Friday, February 6, 2009

Floating Body Parts

In all the courses I've taken and books I've read on writing fiction, there are certain rules that I've learned. One is, no head hopping. When you write a scene in a book, you pick one character's point of view and stay in that pov for the entire scene. For instance, you wouldn't write, "She thought he was handsome. He loved the way her eyes sparkled when she laughed."
Another rule is staying in character. Your characters have to be the same personality-wise throughout the whole book. You can't have someone flighty and careless throughout the book suddenly making calm, logical analysis.
A third rule of writing is to be careful of floating body parts. They are phrases we've all heard, or even used, but they tend to give some interesting mental pictures. For instance, rolling one's eyes takes on a whole new meaning when you look at the picture in today's post. And throwing your leg over the chair--did you ever get a mental picture of someone picking up their leg with both hands and actually throwing it? (Maybe it's just us nutty writer-types.) Or one of my personal favorites: throwing up your hands. Regurgitation possibilities abound here.
So in the interest of humor, what kind of floating body parts can you think of? Raising your eyebrows? Would that be half-mast? Go back through some books you've read recently. Find any body parts floating around in there? Share them! Give me a laugh that lasts through the weekend!

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