Emotionally speaking, yes. My thing is juxtaposing one thing that you want to support and are emotionally invested in seeing succeed and one (or more; more is good too) thing that is crushingly emotionally painful and just ramming them into each other (sometimes literally). Point is creating stuff that pulls you in different complicated directions at 100% emotional intensity; everything comes to a head together and rips people apart like a team of horses. The desired result is 'But they're so happy!' followed immediately by 'But he's 15 and she is his mother!'. It's all in the context. If someone's inner deamons puts them in a position where they are compelled to deliver said polishing or lose their family? Boom. Gold dust.
I am going to go off on a strange branch here, Ok? I have written plenty of stuff to merit the reaction I gave you, but that is a whole new level of Wow. I sure hope that isn't a key phrase in your sales pitch. Though to be fair the stuff I have written is 10 fold more F'd up than that phrase, I just don't share it publicly.
That's basically what Thomas Hardy did all the way through Tess of the d'Urbervilles. One of the many reasons I couldn't stand the fucker.
You can rest assured that this is not in the top line of my pitch. It's barely in the pitch at all. The focus is more on the coming of age and/or boy prophet thing he has going on. Didn't I mention he's a prophet? Sure I did. His dad started a cult, had a son, and died some fifteen years later leaving the leadership to his son. He's never lived outside the church, never had a friend or been to school and the book is all about his coming of age and just desperately trying to be normal without really knowing what normal is supposed to be. It's presented like typical coming of age fare set inside a cult where no-one can tell the kid no. Hilarity ensues. But... It is a coming of age story and a pretty big part of that is him, well, starting to think about girls. Except he was raised in the cult and has no taboos and the only person he's ever been close to in his life is the woman who raised him and it just seems so obvious to him when he falls for her. And, god help her, she is kinda into it and it eventually becomes an actual romance. And then the church collapses of course and they are spat back out into the normal world as a couple who are fifteen and forty two respectively with nothing but each other. That's the first book. There are three. Him accidentally raping her is the big crunch point in the second one. But they do end up happy together, even if not necessarily in a way that the reader will be 100% happy with. Spoiler warning; she will have his child before he is seventeen. Suffice to say the marketing is up to someone else; I just write'em. Because I literally cannot stop. Please send help.
I want a pretty mummy with nice teeth, does the cooking, wears one of those check shirts, jeans, a throaty voice, laughing when I stand there all naked with my homework in my hand.
@LostThePlot Ok. I understand the whole trying to make a character act normal and failing thing. I will send help, just need to find the right crew for the job, be back in a few... I am back. Probably should have fed them first, they look a little hungry.
You better summon more then. It's a real bare bones team you've got going. Your dead lucky they haven't failed you yet. You could suffer some grave misfortune. Seems it's not quite out of my system yet.
If you're going to make your characters fail at being normal they should fail really badly. Make them sleep with their mothers! Make them have genuinely quite sexy sex where she talks to him like he's eight years old! Make them lie about having cancer! Make them discover a friend is being sexual abused and then make them jealous of that! I am not kidding. These are all taken from my books. Did I mention I am legitimately trying to sell these as YA books? Fuck'em up so hard the reader gets both a concussion and emotional whiplash. Make the reader ask questions of why they aren't ok with what's going on, and why, in spite of themselves they still sympathize with these characters. Make the reader ask themselves if they can still be a good person for thinking that. Make the reader seduce their mother too! It's all good!
@Oscar Leigh Ok, but they are a in a mood. @LostThePlot I have more an awkward character than flat out just messed up. Makes bad metaphorical references, takes somethings too literally, and is over analytical. Though she is introduced as one who gets off on torturing people as a profession, before working on reforming her ways. She slips up now and again, but only if you call her a bitch.
Ah well, there's your mistake. She shouldn't reform her ways. Characters need compulsion. That's how you make'em do stuff they don't want to. Make her unable to control herself and take a stapler to her boyfriend and we'll be onto something good.
