1. I like starting novels by calling a place a dump. This is the second first draft where I've felt compelled to identify a place as less than pretty. My first line is thought by my protagonist, Lauren, as she looks across the road at her new place of employment: "Even the look of this place was lousy." Short but fitting.
2. I'm slightly Dickensian in my naming style. I didn't have a name for the laundrette until I got to the point where I needed to name it. Is it just me or does Crimbleweed's Laundrette sound as though it could have come straight out of Dickensian Britain (with a few electronic advancements, of course)?
3. When I'm nervous my characters ramble. Shelley offers an example in chapter one: "Hedging your bets, I like that. Now, in all honesty, there’s no need for two of us but the boss insists. We’ve got regulars and then we get people coming in who managed to break their washing machine by lodging a coat-hanger in it. Keep an eye on them, make sure they don’t do it to ours. We’ve got a contract with a repair firm, a local one, but I’ll deal with that." Then again, verbal diarrhoea is not a bad thing during NaNoWriMo!
4. Yorkshire's my bread and butter. I like it and I write about it. And woe betide any non-Yorkshire person who criticises it!
5. I have a thing for cantankerousness elderly women. Meet Mavis: she brings her clothes to the laundrette in a shopping trolley. "After a lot of grunting the woman managed to cram her load into the machine. She pulled out a bag full of coins and inserted them one by one into the coin slot. It was like a day at the seaside amusements without the annoying bleeping in the background. Instead, each drop was punctuated by a raspy cough on the part of the customer. Lauren gritted her teeth and returned to the back room."
I'm having fun with this. How's NaNoWriMo treating you so far?
2 comments:
Still enthusiastic into day 2. I think I'd better write some more.
Keep at it while the enthusiasm lasts!
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