Posts By Lindsey Loucks

Grrrrrrrrrrrr

On March 16, 2011 by Lindsey Loucks With 4 Comments - Jesse

That was the sound Jesse made at the vet’s office today, a deep, guttural, “You touch me, you die” kind of sound. But everyone survived. Even the vet. As a special present for my kitty cat, I’m posting this video of him napping. I’m obsessed, I know.

An Ode to Critters

On March 7, 2011 by Lindsey Loucks With 6 Comments - Critiquing, Writing

No, not the movies (see funny photo above). I mean the super-intelligent, highly dedicated group of other writers I’ve been fortunate enough to find who critique my story(ies). Yesterday (at least I think it was yesterday; the weekend went by in a blur), a critter pointed out yet another plot hole. Yay Joe! I grabbed my shovel to fill in the hole, and something wacky happened. My MC came up with a great come-back line to some kids on the bus who noticed her yard was… different. That line did two things – 1. it provided a moment of comic relief (which is good, because things get seriously unfunny in the second half) and 2. it was major foreshadowing. I held my shovel like an idiot, blinking at the computer screen, trying to understand the awesomeness that had just happened.

Now I know why Novel Number One wasn’t published – becuase I didn’t put it through the ringer at Critique Circle.

So to all my critters, everyone who has ever given me a critique, thank you. You’ve all provided different perspectives and made me truly think about how the story needed to be told. And a giant thank you to Mysti who’s read and critiqued the whole story almost twice and Joe who keeps throwing me that shovel. Like I told Mysti – the leprechaun told me there are Godiva chocolates in the magic pot for all of you at the end of the story. : )

Kidnapped by Dr. Seuss

On March 2, 2011 by Lindsey Loucks With 4 Comments - Dr. Seuss

Happy birthday to a genius storyteller who’s nonsensical rhymes and zany characters still make people laugh! I’ve been busy planning Dr. Seuss’s birthday celebration at school, and I think it was a hit. I think I’ll get decked out Cat in the Hat and Fox in Socks style everyday. Maybe I’ll check out this amazing video everyday, too.

Setting the Mood With Weather

On February 21, 2011 by Lindsey Loucks With 3 Comments - Mood, Writing

The weather in Kansas can change dramatically in ten minutes. I timed it once. My moods reflect the weather, which means I have bipolar disorder. Not really, I’m just making a point.

I was thinking about the weather in my current work in progress the other day. The story takes place in Kansas. It’s spring time (almost in real life too. Yay!), which means the weather is even stranger than normal. Since I’m the author, aka Mother Nature, I can call up a hurricane to blow through Krapper, Kansas if I wanted to. But a hurricane doesn’t fit the story. And no, a tornado doesn’t either. My characters already have too much to worry about. But weather can really add to the mood of the story. During a particular dramatic moment, it’s pouring rain, flashes of lightning are parting the sky, and thunder is shaking the ground. To switch it up a bit, I have another panicked moment later in the story where the sun is too bright, the air is too still, and my main character sees death surrounding her.

Weather sets a certain mood. If you’re going for intensity and creepy, rain could work in the scene. If you want contrast, scary events on a perfect day could work too. Look out the window of your imagination and see what it’s doing outside.

So what’s your weather like, real or imagined?

Borrowing From Real Life

On February 14, 2011 by Lindsey Loucks With 5 Comments - Ideas, Real life

A drama-free life is a happy life, so that’s what I strive for. I leave the jaw-dropping plots to my characters. But I do occasionally throw in some tiny details from my life into my stories. For example, spiders. I hate them. They skitter sideways on creepy, hairy legs and are too unpredictable. I will screech and run away whenever I see one. Yet they’re in my current story. Lots of them. Why? Because I’m trying to face my fears. And because two dead spiders, a mama and a baby, are stuck to my garage wall, and have been since I moved in since I refuse to do anything about them. Moms and babies play a large part in my story, so I thought, “Why not spiders?” While writing the spidery scenes, I freaked myself out. So much for facing my fears.