Well if I did that, then it would be not good considering the fact that they have a mutual respect for one another. Perhaps at some point in the future when you get to read it, you can write a little fanfic of that type of scenario. Not unlike all the HP slash out there. I have plans for her to lose her shit and go ballistic, but not quite there yet.
You should keep the conflict in the character though. Don't make her voluntarily change who she is even if it's not a good thing. Have her learn to accept what's inside her and to use it for good but never have her stop salivating at the idea of messing some fucker up with a straight razor. She doesn't need to change, she just needs to learn to be ok when she's not doing it.
You sir think small, a razor blade? Hell there is a truckload of all her old tools of the trade in storage. Just let that sink in along with internally struggling with her old life around 500 years in the making. Trust me she is built to fall, and fall hard. And still not the scariest character in the story. So it will be an epic (and very dark) moment when she falls back into the swing of her old ways. Definitely going to gain some more tattooed skins to add to her collection.
My point really is this: Don't make her relapse; don't make her get clean. Don't make her 'fall'; it's still the same character acting in character. By all means have other things in her life, have her grow enough to not need to do that every day, but have it remain an option in her head. Here's a secret about addicts and perverts (of which I am both). We do not ever stop thinking about the object of our desire. Every day I am not high is a day I spend thinking about getting high; how good it'll be come Monday. Part of growing up is learning moderation and learning to be ok not getting high every damn day. You don't learn not to like drugs (or weird sex) but you learn the perspective to say 'I can get by'. About the only thing twelve steppers get right is that recovering addicts are still addicts. Even when I have been clean all I did was think about opiates. That is not what normal people do (I mean, presumably). She can stop herself hurting people because she's a person who has a moral choice. But that doesn't stop the desire. Underneath it she always wants to. She'll lie about it if asked and fake like she's 'clean'. But she's not. Addiction is in your head not in your veins. Your an addict because you like drugs, not because you need them. You can clean out your veins but that impulse that made you like it to cut people up will never go away. It's why junkies find religion. We have a lot of guilt and shame attached to this. We know it'll kill us and we go back anyway. So does she. She can run from herself but she'll never stop being what she is. She likes being who she is. That is her secret. And she'll never ever be clean of it.
Well what was my original intent for the character. Lets just forget that last little bit from just a bit ago, seeing as you make much more sense when you explain your thoughts. Cause honestly she has moments of relapse, like when somebody calls her a bitch. Sadly it is not much of a secret to those who know, and to those who don't are afraid of the mythos surrounding her. Trust me she runs from herself quite a bit, though she gets a lot out her system piloting a war-frame. Wow I have two characters that are at odds with their third counter part. Quite the mix: A sadist in reform, an old war dog with a dark sense of humor, and a level headed captain that just so happens to be a hell of a swordsman. The mad, the evil, and the normal, all getting along in kicking asses. And yet this was what went in to the blender, and came out as novel smoothy. The sequel might be better in terms of amount of ass kicking being dished out though.
I'm told often by random old acquaintances, friends, strangers, etc. on social media that I should write a blog or a book on parenting. I have a certain voice on social media. It's raw, witty, and relatable. I appreciate this voice. And I have thought many a time about blogging about my observations on parenting ... taking the seemingly mundane and making people laugh is kinda' my thing. Here's the problem -- I lose this voice any time I try to write anything longer than 500 or so characters. It always comes out preachy or pointed, with some grand statement, that maybe should be said, but isn't my goal. I just want to keep the raw wit ... I just want people to laugh. No matter how much I try, I lose it. How the hell do I keep my wit in length?! Anyone else have this problem?
If writing short, witty vignettes is your thing, then write short, witty vignettes. I could recommend that you try to think of longer passages as multiple shorter passages, but you've probably already tried that. My main point is that this doesn't have to hold you back from making it into a blog or book. Coincidentally, I've actually read a mostly humor/partly parenting book where three-quarters of the chapters are four or less pages long. It might help you identify how that style can work in a book format. Also, I'd definitely read your blog if you started one.
