Script Frenzy RE: Helpful Info on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

Posted March 1, 2010 – 20:08	Helpful Info on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?
	One of the major plot points of my show revolves around one of the characters having Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Here’s the problem, I don’t know much about it. I’m going to make this short and sweet as opposed to droning on and on over the issue: Does anyone have some helpful information on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

Posted March 31, 2010 – 06:55 RE: Helpful Info on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder? I have PSTD to the point that I also have agoraphobia and have not been able to leave my house or have face to face contact with humans. Oddly in the past 20+ years the only time I’ve been able to either leave my house or have contact with humans is for the local Write-In meetings for NaNo and SF. When I was 14years old, my best friend was murdered along with 4 other friends. (five in all) I was the only survivor of a violent bloody attack, which left my friends with their arms and legs cut off their bodies, their intestines ripped out, and 2 of them living on for a few days before actually dieing. The court trials went on for 6 months. Because the murderer was caught in the act of slaughtering my friends, and because their was one survivor/witness of the attack (me), the trail went fast and she was executed that same year. I spent 6 months being questioned and interrogated by police and judges and lawyers, who didn’t give a damn about what I was going through, all they wanted was the facts so they could take another life (I was against her execution). This event left me without a single friend – every one of them was killed during this event. In the 20 years since I have not been able to make a single new friend. The event was made worse by the fact that when I went to church, I was meet with adults who didn’t give a damn. Several of them shook hands with me and said “How are you doing”… I responded with “My best friend was murdered this week” to which they responded “Oh that’s nice, I had a great week too” and walked off to shake hands with the next person. There were 375 adults in our church, dozens of them repeated this same thing that Sunday. Not one of them heard what I said. I went into a major stress overload during the court trials. By the time it was over I had stopped talking. I’ve barely spoken a full sentence since than. I took up writing full-time after that. I would get up in the morning, go out to my garden and start writing until night time. Every day, for the next 20+ years, without ever saying a word. Over the years, local rumors have spread, saying that I was a demon possessed witch who puts curses on people. It appeared that I was getting better by 2001, when I was about to be married, but than I had a miscarriage, he called off the wedding, and than in 2003 the demon possession rumors took a violent turn when one hysterical local started saying I had used witchcraft to kill someone. This rumor got out of hand in during the infamous and well documented NaNoWriMo 2006, the year I dropped out due to vandals burning my house to the ground, resulting in my becoming homeless and very famous at the same time. Many news reports, paparazzi hounding’s, and 2 published books later, the stress proved to be too much for me and I suffered a stress induced stroke in October 2009. There is also some debate as to wither I have PTSD or Autism or both. And because it might help your research, I’m going to copy part of an article I wrote, you can read the entire thing here: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2807682/living_with_aspergers_s… the entire article is 25 pages long and may take a couple of hours to read, and it is itself and excerpt from a 557 page book which can be found here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/for-fear-of-little-men/6508479 if you are really into the research and want to know all the details of everything that happened throughout this entire event, you’ll want to read the book itself. Any ways, one of the noted aspects of PTSD is the panic attacks and meltdowns that are triggered by the person coming in contact with anything that reminds them of the stressful event. 14 years, almost to the day, after the murder trail that stopped me talking, I found myself in court once again, and the result was a massive meltdown that got me sent, by the judge, to a psychologist, where it was discovered that what people had been calling PTSD, may have actually been in fact, Autism instead. Here is the part I’m copying (I was 30 years old at the time of this event): Don’t you know it’s rude to stare? Not a question asked to me, but a question I ask in response to people demanding I look at them when they talk. Eye contact. Why do I need to be looking at you to hear what you are saying? I hear with my ears not my eyes. Why do I need to look at you to talk to you? I talk with my mouth not my eyes. My lack of eye contact, my inability to speak around strangers, and my cloths, resulted in leading to my finding out I had Asperger’s, when in 2005 I was summoned into court as a witness to some case which I had no idea why they were saying I was a witness too. I’ll recap: A year before the fire or the flood which left my homeless, a man walked up to me, handed me a paper, told me I had been served and I had to show up in court to testify. I found this to be very confusing and puzzling because I didn’t know anything about this so call case that I was supposedly a witness too. I tried to explain this to the man, but I’m not good with verbal explanations. He told me that it didn’t matter wither I thought I was a witness or not, it was a court order and if I didn’t show up at court later that week, I would go to jail. Very puzzled, and very reluctant, I went to court on the date in question and found it to be one of the most nerve wracking frustrating days of my entire life. First off I had to be searched by a guard, who took my tote bag and dumped it out. (I carry my writing paper, my art supplies, and comic books with me every where . . . it’s a really big tote bag. Next I was questioned about my cloths; this being one of my very first confrontations with the world outside of church, I was completely lost as to understand why I was being asked about my cloths. What was wrong with the way I was dressed? My things were stuffed untidily and messed up back into my tote bag and I was told to sit on the right side of the court room. I sat in the very last pew and spent about an hour, resorting my crayons, comics and papers back into their proper order. I was interrupted while doing this, by my name being yelled out. Apparently the judge had called my name several times, but I had not heard her because I was busy fixing the mess the guard had made of my writing materials. I stood up, but had no idea what to do next. She called my name several more times, before finally telling me that I was supposed to come up front and sit in a chair in front of all of those people. Up front, I was asked to repeat a bunch of words, but now came my first really big problem . . . I was being asked to open my mouth and speak, something I had not done in years, and I was being asked to do it in a room filled with 40 or 50 people. This was not my first time in court. When I was 14 I was the only living witness to the murder trail of my 5 friends killed on August 21, 1991. It was court that had stopped me talking before. I spent day after day after day of interigation, back at my friend’s murder trail. When the murder trail ended, I went home and was never able to speak to a stranger again. Now, here I was again 14 years later in court. The judge asked me again and again to repeat the words of the police officer who was standing in front of me. I did. I tried, I said the words, again and again, but though my mouth moved not a sound came from my lips. It was like me throat was strangling them and refusing to let the words escape. The judge finally accepted a nod of yes and told me to sit down. Than came the questions from the 2 men sitting at the tables in front of the judge. They had to ask and re-ask their questions several times, but I could not hear their words, all I could do was stare out at all of those faces, rows and rows of them sitting in the seats below. I think I answered some of their questions because the judge kept telling me I had to speak loud enough for the tape recorder to hear me, and finally she said she had had “enough of this circus”. She than turned to me and told me to look at her. I looked at her hands. She repeatly demanded I look at her. Than she started yelling and saying that I was a grown woman acting like a child, she started yelling at me about my inappropriate cloths, my refusal to answer questions, my refusal to comply with orders, and my arrogance at not making eye contact. My cloths again. What was wrong with my cloths? She dismissed me as a witness, but told me not to leave the court, but to go wait at the front window. While I was sitting on the bench waiting, several men and women, I assume to be lawyers based on the fact that they were wearing suits and carrying brief cases and were in a court house, stopped to talk to me about my cloths. Most asked if I had been on my way to a party or a Ren faire when I had come to court. A few elderly women hobbled over to me and started talking about how nice it was to see people dressing up again like when they were young. Someone asked if I was a “dead head”. Dozens of people walked past me ever few minutes going in or out of one of the three court rooms, and nearly every one of them, made a point to stop and ask me about my cloths. With each question, I was growing ever more puzzled about this obsession every one seemed to have with walking up to me and talking about my cloths. About three hours later the woman at the front window called my name and handed me a paper. It was a court order to see a psychologist, with a slip of paper saying that the State of Maine was going to pay for one 3 hour appointment. As I turned to leave, the woman commented that she liked my costume. I was wearing a Josephine Empire gown of wedge wood blue, with a 3 foot long train. Over which I wore a 7 yard blue velvet burnoose (a type of hooded cape). A few weeks later at the psychologist’s office, I was greeted with: “So you are Wendy. Why are you dressed like that?”. (I was wearing a full kimono — many layers of kimono). He told me he had been reading my case (What case? I have a case? Since when?) sent to him by the judge. He commented several more times about my cloths. Asked if he could see the contents of my tote bag, and than spent the rest of the time asking me about my drawings and writings and how I lived my life. During the course of the meeting he commented several times on my “bizarre accent” and use of old style language, which he said was seen only in rare cases of twins left to be raised by themselves. He called it “twin-language”. He said he had read cases of it, but that he had never witnessed it himself before. He found my childhood and 27 year isolation at the hands of people he called “cultists” fascinating, and believed my total lack of prior Human contact was the cause of my “inability to function”. He thought it may be possible that I could be “trained like a dog” so that I could learn how to “be normal”, as he believed it was possible that I did not actually have a disorder at all, but rather I simply was living just the same as I was as a 4 year old child simply because no adult had ever taught me to be otherwise. By the end of the meeting he had become very excited and was acting like he had just discovered the Lost City of Eldorado or something. He ended by writing up a paper which he said was a request to the State for funding to do a research study on me, saying that I was an “anomaly” which he could not properly diagnose, because I was displaying so many symptoms of so many disorders. Officially I have “Schizotypal Asperger’s Syndrome with OCD Tendancies”, however, he thinks I have something that he calls “an anomolly yet to be named”, as he says there is no deffinate text book disorder to describe me properly. I left his office that day very confused, and for the first time in my life, noticing what people around me were wearing and noticing that it was very different from what I was wearing. I was also, now realizing for the first time, that people look into your eyes when they talk to each other. I was also realizing that people on the street around his office seemed to be doing a lot of standing around (wasting their time) and talking to each other. It has only been 4 years since that meeting, and I still am having a very hard time processing the fact that people talk a lot, people look at each other a lot, and people . . . well, you people just plain dress really weird as far as I can see. I have not again heard back from the psychologist, however, both my mother and my father have gotten letters from him, and each of them, and my mom’s current husband, and my three brothers were called in to be “evaluated” by him to see if the whole family was like me, or if I was the only one in the family who was like this. I don’t know who else he contacted, but I suspect he was the one who sent the social worker to “the tent” a year later, after the flood and the fire left me homeless and living under a tarp. All this, because I wouldn’t look a judge in the eye? I remain confused over why the judge responded the way she did to me, and I remain equally confused as to why the psychologist responded the way he did to me. It was my first real contact with any one outside of the Mormon church and I found it very strange. But, as a result of the judge and the psychologist, I also found out that outside of the Mormon church, people do not believe in demon possession, and unlike the Mormon leaders who always said I acted the way I did because I was possessed by a demon, an evil spirit, or a poltergeist, I had now learned from the psychologist that what they had called evil spirits was really some sort of birth defect in my brain, which causes me to see the world on a different brain wave pattern than every one else, resulting in me acting, dressing, and otherwise responding differently to things than does every one else. Well, I must say his medical diagnosis certainly made much more logical sense to me than the religious leaders’ accusation of demon possession. And now that I know the church leaders were wrong when they called me demon possessed, I no longer feel quite so much like an outcast, unloved, and alone. I’ve since looked into this whole Asperger’s thing, and I must say, it’s kind of a sigh of relief, because now I know what is “wrong” with me, and now, I can figure out how to work my life around it. Copyright Info: The contents of this post, are taken from the second draft of the book “For Fear of Little Men” by Wendy C. Allen, and reprinted here with permission. This article was originally published in October 2008 under the title Living With Asperger’s Syndrome is copyright to Wendy C. Allen and The Twighlight Manor Press, and is reprinted here with permission. __________________________ ========== My Advice for Writers My Books

http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com
http://eelkat.wordpress.com
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/132659
http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/user/132659

Script Frenzy RE: Helpful Info on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

Posted March 1, 2010 – 20:08	Helpful Info on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?
	One of the major plot points of my show revolves around one of the characters having Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Here’s the problem, I don’t know much about it. I’m going to make this short and sweet as opposed to droning on and on over the issue: Does anyone have some helpful information on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

