I don't see a priest or a confessional.\u00a0 Heck, I'm not even Catholic.\u00a0 Guess I'll just make the confession right here to all of you - I LIKE MIND HOPPING.\u00a0<\/p>\n
There.\u00a0 I said it.\u00a0 Right out in the open.\u00a0 Feels kind of nice to be out of the closet, or the hard drive.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Whether it's the hero or the heroine, the protagonist, a second fiddle, a third fiddle or a maid who never laid hands on a fiddle, I want to know what they're thinking.\u00a0 I'm a mind junkie.\u00a0 \u00a0If a character speaks, the words are out there for the whole room to process.\u00a0 But if a character thinks something, but doesn't say it, then only he or she AND THE READER\u00a0are privy to that inside knowledge.\u00a0 And I like being an insider.<\/p>\n
I want to know that even if the hero and heroine are hissing and clawing in public, that in private, they'd like to be grubbing and pawing.\u00a0 I want to know that he finds the way she sometimes slips and pronounces R's as W's adorable.\u00a0 I want to know that she'd like to brush that fallen lock of his raven\u00a0black hair back into place with her\u00a0tongue.\u00a0 I want to know if the heroine's sister sees the secret looks\u00a0passing between the lead couple and thinks they've done more than kiss, that her sister is in over her head, or that Da will\u00a0go off the rails\u00a0over the whole affair.<\/p>\n
In real life, I wonder how daft my husband\u00a0thinks I am.\u00a0 I wonder if my eldest son would really hurt me\u00a0if I snuck up on\u00a0him during the night and shaved that abominable beard he's grown.\u00a0 I wonder if my youngest lives inside his head as much as I think he does and where that amazing imagination might take him.\u00a0 When I pick up a book, I don't want to have to wonder, imagine, or work out clues from dialogue and physical actions.<\/p>\n
I want the author to let me know what the character thinks and feels.\u00a0 That's much more important to me than how he looks or what she wears.\u00a0 And by the great\u00a0green toad frog, we all know that it's more important than what either of them says.\u00a0 Let me inside the characters' heads and hearts so that I can understand.\u00a0 As life kicks them around and love doesn't go their way I can care.\u00a0 And when love and fate and karma smile and the characters overcome the obstacles to find their way to each other, I can cheer.\u00a0 Then I can close the book and tuck it away in my \"keeper\" pile and recommend it to all my friends.\u00a0<\/p>\n
All those books where the author wants me to decide what the characters are\u00a0thinking or feeling from visual or verbal clues?\u00a0 They remind me of business lunches where I don't know anyone.\u00a0 I'm glad to get out as soon as I can and do it without the least desire to go back.\u00a0<\/p>\n
When I'm at my computer\u00a0crafting my own stories, I do my best to bring the reader along.\u00a0 The mind hopping express departs daily from my hard drive.<\/p>\n
ALL ABOARD!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I don't see a priest or a confessional.\u00a0 Heck, I'm not even Catholic.\u00a0 Guess I'll just make the confession right here to all of you - I LIKE MIND HOPPING.\u00a0 There.\u00a0 I said it.\u00a0 Right out in the open.\u00a0 Feels kind of nice to be out of the closet, or the hard drive.\u00a0 Whether it's ...continue reading \"All Aboard!!!\"<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}