Hmmm...I dislike the times when I feel as though I can seriously see no way out for a protaganist. If it lasts for a few pages, I'm alright with that, but chapters and chapters of oppresive hopelessness are a real turn-off for me. Melanie
Posts: 938 | Registered: May 2008
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Robert, I submit that all of a writer's characters are basically the writer. The trick is to separate different aspects of the writer in creating each character. That way, you can extrapolate on yourself, using "what if?" to build a believable character from just a part of yourself.
Posts: 8826 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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whats really fun is giving a character powers from the beginning, then having him discover those powers later on.
Posts: 35 | Registered: Jun 2008
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I've had that happen before. I once started a story with a character who was based on me when I was younger. A published author critiqued the first few pages on her blog and suggested that my character wasn't very sympathetic, and that the very traits that made the character like me (although she didn't know it) were the ones that would be better in a minor character. Story of my life Posts: 938 | Registered: May 2008
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REG: All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us? Posts: 556 | Registered: Oct 2006
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But Robert, the scum of the earth characters are based on only part of you--the part with scum potential.
I didn't say they had to be you as you are now. They can be based on extrapolations--you as you would be if thus and such had happened or if you'd made this or that choice.
So if there is part of you that could even think of scummy things, that is the part your scummy characters come from. Just as no one is perfect, no one is free from the possibility of being nasty.
quote:I didn't say they had to be you as you are now. They can be based on extrapolations--you as you would be if thus and such had happened or if you'd made this or that choice.
This is exactly how I approach creating the majority of my main characters.
My YA MC is based on me, had I chosen to go extreme in my pursuits of my musical goals.
One of my SF MCs is based on what I might be like if my very mild case of autism was instead full blown.
And, in fitting with this topic (such as it is in a thread entitled "Random Musings"), one of my favorite characters is based on what I would be like had I ever decided to treat "The Godfather" as my Golden Rule.
Frightening, no doubt, at how scummy I could be. The cool part about all this is that, as long as I keep everything on the page, I can do anything I want to anyone I want---for whatever reason happens to make sense to me at the time---and I don't have to worry about being on the 11 O'Clock news.
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It's not good when you find out the people you're in business with are wiseguys and/or made men.
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
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It's not good when you go to pick up your pay if the bosses are discussing rubber payroll checks.
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
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Since I started working for the US Postal Service, I've been regularly told, from that day to this, that my job is obsolete. And that's over twenty years now.
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Since I started working at my job, stay at home mom, I've been told that the job is obsolete, and beneath me. Usually by people who really need a hug from a mommy. Posts: 1201 | Registered: Jan 2008
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Really, Sheena? Since I started my job as a stay at home mom 11 1/2 years ago, that has never happened to me once. Once a dental hygenist started ranting about how it wasn't fair that I didn't have to work and she did, (but that whole dental office was weird) but that's the closest I've ever come to having someone not be totally cool about it. Melanie
Posts: 938 | Registered: May 2008
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It was more of a joke with an undercurrent of truth. Or a mostly true fiction. I've never had people say that directly to me, but I have had several people think that at me. Mostly people from my previous occupation that don't understand how I can quit to change diapers.
I think being a mom is awesome and a friggen powerful and important job, and that the hand that rocks the cradle rocks the world.
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I started wearing prescription eyeglasses at the age of 11. The ophthalmologist, the optometrist, the optician, my teacher, my school's principal, my minister, my parents, all and every authority over me warned me about how mean other kids could be and not to take to heart being called four-eyes. No one ever did. However, I was curious how wearing a pair of eyeglasses made a person look like they had four eyes. I didn't see it.
My first clues came from reading the correspondence of our founding fathers. Ben Franklin invented bifocals because he was annoyed by having to switch between his reading glasses and his myopic-vision correcting set. At least one anecdote I encountered in the correspondence remarked that at times Mr. Franklin looked like he had four eyes. I found no further clues on that front.
A few years back when I returned to college after a long intermission, I needed reading glasses to read textbooks. One day I was studying with a classmate. My myopic-vision correcting set was perched on my brow, and I was reading with the reading glasses set on my nose. She remarked, "When you wear your glasses like that you look like you have four eyes." Aha! wearing two sets of glasses at once, one above the other, makes a person look like they have four eyes.
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited March 20, 2009).]
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Don't all you stay at home moms out there just laugh like crazy when somebody says or thinks at you that it's easy?!
I had this off duty cop come up to me one day in walmart when my kid was having a fit, and flash his ID at me and tell me that my child was being disruptive and I had to leave the store. Immediately. Sad thing was, he didn't know he was dealing with a jail cop from the neighboring county. I knew he had no authority. So I messed with him and acted all scared and got him to admit that I wasn't doing anything illegal, that, well, the kid's just making a scene and it looks really bad....at which point I told him that he should know better than to try to be badge heavy, cause the sherrif I work for doesn't tolerate that stuff. He apologized and left.
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When I was fitted for glasses, I didn't wear them regularly, and was told I didn't need to. But age sixteen rolled around, and I found I needed to see to drive, and I needed my glasses to see, so I wore 'em all the time.