EelKat Municipal Liaison Posted March 31, 2010 – 06:55

RE: Helpful Info on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

I have PSTD to the point that I also have agoraphobia and have not been able to leave my house or have face to face contact with humans. Oddly in the past 20+ years the only time I’ve been able to either leave my house or have contact with humans is for the local Write-In meetings for NaNo and SF. When I was 14years old, my best friend was murdered along with 4 other friends. (five in all) I was the only survivor of a violent bloody attack, which left my friends with their arms and legs cut off their bodies, their intestines ripped out, and 2 of them living on for a few days before actually dieing. The court trials went on for 6 months. Because the murderer was caught in the act of slaughtering my friends, and because their was one survivor/witness of the attack (me), the trail went fast and she was executed that same year. I spent 6 months being questioned and interrogated by police and judges and lawyers, who didn’t give a damn about what I was going through, all they wanted was the facts so they could take another life (I was against her execution). This event left me without a single friend – every one of them was killed during this event. In the 20 years since I have not been able to make a single new friend. The event was made worse by the fact that when I went to church, I was meet with adults who didn’t give a damn. Several of them shook hands with me and said “How are you doing”… I responded with “My best friend was murdered this week” to which they responded “Oh that’s nice, I had a great week too” and walked off to shake hands with the next person. There were 375 adults in our church, dozens of them repeated this same thing that Sunday. Not one of them heard what I said. I went into a major stress overload during the court trials. By the time it was over I had stopped talking. I’ve barely spoken a full sentence since than. I took up writing full-time after that. I would get up in the morning, go out to my garden and start writing until night time. Every day, for the next 20+ years, without ever saying a word. Over the years, local rumors have spread, saying that I was a demon possessed witch who puts curses on people. It appeared that I was getting better by 2001, when I was about to be married, but than I had a miscarriage, he called off the wedding, and than in 2003 the demon possession rumors took a violent turn when one hysterical local started saying I had used witchcraft to kill someone. This rumor got out of hand in during the infamous and well documented NaNoWriMo 2006, the year I dropped out due to vandals burning my house to the ground, resulting in my becoming homeless and very famous at the same time. Many news reports, paparazzi hounding’s, and 2 published books later, the stress proved to be too much for me and I suffered a stress induced stroke in October 2009. There is also some debate as to wither I have PTSD or Autism or both. And because it might help your research, I’m going to copy part of an article I wrote, you can read the entire thing here:http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2807682/living_with_aspergers_s… the entire article is 25 pages long and may take a couple of hours to read, and it is itself and excerpt from a 557 page book which can be found here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/for-fear-of-little-men/6508479 if you are really into the research and want to know all the details of everything that happened throughout this entire event, you’ll want to read the book itself. Any ways, one of the noted aspects of PTSD is the panic attacks and meltdowns that are triggered by the person coming in contact with anything that reminds them of the stressful event. 14 years, almost to the day, after the murder trail that stopped me talking, I found myself in court once again, and the result was a massive meltdown that got me sent, by the judge, to a psychologist, where it was discovered that what people had been calling PTSD, may have actually been in fact, Autism instead. Here is the part I’m copying (I was 30 years old at the time of this event): Don’t you know it’s rude to stare? Not a question asked to me, but a question I ask in response to people demanding I look at them when they talk.Eye contact. Why do I need to be looking at you to hear what you are saying? I hear with my ears not my eyes. Why do I need to look at you to talk to you? I talk with my mouth not my eyes.My lack of eye contact, my inability to speak around strangers, and my cloths, resulted in leading to my finding out I had Asperger’s, when in 2005 I was summoned into court as a witness to some case which I had no idea why they were saying I was a witness too. I’ll recap:A year before the fire or the flood which left my homeless, a man walked up to me, handed me a paper, told me I had been served and I had to show up in court to testify. I found this to be very confusing and puzzling because I didn’t know anything about this so call case that I was supposedly a witness too. I tried to explain this to the man, but I’m not good with verbal explanations. He told me that it didn’t matter wither I thought I was a witness or not, it was a court order and if I didn’t show up at court later that week, I would go to jail.Very puzzled, and very reluctant, I went to court on the date in question and found it to be one of the most nerve wracking frustrating days of my entire life. First off I had to be searched by a guard, who took my tote bag and dumped it out. (I carry my writing paper, my art supplies, and comic books with me every where . . . it’s a really big tote bag. Next I was questioned about my cloths; this being one of my very first confrontations with the world outside of church, I was completely lost as to understand why I was being asked about my cloths. What was wrong with the way I was dressed?My things were stuffed untidily and messed up back into my tote bag and I was told to sit on the right side of the court room. I sat in the very last pew and spent about an hour, resorting my crayons, comics and papers back into their proper order. I was interrupted while doing this, by my name being yelled out. Apparently the judge had called my name several times, but I had not heard her because I was busy fixing the mess the guard had made of my writing materials. I stood up, but had no idea what to do next. She called my name several more times, before finally telling me that I was supposed to come up front and sit in a chair in front of all of those people.Up front, I was asked to repeat a bunch of words, but now came my first really big problem . . . I was being asked to open my mouth and speak, something I had not done in years, and I was being asked to do it in a room filled with 40 or 50 people. This was not my first time in court. When I was 14 I was the only living witness to the murder trail of my 5 friends killed on August 21, 1991. It was court that had stopped me talking before. I spent day after day after day of interigation, back at my friend’s murder trail. When the murder trail ended, I went home and was never able to speak to a stranger again. Now, here I was again 14 years later in court. The judge asked me again and again to repeat the words of the police officer who was standing in front of me. I did. I tried, I said the words, again and again, but though my mouth moved not a sound came from my lips. It was like me throat was strangling them and refusing to let the words escape. The judge finally accepted a nod of yes and told me to sit down.Than came the questions from the 2 men sitting at the tables in front of the judge. They had to ask and re-ask their questions several times, but I could not hear their words, all I could do was stare out at all of those faces, rows and rows of them sitting in the seats below. I think I answered some of their questions because the judge kept telling me I had to speak loud enough for the tape recorder to hear me, and finally she said she had had “enough of this circus”. She than turned to me and told me to look at her. I looked at her hands. She repeatly demanded I look at her. Than she started yelling and saying that I was a grown woman acting like a child, she started yelling at me about my inappropriate cloths, my refusal to answer questions, my refusal to comply with orders, and my arrogance at not making eye contact. My cloths again. What was wrong with my cloths? She dismissed me as a witness, but told me not to leave the court, but to go wait at the front window.While I was sitting on the bench waiting, several men and women, I assume to be lawyers based on the fact that they were wearing suits and carrying brief cases and were in a court house, stopped to talk to me about my cloths. Most asked if I had been on my way to a party or a Ren faire when I had come to court. A few elderly women hobbled over to me and started talking about how nice it was to see people dressing up again like when they were young. Someone asked if I was a “dead head”. Dozens of people walked past me ever few minutes going in or out of one of the three court rooms, and nearly every one of them, made a point to stop and ask me about my cloths. With each question, I was growing ever more puzzled about this obsession every one seemed to have with walking up to me and talking about my cloths.About three hours later the woman at the front window called my name and handed me a paper. It was a court order to see a psychologist, with a slip of paper saying that the State of Maine was going to pay for one 3 hour appointment. As I turned to leave, the woman commented that she liked my costume.I was wearing a Josephine Empire gown of wedge wood blue, with a 3 foot long train. Over which I wore a 7 yard blue velvet burnoose (a type of hooded cape).A few weeks later at the psychologist’s office, I was greeted with: “So you are Wendy. Why are you dressed like that?”. (I was wearing a full kimono — many layers of kimono). He told me he had been reading my case (What case? I have a case? Since when?) sent to him by the judge. He commented several more times about my cloths. Asked if he could see the contents of my tote bag, and than spent the rest of the time asking me about my drawings and writings and how I lived my life. During the course of the meeting he commented several times on my “bizarre accent” and use of old style language, which he said was seen only in rare cases of twins left to be raised by themselves. He called it “twin-language”. He said he had read cases of it, but that he had never witnessed it himself before. He found my childhood and 27 year isolation at the hands of people he called “cultists” fascinating, and believed my total lack of prior Human contact was the cause of my “inability to function”. He thought it may be possible that I could be “trained like a dog” so that I could learn how to “be normal”, as he believed it was possible that I did not actually have a disorder at all, but rather I simply was living just the same as I was as a 4 year old child simply because no adult had ever taught me to be otherwise. By the end of the meeting he had become very excited and was acting like he had just discovered the Lost City of Eldorado or something.He ended by writing up a paper which he said was a request to the State for funding to do a research study on me, saying that I was an “anomaly” which he could not properly diagnose, because I was displaying so many symptoms of so many disorders. Officially I have “Schizotypal Asperger’s Syndrome with OCD Tendancies”, however, he thinks I have something that he calls “an anomolly yet to be named”, as he says there is no deffinate text book disorder to describe me properly.I left his office that day very confused, and for the first time in my life, noticing what people around me were wearing and noticing that it was very different from what I was wearing. I was also, now realizing for the first time, that people look into your eyes when they talk to each other. I was also realizing that people on the street around his office seemed to be doing a lot of standing around (wasting their time) and talking to each other. It has only been 4 years since that meeting, and I still am having a very hard time processing the fact that people talk a lot, people look at each other a lot, and people . . . well, you people just plain dress really weird as far as I can see.I have not again heard back from the psychologist, however, both my mother and my father have gotten letters from him, and each of them, and my mom’s current husband, and my three brothers were called in to be “evaluated” by him to see if the whole family was like me, or if I was the only one in the family who was like this. I don’t know who else he contacted, but I suspect he was the one who sent the social worker to “the tent” a year later, after the flood and the fire left me homeless and living under a tarp.All this, because I wouldn’t look a judge in the eye? I remain confused over why the judge responded the way she did to me, and I remain equally confused as to why the psychologist responded the way he did to me. It was my first real contact with any one outside of the Mormon church and I found it very strange. But, as a result of the judge and the psychologist, I also found out that outside of the Mormon church, people do not believe in demon possession, and unlike the Mormon leaders who always said I acted the way I did because I was possessed by a demon, an evil spirit, or a poltergeist, I had now learned from the psychologist that what they had called evil spirits was really some sort of birth defect in my brain, which causes me to see the world on a different brain wave pattern than every one else, resulting in me acting, dressing, and otherwise responding differently to things than does every one else. Well, I must say his medical diagnosis certainly made much more logical sense to me than the religious leaders’ accusation of demon possession.And now that I know the church leaders were wrong when they called me demon possessed, I no longer feel quite so much like an outcast, unloved, and alone. I’ve since looked into this whole Asperger’s thing, and I must say, it’s kind of a sigh of relief, because now I know what is “wrong” with me, and now, I can figure out how to work my life around it.Copyright Info: The contents of this post, are taken from the second draft of the book “For Fear of Little Men” by Wendy C. Allen, and reprinted here with permission. This article was originally published in October 2008 under the title Living With Asperger’s Syndrome is copyright to Wendy C. Allen and The Twighlight Manor Press, and is reprinted here with permission. __________________________ ========== My Advice for Writers My Books

http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com
http://eelkat.wordpress.com
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/132659
http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/user/132659

>Script Frenzy RE: Helpful Info on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

>

Posted March 1, 2010 – 20:08	Helpful Info on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?
	One of the major plot points of my show revolves around one of the characters having Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Here’s the problem, I don’t know much about it. I’m going to make this short and sweet as opposed to droning on and on over the issue: Does anyone have some helpful information on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

EelKat Municipal Liaison Posted March 31, 2010 – 06:55

RE: Helpful Info on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder?

I have PSTD to the point that I also have agoraphobia and have not been able to leave my house or have face to face contact with humans. Oddly in the past 20+ years the only time I’ve been able to either leave my house or have contact with humans is for the local Write-In meetings for NaNo and SF. When I was 14years old, my best friend was murdered along with 4 other friends. (five in all) I was the only survivor of a violent bloody attack, which left my friends with their arms and legs cut off their bodies, their intestines ripped out, and 2 of them living on for a few days before actually dieing. The court trials went on for 6 months. Because the murderer was caught in the act of slaughtering my friends, and because their was one survivor/witness of the attack (me), the trail went fast and she was executed that same year. I spent 6 months being questioned and interrogated by police and judges and lawyers, who didn’t give a damn about what I was going through, all they wanted was the facts so they could take another life (I was against her execution). This event left me without a single friend – every one of them was killed during this event. In the 20 years since I have not been able to make a single new friend. The event was made worse by the fact that when I went to church, I was meet with adults who didn’t give a damn. Several of them shook hands with me and said “How are you doing”… I responded with “My best friend was murdered this week” to which they responded “Oh that’s nice, I had a great week too” and walked off to shake hands with the next person. There were 375 adults in our church, dozens of them repeated this same thing that Sunday. Not one of them heard what I said. I went into a major stress overload during the court trials. By the time it was over I had stopped talking. I’ve barely spoken a full sentence since than. I took up writing full-time after that. I would get up in the morning, go out to my garden and start writing until night time. Every day, for the next 20+ years, without ever saying a word. Over the years, local rumors have spread, saying that I was a demon possessed witch who puts curses on people. It appeared that I was getting better by 2001, when I was about to be married, but than I had a miscarriage, he called off the wedding, and than in 2003 the demon possession rumors took a violent turn when one hysterical local started saying I had used witchcraft to kill someone. This rumor got out of hand in during the infamous and well documented NaNoWriMo 2006, the year I dropped out due to vandals burning my house to the ground, resulting in my becoming homeless and very famous at the same time. Many news reports, paparazzi hounding’s, and 2 published books later, the stress proved to be too much for me and I suffered a stress induced stroke in October 2009. There is also some debate as to wither I have PTSD or Autism or both. And because it might help your research, I’m going to copy part of an article I wrote, you can read the entire thing here:http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2807682/living_with_aspergers_s… the entire article is 25 pages long and may take a couple of hours to read, and it is itself and excerpt from a 557 page book which can be found here: http://www.lulu.com/product/paperback/for-fear-of-little-men/6508479 if you are really into the research and want to know all the details of everything that happened throughout this entire event, you’ll want to read the book itself. Any ways, one of the noted aspects of PTSD is the panic attacks and meltdowns that are triggered by the person coming in contact with anything that reminds them of the stressful event. 14 years, almost to the day, after the murder trail that stopped me talking, I found myself in court once again, and the result was a massive meltdown that got me sent, by the judge, to a psychologist, where it was discovered that what people had been calling PTSD, may have actually been in fact, Autism instead. Here is the part I’m copying (I was 30 years old at the time of this event): Don’t you know it’s rude to stare? Not a question asked to me, but a question I ask in response to people demanding I look at them when they talk.Eye contact. Why do I need to be looking at you to hear what you are saying? I hear with my ears not my eyes. Why do I need to look at you to talk to you? I talk with my mouth not my eyes.My lack of eye contact, my inability to speak around strangers, and my cloths, resulted in leading to my finding out I had Asperger’s, when in 2005 I was summoned into court as a witness to some case which I had no idea why they were saying I was a witness too. I’ll recap:A year before the fire or the flood which left my homeless, a man walked up to me, handed me a paper, told me I had been served and I had to show up in court to testify. I found this to be very confusing and puzzling because I didn’t know anything about this so call case that I was supposedly a witness too. I tried to explain this to the man, but I’m not good with verbal explanations. He told me that it didn’t matter wither I thought I was a witness or not, it was a court order and if I didn’t show up at court later that week, I would go to jail.Very puzzled, and very reluctant, I went to court on the date in question and found it to be one of the most nerve wracking frustrating days of my entire life. First off I had to be searched by a guard, who took my tote bag and dumped it out. (I carry my writing paper, my art supplies, and comic books with me every where . . . it’s a really big tote bag. Next I was questioned about my cloths; this being one of my very first confrontations with the world outside of church, I was completely lost as to understand why I was being asked about my cloths. What was wrong with the way I was dressed?My things were stuffed untidily and messed up back into my tote bag and I was told to sit on the right side of the court room. I sat in the very last pew and spent about an hour, resorting my crayons, comics and papers back into their proper order. I was interrupted while doing this, by my name being yelled out. Apparently the judge had called my name several times, but I had not heard her because I was busy fixing the mess the guard had made of my writing materials. I stood up, but had no idea what to do next. She called my name several more times, before finally telling me that I was supposed to come up front and sit in a chair in front of all of those people.Up front, I was asked to repeat a bunch of words, but now came my first really big problem . . . I was being asked to open my mouth and speak, something I had not done in years, and I was being asked to do it in a room filled with 40 or 50 people. This was not my first time in court. When I was 14 I was the only living witness to the murder trail of my 5 friends killed on August 21, 1991. It was court that had stopped me talking before. I spent day after day after day of interigation, back at my friend’s murder trail. When the murder trail ended, I went home and was never able to speak to a stranger again. Now, here I was again 14 years later in court. The judge asked me again and again to repeat the words of the police officer who was standing in front of me. I did. I tried, I said the words, again and again, but though my mouth moved not a sound came from my lips. It was like me throat was strangling them and refusing to let the words escape. The judge finally accepted a nod of yes and told me to sit down.Than came the questions from the 2 men sitting at the tables in front of the judge. They had to ask and re-ask their questions several times, but I could not hear their words, all I could do was stare out at all of those faces, rows and rows of them sitting in the seats below. I think I answered some of their questions because the judge kept telling me I had to speak loud enough for the tape recorder to hear me, and finally she said she had had “enough of this circus”. She than turned to me and told me to look at her. I looked at her hands. She repeatly demanded I look at her. Than she started yelling and saying that I was a grown woman acting like a child, she started yelling at me about my inappropriate cloths, my refusal to answer questions, my refusal to comply with orders, and my arrogance at not making eye contact. My cloths again. What was wrong with my cloths? She dismissed me as a witness, but told me not to leave the court, but to go wait at the front window.While I was sitting on the bench waiting, several men and women, I assume to be lawyers based on the fact that they were wearing suits and carrying brief cases and were in a court house, stopped to talk to me about my cloths. Most asked if I had been on my way to a party or a Ren faire when I had come to court. A few elderly women hobbled over to me and started talking about how nice it was to see people dressing up again like when they were young. Someone asked if I was a “dead head”. Dozens of people walked past me ever few minutes going in or out of one of the three court rooms, and nearly every one of them, made a point to stop and ask me about my cloths. With each question, I was growing ever more puzzled about this obsession every one seemed to have with walking up to me and talking about my cloths.About three hours later the woman at the front window called my name and handed me a paper. It was a court order to see a psychologist, with a slip of paper saying that the State of Maine was going to pay for one 3 hour appointment. As I turned to leave, the woman commented that she liked my costume.I was wearing a Josephine Empire gown of wedge wood blue, with a 3 foot long train. Over which I wore a 7 yard blue velvet burnoose (a type of hooded cape).A few weeks later at the psychologist’s office, I was greeted with: “So you are Wendy. Why are you dressed like that?”. (I was wearing a full kimono — many layers of kimono). He told me he had been reading my case (What case? I have a case? Since when?) sent to him by the judge. He commented several more times about my cloths. Asked if he could see the contents of my tote bag, and than spent the rest of the time asking me about my drawings and writings and how I lived my life. During the course of the meeting he commented several times on my “bizarre accent” and use of old style language, which he said was seen only in rare cases of twins left to be raised by themselves. He called it “twin-language”. He said he had read cases of it, but that he had never witnessed it himself before. He found my childhood and 27 year isolation at the hands of people he called “cultists” fascinating, and believed my total lack of prior Human contact was the cause of my “inability to function”. He thought it may be possible that I could be “trained like a dog” so that I could learn how to “be normal”, as he believed it was possible that I did not actually have a disorder at all, but rather I simply was living just the same as I was as a 4 year old child simply because no adult had ever taught me to be otherwise. By the end of the meeting he had become very excited and was acting like he had just discovered the Lost City of Eldorado or something.He ended by writing up a paper which he said was a request to the State for funding to do a research study on me, saying that I was an “anomaly” which he could not properly diagnose, because I was displaying so many symptoms of so many disorders. Officially I have “Schizotypal Asperger’s Syndrome with OCD Tendancies”, however, he thinks I have something that he calls “an anomolly yet to be named”, as he says there is no deffinate text book disorder to describe me properly.I left his office that day very confused, and for the first time in my life, noticing what people around me were wearing and noticing that it was very different from what I was wearing. I was also, now realizing for the first time, that people look into your eyes when they talk to each other. I was also realizing that people on the street around his office seemed to be doing a lot of standing around (wasting their time) and talking to each other. It has only been 4 years since that meeting, and I still am having a very hard time processing the fact that people talk a lot, people look at each other a lot, and people . . . well, you people just plain dress really weird as far as I can see.I have not again heard back from the psychologist, however, both my mother and my father have gotten letters from him, and each of them, and my mom’s current husband, and my three brothers were called in to be “evaluated” by him to see if the whole family was like me, or if I was the only one in the family who was like this. I don’t know who else he contacted, but I suspect he was the one who sent the social worker to “the tent” a year later, after the flood and the fire left me homeless and living under a tarp.All this, because I wouldn’t look a judge in the eye? I remain confused over why the judge responded the way she did to me, and I remain equally confused as to why the psychologist responded the way he did to me. It was my first real contact with any one outside of the Mormon church and I found it very strange. But, as a result of the judge and the psychologist, I also found out that outside of the Mormon church, people do not believe in demon possession, and unlike the Mormon leaders who always said I acted the way I did because I was possessed by a demon, an evil spirit, or a poltergeist, I had now learned from the psychologist that what they had called evil spirits was really some sort of birth defect in my brain, which causes me to see the world on a different brain wave pattern than every one else, resulting in me acting, dressing, and otherwise responding differently to things than does every one else. Well, I must say his medical diagnosis certainly made much more logical sense to me than the religious leaders’ accusation of demon possession.And now that I know the church leaders were wrong when they called me demon possessed, I no longer feel quite so much like an outcast, unloved, and alone. I’ve since looked into this whole Asperger’s thing, and I must say, it’s kind of a sigh of relief, because now I know what is “wrong” with me, and now, I can figure out how to work my life around it.Copyright Info: The contents of this post, are taken from the second draft of the book “For Fear of Little Men” by Wendy C. Allen, and reprinted here with permission. This article was originally published in October 2008 under the title Living With Asperger’s Syndrome is copyright to Wendy C. Allen and The Twighlight Manor Press, and is reprinted here with permission. __________________________ ========== My Advice for Writers My Books

