A "Just for Fun" Post, and now I shall hide.

This is the first time I am posting an identical post on this blog and on my personal blog: Savanvleck’s Weblog

Master’s daughter always gives the greatest gifts. I have received a Japanese tea set, a miniature Stonehenge (we’re still waiting for a Scottish fellow to time travel through), a circular knitting sock kit, complete with a neat bag, and “The Aspiring Writer’s Journal.”

Too bad she can’t give me a better memory, because I know there are more neat gifts, but I cannot remember them at this moment. They are always a delight and a complete surprise, and will be again when I find what I have done with them.

So, my inspiration for today, (“Ahem! Ahem!” She cleared her throat, commanding attention.) is a page in the Writer’s Journal, she gave me.

The assignment is:— Make up a story beginning with the following quotation-
“When Sleeping Beauty wakes up, she is almost fifty years old.”

I have changed the opening line, but the premise is there.

(Okay, I cannot believe I am going to embarrass myself this way, but what the heck? Here it is, complete with errors in punctuation and dangling participles.)
~~~~~~~~~~~

Sleeping Beauty woke from her near eternal sleep and gasped for air. My, how tight my corset doth feel. Hands above her head, she stretched—and screamed.

“Spots! What are these spots! There are brown spots on my hands and arms?”

Blankets flew as she surged to the mirror, her body half bent over.

“Kricky!” she said, being a fan of British blogs. “Oh my aching back! Heads will roll for not removing the peas under my mattress and, speaking of pees, I do believeth I am damp. What, in blazes, goeth on?”

Lines stared back from the mirror. These were the final insult as Sleeping Beauty, who was all of eighteen when she fell into her near eternal sleep, ‘twas now fifty. She lay sobbing into her pillow, for no handsome Prince would search for a wrinkled Sleeping Beauty, she feared.

In a far distant land by the sea, gallant Lord Viggo, some years younger but no longer a youth, lived. He could feel her sorrow and confusion.

“Hark!” He called. “I shall scry for the sound of sorrow I hear.”

And, scry, he did.

“She ‘tis a vision of loveliness to me.” He said as he peered into the water. “A woman of wisdom and experience. No petulant youth need I put up with. And, her smile sets my heart free.”

‘Twas but a journey half way cross the land, to the woods where the beauty lay sleeping and where he dried her tears and they lay on the swing of her porch and watched the stars for a near eternal life.
THE END

I shall go and hideth my head under the pillow now.

Are there real people in your book?

I am sorry, that I have been gone so long from blogging. I have had a touch of the flu here, as well as working with my camera (it is fairly new). I need to really have it down as I am taking wedding pictures, for my niece, in two weeks. I did her mother's wedding photos, oh so long ago.

But, back to the book, I wonder how you 'see' your characters.

Are your characters based on real people?

My book is set in a fantasy world but I definitely use real people for inspiration. Sometimes it’s just a face in a magazine, sometimes an actor and occasionally, I am inspired by someone I know.

As a portrait artist and some-time doll maker, I have always collected photos of interesting faces. I search through this file for faces that say they belong to my character. Usually, already have a good solid description of their character first and use the picture to make them come alive for me. I am a visual person.

One character in my Middle Grade novel, was giving me trouble. I had a description, but for some reason I just could not “see” him. He was a wooden character; without a personality. I decided it was time to find his face.

Nothing in my file fit, nothing spoke to me. It was a voice that finally did it. And, readers of my personal blog Savanvleck’s Weblog have my permission to start laughing, but this is how it happened.

I was watching that extra disc of information that they put in the Lord of the Rings I and III, and other, movies. I was making some notes and not watching it really, just listening and I heard my character speak. I looked up to see they were interviewing Viggo Mortensen. His every day, non-acting voice, was the voice was my character. It was the first time I had heard his calming tone and my charcter came alive and said, "This is who I am." I finally found “the” face.

The really odd thing was that when I went into my character charts to see if I needed to update his description, the only thing I had to change was his eye color.

I almost always have a picture for my character, even if it is a sketch, and a lot of the personality quirks of my three protagonists fit the three boys in my house; obviously real people. Which, is not surprising as they were the inspiration for the story and, in some ways, it is their story.