The Pecman
-
Posts
3,544 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Blogs
Posts posted by The Pecman
-
-
Booklist says this about this book: In this sequel to Geography Club (2003), 16-year-old Russel, now openly gay and tired of being the freak at school, tries to escape as a counselor in a rural summer camp with his two best friends. The camp kids are 10-year-old burn survivors, scarred and disfigured, and Russel identifies with them. They also have fun together, once he stops seeing them as "all nervous and noble." But Russel fights with his friends, especially after discovering that he and bisexual Min are attracted to the same gorgeous counselor guy. There's much metaphor and message, including the stories Russel tells the kids about raging fires, hidden beauty, and developing toughness. What readers will like best is the honest, tender, funny, first-person narrative that brings close what it's like to have a crush and hate a friend.
This and several other reviews felt the author's netaphors were too heavy-handed. I initially felt disappointed with this book, because its first chapter starts off very slowly, almost leading me to put it down. Thankfully, I stuck with it, and was pleasantly surprised to see that Poison Oak actually surpasses the author's first book, Geography Club (which itself is a terrific read).
One might think that the story of three teenage friends at a summer camp might not have a lot of dramatic potential... but think again. Sure, this story's got all the expected teenage angst, but add to that romance, betrayal, lust, friendship, and a wealth of other emotions -- quite a rollercoaster ride. Some unexpected twists and turns lead to several surprising dramatic climaxes, along with valuable lessons in life for both the reader and the characters.
Like the author's last novel, Poison Oak draws its characters vividly, and their many flaws make them both interesting and very real. Hartinger makes some good points, comparing children with scars on the outside to those with scars on the inside, and does it in a way that's never cloying or hokey. And the romantic yearning felt by the three central characters are universal; some might characterize the book as a being for "gay teens," but I think these emotions can be empathized by anyone with heart.
This being a YA novel, don't expect for the sex scenes to be explicit. I'd call this "PG-13" sex, leaving much to the imagination, but still with enough details to make the point. The emotional content is much more intense; there's several scenes that I suspect many readers will find very moving, and at least a couple that are almost heart-breaking. And this ain't no "after-school special"; the story and characters ring very true to me, without the "happily ever after" gloss of similar stories and TV shows.
Five-star reviews get handed out much too often, but I think Poison Oak clearly deserves that highest rating.
-
I have to agree. Definitely very good stuff here. Driver is clearly a very talented guy.
I wouldn't necessarily say he's as good (or better) than mainstream authors, but I'd definitely put him very high on the list for Net fiction.
For the record, the best author I've read is here on Awesomedude, and that would be David Buffett. In particular, his story Alpha Male is light years ahead of anything I've ever read on Nifty.
-
I want to like the For the Love of Pete series, but the whole thing recently descended into so much contrived melodrama, I'm just wide-eyed and bewildered at the whole thing.
The current installment, where the two have split up because one of them (God knows which; I get them both confused) outted himself at school by coming to the rescue of a gay kid who was getting beaten up in a fight by a thug. The secret boyfriend -- I think it was Pete -- is incensed that Brian has put him in the position of pretty much being outted, gets incensed beyond belief and breaks up with him.
This completely goes against the entire romantic direction the series has been in for several years. I have absolutely no problem with conflict in fiction, but this to me just rings so false, so patently contrived, I feel like the author just threw it in there to stir things up. I don't buy that the characters would have this argument for more than an day, let alone allow things to boil to a head to cause them to split up.
I could also also make the argument that I don't think 13 year-olds could have romantic entanglements this intense and involved, but that's another topic entirely. (The author also seems to have forgotten that much earlier in the story, Pete somehow inherited a small fortune, and I think that money could've solved a lot of their current problems.)
Don't get me wrong: I think Dewey has talent, but I think this story is meandering all over the place like an out-of-control soap opera. Angst can be a good thing in fiction, but only if the reader can really believe it. It's a frustrating story to read, because I think he's capable of doing better work than this.
-
I'm reminded of the memorable scene from the excellent 1973 Mel Brooks movie Blazing Saddles, where one character exclaims, "Bart! But they said you was hung!"
And Bart replies, "and they was right!"
I was so naive, I honestly didn't know what this meant until it was pointed out to me. Aaaaa, I was a total geek back then.