http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com
http://eelkat.wordpress.com
http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/user/132659
http://www.scriptfrenzy.org/user/132659

NaNoWriMo RE: Limited medical training; restraining and caring for someone

RE: Limited medical training; restraining and caring for someone

[quote=akozete]My characters are in an isolated area. The group usually includes a doctor and a couple of nurses, but they’ve gone off to do something else, and the only person left with any medical experience is the cook, who used to be sort of a field medic and occasionally fills in as an extra assistant. He’s good to have around in an emergency, but when the doctor left, it was with the assumption that the main group would be able to get back to civilization and a real doctor pretty quickly if necessary, which is no longer the case.

Unfortunately, one of their number has just snapped: they’re not sure if she’s taken something or if she’s just gone mad (she’s never been quite right in the head, but she’s always seemed harmless enough), but she’s been muttering to herself, failing to respond to most stimuli, has extremely dilated pupils, apparently tried to attack my MC, and, according to the people left to watch her (who are lying, but no one has realized it yet), had been battering herself against the door of the room the MC managed to lock her into. The rest of the characters are agreed that she needs to be restrained before she hurts someone (probably herself), but I don’t know how this would best be accomplished, and I’m not sure how my cook would be likely to go about it. The doctor did leave behind most of her medical supplies and would probably have had what she’d have needed for this kind of situation (although it’d be basic and only intended as a stopgap until they could drop the person off at a real hospital), and I don’t want the cook making any serious, dangerous mistakes. I’m also not sure if there’s anything else he should do afterwards, given that he and the rest of them will be stuck with the crazy character for at least a few days–should he just watch that she’s not obviously injuring herself, or is there some other care he should know to give her?

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

———-

[/quote]

You and me write the same types of characters it seems. I got a doc that up and left a character with folks who’ve no idea how to handle him. He’s an extreme paranoid schizophrenic and prone to violent outbursts, due to extreme irrational phobias (such as fear that the house has come alive and is about to eat him, etc.). In my stories, the doctor is always busy off making house calls (it’s an old setting) cause he’s pretty much the only doctor in the area, so my schizoid gets left in the care of well meaning but uneducated folks quiet often.

My MC gets just like you describe your girl, only he also starts picking things up and just throwing them. Not really at any one, just throwing things around. (He can see “people/ghosts” that no one else sees, and that’s why he’s throwing things. He’s trying to get the “people/ghosts” to leave him alone. But the real people in the room with him, are not aware of this, they think he’s just gone nuts and thrown things for no reason.) He’s also Autistic, so even when he’s not having an “episode” his ability to coherently communicate with others is limited at best. Like most Autistics, he can write long lengthy descriptions of what he is feeling and on paper communicates perfectly, but his ability to speak verbally is limited at best, and like most “normal fols” that we Autistics have to deal with, no one is willing to read his written words, because they don’t have the time to. (Or course, if they don’t have time to read what the Autistic person wrote, than how would they have had the time to listen to them had they said the words instead of written them?) Most times he just sits quietly humming to himself and staring up at the ceiling – which is why the doctor sees no harm in leaving him with none medical folks, because usually he’s not hard to look after. It’s only when he starts seeing the “ghost/people” that he goes off in an uncontrollable and violent fit.

Usually, they try to hold him down, and tie him to the bed so he can’t hurt any one until they can get the doc back. If his house keeper/butler is on duty, the butler usually has the key to the manor’s medicine supply and starts just pouring stuff down his throat hoping something will knock him out for a few hours. Yep, I write classic Gothic: big manor houses owned by raving madman whom women fall madly (and illogically) in love with. LOL!

So, that’s how I handle it when my MC is having an “episode”. Don’t know if that is really helpful to you or not.

.
.
.

In your case, I’m assuming that you have a modern day setting, based on what you’ve said. (Mine was 1700′s setting, so even when the doctor is there, there is very limited things that can really be done.) I would assume that some one in your group was wearing a belt, and would try to use it to strap the girl to a bed (if there is a bed) or a chair, or even just use it to tie her arms behind her back, so as to restrain her to some extent. They may try to wrap a blanket around her first, than hold it down with a belt, sort of making a make shirt straight jacket, to keep her from hitting or kicking any one.

I’m afraid I’ve never heard of valum and as for sleeping pills???? I’ve never seen a first aid kit with sleeping pills in it before. From what you are describing your girl is either Autistic or Schizophrenic, possibly even Schizotypal Asperger’s Syndrome (which I have myself, btw) which is an Autistic person who also has Schizophrenia. and no doctor in his right mind would ever recommend over the counter meds to either one. And believe me, that’s saying a lot, because I write about Autistic and Schizophrenic characters for a reason – both run deep in my family varying in cases from mild to out right off the wall outlandish to seriously dangerous to every one around them (and also Diabetes and Bi-Polar and had to care for a coma victim for a year as well. ) I write what I know. I have to deal with out breaks and episodes (including my own) on a weekly basis and we have med kits EVERY WHERE as a result – bathroom, bedroom, car, living room, etc.

(I’m just the one who always ends up taking care of every one, but boy do I feel like every one in the family thinks I’m their personal doctor some times – and I’ve never had any medical training at all!!! Believe me – it’s stressful and does not help my own symptoms any at all.)

In real life, what I do, the medical kit will have the person’s prescriptions in it. It will also have a chart in it, which say with meds are for what and how much to give when, and how to give it. Some meds are in pill form, but most are in vials and so I have to know how to remove bubbles from the vial, insert the needle, fill the needle to the right amount, and than where and how to inject the needle. The doctor is likely to have given the chart and meds to some one AND had that person give the girl a few test shots before leaving them alone with her. I know that is what doctors do, because, that IS what real doctors do.

Know that in real life, a doctor would never, never, never, NEVER leave a character like this alone with some one unless that some one had gone through a training course (which would last a week or more) taught by the doctor, and than had lived with the character AND a visiting nurse for another few weeks, so that the doctor was confidant that the person could handle be left alone with the patient if such an episode did occur. (I know this from personal experience.) This is not some thing that doctors do “just because” either – it is a federal law (in the USA), they ARE REQUIRED by the government, to have trained a relative or close personal friend in how to care for the patient, other wise the patient is NOT allowed to leave the hospital to begin with. And than that person is supposed to be with the patient AT ALL TIMES. It’s the law.

So, there should be some one in your group whom the doctor gave her meds to, and who knows how to give them to her and whom has already been giving them to her on a fairly regular basis, assuming your characters are in the current time period in the USA .

.

Of course, you hit at foul play, so, the doctor could have unwittingly given the med kit to the character who may just have tossed it out the window and is now pretending they don’t know how to deal with this situation, even though in fact they do, because of some vile deviant motive, yet to be revealed. They could even be causing her to have the episode – maybe she needs certain meds through out the day and they haven’t been giving them to her on purpose? Maybe they know she has an irrational phobia that triggers these episodes – say she’s morbidly afraid of spiders and they put a spider on her hand, thus causing the episode to begin with. That sort of thing. The rest of the group would be clueless about what was going on and how to deal with it, and the one that is supposed to be helping her, could be pretending to be clueless as well.

Or, is it possible, that the situation is such that the person who knows what to do in these situations is now dead or unconscious? The doctor was confident leaving, because that person was alive and well when he left, but now that person is for whatever reason, completely unable to tell the others what to do to calm the girl down. That seems to be a very likely thing to have happened, and would thus result in the rest of the group panicking. Also, the girl would feel a deep connection of trust to the one who takes care of her, and seeing that person now dead or otherwise out of it, could very well have been the trigger to send her into her current episode. (Autistics and Schizophrenics are both prone to panic attacks triggered by separation anxiety and stress overload.)

.
.
.
As for your cook. It sound like he doesn’t really know her too well, and he’s just there sort of filling in, on a just in case basis. Is that correct? That’s how I’m reading what you wrote at least. I could easily see him making a lot of mistakes, just because he is not familiar with the girl’s particular quirks and habits, phobias and fears. He could easily do something to trigger and even worse episode, with out realizing it, just by doing or saying something that frightened her. In both Autism and Schizophrenia you would be dealing with a person that has extreme paranoia and irrational fears of things that most people find ordinary – for example she may be terrified of spoons and think that any one holding a spoon is trying to kill her, and your cook may try to give her liquid meds via a spoon, causing her to become even more violent when she sees the spoon, but your group and the cook, would have no idea that the spoon was what triggered the attack – the doctor probably knew about this, but would not have thought to mention it seeing how he left assuming they would get to where they were going safely. So your group could be dealing with a potential explosive situation here that could get far worse and they would have no way of knowing what her fear triggers are.

.
.
.

I would also suggest that you do a bit of Googling and look up so info about Autism, Schizophrenia, and Schizotypal Asperger’s Syndrome. Especially, look up the medical journal type sites, sites written by real doctors.

You might also want to read this site written by a patient with Schizotypal Asperger’s Syndrome: http://www.squidoo.com/Aspergers-Syndrome-and-Me to help you better understand what is going on inside the patient’s, head and see the world as they see it.

Sorry for the extra long post. Hope it helps you out some. Good luck with your story!

Incubus: Fear the Night!

http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com

>NaNoWriMo RE: Limited medical training; restraining and caring for someone

>

RE: Limited medical training; restraining and caring for someone

[quote=akozete]My characters are in an isolated area. The group usually includes a doctor and a couple of nurses, but they’ve gone off to do something else, and the only person left with any medical experience is the cook, who used to be sort of a field medic and occasionally fills in as an extra assistant. He’s good to have around in an emergency, but when the doctor left, it was with the assumption that the main group would be able to get back to civilization and a real doctor pretty quickly if necessary, which is no longer the case.

Unfortunately, one of their number has just snapped: they’re not sure if she’s taken something or if she’s just gone mad (she’s never been quite right in the head, but she’s always seemed harmless enough), but she’s been muttering to herself, failing to respond to most stimuli, has extremely dilated pupils, apparently tried to attack my MC, and, according to the people left to watch her (who are lying, but no one has realized it yet), had been battering herself against the door of the room the MC managed to lock her into. The rest of the characters are agreed that she needs to be restrained before she hurts someone (probably herself), but I don’t know how this would best be accomplished, and I’m not sure how my cook would be likely to go about it. The doctor did leave behind most of her medical supplies and would probably have had what she’d have needed for this kind of situation (although it’d be basic and only intended as a stopgap until they could drop the person off at a real hospital), and I don’t want the cook making any serious, dangerous mistakes. I’m also not sure if there’s anything else he should do afterwards, given that he and the rest of them will be stuck with the crazy character for at least a few days–should he just watch that she’s not obviously injuring herself, or is there some other care he should know to give her?

Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

———-

[/quote]

You and me write the same types of characters it seems. I got a doc that up and left a character with folks who’ve no idea how to handle him. He’s an extreme paranoid schizophrenic and prone to violent outbursts, due to extreme irrational phobias (such as fear that the house has come alive and is about to eat him, etc.). In my stories, the doctor is always busy off making house calls (it’s an old setting) cause he’s pretty much the only doctor in the area, so my schizoid gets left in the care of well meaning but uneducated folks quiet often.

