Kissing is Awkward and Licky

I finally did the first pass at the kiss scene I was ranting about a few days ago. It’s…all right. I’m not going to say that I love it, but I managed to preserve the funny/geeky tone I was going for and it did end up easier than I thought it would be.

First, a little bit of backstory. The main character, Leslie, is around 15-16 years old, and over-intellectualizes everything. This is her first date with Owen.

It does not go like this.

You’d think that they would teach you practical things in Health class. Yes, I realize the main point is to tell us not to get naked with each other, but a bunch of seventh graders could use a little basic knowledge. Like what to do if the guy you want to kiss is four inches taller—does he bend down or do you get up on tiptoes? And what about if you just drank hot chocolate so you’re not completely sure if your breath smells decent? There wasn’t really an unobtrusive way to check.

I was frozen on my porch by the realization that I had absolutely no clue about the mechanics of any of this. I couldn’t even figure out how to avoid the nose-bumping issue. Or how much to open my mouth so I hit the sweet spot between “slack-jawed zombie” and “my lips are vacuum-sealed.” Silently, I promised myself that when I had kids I would teach them proper kissing procedure along with where babies came from. Just so that they wouldn’t be trying to figure it out while standing on a wet porch with only a limited amount of time to actually do this thing before the rest of the family came home.

Owen looked at me, biting his lip. All the school gossip I’d heard had never linked him with anyone, either.  But he had more adrenaline than me, apparently. In one motion his hand moved from my arm to the space on my back just below my bra (thank god) and then his mouth was pressed against mine.

Shock resulted in my being neither a zombie nor vacuum-sealed.

It was warm and very, very nice. Something small burst in my brain, because I was grinning like the girly-girl I’d never been.

After thirty seconds we needed air and pulled apart. What do you say after that?

“Thanks,” he said, then winced and retracted it. “So, um, good?”

“Good.” I nodded like a crazy person. Good grief, I’d been reduced to the vocabulary of a caveman. I backed towards the front door, while Owen sort of staggered down the porch steps. It had become a romantic staring contest. My hand found the doorknob. “Tomorrow? Ah—I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Great!” he grinned, and finally hit the sidewalk. I slipped inside the door and as soon as I was sure that there was no possible way he could hear me, I started giggling. It seemed like the appropriate response.

So, what do you all think (seeing as how I wrote an ambiguous and confusing thought-splatter about romance before, I thought it only fair that I posted the results)? Voice? Character? Was the kiss long enough to be satisfying, even though it was only a few sentences?

Gah. Now I must edit.

Stupid Alarm Clocks Are Stupid

Usually, the fact that I am both smart and lazy evens out to making it through the day with a minimal amount of effort and a good enough success rate. Sometimes, it screws me over.

I have to get up between 6 and 6:10 to be able to leave by seven. Any later and I either have to skip a shower (thereby feeling gross and sleepy all day) or crawl back under the covers and declare very loudly that I am Much Too Sick to Do Anything–which only works one day a week at most.

I have known for the past ten days that something is wrong with my alarm. Last week I didn’t wake up until 6:45 two days in a row, but I procrastinated on getting a new clock until the weekend. Then the weekend came, and it was no longer a pressing issue, because I could sleep as long as I damn wanted, so I didn’t bother to do anything about it. Then Monday was Memorial Day, and all the stores were closed, so I again didn’t bother with it.

Today I woke up at 6:20, which is slightly too late for me to shower but just early enough for my inner monologue to be filled with profanity instead of sleepy mumblings. And it was also the day I’d promised myself I’d wear a dress (occasionally, I have to be reminded that I am actually feminine) so I ended up putting it on because maybe that would negate the non-shower grossness. Now it’s 1:00 a.m. and I still have yet to get a new alarm.

Honestly, I’m not even sure its the clock’s fault. I don’t get a lot of sleep. I could be waking up just long enough to turn it off.

Also, I tend to throw it across the room a a lot.

The devil.

 

The End (Daily Dose)

In honor of the end of my daily-inspiration month, I’ve devised three writing prompts having to do with endings.

1. The First Thing You Think of is Never the Best. It’s true. The first ending that you think of is the one your readers will be expecting. It won’t be surprising because it very much is the easy route.

Take the ending you’ve got planned for whatever piece you’re working on right now, or of a piece you recently completed. Throw it out. Now try to think of three other endings that could fulfill all the promises you made to the reader.

2. End With This. Three possible endings for your using pleasure.

It was over. Her muscles were aching, head-to-toe, but all she could do was lay on her back in the mud and dirt and others’ blood. All that mattered was that they’d won.

Thomas watched the boy walked away with his parents. It had all ended okay. A few broken bones, and some heads would roll back at HQ, but all in all the only one who wouldn’t recover was the monster rotting in his cell. 

The boy pushed the box back under his bed. The last rattle of pans echoed downstairs–thank goodness he’d gotten home in time for dinner. No one ever had to know.

3. Cut-n-Paste. Take a story you’ve never read before (basically, go to the website of an lit mag and there should be some sample stories. Or, you know, find your damn library) and read until the third-to-last page. Then write the ending you want to see.

Finally, go and read the real ending. Is it better or worse than yours? Why?

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Whew! I think this is the last 30-day blogging project I’ll be doing for awhile, at least until summer ends. It was fun, but it does take dedication. (Oh, and anyone who posts what they did off a prompt gets a virtual cookie. I like responses )

Steal This Character (Daily Dose)

Its true that there are very, very few original ideas–and that goes doubly so for characters. So today I stripped several popular movie and comic book protagonists to their basic biographies. Its fun to see what vastly different stories one sparse bio can build.