-
Maybe it wasn't an error, maybe USPS prefers zip codes to be listed in films, as part of their education efforts. A whole host of things are controlled that way by persons outside the actual filming, not even including real advertisments, meant for profit, of copyrighted ideas, products and persons.
That's thoroughly wrong, at least in my experience living and working here in LA for almost 30 years.
Trust me, somebody just wasn't thinking, and I bet the director wasn't even in this room when an insert shot of this address page was shot. No way would a Zip Code be "required" by anybody, and neither the Post Office or any other government agency can demand dialog be changed for technical accuracy. Hell, protesters haven't even been able to get smoking eliminated from film scenes, and that's almost a legitimate protest.
In the case of the scene in question, I have no doubt that if even a lowly grip or a honeywagon driver pointed that out to the director, they'd be thanked and it would've been changed immediately. I bet everybody was in a hurry, nobody noticed, nobody caught it, and it got shipped before it was too late. Simple as that.
There are whole books written on the problems of anachronisms and continuity problems in films, like Bill Givens' hilarious Film Flubs series. One that always bothered me was the car-inspection sticker on a 1962 car in the (otherwise great) movie Godfather II. The only problem is: car inspections didn't start until about 1972, around the time the movie was made. I also go nuts when they get the TV cameras, microphones, and other equipment wrong in movies about the 1950s or 1960s; the brand-new George Clooney film Good Night and Good luck does everything right, but then you see stuff like the 1979 Kurt Russell Elvis movie, where they have Elvis in front of 1977 color TV cameras... in 1956. Uh-uh.
Other flaws happen, too. I worked on about 30 projects for Miramax in the 1990s, and I caught (as one example) numerous spelling mistakes in end credit-crawls. The studio was always very gracious and chagrined when they discovered the error, and had to spend thousands of dollars to fix them for the home video releases. By then, it was too late to fix the theatrical, but we at least caught it for VHS/DVD. (I also caught a mistake in the end credits of SPY KIDS 2, but that was before the film came out, and they were able to fix that problem.)
I do agree with much of what you say. I believe if a writer can at least capture the "look and feel" of speech in a specific era, even if it's slightly off, you can get the gist of it and make it work for the story, and make the reader believe everything that happens. On the other hand, then there was the 2001 Heath Ledger film Knight's Tale, for which I worked on all the trailers. That one had characters saying "YES!" and making a fist, a modern gesture right out of the late 1990s. I've never seen a worse movie in terms of having the wrong historical attitudes for the time shown in the film. I also disliked the little kid in Mummy 2, who at one point turns to the villains and says, "my daddy's gonna kick your ass!" No kid would talk that way in 1932, certainly not the child of wealthy, educated parents. Both the attitude and the dialog are totally wrong for both historical examples.
-
Sincere good luck, Blue! I hope things work out well for you.
I've been told by a few psychiatrists that it seems a larger-than-normal percentage of gay people are neurotic. But the theory is that a lot of their problems and depression were caused by years of having to hide in the closet. Once they were out, they were a lot better off, but it still took years to overcome the traumas from the times they weren't out.
As for me, I struggle with depression and mood swings all the time, but I try to keep swingin' as best I can, and live up to my responsibilities and so on. Being gay isn't a problem for me anymore, but at the same time, I don't volunteer the info. Only in the last couple of years has anybody I worked with actually asked, "so, are you married?". Usually I pause, brace myself a little, and then casually say, "well, sort of. I've been with the same guy for 20 years." So that's one way to answer the question. :)
-
I have written a lot in 1st person and find it awkward transitioning to 3rd person. It is more of a problem of getting out of a rut than a true problem with the mechanics of writing.
Actually, it's easier than you might think. Read the Orson Scott Card book I keep mentioning, and he has actual examples of how 1st can easily be converted to 3rd.
That having been said: I readily agree that there are definite stories for which writing in 1st person is mandatory. One of the best is detective stories and mysteries, where the detective is actually telling the story (or his assistant, as with Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes stories, most of which are related by Dr. Watson). Those would be far less effective if written in 3rd person, since this way, the audience discovers the clues as the hero finds them.
-
My inclination is to leave the focus on my blinded protagonist most of the time, and shift over when necessary and just not bring up the changes, but I'm not sure that can work.
The beauty of writing in third-person omniscient POV is that you only have to change perspective when you want to. Just because you can show the inner thoughts and activities of another person doesn't mean you have to do it.