Now that I've been hit by praesbyopia, if that's how it's spelled, I have to take my glasses off just to read. My current pair are technically bifocals, but that hasn't helped.
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Ah. Glasses at eight, for me. Changed my life forever. Glasses can give (at least a tentative kid like I was) an excuse for all kinds of things you don't want to do. Swim? I don't have a place to put my glasses. Fight? ...glasses. Clean your room? ...glasses-- my mother never bought that one.
[This message has been edited by Owasm (edited March 21, 2009).]
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I got my glasses at 10. I started wearing them at 13. I hated wearing glasses, so I started wearing contacts at 17. I've pretty much worn contacts from then on. My vision is 20/400 in both eyes with little +'s and -'s tagged onto each ratio. If I don't wear contacts, I have almost no peripheral vision.
Posts: 2003 | Registered: Jul 2008
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Elton John once said he started wearing glasses to emulate Buddy Holly...and eighteen months later, he found he couldn't see without them.
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I miss White Castle. And no the frozen food section of my supermarket won't do...sliders have to be hot and fresh.
Posts: 114 | Registered: Feb 2009
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The best hot dogs I've ever eaten came from a fast food stand in Fishkill, New York. Later they converted to a restaurant...later, after I'd moved away, the restaurant changed hands and changed menus.
(Last time I was there, a little stand out back appeared to have the hot dogs on the menu...but I didn't have the nerve to order one.)
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Right now I've been up since 8:00 PM (Eastern Daylight Time) last night. I'd add "awake" but I've nodded off several times along the way, mostly in the 3:00 PM to 4:00 PM hour.
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I am my own boss, and boss of no one else, which suits me like wearing the outfit I was born in while lounging on a tropical shoreline.
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
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Since having heart failure, I've learned two important things:
1) I realllllllllllllllly like butter, steak, ham (including SPAM), bologna, potato chips (and corn chips), Mexican food, Italian food, Chinese food and pizza.
and
2) If I can eat it, chances are it's bland, I'm not too fond of it, it's nothing resembling snack food, it's a type of fish or fowl (not including duck) or I hate it.
[This message has been edited by InarticulateBabbler (edited March 25, 2009).]
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AimeeRock--I've had them. Against my will. They may be good, but I'd never have them again. I imagine they are colored for the same reason pistachios are colored red, and that's just so much more disgusting in a hot dog. Posts: 938 | Registered: May 2008
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I am attempting to give up chocolate this week. My addiction is hanging on tight though.
Now that I'm in my late 30s (just barely though!) chocolate gives me a migraine at least half of the times I eat it. That doesn't stop me from thinking that this time it might be different.
(edited to put a halt to rampant overusage of the smilies legend.)
[This message has been edited by Unwritten (edited March 25, 2009).]
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I used to get headaches when I ate chocolate, still do sometimes. I found that eating salty peanuts made the headaches go away. Later, I found out I'm diabetic. Through trial and error, I discovered that eating sweets was causing my headaches. The mechanism of the headaches is fairly straightforward. Converting starches and sugars into glucose consumes water. The glucose enters and overwhelms the bloodstream. The kidneys process out excess glucose, again, consuming water. The body becomes dehydrated. The brain aches because the water volume of the blood feeding it is too low and the glucose it needs can't be taken up as readily.
Dehydration is also a common cause of chronic kidney stones. I've passed my share and then some. Chocolate doesn't help. Oxalate compounds in chocolate are a source of minerals that form into calcium oxalate stones in the kidneys and gall bladder. Same with tree nuts and spinach.
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I carried a 7 millimeter stone impacted in my 4 millimeter urethra for 11 months before it finaly passed. The stone had been in my kidney for at least two years growing from 2 millimeters to 7 before it broke loose. 11 months of excruciating labor and a painful delivery. My worst.
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
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My brother passed a stone last year...somehow, I though I, with my sedentary and indulgent lifestyle, would be the one with health problems like that.
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
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See that? I've stopped telling people that eating sugar gives me migraines because everyone acted like I was insane, and what happens? extrinsic gives me a perfectly good explanation for it without even knowing me.
I'm not a diabetic, but by all rights I should be. I crave sugar like it's going out of style and get terribly sick every time I eat it. Eating sugar that's not covered in chocolate does seem to decrease my symptoms though, although it could be a placebo effect.
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effect? affect? I'm never quite sure. Even when staring at the definitions they I can't decide.
Posts: 938 | Registered: May 2008
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I'd craved carbohydrates from day one. Full onset of diabetes type II happened in my 35th year. Sulfonyuera medication helped a little to control my blood sugar levels, but not my cravings. Starting on a time release glargine insulin last year, my carbohydrate cravings are finally controllable. Now I crave fats and proteins.
In most situations effect is valence neutral and affect is negatively charged, except perhaps for alternative definitions, like, affect a smile, affect an air of confidence, affection for, but not affectation. Chocolate, though I love it and won't live without it, affects my health and effects my happiness.
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited March 25, 2009).]
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And no the frozen food section of my supermarket won't do...sliders have to be hot and fresh.
