Wednesday, June 21, 2006

Ten Things

Swiped from Tori's blog:

Ten Elements or Words I Always Use in My Stories

1. There's always an animal as a main character.

2. My heroines never were and won't be sexually promiscuous.

3. I've always used a setting from a state in which I've lived.

4. "Grin" seems to be one of my favorite words to use. My characters seldom simply smile. But they "grin" constantly. Any ideas of another word I can use?

5. Thus far, all of my heroines have only had one living parent. Huh. I just realized that.

6. With one exception (that I made consciously when I realized that I'd fallen into this rut), my heroines are always tomboys - unafraid of dirt and work and having a job or hobby that's usually considered something a man would do.

7. Coffee. Coffee figures prominently in nearly everything I've written (including most of my short stories... apparently coffee is so important that even a limited word count won't let me edit it out).

8. I was stuck in the "only child" rut for a while. When I realized this, I made up for it by giving a HUGE family to dear Camilla. But, I've just realized that my latest WIP that I'm plotting right now, I've fallen back into that rut. Neither my hero, heroine or villan have a sibling. Huh.

9. All of my novel length writing is category length -- I don't know if I have 100,000 in me for only one story. I typically fall in the 65,000 - 70,000 word length.

10. I love comedy, so most of my stuff has at least a little silliness in it. I sat up last night trying to figure out if I could include some into my latest WIP. I like a touch of the absurd, what can I say?

Man. This was HARD. But it's done, and now you know everything there is to know about my writing. Why not do one for yourself?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Great list, Marianne!

3. I've always used a setting from a state in which I've lived.

I never thought about this when I was working on my list, but a large number of mine are set in places I've lived, too.

Ceri Hebert said...

Most of mine are set in NH since I love it here. And Maine.

gyccbe-get your cruddy crates behind Elroy.

Charity Tahmaseb said...

Aw, man, you say sexually promiscuous like it's a bad thing.

*running and ducking back over to mainstream fiction-land*

You know I'm kidding, right? ;-)

It's not all about the sex. And I'm still thinking about your other (great) post, but haven't been able to get my thoughts together. Might end up as an entry on my own blog.

Anonymous said...

Have any of your heros been promiscuous?? Just wondered, hoping there wasn't a double standard lingering there. ;-)

And, it's not where the characters start out as much as where they end up, said Pam, who must defend poor, tormented Chelly, heroine in one book, who didn't say no to too much physical companionship for a while there until she found true love again.

I did three books set in places I've lived until I got bored and started reaching out to places friends lived. Probably better to stick with what I know firsthand.