For example: think of all the mystery stories you've read, at least the ones written in third-person. It would be suicide for the author to tip his or her hand at the beginning and show who the murderer is. The key is to just provide enough occasional glimpses into other people's thoughts when you need to.
I discovered a lot of tricks and problems when I wrote Jagged Angel, which was my first (and so far, only) 3rd person POV novel. One thing I had to experience in order to understand it was when showing other characters' thoughts worked, and when it didn't. For example, another writer/friend of mine pointed out a scene in which I had two characters talking on the phone. He pointed out it was odd to show the thoughts of the other person on the phone, and he was right. In scenes like this, just stick with one person only, preferably the one who's the central focus of the scene. And don't bounce around back and forth; that'll confuse readers every time.
My rule of thumb is, the moment one character leaves the room, then you can switch the focus to show the other character's thoughts -- like have them say, "gee, what's gotten into Joe? Why did he snap at me like that?" That kind of thing.
BTW: This is all covered very well in that Orson Scott Card book I mentioned elsewhere, Characters and Viewpoint. I found this book so illuminating, I read it twice. Check it out for yourself.
-
Power failures in LA wacked a lot of network traffic.
Yeah, we had the crap whacked out of us here. I'm far enough away in the Valley that we escaped most of it, but it hit everywhere from Burbank to Downtown LA pretty badly. Some places had no power for two solid hours.
When the medium-big 1994 quake happened, even back then I had a UPS power backup on my computer. I was up and awake, listening to Howard Stern on the radio and online to CompuServe when the thing hit. After all the shaking stopped, the only light we had in my room was from the monitor, which was lying on the floor.
You really start appreciating life a little more, once you've had a few experiences with disasters...
-
Fitzgerald and Meredith in their book Structuring Your Novel write that nine out of ten published first novels are about personal experience. I think this is because the best writing is often about subjects with which the writer is most familiar and about which he or she is most passionate.
Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense. The first fiction I wrote, Groovy Kind of Love, was just a rewrite of my own life in the 1960s, and at least 50% of it was true (or inspired by real-life incidents). All the characters were based on people I really knew -- combining some people into one new character, using real-life names, or using elements from people I knew very well -- as well as real buildings, cities, streets, and places, and the lead character was a thinly-disguised version of me. Readers who knew Central Florida sent me congratulatory emails, but I chuckled because most of what I described was done solely from dim memory, since I hadn't been back there in over 27 years.
I went in a 180-degree different direction with my second novel, though, and decided to write about people I knew nothing about (contemporary teenagers), in a world I never had anything to do with (wealthy families in Southern California, and kids on football teams), doing things I never did (drugs, sex, wild parties, you name it). It was a stretch, particularly for the lead character, because he was such a radically-different character from who I am. It took a lot of research, particularly on details like the inner workings of football teams, or what it was like to get arrested for murder and sent to jail, but I think it was worth it.
I'm trying a different tactic for my current novel, which will be another teen story. The lead character is close to what I might be like as a teenager today, but sent back in time to a world totally different from anything I know about. Again, this is taking a lot of research, but the end result is the same: I'm writing about what I know, even though it's involves details I had to conciously learn.
Quick side-story: one of my favorite pulp novel series are the FU MANCHU thrillers written by Sax Rohmer in the early-to-mid-20th century. I was surprised to recently learn that not only had Rohmer never visited Asia, he was an almost-total recluse and rarely ventured out of his West Side NYC apartment! So here's a guy who wrote a couple of dozen novels about Chinese opium dens, crime in San Francisco, the lowlife slums of London, and many other major cities -- none of which he ever visited! And yet he makes each world seem vividly real, with all kinds of true-to-life detail. As long as you can fake that, it doesn't matter if it's from your personal experience or not.
-
If you can lose yourself in the story, have it feel real, and forget the world around you and your troubles, while you're in the story, that's a master storyteller.
Yeah, a few of the books on writing that I've read have stressed the need for us to write a story that practically "hypnotizes" the reader and puts them in a dream-like state.
I'm sure any of you who've read a really fine novel have been so immersed it in, when a friend comes up to try to talk to you, you kind of shake your head as if coming out of a dream, and go "wha? Huh?"
A writer who can do that is doing a reasonably-good job. I dunno if it's "master-storytelling," but that's the desired effect.