Another thing I threw into the story from real life were lyrics to an awesome song I like to play on the game Rock Band. It’s The Fratellis’s “Creepin’ Up the Backstairs.” Here’s the song:



One line from the lyrics is “Take your brother’s car keys.” That’s why Jo is always taking her brother’s car keys. It fits her personality too.

So how about you? Do you search for drama in real life or strive for drama-free living? What are some things you take from real life to put in your stories?

Feeling Human

On February 8, 2011 by Lindsey Loucks With 5 Comments - Movies, Writing

I feel like a human bean, I mean being, again. Last week, not so much. The flu dragged me by the heels into the cluttered basement, where I marked time into the closed door with my fingernails. Yikes! I’ve been watching too much Paranormal Activity 2! But anyway, I was trapped for a whole week with the flu. No fun.

Between moans and complaints to Gabe, I thought about writing. My characters gave me sly smiles and beckoned me closer. I thought they were going to eat me (did I mention I had a fever?), but then they comforted me.

I thought about the different plots taking shape in my head, the ideas that could melt away if I didn’t get better soon. At the urging of my characters and those plots waiting to be written down, I finally did get better.

And it occurred to me during my upward climb: I’m addicted. To my characters, to those ideas taking root in my brain, to writing a word, a sentence, a paragraph that makes me smile. I’m addicted, and that addiction helped me get better faster. The drugs helped too, though.

Anyone else addicted? Have you taken your temperature today? Have you seen Paranormal Activity 1 or 2?

Brought To You By the Letter X

On January 28, 2011 by Lindsey Loucks With 5 Comments - Characters

X is a nifty letter. It has a great sound. Go ahead and say it aloud. X. Nifty, huh? It has punch and it’s kind of sexy. Probably because it’s in ‘sexy’, but still. X….

Anyway, when my current novel idea jumped inside my head, it was followed closely by Leigh Baxton. Leigh herself is punchy (just ask the boys in the story), and sexy (just ask the boys in the story). Did you notice the X in her last name, by the way? That’s no coincidence. She’s also built like a twig and short, kind of similar to her first name. The name fits the character. The character fits her name.

The name Leigh Baxton just came to me. I didn’t have to think too hard. I didn’t have to go here, though that’s a great starting point. What about the rest of you? Where do your character names come from? Do they have the letter X in them? Should they?

Award Happy Dance

On January 21, 2011 by Lindsey Loucks With 1 Comments - Awards, Happy Dance
There’s been a lot of happy dances this week! This one is for my first blog award! Mysti Parker from Unwritten awarded the Fair Dinkum (good buddy) Award. Thank you, Mysti!

With this award, I am to share informational tidbits about myself and award five other bloggers. Here I go with the tidbits:

1. I’ve thought about going to clown school.
2. I’m addicted to crack-ERS. HA! Crackers, not crack.
3. In high school, I co-wrote and performed in a play, and received a standing ovation.
4. I once wanted to be an FBI agent, but then decided I was too goofy. (See number 1).
5. My biggest fear, more than anything else in the world, is throwing up.

Now it’s time to award five bloggers. All you have to do is what I just did. And the awards go to (in no particular order):

1. Sarah Ahiers at Falen Formulates Fiction
2. Demitria Lunetta
3. Ryan Sullivan at The Dark Corner of the Mind
4. Deboarah Burns
5. Trish at Adventures of Molly Mavis Gumnut

That was fun! Let’s do that again!

Honorable Mention Happy Dance

On January 19, 2011 by Lindsey Loucks With 6 Comments - Contests, Happy Dance

I entered the first 500 words of The Grave Winner into a contest hosted by Lydia Sharp over at http://lydiasharp.blogspot.com/ and received an Honorable Mention! Yay! My insides are all fluttery! Every entry received a critique; here’s mine with Lydia’s comments in red:

