The Sound of Silence

So I’m about a dozen pages into my new novel and I’ve made an odd little discovery: my main character really doesn’t talk much.

This is particularly odd for me. You have to understand, I’m coming off of A House Divided, where I had characters who talk all the time. There’s Teresa, who talks to everything including animals and cars; Kyle, who has a running interior-and-sometimes-exterior monologue about military procedures; the twins Mary and Myra, who only appear in a few scenes but are constantly babbling to each other; and Jeremy, who didn’t actually talk that much when he was on his own but always played off the chatterbox characters around him.

Now, I have Tyra, the MC of Aurorae, who’s just…really, really quiet. I have an eight-page sequence or so where she’s wandering around with this lawyer, and he just keeps babbling and babbling and babbling; but Tyra says a grand total of three lines. Now that he’s out of the picture, she’s on her own and she hasn’t said a word in five pages.

It’s odd, because on one hand I really like this about her – she’s meant to be shy, withdrawn and uncertain of herself – but on the other, I worry that it might be boring. I guess I’ll have to see come critique whether that’s true.

Almost done with the novel-ing for today, which means I need to start on my technical writing project. I wish my window wasn’t in the shade. It’d be nice to see the sun a little more when I’m stuck inside working. Then again, it’s so overcast today that I guess it doesn’t matter. Oh well.


Current NaNo Stats
Page Count: 11
Word Count: 3,370
Story progress: Almost finished with Chapter 1
Status: Craving pasta with tomato sauce