Last quick comment: some of the scenes I've written myself were so vivid to me, I feel like they're actual memories of something that really happened in my life, or a (very high-budget) movie that I've watched. I can only think of half a dozen instances where this happened, but the moments really felt powerful and emotional to me. My readers have often cited those same scenes as jumping out at them in the story, so I like to think those approached (but probably didn't quite hit) the so-called "master-storyteller" level.
-
How silly it seems, and sad that it should become such a big deal, at whatever age you finally come out.
Exactly. But it does seem like a really big deal when you're going through it.
I often wish I could go back in time and give myself the advice I didn't have as a teenager in the 1970s. To me, coming out doesn't have to be a big deal; but on the other hand, you can't do it until you're ready. As for me, I wasn't ready until I was in my 20s, and it took a 2500-mile move, away from my family, plus another four or five years to finally get the courage to do it. Once I did, it was like a tremendous weight was taken off my shoulders.
But that was back in the late 1970s. I think it's easier now, especially for teenagers, to get the right information and to understand what it takes to be honest with yourself. My joke is, if I had been able to watch QUEER AS FOLK when I was a teenager, I'd've been partying pretty hard by the time I was 15 at least. :)
-
Yeah, they definitely do. One of the easiest ways to throw me off a story is to have details of a place I've been in it and have them wrong. That grates, in a way that makes it really hard to take the rest of the story seriously.
I often get annoyed when I'm reading a story that takes place where I live, in Southern California, and they make some dumbf@ck mistake about how a certain place looks, or where it's located.
One writer for whom I edited for a while (whose story is on this site) had some scenes set here in LA, but he made the giant error of having people bop back and forth between Anaheim and Hollywood in a few minutes. Uh-uh. That's a 45-minute ordeal, and twice that time in bad traffic. We had to make some radical changes in logistics just to make those trips anywhere close to reality.
And I'm sure many of you have seen movies set in your hometown (or a place you know well), where a character turns from one street to another -- streets that may not even connect in real life. I don't mind that as much as the former scenario, but it does point to the need to get the details of your location straight, whenever you're telling a story.
-
I'm not a big dog fan by any means, but even I liked this story very much. I found it very moving, and this is the kind of tale that can get morbid and corny very easily. TR pulled it off very nicely.
-
Yet another reason NOT to use adverbs. Every book on writing I've ever read stresses the need to avoid adverbs as much as possible. To not do so is foolhardy. (Whoops!) :roll:Most often, an adverb used to describe the manner in which a character spoke was related to the content of the speech. For example - I can't believe the engine is still smoking like that, said Tom exhaustedly. -
The main prob from my view point is the difference between American speak and English speak.
Yeah, there are differences, and they can be major.
I once made the mistake of complimenting a writer on a very fine novel he did on Nifty, but chided him (very mildly) on some "British-isms" that crept into the story. The tale took place in an unspecified city in California, and the characters were all-American boys, but every so often, things went... uh, a "bit wonky."
For example, in one scene, he dropped in the phrase "Father Christmas," which caused me to almost do a spit-take. No bloody *way* would an American refer to that character by any name but Santa Claus. Kris Kringle... maybe. St. Nick... OK. But not Father C. (And there was a lot of the word "bloody" in the story, too, which I think doesn't happen that often here in the States.) Stuff like this immediately flagged it as "fake" in my book, and I told him the characters just didn't ring true -- and I hear Calfornia teenagers speak every other day of the week.
The author was absolutely indignant about my comments and really lit into me in email, which astonished me since 99% of my comments were quite positive. (If I can find the name of the story again, I'll recommend it for the BoN list.) He was convinced that, because he had a couple of friends who were Americans, and he'd heard them speak a few times, he knew American dialog better than I did.
But believe me: if I wrote a story that took place in England or Australia, I'd damned sure run it past a resident to make sure I got the hang of the dialog.
-
As far as honest-to-God real gay literature out there, I'd point to John Rechy as being one of the most important authors still writing.
A great introduction to Rechy's work is the new collection Beneath the Skin: The Collected Essays, which I just finished reading this week. This is strictly his non-fiction work; his fiction, including the classic City of Night and The Sexual Outlaw, are landmark works. Be warned they're very hardcore and often downbeat, but nonetheless extremely powerful and realistic.
