tell me how you feel

that's what I asked my characters yesterday. Especially Louis. Arlen is easier because a lot of her is me back when I was a senior in high school. But Louis is harder. Even though I've written a character sketch and given him his own bio and asked him all those questions, still, sometimes he doesn't come across as truly here, or there. So yesterday I went back to when he was being followed in chapter three and I asked him straight out, "How are you feeling right now, Louis? Are you worried? Or have you become accustomed to being followed?" Then when he automatically reached for his magick when confronted and found it gone, I asked him again to tell me what was going through his mind. And finally when he sees himself in the mirror and knows that something awful has happened, but not what it is, I asked him what he's thinking.


I didn’t get a lot of answers. I think Louis is very untrusting at this point. But I did get a few things back, like how he felt naked without his magick to rely on. I should try to get it back to him soon, huh?

Anyway. It’s helping. This talking to my characters. Asking them what it looks like, feels like, tastes like, in their own words, not mine. So in chapter six, when Louis is looking at Arlen, it’s from his perspective, not mine.

     “He looked at her, noting the headset resting around her neck, and he supposed that was why she hadn’t heard him at first. She’d been jacked in. Was that her thing? She looked the type, with her slightly skewed sense of fashion and her boy cut. Not that anyone would mistake her for a boy. And the tattoo… It was hard not to look at it, the way it wound around her neck and shoulder, twisting around her bare arm in just the same way he remembered it twisting around him. He could almost feel it.”




meanwhile, windy and cold here, 27 days 'til spring, and yes, I am counting.