We stood rooted in place after Mom’s funeral, just the three of us. The weight in my chest threatened to suffocate me if I looked at the lid of her gleaming casket any longer. I focused on the sky instead, at the black birds cutting across the wisps of clouds in a sharp V formation. The dull thump of my heart echoed the rhythm of their beating wings. They pressed on until the clouds took them from me. {love that description. Saying they “took them from me” feels like comparative imagery with the loss of the character’s mother. Very well done.}
            A different flutter out of the corner of my eye pulled me back to Earth. The movement took a few seconds to penetrate my numb brain until I realized I was staring at a girl. She crept in and out of the crumbling tombstones, her body thick with mud and grime. A dress, or the torn remnants of one, hung loosely from her scrawny frame. Her mouth sagged open as if she was about to scream. {ew, for real? That would make me scream. Good descriptions, though. You got a physical reaction out of me.}
            Darby, my little sister, stood next to me, and I reached out to touch her. I wasn’t sure anymore if any of this was real, if I was completely losing it, but Darby was real. Her ache was real. My hand slid over her bony, quivering shoulders and squeezed her closer to me.
            Inky black footprints followed the girl like a trail of burnt breadcrumbs. She stopped beside a tree and leaned her back against it.  More darkness pooled at her feet and crept up the tree trunk behind her. {I love that you got to this weirdness so quickly, no messing around. I’m definitely hooked.}
            Sweat trickled down the back of my dress. A sudden breeze brushed spring air over my arms and sent a faint smell of rotten hamburger meat past my nose. My stomach rolled, but the breeze and stink faded to nothing as quickly as it had come.
            The girl turned her head and looked at us. The whites of her eyes blazed behind the mud that covered her face. Her open mouth held the same black gloom that fell at her feet.
I gasped as recognition hit me.
            I knew the girl. Knew of was more like it. Her social circle was my social nightmare. Her name was Sarah, a popular cheerleader who committed suicide one week ago. {ack!} Poor Sarah, everyone said. She couldn’t handle the pressure of popularity and performing kicks and splits in front of everyone anymore. She’d sliced her wrists open to release her from those horrible demands.
            So how could she be here when she should be in the ground? I had to be hallucinating. My grief, the unbearable weight in my chest, was climbing up to press on my brain.
            But if Sarah really was standing over there by the tree, I couldn’t let Darby see her. That would be too much to handle in one day. I wanted to fold her into me or flip her glasses off her face. Instead, I willed Sarah to go away.
            Her darkness crawled up the earthy brown bark to the tips of the tree’s branches and ripped away the silky song of its leaves, leaving it empty and naked.
This is a big mess of awesomesauce. I love it. Sorry if my comments aren’t very helpful, but I honestly don’t see much to improve upon here. You’ve effectively pulled me into this very quickly. You have great voice and excellent description and a whole lotta intrigue. Superb.
Thanks again, and best of luck with this!

Thank you so much, Lydia!!

10 Ways to Make Your Head Explode With Story Ideas

On January 14, 2011 by Lindsey Loucks With 2 Comments - Writing

Earlier this year, I was asked to speak to the high school fiction writing class. I spoke while the class looked at me through half-closed eyes, their mouths slack. Gotta love those high school students. They perked up a bit when my computer screamed. It does that on occasion.

Anyway, one of the things I talked about was how to come up with story ideas. I came up with ten:

1. The What-If Game – What if the football hero injured his leg… and it hurt him so much he tried to cut it off? What if people had three ears? What if Germany had won World War II?

2. Think of a title first. I did this with my current novel, The Grave Winner. It just jumped into my head. Then I thought: why would anyone win a grave? Eventually the story came to me. This same thing happened again, and now I have another idea for a novel floating around in my brain based on just a title.

3. Think of a catchy first line. In my first novel, Pause, the first line is “Are you ready to faint today?”

4. Make your dreams a reality on paper. It worked for Stephenie Meyer with Twilight. It worked for me too. The idea for Pause came from a chase dream and my increasing age.

5. See it – watch the story play out in your head like a movie.

6. Hear it – listen to music, close your eyes, then write down what you see in your head.

7. Read the newspaper – especially the Weird News part.

8. Real life – enough said.

9. Start with an interesting character.

10. Start with an interesting place.

Where do your story ideas come from?