Another one that blew me away the first time I read it was Patricia Nell Warren's classic Front Runner, which was published more than 30 years ago. I didn't discover it until about 1980, but I found it an inspiring, fantastic book. I'm totally pissed-off that it still hasn't been made into a feature film.
-
I could've posted my (lengthy) reply to the guy, but suffice it to say, I sympathized with him. I told him nobody's a bigger geek than me (especially back in the 80s), and getting the nerve to go to snazzy LA hot spots and bars was tough. Even worse when you don't exactly look like the member of a boyband or have the physique of a model.
Funny, though, the guy I wound up with was just another geek like myself. :) Neither of us had been out for very long, and we've been pretty comfortable together for over 20 years now (with some expected ups and downs). It seemed like kind of a big deal when it first happened, but looking back, it was like falling off a log -- natural and predictable, and we were instantly comfortable with each other.
The bottom line is that relationships are hard, and it takes a lotta courage and effort to go out and make new friends, have dates, have sex, and make longterm commitments. But you can't get discouraged, and you also gotta know that everybody's got the right to find happiness in their lives. I encouraged the reader not to give up, and (using my own example), told him that if an idiot like myself could finally hook up with a compatible guy, anybody can.
If you wanna talk privately about this in email, feel free to talk to me. I don't claim to have all the answers, but I can at least point you to places where you can get them, and give you my two cents on life in general.
-
...but as an amateur if I want to set a story in Queensland, for example, then I run the risk of making mistakes if I make the location too specific.
Oh, I dunno. To me, that's what maps and the Internet are for. Just figure out the location, make a few phone calls, and you can pepper in enough details to make the story real.
As one example: in my story Jagged Angel, I set the first two chapters in Phoenix, Arizona, a city I've only visited for about two hours. About one hour of free Internet research got me some city maps, names of streets, neighborhoods, freeways, and schools, and I was able to stir all that in just here and there, enough to at least give readers the flavor of what the city was like. The two boys in the story's open could mention the names of real schools, I could have them journey down real streets, and to me, it gave it that much more verisimilitude.
Maybe I'm obsessive-compuslive, but I also go to the trouble of mentioning a specific date and getting the day right; little things like that piss me off when I read a novel, and they say "Christmas of 1992 was on a Sunday," when I know damn well it was on a Friday. Sure, it's a trivial point, but I believe it all adds up in the end.
I wrote those first chapters of Angel when we had a horrendous heatwave here in LA, and our air conditioning was busted, so it was about 95 degrees in my office when I did most of that writing. I believe this is called "suffering for your art." :) But that accounts for the emphasis on temperature in the first part of the story.
Last comment: I seem to recall no less than Isaac Asimov once saying, "I don't have to have visited outer space in order to write about it." Asimov's classic SF tales certainly make you feel you've been in space and on other planets, and his descriptions are vivid enough, you feel like you know the story's location very well. That's all I'm getting at -- that if you leave out those details, whether the location is real or imaginary, the story's impact is greatly reduced. To never mention the city or give us details about it is lazy writing, period.
-
Stephen King is NOT a good writer normally. He can be (the Four Seasons book) but mostly he is a hack (Cujo plus anything recent).
You and I have had this disagreement before, W (if you don't mind me using your first initial), but I think King is still capable of being a very fine writer.
I'd point to the recent Dreamcatcher (2001) as an example that King's skills haven't quite deserted him. Also, anybody who can crank out masterpieces like Carrie, 'Salem's Lot, The Shining, and The Stand ain't exactly a hack. Lesser works like It, Shawshank Redemption and Green Mile are pretty damned good, even though they may not quite be classics.
But I started really disliking some of his stuff like Cujo, Christine, Pet Sematary, and several others from the 1980s and early 1990s (when King admits he started having a big problem with drugs and alcohol, which he mentions in his book On Writing). I found all of those to be terribly disappointing.
Still, given that the guy has -- what? -- 40 best-selling novels, I'd say at least a half-dozen of them are bona fide classics. As far as I'm concerned, none of us are worthy of even sharpening King's pencils. To me, King does fall under the category of "Master Storyteller," as do few contemporary authors.
-
Are you sure you want to say this?
Oh yeah, definitely. If there's any master storytellers out there, raise up your hands.
<after a short pause>
Yeah, I thought so. At best, we're just a group of somewhat-talented amateurs. I made a pretty good living for about 20 years writing over a thousand published article as a professional writer, for a dozen different newsstand magazines, but I still put myself solely in the "amateur" class in fiction. But just because I'm an amateur writer now doesn't mean I can't try to do my work in a professional manner.
