THIS IS RATED R.
I have been accused many times in my life of being a prude (mostly by my mother). I always find this kind of funny because I see myself as the creepy guy with the neck beard and the trilby while apparently others see me as their conservative Aunt Mildred. Maybe I'm over-compensating? So this is me trying to find somewhere in the middle that is a more clear representation of who I am as a writer and what I want to bring to the table
As a reader, I like my stories to have sexual scenes in them. It doesn't have to be actual sex (in fact, those scenes are usually pretty awful) but I want there to be some sort of nod towards sexuality. I like a story to feel real. I want my characters to have to go to the bathroom and brush their teeth and figure out if that truck passing by is going to be loud enough to cover up the fart they've been holding in all day. I don't know, maybe I'm weird but I like to relate to my characters rather than feeling like I'm reading about Barbie and Ken and their perfect lives where no one gets diarrhea from eating too much risotto at that fancy restaurant.
This scene is one that I wrote when I was a teenager. It's clearly hormone-addled and not at all realistic but falls along the tried and true romance trope of "forbidden relationships". In this story, a 17-year-old girl falls in love with her 30-something high school English teacher. I wrote this around the time that Twilight was really popular so I didn't feel bad about the whole age difference thing. (If you haven't read Twilight, a 17-year-old girl falls in love with a 100-year-old vampire but it's not creepy because he looks 17).
At the time, I thought the writing for this story was flawless but looking back on it today, I laughed out loud several times. Even if you ignore the POV issues and the lack of a clear setting, you get fantastic similes that include things like "tractor beams". I decided to just take photos of the original draft so that I wasn't tempted to change anything in the process of typing it up. If you can read my handwriting- congratulations you've got yourself a silly, sexy, ridiculous bit of fiction written by a teenage girl in her "secret notebook". Enjoy.
As a reader and writer I love having things feel real even if it's gritty and what some consider boring details. I think this is because we've both been involved with live performances. The devil is in the details as Patty Kane would say. :)
ReplyDeleteHaha that is something she would say. Man, those were some good times.
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