Help, Action Needed

Need some action words and help with a scene.

A young woman is in her bed on the second floor of the house and hears a noise. The noise is coming from the foot of her bed. She notices the window, which she closed earlier, is open and the sheer curtains are bellowing in the wind. The intruder is between her and the door to the hall. The window is her only escape. The sound of the man coming closer, she jumps out of bed intent on escaping through the window when the man grabs a handful of hair and yanks her backward, ouch. Before she can yelp, he clamps a hand over her mouth.

Here's the deal, she can't see him, not because she's blind, but because I don't want her identifying him. She can't get killed or immobilized. He only wants to scare her, not hurt her, not yet.

Questions:

What does it feel like to get your hair yanked so brutally? I mean, I've had my hair pulled, but how do you describe the pain?

How is she going to get out of this situation? Should the attacker 1, knock her out or 2, manage his escape without being seen.

Also, I need a list of action words.

Think of this as an exercise, and thank you in advance.

Givaaway

It always gets peoples attention, doesn't it. Giveaways. Well, if you go here you'll find one for a cool sounding book, Two Way Street by Lauren Barnholdt. Good luck.

I think I can

I'm going to start with a nice low number, say five hundred words a day, and be happy if I get half that much done each day. A thousand words a day is way over my limit. If I get there, all the better. For me, a thousand words is close to a whole chapter. I'd have the thing knocked out in no time.

I've never been good a goals. That's why I never make them, but the times they are desperate and I feel a renewed sense of purpose.

I mentioned in my last post I was taking a break from Bum's Rush. What I meant was, I'm going to work on one then the other. I see others doing that and it seems to work for them. I think I can, I think I can.

Watch my meter on my "Bum's Rush" page.

How Present the Past

Many of you have given me some good advice on my current WIP, Bum's Rush. Thank you. One piece of advice, heard many times from different people, is to get away from it and write something else.

My first WIP, a work I started six years ago, now, has been on my mind. It's the novel I cut my teeth on. The one I allowed to be critiqued, the one I finished at least twice. I got it out the other day and started rereading it. Lo and behold, it's darn good writing. When I thought about it, it should be, I mean I nurtured it for five years before I put it aside for Bum's Rush. So there you have it. The name of this piece is, How Present the Past. Just so you know. You can watch my progress on my Bum's Rush page.

Betta Safe than Sorry

Hello my friends. I woke up thinking what a wonderful world we live in insofar as the internet is such an amazing tool for just about everything a person can think of. Isn't it strange that people, who you'd normally never know, much less talk to, convene and become chatty. There's always someone out there to offer themselves and rise to whatever need one has, whatever cause of the moment needs attention, or just to spend a sleepless night with.

Frank jumped to his death earlier this week. I came into work and went to feed he and Shirley when I noticed, well, there was only Shirley. My boss and I looked around and sure enough, Frank had dried out overnight and stuck, dangling, to a footstool next to his tank. He was a jumper, that Frank. He probably thought life would be better in the big pond where daily he watched, with apparent longing, the big fish swim around. How utterly astonished he must have been when he realized, oops, there ain't no water in that tank. But he had high hopes. I suppose there's a lesson to be learned from this. Suffice it to say Frank's lesson was, I suppose, "Dream big, but don't go over the wall." Frank and Shirley are, or in Frank's case, were Bettas. The divider came out and Shirley has the whole tank to herself now and Frank, well, he's in a bigger pond after all. I guess, in Shirley's case, it was betta safe than sorry.

Like a Monkey on your back

It's like having a monkey on your back, this writing. There's no let up, no rest. I can't even get up in the middle of the night and NOT think about it. That's okay, actually, because it puts me to back to sleep quick. Now it's like, You will never make your goal at this pace. I say, SO WHAT? I'LL JUST MAKE A NEW GOAL.

Now when someone asks how the book is going, I know they're rolling their eyes behind my back, heck, they're doing it to my face. No one is taking me seriously. I could take a brake, but I'm afraid I won't remember stuff. Besides, it never goes away. Like a monkey on my back.

I remember when I was on fire thinking about writing. Every waking moment was consumed with it, always plotting, always making notes and soaking in every ounce of learning I could absorb. Then doubt set in and a slow death began. But I won't let it happen. I've got too much invested and doubt is not a huge thing. That's what I tell myself. Didn't I read somewhere if you have doubt, you're probably a good writer, better than you think, and you'll work harder to achieve perfection.

All self pity aside, I have encouragement all around me. Others are going through it or have and overcome. I will too.

Fast Healers and other things

I've spent a lot of time revising one chapter. It's got violence in it. I'm not a violent person by nature. I can't even watch boxing because I don't understand the desire to do that to another human being, or wanting to. So you see, it's hard for me to write that. At first my victim only received a bump on the head and a little scare. I was thinking about down the road when my victim needed all his bodily functions to move the story along.

I've noticed in books I've read that injuries never are as bad as they seem they should be after a battle. Characters seem to heal quickly in books. Oh, they might feel a bit of discomfort for a day or two, then one day they realize the pain has abated.

It was brought to my attention that if I want to be an author, my grammar and punctuation don't reflect it and I should get a word processor. If they make a word processors that can detect missing commas or sound alike, different meaning, differently spelled words, I'm all over that. I know I have a problem and I've been working very hard at learning punctuation, especially. It's always been a sore spot with me, but I refuse to let it silence my writing. I know I'm not alone. Oh, well, maybe I'm a little sensitive. I'll have my WIP gone over by an expert before I dare to submit it anyway.

Speaking of WIPs, I've promised myself a few moments blogging, then I must get back to work. No more waisting time.

Dread, more than fear and hard verbs

I was told that my action scene didn't grab the reader because I didn't use hard verbs. The writer gave me examples of hard verbs, but I didn't see the difference. I've been looking on the internet for, "Hard Verbs" but all I've found was that verbs were hard. But wait, maybe it's how you use the words.

I recently read an article and I'm sorry, I don't remember from where, but it was about writing horror. I don't write horror, but I think there may be some similarities to writing suspense. The article said, and I misquote, Dread more than fear can drive a story.

Have you ever read a story where you dreaded continuing to read? Dean Koontz, in my opinion, is a master of creating dread.

Okay, I hope I've given you something to think about.






The Coolest Thesaurus ever If anyone has a cool thesaurus, I'd love to know where it is.

Beauty Treatment

Thank you, my friends, for your patients. I know you wait with bated breath for my next sensational blog. I have sinned, it's been a week since I blogged.

I have been working on a face lift for my blog. I was almost done when I decided to put a new template on one of my pages, thinking it was a page I was having trouble with. Well, it was my main page and I lost all my links. Anyhoo, as things go, it will be better this time around. Keep checking.

Muddy the Waters

Our goal: To make things as hard as possible for the main character, the heroes, the good guys. And to make things easy for the bad guys, then figure a way to turn the tables.

Our Job: To throw roadblocks up where ever we can to prevent our characters getting what they need. Aw, that's character abuse, now isn't it? Yet it's our job as writers to keep the story believable. Our characters are, after all, ordinary people, depending on the genre, of course, and depending on the character's occupation.

Let's face it, adversity makes or breaks us, shows our strengths and weaknesses. Helps us to grow and change as we meet the challenges put before us. This is our goal for our heroes, and if it's done right, The reader gets the delicious anticipating of wondering how it'll be pulled off. How satisfying, too, when our heroes outsmart the villains, setting the stage for "Happily ever after." For the moment, at least.

Easier said than done. I struggle with this. I tend to want to smooth the way, rather than muddy the waters. I have a lot to do, I'm realizing. You know it's easier to write about doing it than to write it.