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[mare]

Google Docs is a decent Word substitute.  I like that it saves automatically and is accessible from anywhere, so I no longer have to worry about saving docs to flash drives to move between my desktop and laptop.  The biggest downside I've encountered is that it has a word count limit.  My super long stories literally won't fit in one document on Google LOL.  But I don't even have Word anymore, so it's either that or Open Office.

Thankfully, my 4th graders are too young try using AI.  The most they do is plagiarize by copy/pasting directly from the internet, which is painfully obvious.  But I feel for teachers of older students.  I think it would be hard to detect and even harder to prove, since you can input the same prompt and get a different result each time.

The toolbar keeps popping up each time I open my story, so this time, I let it come up with a list of suggestions.  One of the suggestions was: "The sentence beginning with "The tiny bra top showed plenty of cleavage..." could be rephrased to be less sexually suggestive."  Considering that sentence was in a sex scene, I'd say being sexually suggestive was the point LOL.  It also finds my use of medical terminology in a hospital scene  "vulgar" and thinks some of my sentences are too wordy.  The last part is probably true, but otherwise, I'll take its advice with a grain of salt.

Your toolbar seems like a snob! LOL

[RokofAges75]

LOL Right?  I think it's a prude!  Cleavage... how scandalous!

[RokofAges75]

I've been trying to think of a new topic to discuss, so here are a few questions about original characters.  When you create original characters, can you picture how they look in your head?  Do you base their physical description on real people or make it more generic?  If your story were a movie, who would you want to play them?

I wrote a blog about this for my site last night, based on my realization that the woman in the new version of that annoying Jardiance commercial looks just like my Sims version of Dawn, a character from the current story I'm writing.  She is not who I picture in my head when I'm writing Dawn, but then, neither is Sim Dawn.  They do both fit the description and general look of Dawn, though.  (Side by side comparison: https://i0.wp.com/dreamers-sanctuary.com/fanfic/wp-content/uploads/dawnjardiance.jpg)  In actuality, when I was creating Dawn, I based her appearance and personality on a friend of a friend that I've only met a couple of times, like ten years ago LOL.  Inspiration comes from strange places.

That got me thinking about how some of us (not you, Mare, but definitely me LOL) used to have to find photos of celebrities or models to put in our cheesy banners.  I almost always had a look in mind for my character first and then tried to find someone that fit that look, but I wonder if some people did it the other way around.  I don't actively go looking for people to portray my characters in banners anymore, but when I describe them in my stories, I do sometimes use real people as inspiration.  For example, the other major OC in my current story is Natalie, who I imagine as looking similar to Natalie Portman, Victoria Pedretti, and Minka Kelly.  Again, I don't actually picture any one of those actresses in particular when I write her, but they all have the same type of look I had in mind for her.  But then, I have other characters that I honestly have no idea who I would "cast" to play them in a movie because I didn't base their appearance on any particular people.  I can still picture them in my head, but I don't have anyone to compare them to.

[mare]

That's a good question. Who knew you'd be writing about the Jardiance lady lol They do look eerily similar.

I never picture anyone in my mind when I write my original characters. It isn't until I have written them for a little while before an image even pops up in my head. That might be weird, but I feel like everything I do writing wise is weird. Once I do visualize them it's never someone famous. I guess maybe an amalgam of different people. Even when I wrote BSB and now with Succession, the main characters don't always look in my head like how they look in real life. Many times, when I would write Nick, he wouldn't really look like the Nick we know. In fact, some of the time, the Nick I pictured was a brunette. I guess I never shared that before. It's been the same with Roman etc... a little Kieran but a little not.

It's mainly personalities I might borrow from people. I modeled Mimi in my Tumbledown story to mimic Kieran's real life wife Jazz. At least how she comes off in public. But in my head, she doesn't really look like Jazz. I do this in my dreams as well. I very rarely dream about people I actually know. I always see faces that aren't familiar to me, even when they are supposed to be someone I know. I couldn't even really describe any of them the way you just did, because I'm not sure I would be able to solidify one distinct image.

