My Main Character’s Heart just pounded, thumped, raced, leaped and fluttered her to Death.

Words. Dang, there are a lot of them. Many, many, many. And therein lies my problem. I don’t know enough of them. Case in point, I’ve just repeated the same word to describe how many (bastard!) words there are to use.

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I don’t know, oh little blue horse of the stunned face, or should I say, oh petite, azure equine of the bewildered guise? Thank you Thesaurus, please marry me and have my wordy little babies. Or  should I say, discursive miniature humans, perchance?

A month ago I entered the swirling, tumultuous, heaving, shuddering maelstrom that was my first professional edit.  Or, as I like to call it, a MOFO of a rollercoaster that made me puke and pee my pants. Wheeee, now that was a ride.

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But I gotta say, I wanna go again! ‘Cause like, I learned so much, and the book might not suck now, and I know how to punctuate and stuff now, and I grew during the journey, blah blah, *insert random crap about expanding horizons here*.

Alongside all that growing, I made a discovery. And that is, having characters who are constantly cold and terrified throughout the entire manuscript is…how shall I put this delicately? Fucking annoying. Because you need WORDS, people, to describe that kind of shit in an interesting way, for thirty-six chapters. And you can’t use just any old timeworn word. Oh no, no, lordy gracious me. You need the type of words that make a reader think, ‘hmm, this author chick knows how to rock a description. I feel as though I’ve transcended to a higher plane of existence. Perhaps I shall not use this book to wipe my bot-bot after all.’

But why, for the love of god, did I not set my book in a climate that changed on the odd occasion? There are many, many, many copious, abounding and multifarious ways to describe being cold and I’ve covered them all. Every.single.one.of.them. But you know what? The girl was just COLD. COLD. COLD. It’s a nice word. Simple. It is the matriarch of all those other little meager, shitty brats like, icy, crisp, frigid, frosty, frozen, bitter, bleak, brisk. Hyperborean. Hyperborean? Curse you Thesaurus gods, you hid that beauty from me.  Now I’m an un-knower of words and a liar.

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As for the endless stream of scenes wherein my MC was terrified, well, if her heart launched into any more acrobatics I was going to get have her admitted to the Cardiovascular Hall of God-Damn-That-is-Bloody-Ridiculous Fame.

Hers pounded like a herd of wild horses, fluttered like a flock of birds, sledge-hammered, nail-gunned, very occasionally just thumped really fast, visited her throat on a regular basis, did a shit load of missing beats, magically timed itself with the ringtone of a mobile phone,  and then raced and thudded her to ultimate glory.

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That is not a heart. That is not a blob of ventricles and tissue inside someone’s chest, it is a bloody pegasus on speed. A tiny microscopic pegasus, that likes to hang out in people’s throats. Bottom line people, her heart beat. Just plain old beat. Sometimes faster than normal, sometimes just regular. It didn’t actually slow because that would mean she was heading off to meet the Reaper, and as her god I did not allow that. Her heart did also not actually go into her throat, because then she would be dead. (Refer previous sentence.) So, her heart beat. It was usually beating very fast, but that type of word choice won’t transcend anyone, and the people who write the Thesaurus will be very sad doleful, so Pegasus it is then.

Excuse me while I hop online and order some meds and a defibrillator, to ensure my MC doesn’t have a heart attack before book 2.

Oh. Book 2. The one I have an infinitesimal amount of developed storyline for?

“Ah yes, Book 2,” she says, her heart dashing against her ribs like a crazed cobra. A tiny, little, old, cold cobra.

5 Comments

  1. M. Unchie on October 13, 2016 at 7:27 am

    Book 2 😃😃

    • DanKG on October 15, 2016 at 5:51 am

      Extra|Limital 🙂

  2. Karen Graham on October 13, 2016 at 10:12 am

    Awesome. Brilliant. Tremendous. Astounding. Marvellous! 😉

    • DanKG on October 15, 2016 at 5:51 am

      Ha ha! Love it. That’s so kind, gracious, thoughtful and eleemosynary of you.

  3. Moi on October 13, 2016 at 5:59 pm

    Great stuff !

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