My MC gets just like you describe your girl, only he also starts picking things up and just throwing them. Not really at any one, just throwing things around. (He can see “people/ghosts” that no one else sees, and that’s why he’s throwing things. He’s trying to get the “people/ghosts” to leave him alone. But the real people in the room with him, are not aware of this, they think he’s just gone nuts and thrown things for no reason.) He’s also Autistic, so even when he’s not having an “episode” his ability to coherently communicate with others is limited at best. Like most Autistics, he can write long lengthy descriptions of what he is feeling and on paper communicates perfectly, but his ability to speak verbally is limited at best, and like most “normal fols” that we Autistics have to deal with, no one is willing to read his written words, because they don’t have the time to. (Or course, if they don’t have time to read what the Autistic person wrote, than how would they have had the time to listen to them had they said the words instead of written them?) Most times he just sits quietly humming to himself and staring up at the ceiling – which is why the doctor sees no harm in leaving him with none medical folks, because usually he’s not hard to look after. It’s only when he starts seeing the “ghost/people” that he goes off in an uncontrollable and violent fit.

Usually, they try to hold him down, and tie him to the bed so he can’t hurt any one until they can get the doc back. If his house keeper/butler is on duty, the butler usually has the key to the manor’s medicine supply and starts just pouring stuff down his throat hoping something will knock him out for a few hours. Yep, I write classic Gothic: big manor houses owned by raving madman whom women fall madly (and illogically) in love with. LOL!

So, that’s how I handle it when my MC is having an “episode”. Don’t know if that is really helpful to you or not.

.
.
.

In your case, I’m assuming that you have a modern day setting, based on what you’ve said. (Mine was 1700′s setting, so even when the doctor is there, there is very limited things that can really be done.) I would assume that some one in your group was wearing a belt, and would try to use it to strap the girl to a bed (if there is a bed) or a chair, or even just use it to tie her arms behind her back, so as to restrain her to some extent. They may try to wrap a blanket around her first, than hold it down with a belt, sort of making a make shirt straight jacket, to keep her from hitting or kicking any one.

I’m afraid I’ve never heard of valum and as for sleeping pills???? I’ve never seen a first aid kit with sleeping pills in it before. From what you are describing your girl is either Autistic or Schizophrenic, possibly even Schizotypal Asperger’s Syndrome (which I have myself, btw) which is an Autistic person who also has Schizophrenia. and no doctor in his right mind would ever recommend over the counter meds to either one. And believe me, that’s saying a lot, because I write about Autistic and Schizophrenic characters for a reason – both run deep in my family varying in cases from mild to out right off the wall outlandish to seriously dangerous to every one around them (and also Diabetes and Bi-Polar and had to care for a coma victim for a year as well. ) I write what I know. I have to deal with out breaks and episodes (including my own) on a weekly basis and we have med kits EVERY WHERE as a result – bathroom, bedroom, car, living room, etc.

(I’m just the one who always ends up taking care of every one, but boy do I feel like every one in the family thinks I’m their personal doctor some times – and I’ve never had any medical training at all!!! Believe me – it’s stressful and does not help my own symptoms any at all.)

In real life, what I do, the medical kit will have the person’s prescriptions in it. It will also have a chart in it, which say with meds are for what and how much to give when, and how to give it. Some meds are in pill form, but most are in vials and so I have to know how to remove bubbles from the vial, insert the needle, fill the needle to the right amount, and than where and how to inject the needle. The doctor is likely to have given the chart and meds to some one AND had that person give the girl a few test shots before leaving them alone with her. I know that is what doctors do, because, that IS what real doctors do.

Know that in real life, a doctor would never, never, never, NEVER leave a character like this alone with some one unless that some one had gone through a training course (which would last a week or more) taught by the doctor, and than had lived with the character AND a visiting nurse for another few weeks, so that the doctor was confidant that the person could handle be left alone with the patient if such an episode did occur. (I know this from personal experience.) This is not some thing that doctors do “just because” either – it is a federal law (in the USA), they ARE REQUIRED by the government, to have trained a relative or close personal friend in how to care for the patient, other wise the patient is NOT allowed to leave the hospital to begin with. And than that person is supposed to be with the patient AT ALL TIMES. It’s the law.

So, there should be some one in your group whom the doctor gave her meds to, and who knows how to give them to her and whom has already been giving them to her on a fairly regular basis, assuming your characters are in the current time period in the USA .

.

Of course, you hit at foul play, so, the doctor could have unwittingly given the med kit to the character who may just have tossed it out the window and is now pretending they don’t know how to deal with this situation, even though in fact they do, because of some vile deviant motive, yet to be revealed. They could even be causing her to have the episode – maybe she needs certain meds through out the day and they haven’t been giving them to her on purpose? Maybe they know she has an irrational phobia that triggers these episodes – say she’s morbidly afraid of spiders and they put a spider on her hand, thus causing the episode to begin with. That sort of thing. The rest of the group would be clueless about what was going on and how to deal with it, and the one that is supposed to be helping her, could be pretending to be clueless as well.

Or, is it possible, that the situation is such that the person who knows what to do in these situations is now dead or unconscious? The doctor was confident leaving, because that person was alive and well when he left, but now that person is for whatever reason, completely unable to tell the others what to do to calm the girl down. That seems to be a very likely thing to have happened, and would thus result in the rest of the group panicking. Also, the girl would feel a deep connection of trust to the one who takes care of her, and seeing that person now dead or otherwise out of it, could very well have been the trigger to send her into her current episode. (Autistics and Schizophrenics are both prone to panic attacks triggered by separation anxiety and stress overload.)

.
.
.
As for your cook. It sound like he doesn’t really know her too well, and he’s just there sort of filling in, on a just in case basis. Is that correct? That’s how I’m reading what you wrote at least. I could easily see him making a lot of mistakes, just because he is not familiar with the girl’s particular quirks and habits, phobias and fears. He could easily do something to trigger and even worse episode, with out realizing it, just by doing or saying something that frightened her. In both Autism and Schizophrenia you would be dealing with a person that has extreme paranoia and irrational fears of things that most people find ordinary – for example she may be terrified of spoons and think that any one holding a spoon is trying to kill her, and your cook may try to give her liquid meds via a spoon, causing her to become even more violent when she sees the spoon, but your group and the cook, would have no idea that the spoon was what triggered the attack – the doctor probably knew about this, but would not have thought to mention it seeing how he left assuming they would get to where they were going safely. So your group could be dealing with a potential explosive situation here that could get far worse and they would have no way of knowing what her fear triggers are.

.
.
.

I would also suggest that you do a bit of Googling and look up so info about Autism, Schizophrenia, and Schizotypal Asperger’s Syndrome. Especially, look up the medical journal type sites, sites written by real doctors.

You might also want to read this site written by a patient with Schizotypal Asperger’s Syndrome: http://www.squidoo.com/Aspergers-Syndrome-and-Me to help you better understand what is going on inside the patient’s, head and see the world as they see it.

Sorry for the extra long post. Hope it helps you out some. Good luck with your story!

Incubus: Fear the Night!

http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com

NaNoWriMo RE: Traditional Torture Thread & a Look Behind the Scenes at The Pearl Necklace

Veteran NaNoers know that the best place to go to find unique and creepy was to kill off your characters if by heading to the: Traditional Torture Thread where authors tell how they torture their characters in their novels. I personally never visit the thread, seeing how I’m never at a loss of ways to kill, maim, and torture my characters. I did however read it today, and found that, well, everything on it, is, as it is, every year and far too “dull, tame, and traditional” for my off the wall fetish obsessed serial killers. If you can’t look at the ceiling and go: “OMG how did THAT get up there?” than it just won’t work for one of my villains.

But anyways, I noticed the Traditional Torture Thread seemed to be suffering from a representativeness this year – iron maidens, the rake, ball and chains – lots of traditional Spanish Inquisition torture methods being talked about but nothing really unique. So I figured it was high time I stepped forward and let one of my villains share his secret to stacking up the bodies:

And seeing how Etiole has moved in as the serial rapist villain of this years NaNovel, it seems only fitting to use his method of torture, as seen in the chapbook: The Pearl Necklace, in the 2006 NaNovel: Love Lust Madness, and this years NaNovel: Incubus.

One I have not seen mentioned yet, but I have a reoccurring serial killer in many of my short stories – he always gets away, so I always get to keep writing about him (It’s Etiole, yeah, he ALWAYS gets away) Anyways he has a rather unique way of killing his victims . . . uhm, sex slaves?. . . (yeah, the guy’s a bit of a fetish freak).

I read a book, years ago (it was written in the 1800′s I think, forget the name and author) and in it was a murder victim that had died in a rather unusual way. It was so freaky and odd ball, that it completely fascinated me so much that I made it the trademark method which my serial killer used for killing his victims. It goes like this:

The guy woes an unsuspecting girl, makes her fall in love with him, gives her a string of beads, tells her to wear it always and never take it off. A few days later, girl is found dead. Simple.

What happened? and how is it torture?

Here’s what happened: this guy make jewelry, by braiding thin ropes made out of sea kelp (sea weed) and stringing beads on them. There are spaces between the beads and the necklace is just big enough to slip over your head. He keeps them in water so they stay the same, but than, once the girl puts it on, the sea weed slowly starts to dry and shrink. It takes a few days before the girl realizes the necklace has shunk to the point she can no longer take it off. By this time he has now kidnapped her and she is tied up and can’t do anything about cutting the beads off. She slowly strangles to death over a period of four or five days.

I just find that so fascinating. I have no idea why. But ever since I read that story, I have always had that scene show up in my own stories.

Incubus: Fear the Night!

http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com

>NaNoWriMo RE: Traditional Torture Thread & a Look Behind the Scenes at The Pearl Necklace

>

Veteran NaNoers know that the best place to go to find unique and creepy was to kill off your characters if by heading to the: Traditional Torture Thread where authors tell how they torture their characters in their novels. I personally never visit the thread, seeing how I’m never at a loss of ways to kill, maim, and torture my characters. I did however read it today, and found that, well, everything on it, is, as it is, every year and far too “dull, tame, and traditional” for my off the wall fetish obsessed serial killers. If you can’t look at the ceiling and go: “OMG how did THAT get up there?” than it just won’t work for one of my villains.

But anyways, I noticed the Traditional Torture Thread seemed to be suffering from a representativeness this year – iron maidens, the rake, ball and chains – lots of traditional Spanish Inquisition torture methods being talked about but nothing really unique. So I figured it was high time I stepped forward and let one of my villains share his secret to stacking up the bodies:

And seeing how Etiole has moved in as the serial rapist villain of this years NaNovel, it seems only fitting to use his method of torture, as seen in the chapbook: The Pearl Necklace, in the 2006 NaNovel: Love Lust Madness, and this years NaNovel: Incubus.

One I have not seen mentioned yet, but I have a reoccurring serial killer in many of my short stories – he always gets away, so I always get to keep writing about him (It’s Etiole, yeah, he ALWAYS gets away) Anyways he has a rather unique way of killing his victims . . . uhm, sex slaves?. . . (yeah, the guy’s a bit of a fetish freak).

I read a book, years ago (it was written in the 1800′s I think, forget the name and author) and in it was a murder victim that had died in a rather unusual way. It was so freaky and odd ball, that it completely fascinated me so much that I made it the trademark method which my serial killer used for killing his victims. It goes like this:

The guy woes an unsuspecting girl, makes her fall in love with him, gives her a string of beads, tells her to wear it always and never take it off. A few days later, girl is found dead. Simple.

What happened? and how is it torture?

Here’s what happened: this guy make jewelry, by braiding thin ropes made out of sea kelp (sea weed) and stringing beads on them. There are spaces between the beads and the necklace is just big enough to slip over your head. He keeps them in water so they stay the same, but than, once the girl puts it on, the sea weed slowly starts to dry and shrink. It takes a few days before the girl realizes the necklace has shunk to the point she can no longer take it off. By this time he has now kidnapped her and she is tied up and can’t do anything about cutting the beads off. She slowly strangles to death over a period of four or five days.

I just find that so fascinating. I have no idea why. But ever since I read that story, I have always had that scene show up in my own stories.

Incubus: Fear the Night!

http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com

NaNoWriMo RE: Writing in 2nd Person POV

Are any of you writing in 2nd person? If so, what have you found to be the biggest challenge about writing in this uncommon POV?

———-

[/quote]

Out side of a game book (aka a Choose Your Own Adventure book) second person does not go over well, with either readers or publishers. It’s hard to read, if you are just reading it for the sake of reading it. It’s extremely difficult to write well, and is considered a “lazy form” of writing when used outside of a game book. The term “lazy form” is used to describe a style of writing that is pretty easy to write, but is hard to read or understand, resulting in the reader thinking the author was “too lazy” to bother to write something better. (First person, is also considered a “lazy form” of writing as well.)

Unless you are really, really, really, really good at English Grammar, and I mean college professor good, it’s VERY hard to write second person AND come out sounding grammatically correct.

That said, when it is well written, it makes for a very fast read, and draws the reader right into the book.

Pretty much every book on these lists is written in second person. I read most of them, but, most of them came out in the 1970′s so that tells you how long ago I read them. I can’t remember if they had dialog in them or not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamebook

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gamebooks

I recommend you try finding a few of these books via inter-library-loan and scan through them to see how other authors handled second person.

If you are writing something which you plan to publish, I would advise against second person, because most publishers toss every second person manuscript that comes across their desk, with out reading it. Unless it’s a game book, you will have an extremely hard time finding a publisher and will have to resort to self publishing it yourself. But if publishing is not your goal or it is a game book you are writing, than go ahead and write in second person, because it can’t hurt to try.

All Hail Bela Lugosi!

http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com

>NaNoWriMo RE: Writing in 2nd Person POV

>

Writing in 2nd Person POV

[quote=stelmariacookie]My story this year takes place largely in dream sequences, so I’ve been playing around with writing some scenes in 2nd person present tense. I’m finding it to be very awkward for dialog.

Does anyone have some good examples of 2nd person dialog?

Are any of you writing in 2nd person? If so, what have you found to be the biggest challenge about writing in this uncommon POV?

———-

[/quote]

Out side of a game book (aka a Choose Your Own Adventure book) second person does not go over well, with either readers or publishers. It’s hard to read, if you are just reading it for the sake of reading it. It’s extremely difficult to write well, and is considered a “lazy form” of writing when used outside of a game book. The term “lazy form” is used to describe a style of writing that is pretty easy to write, but is hard to read or understand, resulting in the reader thinking the author was “too lazy” to bother to write something better. (First person, is also considered a “lazy form” of writing as well.)

Unless you are really, really, really, really good at English Grammar, and I mean college professor good, it’s VERY hard to write second person AND come out sounding grammatically correct.

That said, when it is well written, it makes for a very fast read, and draws the reader right into the book.

Pretty much every book on these lists is written in second person. I read most of them, but, most of them came out in the 1970′s so that tells you how long ago I read them. I can’t remember if they had dialog in them or not.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamebook

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gamebooks

I recommend you try finding a few of these books via inter-library-loan and scan through them to see how other authors handled second person.