[RokofAges75]

Once I do visualize them it's never someone famous. I guess maybe an amalgam of different people. Even when I wrote BSB and now with Succession, the main characters don't always look in my head like how they look in real life. Many times, when I would write Nick, he wouldn't really look like the Nick we know. In fact, some of the time, the Nick I pictured was a brunette. I guess I never shared that before. It's been the same with Roman etc... a little Kieran but a little not.

I'm the same way!  I can picture characters in my head, but it's not a very clear picture.  It's like I'm seeing them from across the room without wearing my contacts or glasses - I can tell whether they're tall or short, what type of body they have, their hair and skin color, etc., but I can't make out their distinct features.  Even if I could draw well (which I can't), I'm not sure I could draw a portrait of them that I was happy with.  When I make them on The Sims, I'm just trying to create a sim that looks sort of like what I see in my head.  I think it's because, like you said, they're really just an amalgam of different people's features.  I've heard that the brain can't create a new face from scratch, that the faces we see in dreams are composites of faces we've seen in real life.  If that's really true, that would be a reasonable explanation for this.  When I dream, I usually know where I am and who I'm dreaming about, but the people and places never look the same as they do in real life.

It's funny that you brought up the "canon" main characters because that was going to be my follow-up question.  Again, same here - the way I see the Boys when I'm writing about them as characters is different from how I see them in real life.  I'm not sure if that's because I've changed them through the events of the story or because I insert some of myself into them or simply because of the way the human brain works, but I do know what you mean.  I can't even really explain how they are different - it doesn't come down to something as simple as having a different hair color or missing a leg LOL - but there is a definitely some distinction between the real and fictional versions of them that goes beyond the circumstances of the story.

I was also going to ask about your experience with rewriting a fanfic as original fiction, like you did with Mel's Tree.  Did you picture the characters differently in the published version as you did the fanfic, or did you still see some version of the Boys, just with different names?

[mare]

That's a great way to describe it. Seeing them from across the room almost blurry.

Rewriting Mel's I did picture totally different characters than I did with the BSB version. I had to reimagine them a bit, but not as much because it was already an AU, so they were more of the original characters than the boys anyway. Rewriting Shadow Woods was more of a challenge because they were the boys, and I actually did picture them as them for that one.

Random note: I just got a comment from someone saying they were more aware of my story than the elections in their country. I'm assuming she's from Mexico. I wish I was more aware of my story than our upcoming elections. I'd be a lot happier. lol

[RokofAges75]

That's interesting that you had different experiences with Mel's vs. Shadow Woods, but it makes sense, given that the Mel's Tree was already AU.

LOL I also wish I could block out our upcoming election and focus solely on my story instead.  Writing and reading are great escapes from reality!

In other news, I'm finally on summer break!  Yay!

[mare]

yay!!! Good for you! Do you have any fun plans this summer?

[RokofAges75]

My family rented a cabin in Pigeon Forge, TN for a week in July, so I'm looking forward to that.  Otherwise, no major plans, just going to relax and write!

[mare]

I've never been to Pigeon Forge but everyone I know who has gone there says it's really a great vacation. I wish I had got myself there while I lived in Nashville. No plans are sometimes the best plans! It's nice just getting to sleep in I bet! Even though for me, I would still/am still waking up at 5 am every morning. LOL

[RokofAges75]

I've been down there once before.  Pigeon Forge itself is very touristy and geared towards families with kids, but the area is beautiful.  They have a crime museum that is one of my favorite museums I've ever been to, so I'm looking forward to taking my family there.  They also have a Titanic museum that I have not been to and am excited to see.

Sleeping in is definitely the best part!  It's my second day of break, and I already stayed up until 6 a.m. playing The Sims last night LOL.  Doesn't take me long to get into summer mode!

