Made it Home

And my landline is out again (in a very different way because you'll get an immediate this number is unavailable message) I knew that because the parents tried calling it by accident when I was away. Also my cell phone won't work here. It worked fine twice at rest stops along the way but here nope, can't find a carrier (which is WHY I have a land line)

I had another mystery charge to an escort service on one of my cards and I had to cancel it and start over (didn't lose my points which was the main thing). I'll probably have to do that with the other card too. Will look it over tomorrow again. All this because I needed that QS reader which I still don't have.

Rocket was waiting for me when I got home. The neighbors have been caring for him.

So this is one of the things I planned to talk to in my writerly ways. Being in character. When you get down to it, mostly you think of being out of character as a fanfic issue but not always. I started thinking about it this week because of two stories one fanfic one not.

Let's start with the fanfic which is more forgivable. There are things we want to do with our fanfic and maybe they should be tagged as AU or OOC but they aren't. It's possible this is how people see the characters. The one I am thinking of was a story I was reccing (but probably won't after this actually), a Prodigal Son wip where I finally started into it and immediately Jessica Whitly is being depicted as an abusive drunk. Yes, she is an addict but everything canonical says she's a good and caring mother. She doesn't do everything right by any means but she doesn't hurt her children purposefully (nor does she dislike Gil and Jackie and that's in here too).

But being OOC is a great way to be kicked out of the story (and this is one I'm kicking to the kerb) It's worse in original fiction though. Yes, technically anything the author does is in character but there are ways to make it seem so out of character its jarring. The one story I'm almost done with had a male potential love interest, a cryptid hunter, who was kind and considerate to the main character and about half way thru for no reason he starts belittling her and being toxic masculine and gross. This sort of 180 feels like it is out of character. There is nothing in the story (other than he's hanging out with his male friends) to foreshadow this sudden turn of character and it bothers me. It's like the author suddenly realized there was no conflict in the story and decided boom this is what I'm going to do.

Does this sort of 180 change of character bother you?

Links from Betty
Starting Over.
It Never Gets Easier

Lead Magnets to Promote Your New Release

Understanding Permission: Legal Considerations for Writers

The Writer Who Doesn’t Know What They Don’t Know

How to Balance Passion and Profit

Why Story Endings Are Often Predictable – And That’s Okay

How Point of View Can Solve Your Writing Troubles

Five Common Dialogue Mistakes and How to Fix Them I'm side eyeing this one because most other how-tos tell you to put the exposition in the dialogue NOT the narrative

Three Painless Ways to Patch Plot Holes

Giving Your Hero Agency When Things Go Wrong

Free Resources for Writers

Personalizing Your Protagonist’s Emotional Wound

Character Type & Trope Thesaurus: Magician

The Power of Setting

How to Create Insanely Complex Characters Using Shadow Theory

I Was Right All Along - How to Write the Right Way

Tips for Distant Settings Redux

COMMON OBSTACLES WRITERS FACE: PERFECTIONISM

Querying Basics: 5 Tips for Landing a Literary Agent

How to Write Three Types of Friendship Arcs

How To Bring Back a Defeated Villain

Five Ways to Hide Your Foreshadowing

Six Signs You’re Dehumanizing a Species or Culture

Should You Write Over the Summer, or Take a Break?

Character Tropes and Types: Innocent

How to Be More Creative

How to write a killer one sentence pitch (or logline) for novels and memoirs