What is this "lunch" thing of which I have heard you speak?

Oh - right. The meal I keep forgetting to eat, along with breakfast...

Okay. Have lunched.

Challenge #47 (yellow) is now closed.

Challenge #48 is: container(s)/holding (or some variation on "hold").

Go to it!

It's only a silly question if you don't ask, right?

Are "container" and a form of "hold" both supposed to be in the drabble, or does the slash mean either or?

does the slash mean either or?

The slash means that the container(s) and the holding are having non-canon relations.

OTP, baby!

Nah, it was just meant to indicate a general sense of "the topic can be about holding, or the [thing] that holds, where [thing] = 'container,' but not necessarily a literal Tupperware container."

If that makes sense.

does the slash mean either or?

t will not say what I'm thinking, will not say what I'm thinking.

This speaks for itself.

Hope, 1971

thumpthumpthump

The helicopter lands on the roof of San Francisco General. General is the only local hospital with a copter pad. It's also one of the few hospitals around here that are doing this kind of operation right now.

The surgeons don't take delivery themselves; they've requisitioned an OR and they're scrubbing up. An orderly runs upstairs, shying away from the wind kicked up by the chopper's blades. Upstairs, a slender man with brown eyes waits.

The orderly signs his name, and takes receipt of a small, innocuous lunch cooler. Contents: one kidney, the one thing Pandora didn't count on.

That's powerful, Deb.

Anyone have any ideas for non-cheesey character interview type exercises? It's been brought to my attention by, like, practically everyone who's read the wip, that Jack is a vividly drawn character and sexy as hell to boot, but that Anna is a bit fuzzy, unreal, as though I'm holding her at arm's length.

When I first started writing this story, if anything the opposite was the case. And I realized today that my breakthrough on being able to write Jack came at the conference this fall when I attended a workshop where we did all these exercises like pairing up and having your partner ask you the same question over and over again. Basic stuff like "Who are you?" or "What do you want?" that you answered as the character. Also free association things where you'd do something like grasp an unusually textured object and write about whatever it brought to mind WRT the character. And while I could try those same exercises, I'm not sure how they'd work without the group dynamic, so I'm looking for other options, too.

Basically, I'm not expecting the exercise itself to work the magic. It's just that I realized I am pushing Anna away from me a bit, and I need to try a few tricks to make me break down those barriers so I can become her the way I've learned to become Jack.

I used to make my screenwriting students answer a whole list of questions on their characters-- the most useful and/or interesting ones were:

What do they value most in others?
What did they do on their last birthday?
What do they most regret?
Are they more likely to talk or to listen?
How would a close friend describe them?
Which was their favorite parent and why?
What does the character think are their best and worst traits?
What do you, the writer, think are their best and worst traits?
What is their most treasured possession?
What is their best childhood memory?

Thanks, Robin. I might try some of those.

The toughest part is I feel in some ways like I'm writing S6 Buffy, at least in the early part of the story, and I don't want to make it as much of a downer for my readers as S6 was for me as a viewer. I feel like I know who Anna was when she was a secondary character in my first book, but in the two intervening years, she's been through a sustained personal hell, and I'm having to figure out exactly what that's done for her, how the walls she's built around herself would manifest, and how honest she's capable of being with herself about what she's made of herself just to survive.