There are some anecdotes I'd love to include in a story but they seem too hyperbolic or unbelievable when I try to write them.For instance, when I was fifteen I had a friend named Bobbie. Bobbie was perhaps the most beautiful girl I ever personally knew. She often asked me to come pick her up before school activities.
Arriving, I'd find her wearing only her underwear and then the show would begin. Bobbie would try on every outfit in her closet. Many of them would demand a change in her stockings, or a change in her makeup or a change in hairstyle. Hair up, hair down; fishnet stockings, white ones; shoulder bag, clutch; cloche hat, beret. It often went on for as long as an hour. Maybe more We were always late.
At some point, I realized that "this" was the fun part of the event for her. Having an audience for her modeling. Having someone in awe of how many clothes she had and how nice she looked in them. Of how original she was in her choices.
There was nothing mean in any of it but when I write it, Bobbie seems disturbed or smug or frivolous, which she was not. Or not exactly. Are there incidents like this that never work in your writing? Is the truth sometimes too unbelievable or too hard to make real? Can a skilled writer make anything feel right or are there some things that elude even the best?
8 comments:
I can't remember which critic rather tellingly put it once, "This is very much like life, but one could wish it was a bit more like art." That would be your further challenge, to find a way to tell the tale that somehow gets at the balance of narcissism and trust and whatever else was going on with Bobbie, and make it work...make it meaningful or significant or otherwise useful...in the work in question. Which might mean changing its particulars or even its tone.
Doesn't matter if it happened, to be more flip, but is it likely/relevant/true? A valid question in fiction, and too often an operational question in politics and the rest of life.
This could be a great scene.
The point of it, of course, is the other character realizing Bobbie likes an audience. It tells us something about Bobbi, sure, but it's really the other character being revealed - how she feels about Bobbie's need for an audience and what she's going to do with this realization. Through her, we'll make up our minds about Bobbie. Well, of course, the other characters wil make them up for us and be subtle about it, but we'll think we made up our minds, that's how we'll be engaged with the story ;)
I really like the way you've described Bobbie. I like that you've observed that there's more to this ritual and to Bobbie than the superficiality on the surface.
Without that additional observation, she's a cliche. You've described someone much more layered.
The thing is-are some incidents, told truthfully, too much? I bet you can think of something that happened to you once that was just unbelievable in a story, no matter how you wrote it: too evil, too sad, too uplifting. I probably didn't use the best example. I can see your points though. The POV can make it work. The lens can make it clear.
And I wonder what happened to Bobbie? Is she still changing her clothes somewhere? Has she worn out husband after husband with this trick?
What appeals to a teen discovering that she is a beautiful creature might not appeal to an adult woman, one perhaps can hope.
And perhaps she's worn out, or not, wives. A certain vibe of an attraction that might not be even fully realized by her, and a desire for corresponding response from you, seems inherently possible.
"And I wonder what happened to Bobbie? Is she still changing her clothes somewhere? Has she worn out husband after husband with this trick?"
Patti, it sounds like you still haven't decided if this is Bobbie's story's or the other character's.
I think you can safely say there are lots of Bobbies and use her as any other archetype. You'll still have to decide for what purpose, for which character's development and all the rest of that story stuff.
But to answer your question, no. There's nothing offlimits, nothing so sad or evil or uplifting (oddly, probably the toughest one on your list).
There aren't many really worthwhile things in the world you can do halfway.
Definitely. Truth can be stranger than fiction. Once, I was in this writing class. It was taught by a pubbed mystery writer. Anyway, a woman wrote a short story where the protag, unsolicited, took a box of kleenex to a group of strangers who were mourning a beach drowning. The teacher/pubbed author said that no one would ever do that. The woman replied that she'd actually done it. The teacher just shook her head and said no one would believe.
Okay. All typed out like that, it reads boring. But, somehow the entire incident stuck in my head that just because something happened doesn't automatically make it appropriate fodder for a fiction book.
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