Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Wee-Bit Wednesday

Happy Wee-Bit Wednesday, everyone!

Today’s excerpt is significantly shorter than last week’s. It also requires a bit of a scene set up to explain a few things.



Angelica is on a date at a charity event with her ex-boyfriend, Rick, who is trying his best to win her back. Inebriated and unsure, Angelica calls on Corryn, her British Guardian Angel, for advice. Normally a very “together” doctor, this scene is completely out-of-character for Angelica which made it a lot of fun to write.


During dinner they talked about what they’d been doing since they last spoke, although Angelica conveniently left out anything to do with her Destiny. The conversation flowed (as did the champagne) and they laughed with each other over crazy patient stories. After their plates had been cleared, and another bottle of champagne had been emptied, Angelica excused herself to the ladies’ room.

She managed to navigate her way through the tables without incident, despite feeling extremely lightheaded from the alcohol. Once she was through the door and standing in front of the wall to wall mirrors behind the long counter of sinks she quickly called for backup. “Corryn!” she whispered loudly. Her Guardian shimmered in at the sink next to her just as a lady in a too-tight fuchsia dress was exiting a stall behind her. Fuchsia automatically moved around the Angel and used the sink on the other side.

“Oh thank goodness you’re here,” Angelica said with great relief.

Fuchsia turned to look at her with a puzzled look. “I’m sorry, do I know you?”

“No, sorry, I wasn’t talking to you,” she answered Fuchsia. Then to Corryn, “Okay, I need your advice.”

Corryn asked, “What about?”

Fuchsia repeated, “You need my advice?”

Angelica looked at Fuchsia in the mirror and said a little flustered, “No, I’m not talking to you.” Fuchsia gave her a look of irritation as she finished drying her hands and proceeded to take out an entire makeup line from her huge Louis Vuitton.

Corryn suggested, “Maybe you should use your cell phone to talk to me.”

“What?”

Fuchsia stopped mid-lipstick application to give a terse, “I didn’t say anything.”

“Take out your cell phone,” Corryn explained slowly, “and pretend like you’re talking to me on the phone before they call the local psych ward.”

When Corryn’s idea finally sunk in Angelica retrieved her cell from her clutch, pretended to dial and wait for an answer, then said, “This will be so much easier in a few days when I can talk to you inside my head.”

Corryn hopped up onto the counter and rolled her eyes at Fuchsia’s hurried attempts at putting everything back in her bag with sidelong glances at the crazy blonde girl. “Fantastic. I suppose I’ll have to do some creative explaining when I ask your father to bust you out of the loony bin. Or I could just tell him his daughter drank more than a glass of alcohol for the first time in her life and acted like a crazy person in the loo.”

“I know,” Angelica whined. She sagged against the tiled wall and leaned her head back. “I don’t know how that happened. I was just so nervous and I felt completely out of my comfort zone so I figured I’d have a glass to help myself relax. But every time I looked at my glass it was full and I wasn’t paying attention to him refilling it all the time.” She took a deep breath and let her hand holding the phone fall away from her ear when Fuchsia finally fled the bathroom.

“Well, I certainly noticed his on-point bartending skills. I’m not sure if he’s aware how much of a lightweight you are. Either that, or he’s very aware and he has a hidden agenda.”

“That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. What do you think? Do you think he’s really telling the truth? That he’s done with gambling and…that he loves me?” she asked with naïve uncertainty.

Corryn looked at her charge and sighed, “I don’t know, love. He seems sincere enough, but unfortunately I’m built for fighting and protecting, not lie detecting. What does your heart tell you?”

Angelica dropped her gaze to the floor. “I don’t know that I can trust my heart right now.”

Her Guardian slid off the counter to stand in front of her. “Then maybe you should just take things as they come. Eventually you’ll learn to trust it again.” Corryn used her fingers under Angelica’s chin to lock their twin pairs of sea green eyes. “It’s a good heart, Angelica. Believe me; I know it as well as I know my own.”

“Thanks, Corryn.” A goofy smile spread across Angelica’s face provoking Corryn to hitch a wary eyebrow in her direction.

