First of all – my heart and sympathies to anyone who’s been impacted either directly or indirectly by natural disaster lately. Not just what happened last night, but what happened last week, etc. If you want to help, make sure it’s with a reputable charity: the Red Cross, or Shelterbox (as supported here by author Maureen Johnson), which helps build shelters, or another of your choice.

regularly scheduled blog post
For anyone who doesn’t know me, I have a couple of very obvious habits. For anyone who’s ever worked with me on anything (I’m talking in the office or out of it), they’re easy traits to see. I know at least three regular readers (*waves*) who have been privy to this *ahem* amazing ability of mine, and at least one who has recognized it. (Stupid, perceptive people. Bah).

I’m like the #1 most unreliable person in the entirety of existence. Not because I want to be, but because it’s a personality trait. Okay, maybe not #1, maybe only like #5. I’d like to make the top 10. That would be something to brag about, right? I’m real good at saying to myself “that sounds like an epic thing to participate in, I’ll volunteer”. And so I say “I’ll do that.”

And everyone says “Wow, epic of you, Lori. Thanks!”

And then a day later. Or two days later. Or a week later. They’ll say “how’s ….. going?”

And I’ll say “Oh, um. It’s epic. It’s almost done. Any minute now.”

Rinse and repeat until I either once again find the epic inspiration that made me volunteer in the first place, or enough guilt that I do it because I know my excuse is falling flat and disappearing from all communication with the requester isn’t always practical.

Not to say it’s always an excuse when I say that. Sometimes, I’m actually in the middle of epicness when asked. It stands to reason, since I’m involved in so much epicness.

I suspect that this is a similar flaw stunning personality trait that makes writers adore teh new shiny, every single one, for at least a few hours until it’s relegated to a word file for ‘later perusal’.

But…not my point. Which apparently I’ve taken a very long time to get to this morning. My point is – gestures, personality traits, and habits in writing. I hear lots of ‘rules’ about writing. I’ve listed some before. One I hear a lot (and get a lot of complaints about in my writing) is cliche’d gestures (character habits if you will. I’m totally not stretching to make these two things connect, I promise).

During my time working with critique partners and groups, I’ve repeatedly been reminded that my characters:

• Pout too much
• Roll their eyes too much
• Growl/sigh/giggle too much
• Smirk too much
• Etc, etc, etc

Which, okay, I get how that can be repetative, I do. But this is where I need help (not being sarcastic, I actually need assistance here). Those are all things I do on a regular basis. They’re things in real society that are recognizable forms of body-language. I roll my eyes at you, you have an idea of how I feel about your comment.

So my question is, if I want to use body language to show

1. Character personality
2. Character reaction

How do I go about it without being epic repetative?

How do you do accomplish this epic evasive goal in your own writing?

Isn’t the word epic just, well, epic?

Does anyone have any chocolate?