If you are writing something which you plan to publish, I would advise against second person, because most publishers toss every second person manuscript that comes across their desk, with out reading it. Unless it’s a game book, you will have an extremely hard time finding a publisher and will have to resort to self publishing it yourself. But if publishing is not your goal or it is a game book you are writing, than go ahead and write in second person, because it can’t hurt to try.

All Hail Bela Lugosi!

http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com

NaNoWriMo RE: Multiple pronouns – how do you keep them straight? (Dialog Tags)

Multiple pronouns – how do you keep them straight?

[quote=terraluft]Help! I constantly have several characters in the same place at the same time. How do you talk about two female characters using ‘she’ without getting them all confused? I hate having to use their names or how they are related to my MC because it doesn’t seem to flow as well as using the pronouns. And maybe the best answer is “don’t worry about it because that’s what the editing phase is for” applies? I have a tendency to obsess about things like this sidetracking me into “edit as I go” mode and I swore this year I wouldn’t do that. But, I keep getting hung up on this one area. Someone tell me how you do it and save me from myself?

[/quote]

I have three male MCs in mine.

I can’t think of how to explain what I do, so I’ll just copy a section from a scene that has all three of them talking to each other, so you can see how I do it:

[quote=EelKat]
The downstairs phone was ringing. “Answer the phone!” Zeb yelled, “I can’t find my pants.”

Xavier ran out of the bathroom, rubbing his wet hair with a towel.

The door bell rang. “Answer the door!” Zeb called from upstairs. “I still haven’t found my pants. Why haven’t you answered the phone yet?”

“Answer the phone. Answer the door. Can’t find your pants. I was in the shower you know.” Zeb wasn’t listening and Xavier knew it. By the time Xavier had gotten a bathrobe on, thrown a towel over his red hair, run down the stairs and reached the phone, it had stopped ringing. “Probably just a telemarketer anyways,” he muttered as he stumbled towards to door. It was Azreal, a tall skinny kid from down the road.

“Thought you guys were supposed to meet me by the creek,” he pointed to his watch, indicating that they were late once again.

“Yeah, I know, the alarm didn’t go off and Zeb lost his pants.”

“Lost his pants? How’d that happen?” Azreal walked in and made his way to the kitchen.

“Don’t know. His mom probably threw them in the laundry.” Xavier was Zeb’s cousin. He was visiting for the year while his parents went on some adventuring trip. Xavier never knew for certain what it was his parents did exactly. Paparazi reporters, is what the kids at school called them. Whatever. They were never home and Xavier ended up spending most of his months bunking out at his cousin Zeb’s house.

Azreal opened the fridge, “Why is there an old penny wedged behind the cheddar?”

“Azreal!” Zeb came down the stairs.

“I hate cheese.” Azreal was still poking around in the fridge.
[/quote]

uhm, yeah. That’s how I do it. Not sure if that helps you out or not. I don’t really use pronoun as dialog tags much.

All Hail Bela Lugosi!

http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com

>NaNoWriMo RE: Multiple pronouns – how do you keep them straight? (Dialog Tags)

>

Multiple pronouns – how do you keep them straight?

[quote=terraluft]Help! I constantly have several characters in the same place at the same time. How do you talk about two female characters using ‘she’ without getting them all confused? I hate having to use their names or how they are related to my MC because it doesn’t seem to flow as well as using the pronouns. And maybe the best answer is “don’t worry about it because that’s what the editing phase is for” applies? I have a tendency to obsess about things like this sidetracking me into “edit as I go” mode and I swore this year I wouldn’t do that. But, I keep getting hung up on this one area. Someone tell me how you do it and save me from myself?

[/quote]

I have three male MCs in mine.

I can’t think of how to explain what I do, so I’ll just copy a section from a scene that has all three of them talking to each other, so you can see how I do it:

[quote=EelKat]
The downstairs phone was ringing. “Answer the phone!” Zeb yelled, “I can’t find my pants.”

Xavier ran out of the bathroom, rubbing his wet hair with a towel.

The door bell rang. “Answer the door!” Zeb called from upstairs. “I still haven’t found my pants. Why haven’t you answered the phone yet?”

“Answer the phone. Answer the door. Can’t find your pants. I was in the shower you know.” Zeb wasn’t listening and Xavier knew it. By the time Xavier had gotten a bathrobe on, thrown a towel over his red hair, run down the stairs and reached the phone, it had stopped ringing. “Probably just a telemarketer anyways,” he muttered as he stumbled towards to door. It was Azreal, a tall skinny kid from down the road.

“Thought you guys were supposed to meet me by the creek,” he pointed to his watch, indicating that they were late once again.

“Yeah, I know, the alarm didn’t go off and Zeb lost his pants.”

“Lost his pants? How’d that happen?” Azreal walked in and made his way to the kitchen.

“Don’t know. His mom probably threw them in the laundry.” Xavier was Zeb’s cousin. He was visiting for the year while his parents went on some adventuring trip. Xavier never knew for certain what it was his parents did exactly. Paparazi reporters, is what the kids at school called them. Whatever. They were never home and Xavier ended up spending most of his months bunking out at his cousin Zeb’s house.

Azreal opened the fridge, “Why is there an old penny wedged behind the cheddar?”

“Azreal!” Zeb came down the stairs.

“I hate cheese.” Azreal was still poking around in the fridge.
[/quote]

uhm, yeah. That’s how I do it. Not sure if that helps you out or not. I don’t really use pronoun as dialog tags much.

All Hail Bela Lugosi!

http://twitter.com/EelKat
http://www.facebook.com/EelKat
http://eknano.blogspot.com

What Makes a Vampire, a Vampire?

Okay, so I’ve got my plot all ready to go, spent 3 months outlining, in 2 days I start writing, I’m doing good too, no vampires in sight – ghosts and zombie, but not a single vampire, and suddenly today, October 30th, I start thinking – tomorrow is Halloween! YAY! Got to go watch every Bela Lugosi and Vincent Price movie under the sun for the next 24 hours!!!! Yep, I’m weird, I know – every Halloween I pull out mountains of Bela Lugosi and Vincent Price DVDs and spend the whole day going classic vampire crazy. Oh no! Two days before NaNoWriMo I have a different plot ready to write and than Halloween shows up and messes up my train of thought and now all I can think about is vampires and how much I want to write a vampire story.

Okay, so I’m still doing my Frost Zombie apocalypse and I’m planning on 75k for that, but you know me, since when I have written less than 200k for NaNoWriMo? What that means is, I can go ahead and do a second NaNovel, and if I can go ahead and do a second NaNovel, than why can’t I go ahead and spend Halloween planning a vampire NaNovel? Can I outline an entire novel in less than 24 hours? Who knows, but I’m going to try.

So, here’s where I come to you guys. I’m trying to figure out what exactly it is, I think of when I think of vampires. Who are my vampires? What is it that makes my vampires, different from humans? What makes a vampire a vampire?

So, I am compiling a list of classic vampire things, (I prefer classic Bela Lugosi style Dracula vampires, btw, so that’s what I’m focusing on, and if any one has anything they want to add to this list, feel free to jump in and add your thoughts.

Here is my list so far:

Things that make a Vampire a Vampire:

- drinks blood
- is undead
- looks like Bela Lugosi
- dresses like Bela Lugosi =P

“Regular” Vampires have the following abilities:
“Super Powerful” Vampires also have the additional “rare” abilities:

Movement Abilities:

-Inhuman Speed
-Unearthly Reflexes
-Vertical Ascension (climbs walls)
-Gliding (with help of cape)
-Bat Form
-Mist Form
-Flight
-Move Silently

Rare Movement Abilities

-Clown Frenzy
-Astral Projection
-Dodge Daylight
-Spider Climb
-Cat’s Grace
-Shadow Conceal

Offensive Abilities

-Fangs
-Vampiric Claws
-Enhanced Senses
-Animalistic Frenzy
-Superhuman Strength
-Mind Control
-Wolf Form
-Horrific Transformation
-Glamor

Rare Offensive Abilities

-Pyrokinesis
-Corrosion
-Control Mall Santas
-Ironic Annihilation
-Purge Blood
-Pestilence
-Mummification
-Blood Soaked Vengeance (Carrie)
-Hellfire
-Demonic Familiar
-Bloodletting
-Vampire Lord
-Summon Horseman
-Shadow Transformation
-Bone Spikes
-Demon Summoning
-Telepathy
-Drain Youth
-Raise Zombies
-Invisibility
-Shadow Manipulation
-Blood to Ashes
-Command a Wolf Pack
-Command Rat Swarm
-Cause Madness
-Intoxicating Bite

Defensive Abilities

-Fast Healing
-Impervious to bullets
-Intimidation

Rare Defensive Abilities

-Veil of Thorns
-Winged Guard
-Premonition
-Indestructible
-Iron Skin
-Create Illusion
-Immunity to Religious Icons
-Immaterial (can walk through solid walls)
-Resistance to Sunlight
-Immunity to Silver

(This list was copied from the Zanga Game Vampire Wars, btw)

So, what do you think makes a Vampire a Vampire? Are the things on my list enough, too much, or not enough? I’m not really worrying about cliches and such. I figure if it’s too cliche, well tough luck, I’ll just have cliched vampires than. I’ve always been mesmerized by Bela Lugosi as Dracula, he’s the best vampire ever and he’s what I think of when I think of vampires, so he’s what I’ve got stuck in my head right this moment – of course it helps that I just watched Dracula last night too

This blog post, btw, started out in life as a NaNoWriMo Thread, What Makes a Vampire, a Vampire? So if you have an answer, you should post your answer on the thread itself. Okay? Cool!

Find Out More About My 2008 NaNoWriMo Book Which the LDS/Mormon Church is up in arms about. (NOTE – this link goes to the unedited proof of the book and not to the actual listing.)

Find Out More About My 2009 NaNoWriMo Project

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

———-
Editing and Drafts
Create a Fantasy Realm
Advice For NaNoWriters!
Creating Character Profiles
Are You A Renegade A Writer?
How To Become a Better Writer
The Top 5 Tools For NaNoWriMo
What Genre Is My Vampire Story?
Where Do You Get Your Ideas?
Improving your writing with what you read.
Have You Written Your Author’s Interview Yet?
How I Reached 50,000 in 30 Days and You Can Too!
———-

. . .

————-

Creating Character Profiles (A NaNoWriMo Post)

As is usual for NaNoWriMo – requests have gone out for the link to my ever popular Character Creating Profile. Here it is, as requested:

[quote=Character Information Sheet?]
I know they’re not necessary for writing the rough draft, but does anyone have a character sheet they use to outline they’re characters’ personalities, quirks, et cetra? I had one years and years ago, before I’d even heard about NaNoWriMo, but I can’t find it now.[/quote]

this is the one I’ve always used: http://www.squidoo.com/CharacterProfiles it’s the one that gets used by a lot of NaNoers each year, and usually someone starts a thread just for it in the helpful orgs section. I usually don’t find out about the thread, until I notice NaNo traffic on the web counter. I always found it amazing that so many people were recommending it each year, because it was just something I threw together, sort of on a whim, years ago (this might even be the one you are looking for, don’t know; it’s old enough – it was originally on my really old, ancient writing blog from way, way, way back, when nobody but us uber geeks had blogs – I moved it to this new website about 4 years ago).

I use it to keep track of characters, so that I don’t go saying my MC is allergic to mushrooms in chapter 1, than having him eating mushroom pizza in chapter 5! Pretty much it’s a fill in the blank list, that gives you the basic details of your characters looks, likes, stats, hobbies, etc, to give you a sounding board for when you get stuck during writing. I’ve had lots of writers, write and tell me this chart was a life saver for their novels, which, I thought was pretty neat, seeing how when I originally made this, it was nothing more than me, randomly brainstorming and having and interview with one of my main characters at that time. Since I put a tracker on it in April of 2007 it has had 18,000 unique visitors to it, most of them returning countless times. This is very likely the most trafficked and most popular character creating profile on the internet.

Find Out More About My 2009 NaNoWriMo Project

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

———-
Editing and Drafts
Create a Fantasy Realm
Advice For NaNoWriters!
Creating Character Profiles
Are You A Renegade A Writer?
How To Become a Better Writer
The Top 5 Tools For NaNoWriMo
What Genre Is My Vampire Story?
Where Do You Get Your Ideas?
Improving your writing with what you read.
Have You Written Your Author’s Interview Yet?
How I Reached 50,000 in 30 Days and You Can Too!
———-

. . .

————-

>Creating Character Profiles (A NaNoWriMo Post)

>

As is usual for NaNoWriMo – requests have gone out for the link to my ever popular Character Creating Profile. Here it is, as requested:

[quote=Character Information Sheet?]
I know they’re not necessary for writing the rough draft, but does anyone have a character sheet they use to outline they’re characters’ personalities, quirks, et cetra? I had one years and years ago, before I’d even heard about NaNoWriMo, but I can’t find it now.[/quote]

this is the one I’ve always used: http://www.squidoo.com/CharacterProfiles it’s the one that gets used by a lot of NaNoers each year, and usually someone starts a thread just for it in the helpful orgs section. I usually don’t find out about the thread, until I notice NaNo traffic on the web counter. I always found it amazing that so many people were recommending it each year, because it was just something I threw together, sort of on a whim, years ago (this might even be the one you are looking for, don’t know; it’s old enough – it was originally on my really old, ancient writing blog from way, way, way back, when nobody but us uber geeks had blogs – I moved it to this new website about 4 years ago).

I use it to keep track of characters, so that I don’t go saying my MC is allergic to mushrooms in chapter 1, than having him eating mushroom pizza in chapter 5! Pretty much it’s a fill in the blank list, that gives you the basic details of your characters looks, likes, stats, hobbies, etc, to give you a sounding board for when you get stuck during writing. I’ve had lots of writers, write and tell me this chart was a life saver for their novels, which, I thought was pretty neat, seeing how when I originally made this, it was nothing more than me, randomly brainstorming and having and interview with one of my main characters at that time. Since I put a tracker on it in April of 2007 it has had 18,000 unique visitors to it, most of them returning countless times. This is very likely the most trafficked and most popular character creating profile on the internet.

Find Out More About My 2009 NaNoWriMo Project

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

———-
Editing and Drafts
Create a Fantasy Realm
Advice For NaNoWriters!
Creating Character Profiles
Are You A Renegade A Writer?
How To Become a Better Writer
The Top 5 Tools For NaNoWriMo
What Genre Is My Vampire Story?
Where Do You Get Your Ideas?
Improving your writing with what you read.
Have You Written Your Author’s Interview Yet?
How I Reached 50,000 in 30 Days and You Can Too!
———-

. . .

————-

Why is my plot trying to become a YA Harry Potter rip-off?

I’m going good – my plot is moving right along, ideas and characters are snowballing into all sorts of plot snow-bunnies, everything is going great – and than today my plot does all sorts of weird things.

Quick recap – my plot revolves around this megalomaniac super villain who comes in and takes over this small town, planning to make it his “secret headquarters” for his bigger plot of global domination. He figures, no one will think to look for his HQ in a little hick town on the edge of nowhere, everyone will expect him to have some huge fortress in plain sight (because that’s his style). He also figures, no one in “a little hick town in the sticks” is going to be smart enough to defeat him or thwart his plans (yeah – this guy has a big ego problem).

