Writing For Real

Lately, I've been wondering about personal presumptions. Those thoughts and feelings that make up our individual reactions to particular situations. It makes for interesting character building. I'm currently doing some work on an admittedly different shifter story. And thanks to two particularly wonderful friend/betas, I've been doing what I almost never allow myself to do.

I'm letting myself be myself. And that may not make sense but bear with me here. What I mean is that every story has it's own characters. Every character reacts to the setup differently. And the thing every writer tries to do is to let the character be the character. Little parts of ourselves slip out of course, we can't help it.

Our characters are part of us after all.

But I've always automatically stopped myself from going that extra mile. This is where the presumptions come in. I don't think I'm good with comedic timing so I don't aim for comedy, ever. I presume that no one will find my attempted funny well, funny. My humor is steeped in biting sarcasm but I'm known to trim down dialogue because otherwise, to be honest, y'all would realize just how bitchy I can be *grins* so I presume that no one wants to read a character that snarky.

And in many cases, I'm probably right.

With this story, however, I'm forcing myself to not edit as I go. I'm sure you recognize this practice from NaNo. Also known as Writers Go Wild. I digress. The result of this means I have heavily sarcastic dialogue, an early, damn near triple-X-rated teasing scene and a lot of heavy duty blood-soaked violence.

The fact that these characters speak to me this way is definitely a bonus.

I fret. My inner editor has gone hoarse from shouting at me to fix this, delete that, and oh-for-the-love-of-all-things-good-and-right-please-don't-write-THAT. I keep thinking that someone is going to call me out on this. I can't seem to stop that little voice from saying that I'm insane.

And yet...and yet...I don't think I've enjoyed or been more challenged by a story in the years I've been doing this. Don't get me wrong, I like pretty much every story I've ever written. But this...this gives me that possibly-a-masterpiece feeling. Not to sound boastful but damn, it'll be something amazing to me.

Plus, these feel like the most fleshed out characters I've written in a long time. It'll be awhile before you guys see them as well but you'll have to let me know what you think. It's kind of like jumping out in the middle of a huge lake...so I'd appreciate the life saver!

Or, y'know, duck-shaped floaty.