I do that too, Tom. Then the doorbell rings and I quickly shovel it all into a folder for a rainy day . The distraction breaks my creative flow and procrastination sets in…and excuses These experiments below I found on Pinterest: ***************************************************************************** Try these experiments when you get a writer's block…
As long as we avoid the hideous misuse of the verb to go, as seems to be horribly popular in Scotland, thus: "You should have went that way."
Tom, good example of a dreadful misuse of the verb to go, but, on the other hand, there is also this to consider… "If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it. Or if proper usage gets in the way, it may have to go. I can't allow what we learned in english composition to disrupt the sound and rhythm of the narrative." ~ Elmore Leonard
I write dialogue in the way that people speak. One result of this is that the one person in my novel that speaks English 'correctly' is a young Polish woman. Because she has learned English in a formal and structured way, she doesn't use idioms and dialect words in the way my Scottish characters do.
I like that idea, Tom. Sounds like a fascinating contrast to your other characters. Gore Vidal said that each writer is born with a repertory company in his head. He said Shakespeare had about 20 and Vidal had about 10. He said as we get older we become more skillful at casting them.
In a way, that Polish girl is my favourite character because she, of all my main figures, is the only one that I made up. The others are closely based on real people, so they were easy to portray. With her, I had to imagine what she looked like, how she spoke, how she acted and all other parts of her nature.
It's based in Edinburgh and the chief protagonist is based on an old boss I had. He is firmly in the antihero camp. The man is a complete philistine whose only interests in life are football, golf and himself, though not necessarily in that order. Most of the office scenes are things that really happened, or at least pretty close, though I've invented all of the dodgier stuff outside the office environment. One thing I'm very confident of is that the original will never read the book because he really is such a philistine that he views people that read books as sad souls with no life.
My publisher has put the book in the "humour" category. This is good, because that was my intention, but obviously I leave that for others to decide. I'm not sure what would be worse - people not laughing at a humorous novel or people laughing at a novel that's meant to be serious.
Every character worth writing about has to be a little crazy. Crazy humorous is more rooted in my comfort zone than crazy scary or crazy insane. The world is over saturated with that.
My novel was a form of revenge fiction. I shouldn't give away what I did with my target or I'll betray the plot. Absurd and foolish characters are easy because there are lots of absurd and foolish people around. You don't really need to exaggerate them much. It's more a case of foregrounding the stupidity. The trick, I think, is to leave them very much as they are and let them blunder into new situations.