Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Bedeviled Sleepwalkers





 I'm back to revising my YA gothic, MOONHILL. One of the first things I needed to do was cut a comparison and replace it with a new one that would put the same spooky image in the reader's mind, but not give away a story element.  


It didn’t take me long to discover that sleepwalking would work just fine. In fact, I was left wondering why I hadn’t thought of it to begin with. Sleepwalking is pretty spooky--whether you’re the walker or the person watching.

As a child, I was a sleepwalker. Normally, I was petrified of walking around at night in the hallways of our huge Georgian house. I didn't even like to have my toes dangling over the edge of the bed when I slept. But when I was sleepwalking, the dark didn’t bother me at all.  I’d wander down the halls and the winding staircase, through one living room to the other, and startle my older sister and their boyfriend (I suspect I broke up more than one romantic session).  Once, when I was in my teens, I sleepwalked out to the front yard and lined up as if a fire drill was happening. Luckily, my friend dragged me back inside.  It was a hot summer night and I wasn’t wearing much.

How about you, have you ever sleepwalked? Have you ever seen anyone do it?

Personally, I find it quite creepy.








10 comments:

  1. Your gothic sounds yummily scary.
    Never had this sleep-walking thing, but I find it so interesting. So are all altered sleep-states. DD had Night Terror until she was five or so. It was terrifying not only to her, but to me. She never remembered any of it when she'd snap out of them.

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  2. Hugs to DD. I can't imagine how scary that must have been. I shared a room at a conference with a woman who had night terrors. She didn't warn me, and I'll never forget what it was like to have her sit bolt upright and scream in the middle of the night.

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  3. I remember sleepwalking only once--when I was a kid. Fortunately, I never even left my bedroom. :)

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  4. It is a strange feeling to have people tell you what you did and to not remember it.

    My husband saw a boy wander around and pee in someone's shoe. I'm assuming that kid was mostly confused about where he was.

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  5. I remember babysitting for a boy who sleepwalked. It totally creeped me out. I did not babysit there often!

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    1. I'm surprised you wanted to babysit for him at all. That must have been startling.

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  6. Sleep walking definitely gives me the heebie-jeebies, so I'm sure it will work great in your story. My daughter only slept-walked once--unfortunately it was in a hotel while out-of-town. Thankfully I stopped her before she could get open the deadbolt! :)

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  7. You were lucky. It would have been horrible if she'd gotten out and wandered down the hall.

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  8. Very creepy. Very gothic. Clearly you were set up from childhood to write the books you do :)

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  9. Kind of like your love for castles and corsets, right? :)

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