Multiple 1st-person POV is a very difficult, cluttered approach at best, and I've rarely seen it done. Again, Card warns against it at great length in his book, and it's clear he knows what he's talking about.
-
That's what I actually like about first person, the way you can tell things to the reader without the speaker even knowing them, which seems to contradict what some are saying about first person storytelling. I like for the reader to know things that the characters do not, and first person is a great way to do that.
I'm confused. In re-reading this statement, I get the feeling that we have different opinions about what 1st person POV and 3rd person POV are.
In 1st person POV fiction, a story is being told completely by one character, totally through his or her eyes. Everything that happens, every event, is filtered through that person's brain. Just one person, like an autobiographical tale: "This is what happened to me." The only thoughts the reader can hear are those of this one character. Everything that happens in the story has to be seen or heard by this one character; otherwise, they have to find out about it second-hand.
In 3rd person omniscient POV, an unseen narrator is telling the story, and we can hear the thoughts or spoken words of any character in any scene. This way, the reader can know, for example, who the murderer is -- we can go inside the murderer's head and find out why and whom he killed, and then move over to a scene with a detective where he picks up clues that will ultimately lead him to the killer. The reader can know many things that the lead character(s) don't know. We can also know when a character is lying. The author can also exclude this information, and deliberately not show the thoughts of other characters except when necessary -- something I had to learn through painful lessons with the 1st draft of Jagged Angel.
Each technique has its own pros and cons, but for most stories, I think 3rd person is probably more appropriate for mainstream fiction. Orson Scott Card, in the book I cited above, makes a very good case that any story originally told in 1st person can be rewritten to 3rd with some effort.
There's no question, though, that some of the greatest books in literature have been done completely in 1st person. I was just talking to a friend about To Kill a Mockingbird, a book I've probably read 50 times, and it's told solely from the point of a 10 year-old girl. (There's also a prominant gay character in the book, based on the author's friendship with Truman Capote, but it's a subtlety you have to look for.)
I think there are stories where one point of view is more appropriate than the other. But I think there's always pros and cons you have to weigh, and it's not always a straightforward choice. Read the Orson Scott Card book I recommended, and tell me what you think.
-
I just got this email from a reader, and I found it so sad (assuming what he says is true), I thought I'd share it with you guys here:
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ok, I'm writing this email in bits at a time to try and be sure hotmail doesn't eat what I write. Basically, ages and ages ago, 20 years ago, I politely informed my parents I had always been gay. I have been thrown out of my own family ever since with no given option of coming back. I live alone, and am still a virgin at 37, something I freely admit to people. I have never had a boyfriend because I have no idea where to start getting one, simply.
Its also because while I genuinely love beautiful men, I am also TERRIFIED of them! Seriously, I've learned not to compliment their looks or anything because if they are straight, HOO boy, you are not seen as complimentary no matter how polite you are and risk getting severely pounded. The possibility of rape (a lot of guys seem to get wildly ferocious when they want their sex) has had me keep distance too.
So yes, I am shy & timid. I also don't go to bars or things because those are boring grown-up-style stuff to me: I'd always prefer a fair or bookstore, I'm a quiet person. But it does make it tough to know where to start. Anyway, around 2000 when I had a working computer, I thought, let's see what happens if I try an online gay dating service.
I'm sure you can imagine that I learned real quick about all the insincerity on the web as a result. And the chat rooms with all their "let's have sex one way or another" attitude. But after 2 years, one person I'll call Scott actually struck up a conversation with me and offered me his phone number. I kept telling myself I was being stupid for calling this number out of the blue.
Well, surprise! This guy just wanted to visit. He wasn't looking for a date at the moment but just thought I'd be nice to visit with while cooking dinner. And we did. He also told me half jokingly "Of course, I know you won't call back after this. They never do, always same old thing on there, sex sex sex. If someone calls back more than 3 times, then I'll believe he's nice, lol." It was a nice call. Seriously, and then as I called back to visit during the next 3 weeks, he finally said "ok, I believe you, you're a nice guy." He actually invited me to meet me at a Dennys.
That Dennys was usually crowded and so I went while taking my cell just in case. And he showed up. Oh wow, I wish I could describe how beautiful he was. I mean, he could have been a model, and the prettiest blue eyes with soft lashes. I later found out he worked out a lot. Tanned.
