Showing posts with label evil. Show all posts
Showing posts with label evil. Show all posts

Friday, February 27, 2009

Blog Chain Blatherskite


Yes boys and girls, it's that time again. My highly intelligent, well educated and overly talented blog chain writer buddies are certainly showing they have a darker side this time around.


I LOVE IT!


This one was the brain-child of recently agented (congrats) Leah Clifford (http://leahclifford.livejournal.com). Elana J was before me (http://elanajohnson.blogspot.com/) and since I am the last link in this chain, start back at the beginning with Leah for her wrap-up!


Here's our question:


What do you do to amp up the conflict? What pins do you stick in the little voodoo dolls? How do you torture your characters?


In some of the previous responses, it seems my writerly friends are much nicer than I. Can you imagine NOT hurting your characters? Well, some did like their characters so much that it was hard to do for them.


Hurting my characters was a problem for me in the beginning, but not in the way you would think. I, uh, was going to kill almost all of my characters, leaving Margaret, the MC alone and miserable. In fact, I even had her death scene at the end planned. I imagined horrible deaths.


*Sword through the gut, but it would take a few hours to die...

*Beaten to a pulp with head bashed in, surprisingly quick death, but really gory scene...

*Horrible death giving birth all alone...

*Father dying slowly, gasping for breath, in excruciating pain from poison...

*Snapping of the neck, that was short and sweet and well deserved...

*Dying alone, old and weak...


My writing teacher told me in no uncertain terms, "You can't kill off all your main characters!"


"Oh yes I can. It's my book, and I can kill anybody I want."


"Then you will not be commercially viable."


"Who cares? I'm writing this for me! And I am killing everyone!!!"


Yeah. How many of you guys laughed? Who the hell doesn't want to be commercially viable? Needless to say, after a while (I don't like to admit when I'm wrong), I had to tell this wonderful teacher that he was right and I was wrong. That wasn't the only thing I had to admit to being wrong about. That poor man got several emails after the class had ended. I may hate to admit I'm wrong, but I will do it.


So, we have established that I do want to be commercially viable. That being said, my historical WIP became a Historical Romance and I did still kill off a few characters (only three). I also learned that I can follow a formula while writing (I had to take out some of my sex scenes...funny thing about fidelity in a romance, a rape scene...he got his neck snapped anyway, and I didn't entirely kill Patrick...he still got stabbed and I still got to write my almost death scene).


Okay, so I have to keep my dark side in check. I call it my "social filter" while functioning as a person in the real world.


How about you? How dark and evil are you really? How's that social filter?

Saturday, October 11, 2008

Cute Ghosts and Dark Entities













Tommy’s birthday was great; he had to go on a treasure hunt to find his birthday present. We had a cook-out and invited a few friends. His birthday cookie and cupcakes were quite fitting, considering my theme this month. Speaking of the theme this month, I have one heck of a story for you today!

To follow from the beginning of my ghostly stories, go here: http://terrirainer.blogspot.com/2008/10/and-paranormal-journey-continues.html .

By now, I’m sure you realize that yes we did bring something home from our stay at the haunted Crescent Hotel. I’ll also take this time to tell you that the stories you are getting this month are not even close to the whole story, just a sampling of what I think are the more interesting events that have taken place over the last six years.















Since I mentioned my son, Tommy, at the beginning of this post, those of you keeping up will know what an evil genius he is. Go here http://terrirainer.blogspot.com/2008/10/ever-had-ghost-hitch-ride-with-you.html if you are unaware of what an arch-villain my son has the potential of becoming (Literal Dan’s son ain’t got nothin on Tommy, just compare: http://literaldan.blogspot.com/2008/10/my-son-arch-villain.html ).

But alas, Karma has a way of evening out the world. When Tommy started telling us that something was in his closet, we just laughed and shook our heads. We weren’t falling for his tricks again. This went on for weeks. You had to give it to the kid, he was tenacious. Bed time came with the whining and complaining, I made a production of closing his closet door each night. It was mirrored, the kind that slides open. He even went so far as to come and get me to show me how the door was mysteriously open on more than one occasion.

