Thanks to everyone who took time to check out my blog and sign up to win Kim's book. It was a lot of fun. Watch this space for more book contests coming soon.
Now On To Those Curious Things We Do With Our Eyes and Chins...
Right now it's back to the MFB manuscript. I'm down to the last little tweaking, looking for repeated words. Every author has their pet words and phrases that are repeated so much they become a cliche in their own right within the story.
What are mine? Thanks to my crit partner, Tammy, I've discovered I love for people to angle their head back to look at someone. Or as Donna Fleisher pointed out to me, I have everyone chuckling or nodding their head.
One area that is really hard for me is what to do with people when they look at someone or something...there are only so many words for gaze, stare, glare, etc. For a while I had my people gazing at everything and each other. So I changed out some of the gazes, and now I have too many stares going on. Checking out my Flip Dictionary and Synonym Finder don't help much. Seems the compilers of those resources also have a hard time coming up with other words to use in place of gaze or stare. I just read a novel where the author was always having someone gaze or her gaze did this or that. We gotta make up some new words here to avoid repeating the same ones!
An action beat I use a lot has to do with chins. My heroine lifts, juts, and raises her chin a lot to show determination, indignation, and to receive a kiss from the hero. I wonder how many times in a day we actaully lift our chins. My heroine is probably getting a strained neck muscle from doing that so much. There's gotta be other ways to show these attitudes.
Well, no matter what, this manuscript has got to be mailed Monday along with Michelle's copy of Bygones. I have the mailing materials. Now all I need is a new word for stare.
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