Day 6 (2017) is The Point of No Return
My protagonist definitely wants to refuse his call to adventure. How will he try to wriggle his way out of a request from the police? I highly recommend working through today’s prompts. They inspired me to explore new areas of character development.
#vss365: trim
He had feared this call would come, but trimming the budget wasn’t as bad as losing the job all together. He would have to lose the new hires, but where else could he cut corners? In this business, if he cut the corners too sharply, someone could die.
Today’s Simple Task
Show your Main Character’s greatest weakness. Put him or her in a moral dilemma.
What is Kirk’s biggest weakness? The guilt he feels over his brother’s accident? Or is there something else?
Warm-up Exercise
Set your timer for 10 minutes. Write about the last thing your character would ever want to do. Then write a scene forcing your character to do the last thing they would ever want to do. – inspired by prompt from Josie (NaNo poster)
This is a great prompt for me today. The last thing my character would ever want to do is set foot on the property where he grew up, but that is exactly what he has to do.
Word Of The Day
quixotic: adj. extravagantly chivalrous or romantic; visionary, impractical, or impracticable. 2. impulsive and often rashly unpredictable.
His movements appeared quixotic, but he was controlling his world.
8 Action Verbs:
Receiving the coroner’s report, didn’t add much new information, but it finally activated an official murder investigation.
Shawna felt he was telling the truth, but his answers were stilted, calculated. He was leaving something out.
Kirk appeared to have contracted something flu-like on the plane. His throat was burning. Until he could get some throat lozenges, he was sucking down breath mints.
He had often wished life could be edited.
Her questions guided him closer to the dark place he didn’t want to face.
She lobbied for more time, but the sheriff was ready to move on. “Wrap it up,” he said.
She told herself if she could just hold on until he retired, she would finally get promoted.
They shared a history, but their memories of those times couldn’t be more disparate.
Awesome Sentence Challenge
Explore connotations: Choose a word (may I suggest one of the active verbs or the word of the day) and look it up in your thesaurus (thesaurus.com). Pick one synonym that has positive connotations and choose one that has negative connotations and write a sentence for each one. Read the sentences aloud. Do the particular connotations of your chosen word influence how you write the rest of the sentence?
I chose contracted because it has a lot of different, interesting meanings.
As they tore down all of the trees and developed every acre of land, they forgot to widen the roads.
His thoughts were disordered. He had trouble putting events in a timeline that worked with his reality.
I didn’t get to my refusal scene yesterday, so I’m going to explore the refusal again.
The refusal card: Strength
MC’s biggest fear about the Call to Adventure: Five of swords
The responsibilities that can’t be abandoned. It is why he can’t refuse: Six of wands
My interpretation: My MC’s refusal is rooted in his idea that he has overcome his inner challenges and obstacles and found his inner strength. He fears facing what he left behind and worries he will find conflict, hostility and aggression awaiting him. But he can’t refuse his call to adventure because he has found strength and is confident and proud of what he has become. He needs to face where he came from to completely win his battles.
Because my example from 2017 went off-book, I went back to the book and took a look at the Refusal section. There, I took a look at the Story Template and decided to fill it in. Here’s what I have so far:
My hero, Kirk Bumke, started out in a world represented by the four of coins. Now he has been called to adventure by the five of wands. But he refuses because he doesn’t want his fortunes to change. He has finally overcome his challenges and found his inner strength. The worst thing that could happen if he goes is he could lose the natural gifts he has used to tame his world . The worst thing that could happen if he doesn’t go is his past could come back to bite him.
Happy Writing!
I hope you find some inspiration in these exercises. See you tomorrow.
Experience Writing 