain in my shin explodes. My scream smothers the sound of the bones grating in my broken leg. Dust hangs in the air, stirred from my fall. The grit tastes like ashes on my tongue. Like regret.

Senses #1

Crap.

It was totaled. Completely and utterly totaled. The whole front fender was
crumpled in on itself, broken bits of headlight scattered across the road,
blinking and sparkling under the street lamp. Glass glittered from where
both the back rear and passenger side front, which had blown out on impact.
The sound of it still rang in my ears, that horrible crashing grinding
hitting bashing noise.

It was still raining lightly so that everything glistened from the silver
blue hood of my car to the grass and the slick black road beneath my fee. It
looked like a snake with a yellow stripe twisting away in either direction.

I reached up to wipe the blood away. It dripped from my forehead and nose
steadily, onto the wet pavement. My arm hurt. And my left calf had a good
two-inch gash in it. But I was walking, thinking, not fatally injured.

I heard a noise then, a human noise, and it reminded me. I looked through
the blood and rain across the double line to where the guard rail twisted
away. I could hear the sound of a radio, someone's voice, and a loud hiss as
I got closer.

It hurt to walk and it occurred to me maybe I was hurt worse than I thought
but I limped across the street and peered down into the darkness. The other
car lay on its roof in the gully below. I could smell gasoline and oil and
antifreeze. And as I looked closer I could see there was someone inside.

They were trying to get out.