[mare]

Wow! Here I am at 9:20 PM trying not to go to bed for the night. LOL

[mare]

Have you ever written a story and you write a very intense chapter, but all your comments focus on a very minor thing? I'm grateful for the comments, but for this last chapter which had a lot of intense moments, all my comments are focused on the fact that Gerri is about to tell Shiv about her and Roman's relationship. I've gotten four comments so far, which has been nice, but all of them are YAY!! I've been looking forward to this chapter forever! Meaning my next chapter. Meanwhile, my next chapter is already written and doesn't make that big a deal of this reveal. Now I'm like should I rewrite it and make more of a deal? Is this what everyone has really cared about all along? Am I going to piss off all my readers? I wish I had the type of brain that gave more importance to the romance side of things. My life would be so much easier. lol

[RokofAges75]

Yes! I have one on-again, off-again reader who comments on the most random things that may or may not even relate to anything that happened in the chapter, let alone the most important parts. Sometimes it's funny, but it can be really frustrating when it's for a chapter I was hoping/expecting to get a big reaction on. I think the worst was for this novel I wrote a few years ago called A Heart That Isn't Mine, which reads like one of my typical medical drama/romance fics for the first half until a huge twist that turns the second half into an intense suspense/body horror.  When I posted the first chapter that was intended to make readers go, "Wait, what??" and start to realize not all was as it seemed, this girl left a comment on it asking when I was going to change my site layout because I'd had the same one for a while.  Literally nothing about the story or the content of that specific chapter.  I'm usually happy to get any comment, but that one annoyed me!  Thankfully, I had a few other regular commenters on that story who came through with the kind of reactions I was hoping for!

I'm glad you're getting comments, but sorry they aren't focused on the intense moments you expected them to.  That's hard when readers seem to care more about an aspect of the story that seems less important to you.  You don't want to let them down by glossing over what they see as a big moment they've been looking forward to, but at the same time, it sounds like the reveal isn't that big of a deal in terms of the overall plot.  As far as rewriting goes, I guess you could reread that scene and maybe revise it to make it more dramatic, but only if you want to and feel it would fit with the rest of the chapter.  You never know what little things readers are going to fixate on.

I'm with you on the romance thing.  I write it, but I'm not sure I write it well.  Sometimes my readers see things differently than I do when it comes to my characters and their relationships, and that's okay, but it does make me question if I'm totally off-base with how I'm writing them.

[mare]

Wow! That's annoying! I hope it wasn't the first comment you got on it. All the anticipation and then when are you changing up your site? LOL Ugh!

I think I mentioned earlier that to get more readers I made this story Roman and Gerri but to avoid having to write them together I had Roman kidnapped in the first chapter, and he's been kidnapped ever since. To figure out a way to have him be abducted in chapter one, I had them together at his house and they were getting ready for a party. To make it believable that someone as protected as Roman could be abducted I decided that Gerri didn't want anyone to know about them. That's why they couldn't arrive together, so he lent her his driver/bodyguard to drive her over first and then he'd go over later. And that was the end of that. Well, everyone took that little tidbit of info about them hiding their relationship and turned it into the main plot point of the story. My first few comments were about what happened but then I hope Gerri tells them about their relationship soon. As if during all this stuff happening, she'd be like oh by the way I am your brother's Babygirl. LOL So I guess I should've seen this coming. At the very end of this chapter Shiv asks Gerri if something is going on with her and Roman. Yikes!

I think I may revise a bit. It's not important to me, but at the moment it's something like, "Oh yes, Roman and I are a couple." And Shiv saying, "Cool, I thought so....so anyway..." lol Maybe I'll make her reaction more visceral or something.

Last night, I did get a really long and nice comment and she actually did mention everything that happened in the chapter. Of course, it ended with her saying, I can't wait to see what Shiv has to say.

As for romance, I know I write it poorly. I am not a romantic person in real life. I hate Valentine's Day. I hated it more when I was in a relationship then I do now that I'm single. So, I can't imagine I'm any better writing the stuff. But like you said, it's funny because readers do see things differently for me as well.