Message Board Topic 3/2

[Comsie]

It can be a lovely world when you're writing stories, right? Hehehe, what a wonderful place to be! The really cute, perfectly built, blond haired love of your life...just 'happens' to be gay and in love with you! And you just 'happen' to have a bunch of stuff in common, so you get along ALL the time! And he just 'happens' to be single (Because who would want a really hot blond boy with a sense of humor and a gorgeous smile, right?)! And your parents just 'happen' to be out of town this weekend! How crazy is that?

 

The best part of a fictional world, is that a lot of things just 'happen' to fall in line for the main character. And that's awesome, because 'magic' is what these stories are all about, right? But how can an author write a good story with a feel good vibe throughout...and not make things seem just a bit TOO perfect to be believable? I mean, nobody watches a porn movie as asks themselves, "Gee, I wonder if these two guys will end up having sex at some point?" So how can an author throw a few unexpected curveballs at his readers? How can a story take a fresh approach that makes things a bit more unpredictable? Because if art is truly imitating life...things should NOT be quite that easy. Do you guys just 'happen' to have any suggestions on this one? Hehehe!

[Graeme]

This is very much a stylistic issue. Relationship stories range from the romance through dramas to tragedies. You're referring more to the romance end of the spectrum, so the reader knows the hero will get his guy in the end (even if sometimes it's not exactly clear which guy).

 

How to give the hero a few bumps in the path is up to the author. There are a lot of traditional ways to do so -- jealousy, misunderstandings, handsome rival, interfering parents, etc. Making them seem natural but new is the job of the author. Even better if the author thinks up some new way to cause disruption (maybe the boyfriend falls pregnant....)

Edited March 2, 2009 by Graeme

[LongGone]

If you're not careful you end up with clich

[JamesSavik]

No car chases, plane crashes, parental death, alien abduction, being adopted by rich and powerful relatives you've never heard of, being eaten by vampires, getting between a flock of vampires and a van Helsing cult, finding alien artifacts, discovering your new car is an autobot, being sold into white slavery, being eaten by werewolves, finding out you have a twin from which you were seperated at birth who hates and wants to kill you for no apparent reason (and is evil of course), discovering something vary valuable and dangerous in your attic/basement, being mistaken for an assasin, being mistaken for a terrorist, being mistaken for a spy, having a reporter slip you an incriminating videotape before he is murdered for attempting to reveal an evil secret of the military industrial complex, being a patsy in an assasination, being targeted as an arch-criminal via idenity theift, being mistaken for the leader of an elite commando group, being mistaken for a politician, being a plliticians double, being a politicians who gets murdered double and being used as a puppet, being forced to do something horrible because your kid has been kidnapped, being kidnapped, being kidnapped and escaping, having a guy with a chain saw chasing you...

[TurtleBoy]

A good story is not built on convenience, but more so on its twists and turns; how something came to be. I've just written a fictional story where I experienced these same difficulties (if you want to take a look -http://turtleboy.weebly.com/unintended.html) I addressed those usual problems and kind of distorted them, so that they wouldn't appear to be on such "common ground" with other stories. Opposites attract, especially when its done by chance of a blind eye.

 

Hmmm, I really should have woken up a little more before posting this reply, I can't seem to verbalize what I'm trying to say quite how I had planned hehe. Hopefully I've been of some help, if I think of anything else I'll drop another line or two later.

 

-TurtleBoy-