“What?” Corryn asked while she pulled back a little like she needed a better angle.

“I just love you so darn much. Is it normal that I can’t feel my lips?”

“Bloody wonderful. You’re completely sloshed. Come on, you’d better get back out to your date before he comes in here looking for you.”

“I’m not sloshed,” she argued as Corryn ushered her towards the door. “I’m just a little buzzed. And I really do love you.”

“Hush now. We can discuss your affections for me later. Go and finish your date.”

“Yes, ma’am, Miss Pushy-Pants.”

9 comments:

  1. I love Wee-bit Wednesdays! I'm glad you have kept this one... and I love Miss Pushy Pants at the end, those are the little things that make me chuckle and really connect with the book. Very great piece! Thanks for sharing!

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  2. Hi Gina! I dropped by here from Jen's blog. I agree - I like the bits of writing that really show the characters' personality. Nicely done!

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  3. I could picture this whole interaction--it was great. Very amusing. Loved the by-play with Fuchsia. And as one who used the numb lips or gums as a true test of intoxication, that line was great.

    I do have a couple of thoughts, however (Don't hate me!).

    You use a ( ) around the flowing champagne comment, and while I adore parentheses (I use them all the time), they always seems a little weird to me in a book. You might want to consider em dashes (as hated as parentheses by some) for the impact, or just commas, to separate out the champagne. "the conversation--and the champagne--flowed..." or "the conversation, and the champagne, flowed". Of course, I'm not a punctuation expert, so take that with a grain of salt.

    You use a lot of dialoge tags(asked, repeated, suggested) which helps distinguish who is speaking (an important piece in this kind of rapid-fire dialogue) but I think you could get a better, and maybe even more humor, if you use more action tags instead. "Fuchsia gaped around the want of fuchsia lip gloss. 'I didn't say anything.'" Not the best example.

    Pushy-Pants... I do like that!

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  4. Jen: I'm glad you liked the piece. It's really even better when read with the knowledge of Angelica's sober character, but I'm glad this read well. :)

    Talli: I'm so thrilled you visited me! I so loved your interview over at Jen's blog today and I'm excited to follow your new path as a fiction writer on your blog. I hope you come back to visit me again. And I can't wait to read The Hating Game!! It sounds awesome.

    J.Leigh: The action tag is a great idea and I'm definitely going to try to incorporate more of those. I get frustrated with all of the "he said, she saids".

    As for the parentheses, I have no idea what the best way to do that is. I'm terrible with super-technical grammar. I've only got the basics down and the rest I just kind of guess. :}

    As always, girl, thanks for your input. I knew this particular excerpt wasn't at 100%. It still needs some tweaking. :)

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  5. Very cute! I like playfulness behind the confusion of whose talking to whom...and the cell phone idea. Tipsy women are just plain funny anyway, and you captured that well here. Kudo's!!

    :)

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  6. Another great scene! Man, I want to know about her Destiny and how the rest of the date went. You tease! :)

    When I first read this post I thought you were still bringing your readers up to speed in the two paragraphs before the dialogue begins. Or it could be just the way I'm reading it since I didn't read what happened before. Does that make sense? It almost feels like showing. (Sorry!)

    Oh, and I vote for em dashes, too! :)

    Thank you for a glimpse of Angelica!

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  7. DL: Thank you, sir. Maybe reading a Para-Rom won't be too torturous for you, eh? ;)

    Jamie: All in good time, dear, all in good time. Believe me, I wish I could edit faster to get it into your hands!! I'll give those couple of paragraphs a looksee. It might be becuz of where I started the excerpt (taking it out of context from the scene), but I'm not sure. I'm glad you told me about it, though. Don't apologize for helping me, goofy girl.

    Tomorrow I'm posting my Truth VS Lies, everyone...be sure to check back then!!!

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  8. OMG!!! That ending is the best thing ever. Haha. Thanks for the laugh!! ;)

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  9. Ok, so I haven't had time to look at your blog until now, so you're going to get all my comments from all your posts in quick succession. Deal with it :) I loved the fun, playful nature of this scene. I has a quick voice that would have reading late through the night without even realizing where the time had gone. Good job :)

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