Okay – so the town in the book, is in fact the tiny town in the middle of nowhere that I grew up in – so I know every nook and cranny and can really get into writing up the setting. I also know the locals pretty well and know that they just HATE outsiders barging in and will not stand for this guy’s attempt at taking over and setting up HQs here. They are NOT the backwards idiots he expects them to be.

So far so good. My problem is, I’ve yet to figure out WHO my hero is. I don’t have a main character or any of his side kicks yet. My story as I’ve planned it gets pretty dark and bloody, and is very much a horror story. Too horror to be considered a Young Adult novel. So I’ve been planning on an adult aged hero team (hero plus two friends).

Than this morning rolls around and I’m working on my plot and suddenly out of no where I’ve got these kids (about 16 years old -ish) and ideas about all sorts of ways they can defeat the bad guy, and I’m going – this is great! And than it hits me – it’s starting to sound an awful lot like Potter and crew going after Voldemort. Than I’m like – “Wait a minute! I wasn’t writing YA, what are these teenagers doing battling the villain?”

I need to steer clear of having Harry Potter-type personalities for my heroes. I think that’s the problem right there – it started sounding like it was Harry, Hermione, and Ron doing all these things. It was like they jumped out of the Potter books and into my plot. Not so much the plot itself being Potter-ish, but the characters acting like they were Harry, Hermione, and Ron. I don’t want to sound like I grabbed them, gave them new names, and set them in my plot, but just the way I was writing about their character bios – it seemed like that’s what I had done.

Of course maybe I SHOULD write YA, because tat’s what I read, and doesn’t every one always say to write what you read? What do I read – well, Harry Potter of course, and The Three Investigators, Bunnicula series, Jane Eyre, Edgar Alan Poe, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Lemony Snickets, Alfred Hitchcock’s Young Reader series, Bruce Coville, Betty Ren White, Kieth Laumer, James Blish, lots of random assorted single title books off the YA paperback rack of my local library – I rarely ever read adult fiction. . . uhm, yeah, YA books is all I ever read, maybe I should try writing YA after all?

It’s odd, I read one and write the other. All my books have always been adult books, usually very adult M rated books, not once have I written YA. It never occurred to me before that I am writing the complete opposite of what I’m reading. Weird, actually. Writing YA is so very not my style. I’m thinking now though, maybe I should give it a try seeing how this one is trying to go that road.

So my question is, SHOULD I go with it and let my teenage characters jump right in and battle the villain? or should I continue searching for older heroes for my book? Should I change my focus and make this a YA novel? And how do I come up with ways for my characters to defeat the villain, without making my readers think – “This is soooo Harry Potter”?

Find Out More About My 2009 NaNoWriMo Project

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

———-
Editing and Drafts
Create a Fantasy Realm
Advice For NaNoWriters!
Creating Character Profiles
Are You A Renegade A Writer?
How To Become a Better Writer
The Top 5 Tools For NaNoWriMo
What Genre Is My Vampire Story?
Where Do You Get Your Ideas?
Improving your writing with what you read.
Have You Written Your Author’s Interview Yet?
How I Reached 50,000 in 30 Days and You Can Too!
———-

. . .

————-

>Why is my plot trying to become a YA Harry Potter rip-off?

>

I’m going good – my plot is moving right along, ideas and characters are snowballing into all sorts of plot snow-bunnies, everything is going great – and than today my plot does all sorts of weird things.

Quick recap – my plot revolves around this megalomaniac super villain who comes in and takes over this small town, planning to make it his “secret headquarters” for his bigger plot of global domination. He figures, no one will think to look for his HQ in a little hick town on the edge of nowhere, everyone will expect him to have some huge fortress in plain sight (because that’s his style). He also figures, no one in “a little hick town in the sticks” is going to be smart enough to defeat him or thwart his plans (yeah – this guy has a big ego problem).

Okay – so the town in the book, is in fact the tiny town in the middle of nowhere that I grew up in – so I know every nook and cranny and can really get into writing up the setting. I also know the locals pretty well and know that they just HATE outsiders barging in and will not stand for this guy’s attempt at taking over and setting up HQs here. They are NOT the backwards idiots he expects them to be.

So far so good. My problem is, I’ve yet to figure out WHO my hero is. I don’t have a main character or any of his side kicks yet. My story as I’ve planned it gets pretty dark and bloody, and is very much a horror story. Too horror to be considered a Young Adult novel. So I’ve been planning on an adult aged hero team (hero plus two friends).

Than this morning rolls around and I’m working on my plot and suddenly out of no where I’ve got these kids (about 16 years old -ish) and ideas about all sorts of ways they can defeat the bad guy, and I’m going – this is great! And than it hits me – it’s starting to sound an awful lot like Potter and crew going after Voldemort. Than I’m like – “Wait a minute! I wasn’t writing YA, what are these teenagers doing battling the villain?”

I need to steer clear of having Harry Potter-type personalities for my heroes. I think that’s the problem right there – it started sounding like it was Harry, Hermione, and Ron doing all these things. It was like they jumped out of the Potter books and into my plot. Not so much the plot itself being Potter-ish, but the characters acting like they were Harry, Hermione, and Ron. I don’t want to sound like I grabbed them, gave them new names, and set them in my plot, but just the way I was writing about their character bios – it seemed like that’s what I had done.

Of course maybe I SHOULD write YA, because tat’s what I read, and doesn’t every one always say to write what you read? What do I read – well, Harry Potter of course, and The Three Investigators, Bunnicula series, Jane Eyre, Edgar Alan Poe, Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, Lemony Snickets, Alfred Hitchcock’s Young Reader series, Bruce Coville, Betty Ren White, Kieth Laumer, James Blish, lots of random assorted single title books off the YA paperback rack of my local library – I rarely ever read adult fiction. . . uhm, yeah, YA books is all I ever read, maybe I should try writing YA after all?

It’s odd, I read one and write the other. All my books have always been adult books, usually very adult M rated books, not once have I written YA. It never occurred to me before that I am writing the complete opposite of what I’m reading. Weird, actually. Writing YA is so very not my style. I’m thinking now though, maybe I should give it a try seeing how this one is trying to go that road.

So my question is, SHOULD I go with it and let my teenage characters jump right in and battle the villain? or should I continue searching for older heroes for my book? Should I change my focus and make this a YA novel? And how do I come up with ways for my characters to defeat the villain, without making my readers think – “This is soooo Harry Potter”?

Find Out More About My 2009 NaNoWriMo Project

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

———-
Editing and Drafts
Create a Fantasy Realm
Advice For NaNoWriters!
Creating Character Profiles
Are You A Renegade A Writer?
How To Become a Better Writer
The Top 5 Tools For NaNoWriMo
What Genre Is My Vampire Story?
Where Do You Get Your Ideas?
Improving your writing with what you read.
Have You Written Your Author’s Interview Yet?
How I Reached 50,000 in 30 Days and You Can Too!
———-

. . .

————-

Villain as a PoV characters? Can it be done?

I’m having a character and plotting problem. I have an idea (not really a full plot yet – but November will fix that), and I have a place (the town I grew up in, of which I know every nook and cranny of), I have the backdrop people (nameless folks in the sidelines who’s sole purpose is to be killed off by the villain), and of course I have the villain (a nursery rhyme character gone comic book megalomaniac) and his evil minions (a traveling side show-circus of frozen ghosts).

My villain is well planned (I spent years creating him) and is life like and three dimensional. I know what he wants and what he’ll do to reach his goals. I know he’s about to land unannounced in this town and pretty much turn it upside down. I know that somewhere, somehow, someone (my hero/main character???) will come along and figure out how to defeat him.

And there’s my problem – I have no main character! I think I want three main characters (three best friends who for whatever reason take it upon themselves to defeat this guy), but I’ve yet to figure out who they, what they look like, or more importantly HOW they will defeat the villain.

I think as it goes now, the villain is going to be the point of view character, but than I wonder – CAN a villain be a PoV character? Stories should build up around the MC right? But does the MC always have to be the hero? My story is building up, but it is building up around the villain and as yet, no hero has come forward. Does that mean that my villain (and not my hero) is the main character?

Traditionally, the bad guy gets defeated at the end, and is no longer seen in the last chapter of a novel; the last chapter being reserved for tying up loose ends and showing the heroes living happily ever after (more or less). Can the novel be written through the eyes of the guy who will be defeated at the end? (He’ll still be alive at the end, the hero isn’t going to kill him off, just stop him from succeeding in his evil plan.) Can a novel end, not showing the hero riding off into the sunset, but rather showing the villain going off to sulk in his lair instead?

I know publishers always want the HEA (Happily Ever After) endings, but I’m just really not a HEA writer! It’s been the major stumbling block to my getting published, actually. Editor’s are constantly telling me: “This is great, but could you change the ending?” Are you crazy? Me? Change the ending? I’m not your sunshine and happiness writer! I don’t let my heroes get everything they ever wanted – heck, they are lucky if they are still alive by the time the book ends! I love Poe’s morbid endings, and I love writing Poe style morbid endings. I get sick of every book I read, ALWAYS having a HEA ending. I get to the end and I wish – just once, why can’t the bad guy win? Just once, why can’t the hero give up and say “To heck with it, save yourself.” Just once I’d like to see a stumbling block fall in front of the hero and he has to end his quest WITHOUT reaching his goal! ACK! Why don’t more publishers give us this? I mean, it’s not like us writers are not writing this stuff. Sure we are, we just can’t get publishers to publish anything without an HEA ending.

End rant.

Okay, back to my NaNoNovel of the year. Well, my novel this year, I’m planning to get published. By December I want to have a draft worthy of editing and polishing, so that by next summer I’ll have an MSS I can send out to publishers. Here’s my problem – I’ve done this before, but my endings are always either hero dies, bad guy wins, heroine dies and hero goes mad with grief, or some other such ending of gloom and despair. I LIKE writing endings like that, but publishers don’t want to publish those types of endings. So, I’m torn between writing what I’m good at or writing what publishers want.

Well, this year, my story, as usual, revolves heavily around the villain. It’s very likely that he’ll be the MC and the PoV character. It’s also very likely that he will defeat the hero and gain global domination. As it’s going right now (in this early planning stage) it looks like my hero is doomed to fail on his quest, and me the author is going to sit back and let it happen. In other words, I WANT MY HERO TO FAIL! No matter what he does or how hard he tries, I’m just not going to let him win. Is that bad?

Anyone ever seen the movie “Quarantine” (It’s a zombie movie that well, let’s just say does not go quite the way the hero expected.) or “Saw”? Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. Those kind of endings. Bad guy wins. No matter how many loops the hero jumps through – bad guy still wins – game over – hero loses. I like to call them *Twilight Zone Endings* because it happened so often, that the bad guy wins in The Twilight Zone. So, that’s the way my story is going.

Of course, it also looks like my plot is turning into sort of a zombie apocalypse here too. Whoops! I didn’t plan on that!

Can anyone recommend any books where the villain/bad guy is a PoV character? I’d like to read some to get an idea of how others have handled writing from the PoV of the bad guy, but so far I can’t think of any books writing from the villain’s PoV. Preferably stuff that makes you think: Quarantine, Saw, Poe, Joker, or Twilight Zone (since this is the way my story is leaning quite heavily at this point.)

I know Batman comic books are somethings written from the villain’s PoV and it’s not uncommon to see Gotham through the Joker’s eyes or to see the Joker taking the lead in the stories while pushing Batman into the sidelines. And of course, though he’s defeated in the end of the story, the Joker is never fully defeated, he always comes back a few issues later. But this is the only example I can think of, of a villain taking the lead, and a comic book is not exactly the same as a novel. Are there any novels that do this?

Is there any one else who has or plans to write using the villain/bad guy as their MC and PoV character?

So many questions, I know, but it’s just that I’ve never seen a novel written from a villain PoV before and outside of comic books I don’t know of any villains ever being used as a main character before. Let me know if you know of any, please.

Also I need to find my heroes (main characters???) but so far they are doing a good job of hiding from me. If any one has any ideas, I’d love to hear them.

Find Out More About My 2009 NaNoWriMo Project

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

———-
Editing and Drafts
Create a Fantasy Realm
Advice For NaNoWriters!
Creating Character Profiles
Are You A Renegade A Writer?
How To Become a Better Writer
The Top 5 Tools For NaNoWriMo
What Genre Is My Vampire Story?
Where Do You Get Your Ideas?
Improving your writing with what you read.
Have You Written Your Author’s Interview Yet?
How I Reached 50,000 in 30 Days and You Can Too!
———-

. . .

————-

>Villain as a PoV characters? Can it be done?

>

I’m having a character and plotting problem. I have an idea (not really a full plot yet – but November will fix that), and I have a place (the town I grew up in, of which I know every nook and cranny of), I have the backdrop people (nameless folks in the sidelines who’s sole purpose is to be killed off by the villain), and of course I have the villain (a nursery rhyme character gone comic book megalomaniac) and his evil minions (a traveling side show-circus of frozen ghosts).

My villain is well planned (I spent years creating him) and is life like and three dimensional. I know what he wants and what he’ll do to reach his goals. I know he’s about to land unannounced in this town and pretty much turn it upside down. I know that somewhere, somehow, someone (my hero/main character???) will come along and figure out how to defeat him.

And there’s my problem – I have no main character! I think I want three main characters (three best friends who for whatever reason take it upon themselves to defeat this guy), but I’ve yet to figure out who they, what they look like, or more importantly HOW they will defeat the villain.

I think as it goes now, the villain is going to be the point of view character, but than I wonder – CAN a villain be a PoV character? Stories should build up around the MC right? But does the MC always have to be the hero? My story is building up, but it is building up around the villain and as yet, no hero has come forward. Does that mean that my villain (and not my hero) is the main character?

Traditionally, the bad guy gets defeated at the end, and is no longer seen in the last chapter of a novel; the last chapter being reserved for tying up loose ends and showing the heroes living happily ever after (more or less). Can the novel be written through the eyes of the guy who will be defeated at the end? (He’ll still be alive at the end, the hero isn’t going to kill him off, just stop him from succeeding in his evil plan.) Can a novel end, not showing the hero riding off into the sunset, but rather showing the villain going off to sulk in his lair instead?

I know publishers always want the HEA (Happily Ever After) endings, but I’m just really not a HEA writer! It’s been the major stumbling block to my getting published, actually. Editor’s are constantly telling me: “This is great, but could you change the ending?” Are you crazy? Me? Change the ending? I’m not your sunshine and happiness writer! I don’t let my heroes get everything they ever wanted – heck, they are lucky if they are still alive by the time the book ends! I love Poe’s morbid endings, and I love writing Poe style morbid endings. I get sick of every book I read, ALWAYS having a HEA ending. I get to the end and I wish – just once, why can’t the bad guy win? Just once, why can’t the hero give up and say “To heck with it, save yourself.” Just once I’d like to see a stumbling block fall in front of the hero and he has to end his quest WITHOUT reaching his goal! ACK! Why don’t more publishers give us this? I mean, it’s not like us writers are not writing this stuff. Sure we are, we just can’t get publishers to publish anything without an HEA ending.