Do you understand what I mean when I say I was so in awe of his unexpected beauty that I did NOT get all turned on? That's how I reacted. As he introduced himself I just stared in awe. Then I turned my head away and knew I was blushing and said "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to stare, it's just.. that you're so beautiful."
He blushed & said "why, thank you." First time I ever got to hear such a response from a man & know it was directed at me. We had a nice casual dinner, he was fun, light & funny to talk to, & very polite even though something about him seemed cautious. He told me that the last time he had ever had a boyfriend, his boyfriend would get really abusive and one time when Scott had had enough & said "I'm leaving" and started to go, suddenly a chair came flying at his head, & next thing he knew he was waking up in a hospital bed. He had shut down his heart ever since & only had what he called "glorified sex buddies". Afterward he drove me to his place so we could continue to talk in private.
Actually we both drove, I was invited to follow him. We sat in his living room on a couch & visited casually about pretty much anything. Then finally it was late & he said he had better turn in for the night as he had to work next morning.
I said "Okay. I should too. I'll see you later?" as I went to the door. He stood but he just had this shocked look on his face. At first I asked if I did something wrong. And he finally says "You didn't try to seduce me. You didn't touch me. You didn't even try to get my shirt up." I was a little scared & said "uh... You wanted me to?" He said "No, I didn't. That's just it. Everybody treats me like a side of beef & then leaves. I get so tired of people drooling over me all the time & acting shallow. You don't want to have sex with me?"
I swallowed & said no. He goes "I don't get it. But you like my looks." I said "of course I do. You're a very beautiful man." and he was, and extremely masculine. He said "Then why didn't you try anything?" I stammered, "I respect you too much as a human being. I mean, what sort of person would I be if I took advantage of you like that? I'd be no better than your last boyfriend."
He looked at me a minute then walked up to me & smiled then said "David, that's the most wonderful thing I've ever had anyone say to me." He then lifted my chin with his finger & said "You're very sweet. Thank you." And he kissed my cheek and said goodnight. I called him the next few nights and he always seemed so happy to hear from me.
I met with him one other time at his place, and it was sort of funny but he said, "This world is so screwed up as it is. How did you manage to stay so innocent? I almost actually start to feel a bit guilty for not giving anything physically to you, I mean you're sure you don't want ANYTHING?" I blushed & said "You said you weren't interested in another boyfriend at the moment, so no, not right now. Well there is one thing I admit I would like." He asked "what's that?"
I said "Well, if it's ever ok, I would like to be held." He went "That's ALL? Here, I can do that for you right now!" And he took me in his arms on the couch and let me cuddle in his arms. I never knew a muscled male could feel cuddly and soft like that but he did. I saw he had the most serene smile on his face, and I grew embarrassed when I realized I had whimpered with pleasure. He softly chuckled at that. After a long time of that I was going and he just smiled at me & said "You are amazing, you know that. It's a shame." I asked "What do you mean?" he paused and said "Never mind, I'll explain later."
Well I found out the next night when I called, he sounded wistful & sad, then speaking slowly he said "uh... David, there's something I need to tell you. You see, a year ago I began to plan a permanent move to Europe. Before we met this month, I had spent that year arranging & paying for everything and my job and all. I'm leaving in three weeks. I never expected to meet someone like you at the last minute like this.. And I'm really sorry."
I was in shock. He said "I was bored and had just been looking for others to shoot the breeze with while I waited for the moving. And I certainly didn't want more sex, please don't get the wrong idea. But I didn't think I'd meet someone like you David, you are wonderful, affectionate, compassionate and I - well, I'm falling in love with you and I find myself wanting to marry you. If I let myself do that, it will ruin things, but at the same time I feel awful leaving you because I didn't mean to hurt you. And it also makes me feel I dont deserve you for doing this to you. I just can't handle the situation. I need to leave and I'm saying goodbye before I do more damage."
By that point I was in tears and begging him to please at least stay in contact with me, that I was willing to accept his being long distance. Suddenly he was in tears himself and wept "Please David, please don't make this harder than it is. Please forgive me. I love you. Goodbye." and that was the last I ever heard of him. All further tries to contact him didn't work, when I tried going to his place he was never there. Eventually it was emptied. I sobbed for days. Lots of times I would just start crying over any little thing as my heart was broken.
