What I’m Writing: Visual Interest & Being a Boy

I try really, REALLY hard not to look for “real” pictures that I could envision as my characters or as book covers, because—let’s be honest—that is getting WAY ahead of myself.

But.

But!

I was on Pinterest (what else is new?) and a legit author (who has an agent and shit) pinned this image to one of her writing research boards and I saw this picture and was like . . . because it is Willa. Almost to a T. (She prefers aisle seats.) Anyway, this freaked me out (I was Muppet arm flailing and on the phone with my mother) and completely inspired me. And now I’m obsessed with it.

And since this one picture had created some many FEELINGS within me, I decided to go through the Interwebs to find other pictures that might kick-start some ideas in my head in regards to my beloved Willa and Dan.

And y’all.

I found some.

Like this.

I don’t exactly know how to explain the way these make me feel. It’s not really warm and fuzzy. Because there’s a little more fear involved in it than warm and fuzzy normally conjures up. But it’s very very very exciting. It’s a good feeling. And it makes me almost TOO enthusiastic. Like, I want to crazy fangirl over these pictures because they make me fall madly in love with my characters.

And, yes, I’ve actually written this week too. (I didn’t just sit around searching for pictures.) And I’ve written a whole bunch from Dan’s perspective, which is hard for me to do since I’ve never been, nor will ever be a teenage boy. But I knew a bunch of teenage boys back when I was still a teenager, so I’m doing my best to channel them so that Dan isn’t some idealized male figure that will make people who like boys have very unrealistic expectations.

But I digress.

So, without further ado, here’s a little snippet of Dan. [Aside: I wish I were as good at writing from a male perspective as Holly Black is. Because HOT DAMN are the Curse Workers books good.]

“Dude, as soon as we beat this level I have to get home,” I said to Aaron as he pulled up a new Call of Duty screen.

“Why?”

“I have to Skype with Willa.”

“God, you are so whipped,” Aaron muttered as he killed the guy attacking him. “I really don’t understand why you spend so much time on a chick you’re not getting pussy from on a regular basis.”

With a sigh I said, “When you find the chick whose pussy you like enough, you’ll understand.”

“Whatever, man. If I were you I’d still be banging Sophie every chance I could.”

This had become a point of contention between me and Aaron. He was still going out with Sophie’s best friend. And even though Sophie and I were on completely friendly terms, Aaron and Hannah still didn’t understand why we had broken up.

“You should tell Hannah that. I’m sure she’d appreciate it.”

“Shut up, asshole,” Aaron said before adding, “It’s not like you and Willa are going to make it anyway. Did you even apply to any of the same colleges?”

He had me there. Willa and I hadn’t applied to any of the same schools. NYU and John Jay were at least in the same city. But, of course, the schools we’d applied to that are in the same geographic area are the schools we still hadn’t heard from. And it’s not like I had any doubts about us making it—long distance worked for us up until the Sophie incident, and since we’d gotten past that, things had been great. There was no way college was going to change us so much that we wouldn’t still want to be together.

“No,” I said tersely. “Did you and Hannah?”

“UT, bitch!” he yelled before throwing a grenade into an enemy mob.

“Have you both gotten in?” I knew Aaron had gotten his acceptance letter months ago, but I had no idea about Hannah. This wasn’t a typical conversation between the two of us and it’s not like Hannah and I were friends.

“Yeah she got in, so we’re both headed to Austin in the fall. But I doubt we stay together. Because, dude, freshman year is not about being tied down a girl.”

© Bethany E.  Larson, 2012