I've been keeping secrets. Nothing too exciting, but the cover up and sneakiness has gotten me thinking about characters. I love having secrets in stories, either the main character is covering up a secret or they learn the truth about a long-kept secret. Sometimes I'm forced to wonder why they go to so much trouble. They can't swim? Big deal, why would that be a secret? I'm terrified of hairy spiders and am happy for everyone to know. I have abandoned a classroom of children in my frantic fleeing when a huntsmen has made his evil entrance - more than once. Even the big boys over 6ft tall know they can not intimidate me, but will squeal like a squeaky toy if a spider is anywhere near.
But there are some things I've hidden.
At school all the teachers know I'm moving to Brisbane at the end of this semester and won't be back next year, but I find I just can not tell the kids yet. They keep quizzing me about classes next year and I've been very evasive, on the edge of lying, because I don't want to hurt their feelings. I'll miss the Yass kids.
There's another secret.
I'm scared of zombies.
Terrified.
I know, I wrote a teen story called MY ZOMBIE DOG, and yes, it has lots of zombies. But I'd never sat through an actually zombie horror flick because they give me the jeebies. I LOVE horror films, my favourite being HALLOWEEN (the original). I'm not squeamish and I find the slasher flicks funny. But there is something just WRONG about those glazed over eyes and the slow shuffling.
I have so many ideas in my head for more zombie tales that I want to overcome this prejudice against the un-dead, so, in my quest to better understand zombies (sometimes called the living-impaired), I've started watching THE WALKING DEAD. Many brain-nomning fans will remember this as a pretty well known comic book series. Now we get to watch it on tv. I got so scared I kept running out of the room and all night long I dreamt of worm-filled zombies.
I have a couple of suspension of disbelief issues with this show - when shot in the head the zombies bleed. Many of them have been dead a long time and are rotting - where's the blood coming from??? And there is a scene where the cop comes across a home where the occupants committed suicide rather than become infected - on the wall above their bodies in blood is the message 'God Forgive Us'. Um, ok, maybe... but this would mean the guy shot his wife and then before completing the double suicide pact, dipped his hand in his wife's head and used her blood to write the message before shooting himself - probably having to re-dip several times. Surely a permanent marker would have been better???
So what is your character hiding? And most importantly - WHY is it a secret? Or is someone keeping a secret from them? Is it BELIEVABLE?
In MY ZOMBIE DOG, Zane's mother keeps a secret from Zane. She didn't get his dog from the pound. She didn't want him to know she got the dog for free... from a voodoo witch doctor.