And now it's 2005. I have no computer now & doubt I would use that dating thing now if I tried. But life has felt so dead after him. I suppose I should be mad at him, but I'm not. I still love him & forgive him. But I don't know how I'll ever meet someone like that again, even though I was left high and dry I still think he was wonderful. :-(
---------------------------------------------------------------------
So that was his email. I gave the reader some advice -- see a shrink, get over it, accept that the person he met was probably screwed-up with his own problems, and this was one of those things just not meant to be. I also told him it was never too late to finally accept who he was and to try to find some happiness in his life, and all it takes is the courage to take that one step. But it still got me thinking.
I thought the content was appropriate for this section, and just thought I'd share it. I also recently worked on the trailers for the real 40 Year-Old Virgin movie (which I never saw, but the scenes I worked on with Steve Carrell were very funny), and the parallels just struck me as ironic and amusing, as well as very sad. A gay version of this film is probably easier to imagine than most people think.
-
My style is basically to get the content into the least number of words, which is a severely limiting skill in the writing of a novel.
Ah, but that can be a good thing. Ernest Hemingway was known for writing very sparse, almost-terse novels, and are a model of showing how you can omit all the fat from a story and still have lots of meat, good characters, and compelling plotlines.
The reason for being down on my ability is not due to lack of some writing skill as a technical feat, but rather my inability to imagine anything at all. ...I seem to be the reciprocal of the master storyteller, having honed my skills at making anything interesting seem boring and dull, albeit brief and factual.Not having a good imagination is a big problem! But I believe writing is a skill like anything else, and even if you know going in that you're never going to become another Stephen King or JK Rowling, you can still become at least a good journeyman wordsmith (which is how I'd characterize myself).
I spent many years writing technical articles and reviews, and it was always a chore to take dull, boring factual information and try to make it interesting. Only in the last five years (after all the magazines I wrote for went out of business) did I turn my attention to fiction. My friends who've read my stuff have been bowled-over by the fact that my previous work was very nuts-and-bolts, concerned totally with technology and the inner workings of everything from computers to DVD players. But my fiction turned out to be far more emotional, much more about human feeling and experiences than anything else. One told me, "it's like you've hidden this secret identity for years," which I took as a compliment.
I guess what I discovered in the writing process is that maybe what's in my subconcious is going to bubble up no matter what I do, and you might find the same thing. And even if your skills don't lend themselves to writing long novels, there's a fine art in knowing how to write entertaining short stories. Hell, even I haven't attempted to do a short story, because most of the ideas I've had are too broad.
My bottom-line advice would be to read the references I gave in the Gay Writing Tips piece. I'll repost that here, and you can pick up the books that interest you. Those will provide infinitely better advice than anything anybody can tell you in a brief message on a bulletin board like this.
Scan to donate
Dialogue question
in Writers' Workshop
Posted
The sentence doesn't have to be "lacking" if it works in context with the paragraphs that came before it. Almost every writing book I've ever read has stressed the importance of avoiding adverbs and adjectives except when absolutely necessary. I believe it's only correct to use an adverb (like "nonchalantly") if for some reason the reader can't understand the real meaning of the dialog in context.
A good example of that would be if the person speaking is being ironic or sarcastic. Take this one:
"Hey, nice dress."
In that case, we don't necessarily know what the person speaking really means. Is it really a nice dress? Is he cracking a joke? Is he insulting the dress?
I think it's better to let the actions dictate the sentence's meaning. For example, in this case, we could have the person pause, then burst out laughing. Now we know what he or she meant, without any adjectives. I think action is stronger than an adverb. And many writing books stress that many amateur writers use adverbs and adjectives to prop up weak sentences. Make the sentences stronger, and you won't need to use nearly as many modifiers.
BTW, I strongly object to people who try to use certain actions as verbs. For example:
"He used to be my boyfriend," Paul sighed.
Uh-uh. You can't "sigh" dialog. You also can't laugh dialog or smile dialog, either. On the other hand, you could say:
"He used to be my boyfriend," Paul said, then sighed and looked away.
and that works fine. You could also describe the character's physical actions, like if he stammers, or nervously picks at something on his shirt, or if a long silence follows after this dialog, and the other character realizes (through thought or an internal monologue) what the words imply. I think to do much more than this can put you on the road to excess.