End rant.

Okay, back to my NaNoNovel of the year. Well, my novel this year, I’m planning to get published. By December I want to have a draft worthy of editing and polishing, so that by next summer I’ll have an MSS I can send out to publishers. Here’s my problem – I’ve done this before, but my endings are always either hero dies, bad guy wins, heroine dies and hero goes mad with grief, or some other such ending of gloom and despair. I LIKE writing endings like that, but publishers don’t want to publish those types of endings. So, I’m torn between writing what I’m good at or writing what publishers want.

Well, this year, my story, as usual, revolves heavily around the villain. It’s very likely that he’ll be the MC and the PoV character. It’s also very likely that he will defeat the hero and gain global domination. As it’s going right now (in this early planning stage) it looks like my hero is doomed to fail on his quest, and me the author is going to sit back and let it happen. In other words, I WANT MY HERO TO FAIL! No matter what he does or how hard he tries, I’m just not going to let him win. Is that bad?

Anyone ever seen the movie “Quarantine” (It’s a zombie movie that well, let’s just say does not go quite the way the hero expected.) or “Saw”? Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about. Those kind of endings. Bad guy wins. No matter how many loops the hero jumps through – bad guy still wins – game over – hero loses. I like to call them *Twilight Zone Endings* because it happened so often, that the bad guy wins in The Twilight Zone. So, that’s the way my story is going.

Of course, it also looks like my plot is turning into sort of a zombie apocalypse here too. Whoops! I didn’t plan on that!

Can anyone recommend any books where the villain/bad guy is a PoV character? I’d like to read some to get an idea of how others have handled writing from the PoV of the bad guy, but so far I can’t think of any books writing from the villain’s PoV. Preferably stuff that makes you think: Quarantine, Saw, Poe, Joker, or Twilight Zone (since this is the way my story is leaning quite heavily at this point.)

I know Batman comic books are somethings written from the villain’s PoV and it’s not uncommon to see Gotham through the Joker’s eyes or to see the Joker taking the lead in the stories while pushing Batman into the sidelines. And of course, though he’s defeated in the end of the story, the Joker is never fully defeated, he always comes back a few issues later. But this is the only example I can think of, of a villain taking the lead, and a comic book is not exactly the same as a novel. Are there any novels that do this?

Is there any one else who has or plans to write using the villain/bad guy as their MC and PoV character?

So many questions, I know, but it’s just that I’ve never seen a novel written from a villain PoV before and outside of comic books I don’t know of any villains ever being used as a main character before. Let me know if you know of any, please.

Also I need to find my heroes (main characters???) but so far they are doing a good job of hiding from me. If any one has any ideas, I’d love to hear them.

Find Out More About My 2009 NaNoWriMo Project

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

———-
Editing and Drafts
Create a Fantasy Realm
Advice For NaNoWriters!
Creating Character Profiles
Are You A Renegade A Writer?
How To Become a Better Writer
The Top 5 Tools For NaNoWriMo
What Genre Is My Vampire Story?
Where Do You Get Your Ideas?
Improving your writing with what you read.
Have You Written Your Author’s Interview Yet?
How I Reached 50,000 in 30 Days and You Can Too!
———-

. . .

————-

NaNoWriMo RE: Living with Paralysis?

Me answering so NaNoWriMo forum questions again. This time on writing about a disabled character.

NaNoWriMo RE: Living with Paralysis?

My main character’s boyfriend is paralyzed below the waist (and has always been), and uses a regular wheelchair to get around. He is not necessarily a sedentary character though–he enjoys going out on the town as long as the places have proper accommodations, he lifts weights to build arm strength, and he sometimes has a race or two against the main character (who roller-blades). He doesn’t have to worry too much about stairs–his house has one floor, and is well-suited to his needs.

+ So first of all, I need to know how someone like him would get in and out of bed (and go to the bathroom, take a shower etc.) I looked on Google, and they said that people in his situation have aides (or in his case, his parents) to help them–but if it’s possible, I’d like him to have an alternative method of doing things besides just “getting help from someone else.” (P.S.: upper-body strength is NOT a problem!)

+ Second of all–I don’t know how anyone would KNOW this, but it’s worth a try–do you think it’s plausible for a wheelchair and a roller-blader to have races like they do? Would one of them have a distinct speed advantage no matter what, and win almost all the time? Or would it all be dependent on the skill level of either racer? Is his lifestyle even plausible?

+ And finally: I read this in a book one time, but I completely forgot how it was done–if he fell out of his chair, how would he instruct someone to help him? I have a scene in the end of the story where this needs to be done, and I have a general idea of how it’s going to go. I just want to be sure.

My uncle is in a wheelchair. Paralyzed from the waist down. His wife has to do everything for him – pick him up, carry him out of bed to his chair, etc. He can not use the toilet at all (being paralyzed from the waist down – means he had no muscle function and thus ZERO ability to “go”. Instead he has to have a catheter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catheter which is like a really big IV tube – one going up through his ass the other his penis – to pump out wastes and act as muscle replacements – they drain into a plastic bag that is strapped too his leg and runs down the length of his leg inside his pants. (Paralyzed from the waist down mean you’ve got a paralyzed bladder and intestines too! – it also means he has a strict, near liquid diet – no intestinal movement, means no ability to remove solid wastes without surgery.) Someone – usually his wife – has to change these tubes and empty the bags 4 or 5 times or more per day. He can’t take a bath or a shower, instead has to have sponge baths from bed. Upper body strength has nothing to do with it – from the waist down means you can not sit up on your own, no matter how strong your arms are.

Legs only paralyzed sounds like what you are describing – legs only would still be able to do stuff on his own, and could still rely on upper body strength, could still bath himself, use a toilet, dress himself, etc. Waist down – not physically possible AT ALL!

Also – there are much greater things than stairs to worry about – very few houses are sized/equipped for a wheel chair – doors not wide enough, rooms not big enough (remember – to turn around the wheelchair needs at least 4 times it’s diameter, just to make a full swing!) A wheel chair bound person paralyzed from the waist down will usually have the living room turned into his bed room and will never again go into any other room of the house – unless of course he’s a millionaire and can afford to have all the walls knocked out and the rooms doubled in size, and the base of door frames removed (even the slightest bump will flip a wheelchair!).

Sidewalks are near impossible to use – to many cracks and dips in the surface, also brick and cobblestone walks are out of the question – the slightest unevenness in the surface will flip a wheelchair. Going up or down even slight hills, not possible either. In all of these cases, an assistance would be required to steady and brace the chair, basically holding it upright as it moves.

Manhole covers, drain grates, and sidewalk-underground-lifts/elevators must all be avoided – 2 reasons, one the openings/edges catch wheelchair tires and cause the chair to flip forwards; 2 they produce static electricity and will electrocute the guy in the chair – this is a VERY, VERY serious problem, because someone with only half their body function is prone to heart problems, and while a normal person would only get a mind “zap” shock, a paralyzed person could die on the spot of a massive heart attack. My uncle did not believe this – used to say it was an urban legend, until one day he went across a manhole cover and had to be rushed to the hospitable in a near coma from static shock.

Something to consider – a waist down paralyzed person who falls out of his chair will be more worried about how to get someone to call him an ambulance than how to get someone to help him back into the chair. Lack of waist muscle means lack of diaphragm muscle – and thus lack of normal lung movement – he’ll be on oxygen because his waist region muscles will not be pushing on his lungs. Once flat on the ground his lung will stop working, and he’ll not be able to breath let alone talk. He’ll need to be lifted into an upright position until the ambulance gets there. He’ll need to be rushed to the hospital to check to make sure the oxygen loss did not cause brain damage.

Also – as you just saw – upper body strength is going to be highly unlikely, because it requires good lungs and without your waist muscles and diaphragm to push on your lungs, you will be lucky if you can breath without a tank strapped to the back of your chair.

I would like to point out though – again – waist down – no, he can’t race, not unless he has a remote controlled electric wheel chair and those move very, very, VERY slow – snail’s pace at best – most people walk faster. Again – that would be someone with legs paralyzed NOT waist down paralyzed who could race. He would need the ability to bend his waist forward to push the wheels of the chair – waist can’t be bent forward if it is paralyzed! Someone paralyzed waist down would NOT be using a hand pushed wheel chair, again, not a matter of upper body strength, but a matter of a lack of WAIST muscle – upper body strength with out the waist muscle to support it is worthless and actually not scientifically plausible — possible, but highly unlikely and extraordinarily rare. He’d be turning the wheel 2 times for every inch moved. Each turn would require him to lean forward, grabbed the wheel, push it down, leaning his upper body down against his knees, and than letting go of the wheels and using his waist muscles to push himself back upright, than grab the wheel again – someone waist paralyzed has no waist muscle movement and thus no ability to lean either forward or backward.

Someone paralyzed from the waist down would be in a monster sized electric wheel chair – these things are big, most as big as a motorcycle, most can not fit through doors of the average house. These do not have the big wire spoke wheels you can reach down and turn on your own, but instead small “car tire” wheels about 8 inches in diameter. The guy would be harnessed into the chair with a harness belt wrapped around his waist, chest, and shoulders. This harness keeps him upright and stops his upper body from flopping around. (Remember – no waist muscles to support his chest, means without the harness his head will be too heavy for his spine to support and his upper body will always be flung forward with his face resting on his knees any time the harness is removed! Your waist muscles do an awful lot of supporting you – without your waist your upper body strength ain’t worth shit and in fact the more upper body muscle you have, the closer your face is going to be to the ground, because all that chest/shoulder muscle makes you top heavy and there is no waist muscle to keep it upright.)

I think, what you are describing is someone with both legs paralyzed which is markedly different from someone paralyzed from the waist down. He’d still have use of his waist muscles and thus would have the big spoke self pushed wheel chair needed to race a roller bladder, and would still be able to get out of the chair to use the toilet on his own, and he’d be able to bath himself, since he would have waist movement still and thus the ability to sit up on his own.

They do sell racing wheelchairs – they have 3 wheels and are long and skinny and low on the ground. They use them in Special Olympics races. But they are for people paralyzed from the hips or thighs down, not from the waist down. You might want to check out info about The Special Olympics. http://www.specialolympics.org/

Of course, in the future, and in a sci-fi, who’s to say there isn’t some way to get around all of these things? Medical science invents/discovers new things every day, so you can be creative and still be accurate at the same time, by explaining things away as a medical advancement. In any case, good luck on your story.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I did also want to let you know – SAVE THIS THREAD/QUESTION and REPOST it Oct 1st! On Sept 30th NaNo shuts down and erases the system – all of your questions and answers will be gone forever! This is the 2008 forum you are posting on right now. The 2009 forum will not go live until Oct 1st.

You will need to reenter your profile information on your profile page Oct 1st as well. EVERYTHING is about to be erased! This close to the erase/reboot date it’s best to not start any new threads, because they be gone in a matter of days. Copy all of your threads, and save them on a blog or your hard drive or something. Than after the system reboots, next week, come back here and start them all over again.

What I do, is I start each of my questions on my blog. I write the blog post asking the question. Than I wait until the system reboots and the new (and very empty!) forums come back, than I copy each of my blog post questions and start my threads asking questions than. That way my questions stay in the system for the entire 2009 year.

———-
Create a Fantasy Realm
Advice For NaNoWriters!
Creating Character Profiles
Are You A Renegade A Writer?
How To Become a Better Writer
Improving your writing with what you read.
Have You Written Your Author’s Interview Yet?

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

. . .

Hey, you know what? I sell Avon! I’m an Independent Avon eRepresentative and that means you can buy Avon from me, 24 hours a day, from your computer, from anyplace in the world, and Avon will ship it to you.

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:

.
.

.

>NaNoWriMo RE: Living with Paralysis?

>

Me answering so NaNoWriMo forum questions again. This time on writing about a disabled character.

NaNoWriMo RE: Living with Paralysis?

My main character’s boyfriend is paralyzed below the waist (and has always been), and uses a regular wheelchair to get around. He is not necessarily a sedentary character though–he enjoys going out on the town as long as the places have proper accommodations, he lifts weights to build arm strength, and he sometimes has a race or two against the main character (who roller-blades). He doesn’t have to worry too much about stairs–his house has one floor, and is well-suited to his needs.

+ So first of all, I need to know how someone like him would get in and out of bed (and go to the bathroom, take a shower etc.) I looked on Google, and they said that people in his situation have aides (or in his case, his parents) to help them–but if it’s possible, I’d like him to have an alternative method of doing things besides just “getting help from someone else.” (P.S.: upper-body strength is NOT a problem!)

+ Second of all–I don’t know how anyone would KNOW this, but it’s worth a try–do you think it’s plausible for a wheelchair and a roller-blader to have races like they do? Would one of them have a distinct speed advantage no matter what, and win almost all the time? Or would it all be dependent on the skill level of either racer? Is his lifestyle even plausible?

+ And finally: I read this in a book one time, but I completely forgot how it was done–if he fell out of his chair, how would he instruct someone to help him? I have a scene in the end of the story where this needs to be done, and I have a general idea of how it’s going to go. I just want to be sure.

My uncle is in a wheelchair. Paralyzed from the waist down. His wife has to do everything for him – pick him up, carry him out of bed to his chair, etc. He can not use the toilet at all (being paralyzed from the waist down – means he had no muscle function and thus ZERO ability to “go”. Instead he has to have a catheter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catheter which is like a really big IV tube – one going up through his ass the other his penis – to pump out wastes and act as muscle replacements – they drain into a plastic bag that is strapped too his leg and runs down the length of his leg inside his pants. (Paralyzed from the waist down mean you’ve got a paralyzed bladder and intestines too! – it also means he has a strict, near liquid diet – no intestinal movement, means no ability to remove solid wastes without surgery.) Someone – usually his wife – has to change these tubes and empty the bags 4 or 5 times or more per day. He can’t take a bath or a shower, instead has to have sponge baths from bed. Upper body strength has nothing to do with it – from the waist down means you can not sit up on your own, no matter how strong your arms are.

Legs only paralyzed sounds like what you are describing – legs only would still be able to do stuff on his own, and could still rely on upper body strength, could still bath himself, use a toilet, dress himself, etc. Waist down – not physically possible AT ALL!

Also – there are much greater things than stairs to worry about – very few houses are sized/equipped for a wheel chair – doors not wide enough, rooms not big enough (remember – to turn around the wheelchair needs at least 4 times it’s diameter, just to make a full swing!) A wheel chair bound person paralyzed from the waist down will usually have the living room turned into his bed room and will never again go into any other room of the house – unless of course he’s a millionaire and can afford to have all the walls knocked out and the rooms doubled in size, and the base of door frames removed (even the slightest bump will flip a wheelchair!).

Sidewalks are near impossible to use – to many cracks and dips in the surface, also brick and cobblestone walks are out of the question – the slightest unevenness in the surface will flip a wheelchair. Going up or down even slight hills, not possible either. In all of these cases, an assistance would be required to steady and brace the chair, basically holding it upright as it moves.

