Originally Posted by BookCat
Sorry to raise the dead but nano is beginning soon and my intention is to finish the first draft of Long in the Tooth this November. In preparation for this, I was going through the Scrivener project and found a letter one of the main characters wrote to me (I'm crazy, I know).
"Dear author,
I am not at all happy with the way you’ve written my character. I’m so boring. Could you make me a little less “middle class housewife” ish please? This is such a dull stereotype. I can’t be very much fun for you to write either; but you will leave me in this existence long after you have finished writing even the final draft and sent me out into the world.
I’ll have to live this dull existence for all eternity. Please give me a more interesting aspect to my personality. Let me break out of the housewife (divorced) mould and LIVE. Perhaps I’m a secret serial killer, and I don’t mean cereal! Maybe I have some other secret vice. At the moment, the only interesting thing which happens to me happens in my dreams: I get bitten by a variation of vampires according to who I’m pissed off with that evening. There, make me use bad language sometimes, I can bloody well do it. Even Neil, a musician, doesn’t swear or smoke dope. He’s too much of a goody too.
Consider your poor readers! Do you honestly think they’ll plough through this boring story full of boring people? Or, having read a few pages, toss it aside for something more rivetting? That’s right, they’ll toss it aside. If they can be bothered, the reviews on SmashWords/Amazon will go something like:
“I’m glad this book was free, it was so boring that I couldn’t finish it. Life is too short to read bad books. I won’t be bothering with this author again.”
Yep, that’s what they’ll be saying.
So make me and my friends more interesting. Give us good bits and bad bits. Give us enemies and fears, secret vices and humour. And for goodness sake liven up the story. My ‘illness’ is going to clear up soon but you’ve only written 32k words! Yes, yes, I know you have to make me well enough to do all the things which occur later, but bring in another conflict before you end the health arc. Perhaps my damn ex gets in touch BEFORE the hospital appointment takes place?
Oh, Neil and Geoff are grumbling in a similar manner about their characters. Neil says he’s too good, despite his profession and Geoff says he’s a stereotypical uncaring male. Two extremes. They want some in-betweenness.
Why am I always asleep when the most interesting scenes occur? Okay, we know this isn’t a ‘vampire’ novel like Twilight (thank goodness), and you want a more ‘real world’ in which vampires don’t actually exist, but at least let me and the others ‘play’ vampires on the goth scene.
And when you take me to a goth club I don’t just want to stand around, talking to minor unrememberable characters who don’t appear again, I want SOMETHING TO HAPPEN.
The phone is ringing now, I expect it’s Geoff with something boring to say for another boring scene,
Yours, stereotypically,
Claire. (From Long in the Boredom)"
It's disheartening when even your characters don't like the book!
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