Any part of your WIP posted for the consideration of the forum members must be posted in the Workshop. make sure to also read the Forum Rules regarding how and when one can use the Workshop. There are some requirements to be met first. As for good idea or not... Only you can decide that. It depends on how closely you want to keep your WIP to your chest for the purposes of subsequent traditional publishing. A short scene of a few hundred words would not be problematic to me, in my opinion.
I've never been on a blind date or a first date where I didn't already know a lot about a person. Do people go to dinner and talk about themselves? That feels like an interrogation. Please don't interrogate me.
They'e know each other for a about a week or something. I'm still fiddling with the time of events in this story, trying to make a realistic pace and frame. But they certainly don't meet blind or anything. And it's coffee in the morning at a gay bar/cafe and its' a pretty casual atmosphere. Luke is feeling a bit that, but he's never gone on a actual date, he kissed one girl and didn't like it, has sex with one guy who could have been his boyfriend then the guy had to leave for England, he's got a disappointing history with romance. And if you think his history is cruel, Oscar's will frighten you. (muhahaha) For a book about people in more mundane living,-your-life situations than my normal thriller/crime-drama/action kind of set-up, there's some twisted shit. I think the bad history of both gives you more motivation to cheer on all the happy stuff they work towards.
It's been so long since I was on a date, but from what I can remember, the talk was pretty casual. We talked about our interests (music, books, movies, sports) and avoided politics and religion. My hubby told me when he went on a date with this girl who eventually became my maid of honor (lol), they ended up talking about the kind of people they'd like to date and their previous boy/girlfriends... That didn't work out. Imo, dragging past relationships to the table with in-depth analyses of your possibly active sex life before your current date are a great way to fuck up the mood. I actually kind of used to do that to sabotage budding relationships. Didn't work with my now-hubby, though. Lol. The sweet spot is about 1000 works, but there have been 2000+ entries in the workshop as well.
No, they don't drag all their past problems in immediately. There's some discussion of that, but not a lot. More discussion about current situations so far. Planning to move to hobbies and stuff.
There is nothing more attractive than being a good listener. People who ask questions ...the kind that require thought, not 'what's your favourite music' kind of questions ...will often get things rolling, unless your 'date' is the painfully shy type. If that's the case, they usually prefer it if you talk yourself. But if you are genuinely interested in your 'date,' you'll want to sound out their opinions and experiences. Perhaps discuss what's happening around you. Or, like @doggiedude suggested, maybe talk about how they met ...what brought them together. Something that doesn't require a lot of gut spilling. What would you talk about if the other person wasn't a 'date,' but just somebody you were getting to know? Ask those kinds of questions, and follow up on the answers as well. If two people are compatible, this should be easy. People often say, when they've met 'the one' ..."We could just talk for hours." If the two people are not compatible, this conversation will be as stilted as you can probably imagine.
They're definitely compatible. As I mentioned earlier, the romance part of the book is mainly their romance. And I definitely included a sense of what I would talk about. (Oscar trying to get Luke to come out to his parents is something I'd do. )
The last first date I went on, I had two coworkers who were dating, and I overheard the sister of one of them say she was looking for groups to ride her motorcycle with. I'd only met her in passing, didn't know much about her. I took two steps left and mentioned to her I rode in a group that was going on a Habitat for Humanity build that weekend, help build a house in the morning, ride in the afternoon both Saturday and Sunday if she was interested. The first date was two days of house building, riding, and a BBQ/bonfire. Anything we learned about each other was in context with what we were doing, and at no point were we just sitting across from each other talking. That's a shared theme through 17 years of dating, I learn about someone by actual activities. There is no topic of conversation, everything is very, very fluid and could go in a thousand different directions depending on the random thought and what stimulus is around. So as of now you have 2,600+ words of two guys in a coffee shop, NOW moving on to hobbies. 8 pages of first date dialogue with maybe 6 more to go. Can you keep me interested for that long? Honestly? Because it isn't about backstory, and it isn't about you saying in this thread everything works out. It's going to be about how you can write the voices of two guys with somewhat opposite personalities discovering their chemistry together, all under the assumption of you asking the forum what people on first dates talk about. I say if you're confident with what you have, snip it and post for a critique.
It's interesting, at least to me, because there's a mixture of emotions, different forms of interaction between the two, discussion of stuff that has been mentioned and stuff that appears later (not mutually exclusive) and a very good show case of their personalities as a diverse whole. There's a lot going on. Plus I could write pages of flirting and kissing between these two and not get bored. The reader I've had liked it, so I presume they'll be a substantial population that can enjoy this scene. And for the record it's six pages, and that count starts with Oscar walking with his two best friends before he actually gets there and he's sitting with just Luke.
Just don't have one of them say Anakin's infamous date talks: "I hate sand..." and "You're in my very soul, tormenting me. I wish I could just...wish away my feelings but I can't!" But seriously, a 'date' is just two people coming together, getting to know each other better -- see if they really do like each other. What sort of thing they like to talk about? What do they want to talk about? They'll be nervous, sure, but just get in their heads and find out if they're a talker, a listener, or both. Do they like talking about themselves or others? They're more than likely not going to say, "I'm more of a talker/listener". Rather it'll be shown through their actions (do they skirt around questions directed at them?) and speech.