Bonus points if you can guess who’s who:

He was thrown out of the Air Force for rebelliousness. One day, while out on a flight, he was chosen to be the next peacekeeper for an ancient alien race.

She was born into a world where children were used in ancient killing rituals, retribution for when the colonies rebelled against the capital city. She was the first to fight it.

She put on a costume for a masquerade ball. She didn’t intend to stop one of the city’s most notorious criminals from murdering one of its most famous citizens. And she certainly didn’t mean to keep doing it, night after night.

He was an exile, framed by his mad wife for her murder. Desperate to be able to return to his children, he took the job that would either make him or kill him.

 

The Hardest Thing is a Good Kiss

I’m hard at work on my Ya project, and I’m feeling really good. Better than I have about a project in awhile. The story has three essential prongs: the superheroics, the friendship, and the romance. And boy, am I having trouble with the romance part of this.

I’ve read a ton of young adult romances. I get how to write the awkward first date, and the sort of puppy-love infatuation that proceeds a real romance. But once I hit that first kiss, the one that has to be written just so, it starts falling apart.

Part of it, I know, is that I don’t have a huge breadth of experience in this area. I haven’t been in a very serious relationship (I get most of my kicks from reading. I have not, thus far,  met my own Tony Stark) and a good portion of the dates I’ve been on have been just irretrievably weird.

What I’m facing now is writing this relationship that is integral to the last half of the book, when romance is by far the thing that I am worst at. My first novel fell apart mostly due to the romantic interest being just sort of there and a plot device rather than a person. I avoid romance entirely in a lot of my shorts because I don’t have the space to pussyfoot around it.

I feel like I hit a certain point with the partners of my protagonists and suddenly my inspiration walks out the door. It’s like I can develop them to a level and then there’s nothing more there. There’s a give-and-take that really well-written romances have that I just fail at. The characters have to be vulnerable and real, and the romance can’t be all flowers and chocolate. It’s ups and downs. I can say all this, and pick it out in the book romances that I like, but it isn’t coming down on the page.

I’ve been consuming tons of YA lately, or at least the YA I like, and even more subtle (because it’s best to learn from the things that do it subtly) lit-fic stories, in the hopes of picking up this skill. But please, if anyone has a good writing book about romance, or just some tips, I’d love to hear them.

Mary Sue Litmus Test (Daily Dose)

I’m planning on doing a longer post about this later, so the writing prompt is going to be pretty brief.

For anyone who doesn’t know (read: any non-nerds) a Mary Sue is a fanfic term for one of those characters that is annoyingly perfect and perky. Usually, its a caricature of the author or the person the author wants to screw. If you’re writing a Mary Sue, it’s pretty hard to tell, because of course you love the character.

Luckily, the Turkey City Lexicon has made a Mary Sue Litmus Test. It’s kind of lengthy, but fun to do. Today’s writing prompt is to run your protagonist through the test. Interestingly, several famous bestseller protagonists (mainly Bella Swan from Twilight) fail the test. Though you can totally see why in each instance.

Have fun!

Even If You Hate It…(Daily Dose)

Right now, I am elbow deep in editing a short story that I began, put down for a few months, and then finished. It is slow going. The story is, quite frankly, not very good. I like the basic plot, and the writing is objectively well done. But the ending is crap and because of the break in writing time I utterly forgot that one character is even in the story and just dropped him halfway through. Compounding that is the fact that the relationship at the center of the story is awkward and uncomfortable in a way I did not want it to be.

So my prompt to you today is intended to be sadistic. Come, darlings, and share my pain.

Take that piece (oh, you know you have one) that embarrasses you, that you would never dream of sharing. And rework at least the first page. See if there’s a small nugget of brilliance that can become something good.

2 Stupid Shows (Daily Dose)

I liked the first episode of 2 Broke Girls. I even mildly enjoyed the second episode. Then I got to the third and realized it was the same damn episode about two annoying, bitchy crybabies in an apartment, just slightly repackaged.

Jesus. I still like the Office and I couldn’t stand this show. How is it still on the air when Campus got canned by our cousins-cross-the-pond after six episodes? Something’s wrong here, America.

But I digress, because this was supposed to be a writing prompt. So write me a story with two annoying, bitchy crybabies that doesn’t suck.

If, somehow, you are a fan of 2 Broke Girls, use the dad from $#*! My Dad Says Instead.

Bizarre Little Kids (Daily Dose)

I think everybody has those childhood stories that make other people think that they either had a very, very odd childhood and/or are traumatized. For example, she I was seven or eight, a man in an unmarked white van drove up to me and asked me to help him find his puppy. Being the type of kid I was, I said “Oh, sure. Let me just go get my parents. They can help too.”

Or another time, when I went swimming in the orange-colored (no joke) drainage pond in my neighborhood, and came out with bug larvae stuck all across my legs. Later, my stupid-ass friend–oh, you know we all have one–and I decided to sell bug large in baby food jars for ten cents apiece. For pets, of course.

Take that wacky childhood memory of yours, and put it in the middle of a story, or use it as part of a character’s backstory. It’ll be interesting, at least.

 

Wikipedia, My Love (Daily Dose)

Again, a short prompt. Because I am tired.

Go on to Wikipedia.

Go to an article that interests you, and click on a link to another article inside that one. Then click on three more links, until you are four articles away from your original article.

Read it.

Write.