Words of Wisdom, Courtesy of Charley's Characters

In most books, characters will usually say at least one thing that will linger in a reader's mind. Think Gandalf, Dumbledore, Aslan . . . you get the vibe. Even younger, less experienced characters will sometimes say things that will bury themselves into your heart and mind. Something sweet. Something innapropriately hilarious. Something tragic. Something that speaks to your soul.

. . . And then there's my characters.

I intended this to be a post about inspiring things that characters can say, and I was going to mix up my own characters' inspiring quotes with those of published authors and challenge you all to find out which ones were mine, possibly following up with an "if I can hide my own amateur creations amidst those of great writers, it's proof of the power of words and emotion and humanity and blah blah blah."

But did I find any? Oh no.

Whether it was a short story or a novel, over seven years old or something I wrote last year, part of an ancient collaborative or a difficult solo project, it seems that the denizens of my head seem to be operating on some celestial plane of thought above that of everyday humans that renders them incapable of saying anything remotely philosophical.

That, or they've been drinking some really strange coffee.

***

"Who on earth is that man?"
"I don't know . . . but he reminds me of a particularly unpleasant biscuit."

"Would that clash with my dragon-slaying appointment?"

"IT'S ON MY FACE!"

"I would compare myself to chopped liver . . . but I'm pretty sure even the gizzards get more say about what sort of stew they're thrown in than I do!"

"I feel like I just gave birth . . . through my nose."

"Do you reckon there's a world record out there for the longest distance travelled inside a giant fridge?"

"That's my name! Long and short for just the same, unless you speak Klingon, in which case you're probably very strange and I would quite like you to leave right now."

"Jumping out of windows is far more therapeutic than you'd expect, you know."

"That's some dream you had, my friend."
"I'll say - the most prophetic dream I can remember is the one where the talking goat was lecturing me about the morality of aeroplane fuselages."

"What is going on in here? Who are you? What do you want? . . . And what have you done to my teapot!"

"Am I the only one who can see the words I REALLY REALLY REALLY WANT TO STAB YOU written on her face? Because whoever did that deserves a golden Sharpie pen for their bravery. And possibly enrolment in a mental institute."

"Excellent. Now, if you would be so good as to remove me from this contraption before it dissolves my elbow, I would be eternally grateful."

"Well then, I guess that makes me the king of the jam fairies."

"I never expected eight-foot-tall, furry-eared, rabbit-shredding people to have such interesting tatse in furniture."

"Is it dead? Well, we shot it full of bullets, stabbed it through the heart, cut its head off, and reversed over it with a pickup truck . . . I think we'd better burn it, just to make sure."

"What's that?"
"It's breakfast."
"What sort of breakfast?"
"The dead kind."

***

Few of these quotes make any more logical sense in context than they do out of it.

Confused? So am I.

~ Charley R

My Funniest NaNoWriMo Occurences, 2011

NaNoWriMo is notorious for making strange things happen in one's novel - we all know that. Last year, I spent an afternoon giggling myself to death at some of the utterly hilarious mistypes and their consequences (I even had an unintentional innuendo that nearly made my eyes pop out of my skull).

And this year it's only got better. Here are some of the weird, wonderful and sometimes downright evil things that my typing fingers have done due to boredom, spite, mistypage, or an overdose of sugar-based edible substances.

1) Fourth Wall breakage. I've gone on about this enough already, but it is truly hilarious. Most of them are pretty rubbish - mostly me trying to up my wordcount - but one or two, I thought, were pretty hilarious.

"Veraxes, please, you know this is going to end badly. Rebelling against -"
"I thought you believed in a free society!"
"I thought you knew whose head we live in!"

Pansanger rolled onto his back and stared up at the sky. He'd done this twice before in this paragraph, but as his author had yet to work out exactly what she was going to do next, he really had nothing better to do.

Sephirax was glaring at him with the sort of vehemency he usually reserved for the moments when Spook accidentally called him Sephiroth.

2) Veraxes has a surprise sex change in the middle of a chapter! ... And I didn't even notice until nearly a page later.

(this is the moment when I worked it out...)
Veraxes' eyes glazed over for a moment, then suddenly he sprang to his feet with a cry. This sudden rediscovery of his vocal cords - and his correct gender - was so sudden that it make everyone in the camp start in alarm.

3) Gallirael spends a page and a half having an argument with himself about directions on a compass. He doesn't even own a compass.

4) Sephirax develops a bizarre addiction to tea and fruit scones. And his narrative voice in my head always speaks in a cockney accent.

5) Vidal pseudo-quotes Doctor Who. A lot.

"Vi, what is that exactly?"
"Not sure - some contraption the magi use. Goes ding when there's stuff."

Vidal's ears twisted irritably. Here he was being fiendishly brilliant and there was no one in the room to stand around and look impressed.

"Vidal, do something!"
Do what? Vidal glared at Arundel, but he was already trying to scramble up the canyon. He sighed and sprinted in the other direction , waving his arms to get the soldiers' attention. "Look at me, I'm a target!"

6) Arystel has a classic catphrase.

"Inconcievable!"

7) I dyed Sephirax's hair pink for a chapter. For kicks and giggles.


.... NaNoWriMo, what have you done to me?