Manhole covers, drain grates, and sidewalk-underground-lifts/elevators must all be avoided – 2 reasons, one the openings/edges catch wheelchair tires and cause the chair to flip forwards; 2 they produce static electricity and will electrocute the guy in the chair – this is a VERY, VERY serious problem, because someone with only half their body function is prone to heart problems, and while a normal person would only get a mind “zap” shock, a paralyzed person could die on the spot of a massive heart attack. My uncle did not believe this – used to say it was an urban legend, until one day he went across a manhole cover and had to be rushed to the hospitable in a near coma from static shock.

Something to consider – a waist down paralyzed person who falls out of his chair will be more worried about how to get someone to call him an ambulance than how to get someone to help him back into the chair. Lack of waist muscle means lack of diaphragm muscle – and thus lack of normal lung movement – he’ll be on oxygen because his waist region muscles will not be pushing on his lungs. Once flat on the ground his lung will stop working, and he’ll not be able to breath let alone talk. He’ll need to be lifted into an upright position until the ambulance gets there. He’ll need to be rushed to the hospital to check to make sure the oxygen loss did not cause brain damage.

Also – as you just saw – upper body strength is going to be highly unlikely, because it requires good lungs and without your waist muscles and diaphragm to push on your lungs, you will be lucky if you can breath without a tank strapped to the back of your chair.

I would like to point out though – again – waist down – no, he can’t race, not unless he has a remote controlled electric wheel chair and those move very, very, VERY slow – snail’s pace at best – most people walk faster. Again – that would be someone with legs paralyzed NOT waist down paralyzed who could race. He would need the ability to bend his waist forward to push the wheels of the chair – waist can’t be bent forward if it is paralyzed! Someone paralyzed waist down would NOT be using a hand pushed wheel chair, again, not a matter of upper body strength, but a matter of a lack of WAIST muscle – upper body strength with out the waist muscle to support it is worthless and actually not scientifically plausible — possible, but highly unlikely and extraordinarily rare. He’d be turning the wheel 2 times for every inch moved. Each turn would require him to lean forward, grabbed the wheel, push it down, leaning his upper body down against his knees, and than letting go of the wheels and using his waist muscles to push himself back upright, than grab the wheel again – someone waist paralyzed has no waist muscle movement and thus no ability to lean either forward or backward.

Someone paralyzed from the waist down would be in a monster sized electric wheel chair – these things are big, most as big as a motorcycle, most can not fit through doors of the average house. These do not have the big wire spoke wheels you can reach down and turn on your own, but instead small “car tire” wheels about 8 inches in diameter. The guy would be harnessed into the chair with a harness belt wrapped around his waist, chest, and shoulders. This harness keeps him upright and stops his upper body from flopping around. (Remember – no waist muscles to support his chest, means without the harness his head will be too heavy for his spine to support and his upper body will always be flung forward with his face resting on his knees any time the harness is removed! Your waist muscles do an awful lot of supporting you – without your waist your upper body strength ain’t worth shit and in fact the more upper body muscle you have, the closer your face is going to be to the ground, because all that chest/shoulder muscle makes you top heavy and there is no waist muscle to keep it upright.)

I think, what you are describing is someone with both legs paralyzed which is markedly different from someone paralyzed from the waist down. He’d still have use of his waist muscles and thus would have the big spoke self pushed wheel chair needed to race a roller bladder, and would still be able to get out of the chair to use the toilet on his own, and he’d be able to bath himself, since he would have waist movement still and thus the ability to sit up on his own.

They do sell racing wheelchairs – they have 3 wheels and are long and skinny and low on the ground. They use them in Special Olympics races. But they are for people paralyzed from the hips or thighs down, not from the waist down. You might want to check out info about The Special Olympics. http://www.specialolympics.org/

Of course, in the future, and in a sci-fi, who’s to say there isn’t some way to get around all of these things? Medical science invents/discovers new things every day, so you can be creative and still be accurate at the same time, by explaining things away as a medical advancement. In any case, good luck on your story.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I did also want to let you know – SAVE THIS THREAD/QUESTION and REPOST it Oct 1st! On Sept 30th NaNo shuts down and erases the system – all of your questions and answers will be gone forever! This is the 2008 forum you are posting on right now. The 2009 forum will not go live until Oct 1st.

You will need to reenter your profile information on your profile page Oct 1st as well. EVERYTHING is about to be erased! This close to the erase/reboot date it’s best to not start any new threads, because they be gone in a matter of days. Copy all of your threads, and save them on a blog or your hard drive or something. Than after the system reboots, next week, come back here and start them all over again.

What I do, is I start each of my questions on my blog. I write the blog post asking the question. Than I wait until the system reboots and the new (and very empty!) forums come back, than I copy each of my blog post questions and start my threads asking questions than. That way my questions stay in the system for the entire 2009 year.

———-
Create a Fantasy Realm
Advice For NaNoWriters!
Creating Character Profiles
Are You A Renegade A Writer?
How To Become a Better Writer
Improving your writing with what you read.
Have You Written Your Author’s Interview Yet?

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

. . .

Hey, you know what? I sell Avon! I’m an Independent Avon eRepresentative and that means you can buy Avon from me, 24 hours a day, from your computer, from anyplace in the world, and Avon will ship it to you.

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:

.
.

.

Girls? Ladies? Women? Which Do You Use?

I found an interesting forum thread on the subject of how to refer to female characters in your story.

You know, I never thought about this till now. I had to actually stop and think about what I used in my own writings! LOL!

Well, after trying to remember what I had said myself, I find that I use the phrase “The girls” a lot, esp when it’s a guy talking.

I only use “Lady” when it an aristocratic title.

I only use “women” when a character is referring to a stranger, such as “That woman over there”.

I’ve never used the word “broad” or “chick”, as it sounds too offensive for my characters to use it.

A couple of my characters use “Honey” or “Darling” a lot, when addressing a female, regardless of wither they know the woman or not, oddly they address men as “Honey” or “Darling” as well, so no political incorrectness there! LOL!

As for male characters, I use “the guys” or “the boys” a lot, in the same way I use “the girls”, so I guess that’s just the way my narrators and characters all talk about each other.

Like the word “Lady” or “Ladies”, I only use “Lord” or “Lords” when referring to aristocrats. Likewise I only use Madam or Sir for them as well.

Again, “men” is only used when referring to strangers.

As for age differences… children are always called “kids” or “little girls” or “little boys”.

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

Obsessed? I’m Not Obsessed… REALLY, I’m not!

When Next You See Me I’ll Look Like This:

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:

Publishing Your Novel? Find out more about Publishing Methods and did you ever wonder How to Start a Publishing Company?

Want to join Squidoo? Than you need to read EelKat’s Secrets To Squidoo Success and What Can You Do With Squidoo?

Are you seeking an online debate to join and tell the world what you think about it? Than you need to check out this List of Active Debates that are waiting for you to speak out on them!

Here is where you can find out How To Start Your Own POD Business to sell your art online and How I Became An Artist and What Art Equipment I Use and where
My Art is For Sale Online.

>Girls? Ladies? Women? Which Do You Use?

>

I found an interesting forum thread on the subject of how to refer to female characters in your story.

You know, I never thought about this till now. I had to actually stop and think about what I used in my own writings! LOL!

Well, after trying to remember what I had said myself, I find that I use the phrase “The girls” a lot, esp when it’s a guy talking.

I only use “Lady” when it an aristocratic title.

I only use “women” when a character is referring to a stranger, such as “That woman over there”.

I’ve never used the word “broad” or “chick”, as it sounds too offensive for my characters to use it.

A couple of my characters use “Honey” or “Darling” a lot, when addressing a female, regardless of wither they know the woman or not, oddly they address men as “Honey” or “Darling” as well, so no political incorrectness there! LOL!

As for male characters, I use “the guys” or “the boys” a lot, in the same way I use “the girls”, so I guess that’s just the way my narrators and characters all talk about each other.

Like the word “Lady” or “Ladies”, I only use “Lord” or “Lords” when referring to aristocrats. Likewise I only use Madam or Sir for them as well.

Again, “men” is only used when referring to strangers.

As for age differences… children are always called “kids” or “little girls” or “little boys”.

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

Obsessed? I’m Not Obsessed… REALLY, I’m not!

When Next You See Me I’ll Look Like This:

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:

Publishing Your Novel? Find out more about Publishing Methods and did you ever wonder How to Start a Publishing Company?

Want to join Squidoo? Than you need to read EelKat’s Secrets To Squidoo Success and What Can You Do With Squidoo?

Are you seeking an online debate to join and tell the world what you think about it? Than you need to check out this List of Active Debates that are waiting for you to speak out on them!

Here is where you can find out How To Start Your Own POD Business to sell your art online and How I Became An Artist and What Art Equipment I Use and where
My Art is For Sale Online.

Girls? Ladies? Women? Which Do You Use?

I found an interesting forum thread on the subject of how to refer to female characters in your story.

You know, I never thought about this till now. I had to actually stop and think about what I used in my own writings! LOL!

Well, after trying to remember what I had said myself, I find that I use the phrase “The girls” a lot, esp when it’s a guy talking.

I only use “Lady” when it an aristocratic title.

I only use “women” when a character is referring to a stranger, such as “That woman over there”.

I’ve never used the word “broad” or “chick”, as it sounds too offensive for my characters to use it.

A couple of my characters use “Honey” or “Darling” a lot, when addressing a female, regardless of wither they know the woman or not, oddly they address men as “Honey” or “Darling” as well, so no political incorrectness there! LOL!

As for male characters, I use “the guys” or “the boys” a lot, in the same way I use “the girls”, so I guess that’s just the way my narrators and characters all talk about each other.

Like the word “Lady” or “Ladies”, I only use “Lord” or “Lords” when referring to aristocrats. Likewise I only use Madam or Sir for them as well.

Again, “men” is only used when referring to strangers.

As for age differences… children are always called “kids” or “little girls” or “little boys”.

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

Obsessed? I’m Not Obsessed… REALLY, I’m not!

When Next You See Me I’ll Look Like This:

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:

Publishing Your Novel? Find out more about Publishing Methods and did you ever wonder How to Start a Publishing Company?

Want to join Squidoo? Than you need to read EelKat’s Secrets To Squidoo Success and What Can You Do With Squidoo?

Are you seeking an online debate to join and tell the world what you think about it? Than you need to check out this List of Active Debates that are waiting for you to speak out on them!

Here is where you can find out How To Start Your Own POD Business to sell your art online and How I Became An Artist and What Art Equipment I Use and where
My Art is For Sale Online.

Plagiarism Update: Sent Report To WordPress

Plagiarism Update: Sent Report To WordPress

I have just sent a report on this evil thief’s activities to WordPress. I urge anyone with the sewing related WordPress blog to look at the thief’s blog and see if your posts are being stolen. If they are, please send a report to WordPress as well. If there is a way to identify this plager and send them to jail, let me know, because I will pursue that course of action. As an author I take plagiarism very seriously, and so should you. Well, at least they chose the right name for their blog: Scum Bag Clothing. I can’t think of anything that makes a person more of a scumbag than being a thief.

Here is a copy of the letter I sent to WordPress:

Posts off of more than 30 different WordPress blogs (all sewing topics) are being copied and posted word for word, picture for picture, on someone else’s blog!

I use CopyScape on my posts, and CopyScape notified me that my posts were being copied and distributed on someone else’s blog without my permission, so I went to their blog to check and CopyScape was right. They copied everything, word for word, picture for picture… even the CopyScape plagiarizing warning gif!

Because they are copying posts off of my sewing blog, so I started checking all the other posts on their blog, and they’ve plagiarized every single post on their blog, by stealing posts and pictures off of other people’s blogs! I’ve only checked the posts for Jun so far, but so far I’ve counted over 30 different WordPress blogs from which they are stealing posts and hotlinking images from!

Here is their blog link:

http://www.scumbagclothing.com/category/dressmaking/

I don’t know how to stop them. I’ve been trying to find a way to notify their blog host, but so far have not had any luck. If you know of a way to stop them from stealing the posts off of our blogs, please let me know, cause I don’t like them claiming that they wrote the articles I wrote. They are even displaying my drawings on their blog and claiming they drew them!

Sorry for the rant, but I thought you’d want to know that they’ve been stealing posts and passing them off as theirs.

This is so frustrating. I put so much work into writing my articles and drawing my artwork, and I know other folks do as well. It’d be one thing if they were linking back to our blogs with a review or something, but they are claiming that they wrote all of these posts and drew all of the art and took all of the photos themselves!

Is there a law enforcement agency I can contact about this? I was told that the FBI had an identity theft division that handles online predators that steal other peoples identities. Should I contact the FBI about this? I mean who ever is running this blog is claiming to be me, by saying they wrote those articles, so that’s identity theft as far as I can tell.

What should I do?

Is there anything that you can do about it, since they are stealing posts off of WordPress blogs?

What Is The Best Thing About CosPlay?

When it comes to picking, creating a persona, creating a costume, wearing a costume, and acting out your character, what is it about costuming and CosPlay that you like the most?

For me it’s all about making the costume. I love the thrill of the challenge of doing a harder costume than the last one, and drawing up the patterns, and hunting down the supplies. I esp love it if I have to hunt down some rare hard to find item, even more so if it sends me to antique shops to look for it… it’s like a scavenger hunt, trying to find just the right item!!!!.

I love hand embroidery work and bead-work, so I always look for projects that need a lot of both.

As a general rule the harder the project is, the better, and if it’s not too hard to do, than I’ll find ways to change it and make it more advanced and harder to make, just for the sake of giving myself a bigger challenge.

Historical accuracy is my thing I get all hung up on. I can not make a costume, until I have first done a massive study into the character… their fictional cannon history, and than the history of what they SHOULD have been like had the been real and not fictional.

Than I write up an essay detailing the life history of the fictional character vs how they should have been in real life, and lastly I start designing the costume by combining elements of the fictional character, with elements of real historical figures. When I get done I have a costume for a fictional character that is also historically accurate, though for some characters it’s a bit more difficult to pull this off… but just because people tell me it can’t be done, doesn’t mean I’m not going to go ahead and make a darned good attempt at it. In fact… the more people tell me that what I am doing can not be done, the more I’m going to fight to prove them wrong! LOL!

After all the work that goes into my costumes, I do not always end up wearing them. Some of them, I have put so much work into that I end up treating them like museum pieces and never wear them, at all!

It’s not so much important for me to have an item to wear so much as it is for me to be able to say: “OMG! I can’t believe I actually made that myself!!!”

I guess you could say, that for me it’s all about the journey and not the destination.
_________________

What’s your take on this? I’d love to hear what you have to say about this post. Leave a comment and share your views!

————-
If you liked reading this blog and want to read more stuff written by me, I have lots of websites, where you can read other things I write, here are a few of the ones I like the best:

All about Lord Sesshomaru’s garb & Making a Lord Sesshomaru Costume. Plus, Sesshomaru & Rin and making Rin’s Costume; and this is for anyone who needs help Creating Character Profiles for their stories or for their SCA persona.

Thank You for reading my blog’s RSS feed. Don’t forget to come to my blog and check out the links in my blogroll too!