I got my characters talking.

I wrote Chapter 7 earlier this week, sometime over the weekend.

Chapter 7 came to 2,380 words (bringing the book’s total to 16,548 words), and most of what happened in it is dialogue.

I’m not sure how happy I am with it. I wasn’t feeling very good about it when I wrote it, and then when I read it back I was a lot happier with it. (Maybe I was feeling awkward during the drafting because it was a pretty awkward conversation.) I’m trying to build a rapport here but my character is resisting it, and I kinda need her to stop doing that if I am going to get anywhere, but that’s what she wants to do so I can’t really write her out of character.

She kinda makes a good point during this whole thing, too: she’s actually not a very nice person, but she’s not actively mean either. It’s just that when you don’t really want to engage, speak bluntly and sparingly, and aren’t empathetic–and (this is key) you’re female–this behavior is interpreted as rude. Women and girls not going out of their way to coddle and comfort others–especially if they’re boys or men who want their attention–are perceived as bitchy. I’m kind of fighting that feeling with Megan, because she’s honestly not “a bitch.” She just lives in a world that expects things of ladies that she is not interested in providing, and she refuses to apologize for it, but she’s not making a big platform out of how proud she is to not apologize for it either.

But anyway, I got my characters talking, I got Brady and Megan to reach an understanding (even if she was kind of sour about it), and I got him to buy her a cookie, so there’s that.

Let’s see where they take it from here.