Bad, Bad Words
Boston weather of the day: snow—actual snow!
Seema and I have been writing some bad, bad words as part of the NaNo rush, but I think my bad words are different from her bad words. For one thing, I haven’t used “cough” even once yet, never mind three times in the same sentence.
At this stage, my NaNo novel is an outline with passable dialogue (except for Jack phoning it in) and a whole lot of bad words where the stunning prose ought to be. The bad words are:
- look
- seem
- be
- turn
- smile
- frown
- shrug
- sigh
- jump
- stand up
- sit down
- raise eyebrow
- nod
- shake head
- motion
My characters need to do something while they’re speaking, so I toss in a bad word wherever I know actual relevant actions should be happening. Now I’m getting to the end of the story, where Snark Conquers Evil and our heroes ride off into the stargate together. And that’s where the trouble starts, because I have to go back and fill in some real action where my characters were just jumping around like crazy people.
Maybe I’ll do the descriptions next, instead.
November 13th, 2004 at 8:53 am
You’re reading over my shoulder, aren’t you.
[fears the editing process]
November 14th, 2004 at 12:33 am
Yup. In fact, I’m reading over all 41,092 shoulders.
November 14th, 2004 at 6:27 am
For some reason, your list of words made me think of a Stargate X-over:
See Jack frown.
Snark, Jack, snark!
Hear Daniel sigh.
Die, Daniel, die!
See Teal’c raise his eyebrow.
See the Goa’uld stand up.
See the team raise their weapons.
See the Goa’uld fall down.
Look, Sam, look at the boys now.
Smile, Sam, smile.
It will be your turn to save the day next time.
November 14th, 2004 at 1:37 pm
Did you mean poem, not x-over? After much geeking, I’ve gotten your lovely poem to display as a poem instead of a paragraph.
November 14th, 2004 at 4:53 pm
I was thinking “Fun With Dick & Jane”–I think it was the ’see’ and the ‘look’ that got me going. (And possibly hanging around with 6 year olds). I am happy you got it cleaned up so it can appear in its intended format (one sentence per line, a la Dick and Jane).
November 14th, 2004 at 10:30 pm
I never pass up an opportunity to geek. I also have a new word: grab. My characters are all very grabby. They express disapproval by grabbing the offending character and (optionally) dragging him somewhere out of the way.