Tommy spent the night at a friend’s house one weekend. After putting the girls to bed, I went by his room and closed his closet door, just out of habit. I shut the door as I left. A bit later, I took some clean clothes to his room, cursing the fact that I had closed the door as I struggled not to drop them. Imagine my surprise when I walked in and found his closet door open! Okay, I admit I was more perplexed than scared. I told Kel, he came in; shut the closet door, and then the bedroom door, just as I had. About an hour later, he went back and guess what he found? The door open again! To this day, we can’t explain that closet door, but we did start leaving it open at night, so it wouldn’t open by itself and scare Tommy.



Okay, here’s the story that may get me in trouble with my husband. Monkey Toe Momma ( http://mommahasmonkeytoes.blogspot.com/ ), DON’T READ THIS WHEN YOU ARE ALONE!

By now, we were fully aware that our house had issues. I was okay with this. In fact, I had embraced the paranormal. I had made several trips to a few cemeteries, armed with tape recorders and digital cameras (not that I really needed to go anywhere to find ghosts).

One night, shortly after going to bed, I started seeing weird shadows on my ceiling. Sitting up in bed, I looked down the hall through our open bedroom door, to check for any kids who could be causing them (I learned not immediately to blame paranormal happenings on ghosts when you have so many kids running around). No sign of them, so I laid back down. Watching the ceiling, the shapes seemed to form across the room above a window, moving up to the ceiling.

“Do you see that?” I whispered to Kel.
Lifting his head, he grunted “See what?”

The shadows were gone.

“I saw a shadow over in the corner.”

He laid his head back down and I continued watching. A few minutes later, there above my window, a dark shadow formed, working it’s way up to the ceiling.

“Right there, look!” I whispered again.
Up goes Kel’s head off of the pillow and the shadow disappears again!
“There’s nothing there Terri, go to sleep.”

By now, I am getting pissed. I know what I saw, and whatever this damn thing is, I’m not imagining it.

“Prop your pillow up, and when I poke your leg, just open your eyes and look, okay?” I whisper again.
“Fine, but then I want you to leave me alone so I can get some sleep.”
“Deal”

The room goes quiet. I wait impatiently for our night-time visitor to reappear. I didn’t have long to wait. As soon as I saw the black shadow taking form, I poked Kel. No response. I poked him again, as I watched this thing form into a thick black mass. It snaked up the wall, and then onto the ceiling. You could clearly make out the form of a head, followed by shoulders. As it slid across the ceiling towards us, I frantically poked Kel’s leg and whispered, “Do you see that?”

“What the hell is that?” He didn’t wait for a response from me. That thing was sliding closer to us. It was now over the foot of our bed, on his side, and gaining ground. Soon it would be directly over Kel!

“LEAVE!” Kel yelled, raising his arm and pointing his finger at the dark entity.

I will never forget the sound of his voice, nor the aftermath. The shadow slid backwards. It followed the length of the wall across from us, turning the corner, going toward the door. When it reached the door, it went down, and slithered under the top of the door frame, hugging the wall the whole time, then was gone.

“What the hell was that?” Kel repeated his earlier question.
“I don’t know, but I’m glad you saw it too.”

Then I got the giggles. Kel was not amused.

“I don’t think that’s funny.”
“You thought I was crazy, didn’t you?” I said between laughs. I was just relieved that he had seen what I was seeing, and knew that I was not imagining it.

I rolled over as soon as I could control the laughter.

“What are you doing?” Kel asked.
“I’m going to sleep.”
“You’re what? How can you sleep after seeing that? What if it comes back?” Kel sounded a bit alarmed.

Needless to say, Kel spent another sleepless night standing guard against the paranormal beings that had taken up residence in our home. I think I was deep in slumber within a few minutes. I will admit, that was the only time I’ve ever seen anything like that. Kel will admit that he hopes to never see it again.

Last time I told you not to bother leaving the light on….maybe I was wrong about that.

Until next time (oh yes, there are still more stories to tell), you guys have a great weekend!