Kate's week 5 post

Last Friday we had our individual meetings with Margaret.

Some really helpful advice included ideas for slowing down time during sex scenes. For example, include initial reaction to clothes, how does he react to her body? Explore the female body more. Is she concerned with his pleasure-if so is it for the first time? And how powerful is it to tease him this way.

Our conversation about how to be a narrator was very helpful! That is where most of her book recommendations came in:

Some of her book recommendations include: The Days of Abandonment by Elena Ferrante, If beale street could talk by James Baldwin, The Mirror on the Wall and a brief history of yes by Micheline Aharonian, Beloved by Toni Morrison, The Lover by Marguerite Duras.

Most of these books have some connection to the story that I am writing and different ways I can be the narrator in my story. I was extremely drawn to Micheline’s books—they seem to have a narrator style that fits well with what I imagine happening with my story.

I keep trying to do different things with my story, basically different points of view-but nothing seems to be working for me. I am hoping to go back and forth with some of these book recommendations to help me get to which POV/narrator style would best work for my story. So far, I still think the first person would work best. I was thinking that maybe I would switch to third person for the sex scenes—but I really need my character to be considering things in her head during these scenes—so I think first person would still work best. I think I just need to really hone in on slowing things down in the sex scenes by having my character have more internal thought and contemplation to slow them down.

I really like that idea because it seems to me that was how I originally envisioned the entire story: for things to be moving really fast on the dates—where I slow down the scenes by having these internal thought moments—I feel like my character really has a lot of internal conversation during her dates, sex and everyday life. She is shy and lacks self-confidence so I think that is in line with her character having a lot of internal thought and less out-loud conversation with her dates. However, I see my character getting more and more comfortable with verbal communication throughout the story. For some reason (that I haven’t figured out yet) she is more comfortable with physical contact-but its more of a sham because she is uncomfortable with verbal and non-sex intimacies.

Wow…okay this blogging today really made me consider my character. Super production 450 words!