This month’s question: What personal traits have you written into your character(s)?
My response isn’t about specific traits but rather the one thing that drives the character(s), and which often says a lot about their traits.
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Weekend Writing Warriors / #WeWriWa / #8sunday
Welcome to the Weekend Writing Warrior blog hop where writers share an 8-10 sentence snippet of their writing, published or unpublished.
My snippet this week comes from the first novella in a series of seven, Shattered Dreams. Drafts for #2 and #3 have been written. The last four plotted out. My plan is to start publishing them by the end of the year. What’s fun is that the characters come in and out of each other’s stories, as they should as one or both of the couples went to school together and all remain in the same community. Oh, and there is a 1969 Volkswagen Beetle that is pulled out of the lake in #1 with a mystery surrounding it.
As a waitress, Shelley is in the diner’s freezer, having propped the door open with a brick. She stumbles, exclaiming out loud, and in the next instant, Mason is there beside her asking if she’s alright. She’s startled, bumping into him, which tips over a bucket of pickles that moves the brick, which seals them in darkness.
SNIPPET:
Shelley heard him moving around. “Where are you?”
“Smile so I can see you.”
Shelley chuckled, unable to help herself. So like Mason to joke when there was a problem.
She heard him moving. “What are you doing?”
“Let’s pretend we’re blind, and we’ll talk with our hands.”
“We are blind. It’s dark, remember? Besides, I can’t see your hands.”
“That’s the point. We can use the braille method.”
Weekend Writing Warriors / #WeWriWa / #8sunday Welcome to the Weekend Writing Warrior blog hop where writers share an 8-10 sentence snippet of their writing, published or unpublished.
My snippet this week comes from a current work in progress, Arrested Pleasures, that is the 3rd novella in a series of 7. The first, Shattered Dreams, has been published. Drafts of #2 and #3 have been written. The rest are being plotted out. My goal is that Burning Desire #2 and Arrested Pleasures #3 will be published by the end of the year.
Dan Walker and Anne Martin had one disastrous date in high school and he’s been chasing her ever since, unable to get a yes to another date. It wasn’t often that anyone could get the better of Game Warden Anne, yet he could do it with one word: Dare, a game they had started after that one date. Confronting her head on was the only way he could get her to talk to him. Even back then, other guys were thrown off with her long look that they called cold. He called it curiosity, and he liked it when she was staring at him. Almost like studying a bug under a microscope. He was good with that, her being focused on him.
SNIPPET:
She decided to up the stakes.
“Truth,” she said, calling his bluff. It was chancy and sometimes worked.
He unfolded his arms, put his feet closer together so he stood straighter, and looked down at her. “Dare.”
Damn, he just called her bluff.
“Dare, but only with the Truth first.”
“I get to choose the Dare?”
She started to nod, then hesitated. That was too quick. Damn, he was outsmarting her again. How did he do that? If she said no, he’d call her a coward and heckle her for days. If she said yes… crap, she could be heading for a bucketful of trouble. She took a deep breath and expelled it. “Deal.”
He grinned.
Oh, gawd, she was in trouble now.
Seven stories with seven couples. Each couple with their own story, told against the backdrop of a small southern community of Laurel Ridge, Georgia.
SHATTERED DREAMS – Mason Baylock has returned to his hometown as a newly appointed judge. He’s hoping to reconnect with his high school sweetheart, Shelley Willis, but she’s not interested. To keep him foremost in her mind, he frequents the diner, located across from the courthouse and where Shelley works, on a regular basis. Once a week for the more than the past three months, he’s been asking her out. And, once a week for more than the past three months, she’s been turning him down.
And then one evening, they become locked up in the kitchen’s cooler by accident. That’s when there’s no more escaping–the real conversation begins–and where the heat gets turned on. She can’t deny she isn’t attracted to him, but she’s not about to date someone who shattered her dreams years ago, either. And then, she discovers that there is more to the earth-shattering consequences than even she imagined, which threatens to fracture and splinter life as they know it.
Will both their dreams be shattered forever? Or does enough of a spark remain that they can rekindle the love they once shared?