Villains – Z to A Challenge

*cue sinister music*


Writing Tip For Fellow Challenged, er Challengers.

The villain is evil, scary. Or maybe gets in the way of the protag.

OUT OF MY WAY, she says.

The reader wants to know why.

For truly sinister attributes, build your antagonist through the eyes of your protag. Don’t tell the reader what a badass the antag is. Prove it. Give the protag’s perception. Use her fear and anxiety to show the reader.

Writing Notes – Z to A

My characters come to life at my treadmill. With music blaring (Lady Gaga usually, heaven help me), I work out at four mph. My spiral notebook rests on the pedestal covering my digital screen.


Beats me why this works. Maybe my mind clears, I don’t know. I write scenes, plot an outline, what is going through my protag’s head, and major shifts in storyline direction. The spiral notebook follows me from treadmill to computer where I slap meat on the bones of the story.

Bing, bam, boom.

Sausage; sometimes ya don’t wanna know how it’s made. But with a family like mine, material presents itself. Hence the photo.

Btw, it’s kind of scary writing a love scene with Bad Romance rocking in the background.

Xenolith – A Rock Hound’s Journey – Z to A Blogging Challenge

A fragment of rock imbedded in another rock.

Geology is one of my first loves. I am a rock hound. In northwest Missouri, an amateur can find such fossils as clams, crinoids (sea lilies), petrified wood, and shark teeth.

 I call this my dinosaur egg. More likely, it is a Native American artifact.

My example of petrified poop isn't as photogenic as the 'egg'. But that is another story.

Any fellow Rock Hounds or budding Indiana Jones out there?

Youth - What Are They Reading

Adults fell on E-readers like people diving on the last cake at a bake sale. And teens are following the trend.

Who would have imagined it, kids with their feet up, Kindle in hand?

I wanted to read so bad that as a 5 year old, I looked at the illustrated version of The Black Stallion by Walter Farley and made up my own story. In first grade, (no kindergarten where I lived) when the strange shapes on the pages began to make sense, reading became my world.

Robert Heinlein’s Have Spacesuit, Will Travel enticed me to enter the realm of Sci-fi. After reading The Forgotten Door by Alexander Key, there was no turning back.

Zag

A direction or segment of a course running opposite to a zig

Or A to Z Blogging Challenge. My way.

“I couldn’t resist, mate.” – Captain Jack Sparrow

Consider this a zag without the zig, a mild form of rebellion that my first grade teacher characterized as, um, stubborn.

I never liked coloring within the lines, following the guidelines. In this business, straying from the thundering herd might brand the writer as unique.

Or pulled down and eaten by a lion. Gulp.

But I digress because I do have an ulterior motive other than exercising my perverse nature.

At the end of April, my daily blogs will line up in alphabetical order.

See? My motives are totally aesthetic.

*tap dancing furiously*