Bernadette Benda

You know what’s hard? Writing facial expressions. I swear it’s nigh impossible. Because when I try I end up doing things like this:

• She swallowed
• He stuck his tongue in his cheek
• his brow furrowed/crossed his brown/eyebrows pinched together. Just something with the eyebrows.
• some other weird, vaguely descriptive tick

Or then the other option is to just

• She looked confused
• He was angry
• She had a hesitant look on her face

Ew, ew, ew. (And yes, I do know there are a ton of different ways to express “emotion” that don’t involve facial expressions but sometimes you just SEE the expression of your character’s face and you want. to. describe. it. But sometimes that is not the best way to go to express that emotion to your reader. And sometimes it is best just to say, “she looked angry.”)

I was editing Lily and found this absolutely gorgeous continuity error: The wind howled is in the first sentence. A few sentences later, his coat blew in the wind though there was none.

um….??? But there is wind??? Or is there not???

Short rant here: So you know the song Speechless in the Aladdin remake? I’ve come to really like that song and really appreciate it. When I watched Aladdin though, I didn’t like it, and was by that point so underwhelmed by the movie that I had kinda zoned out and was just like when. is. this. gonna. be. over.

However, sometime later I saw a post somewhere on the interwebs that mentioned that while Jasmine sang Speechless it’s in like a dream sequence. It’s all in her head. During a song that was about speaking out and using your voice and not letting people push you around and silence you…no was one was listening. No one heard it.

THAT’S WRONG.

I know after that she does stand of to Jafar or something, but still it would have been SO much more impactful if she had sung it to everyone and everyone heard it. (Also, WordPress didn’t believe me that “impactful” is a word. What. ) And then Jasmine could have been all, “in thine visage!” (does anyone remember when in your face! used to be a thing like circa. 2010?)

I also have a new desk companion, courtesy of my dad:

Annnnnddd I bought this poster

This was…very disjointed. Because that’s how life is going these days, and I also wrote this in several sittings which I think just made it worse, me typing vague thoughts in between editing and job training and sniffling from pollen and just in general trying not to fall asleep.

Thank you for listening.