Half of a dialog with my characters

[mrissa]

Gosh, I sure am glad to be done writing a YA for the moment, so my characters can actually have actual sex and not just run around with tension you could cut with the proverbial knife!*

[five minutes pass with grown-up manuscript]

Oh, dammit, it's actual sex in my actual book! Can't you people do this offstage? It's awfully personal! I -- ooh, oh, oh, did I need to know that? I did not! You people! And it's plot and character and theme, too, so I can't just turn the lights out on you. Hell. (Stupid theme. I hate you, theme.)

No, I don't want to know your opinion of having the lights out. I didn't want to know your opinions in the first place. I would rather have inferred them and then implied them. Rather gravitationally, as it were. Shape of the relationship and all that. Spooky action at a distance is fine with me.

No, not like that. Can't you even leave quantum mechanics out of this? Can't you leave quantum mechanics out of anything?

Why don't you people go bother Bear? She likes this sort of thing. And she wouldn't mind researching -- oh. Oh, no. That is Not Okay. And you, oh characters, are northern enough -- albeit a different kind of northern -- to know what Not Okay means. Means wrong. Like, morally. Not Okay, as in, just like Okay, only not.

If you people are going to be sick dysfunctional freaks, can't you at least be sick dysfunctional freaks having a good time?

Oh, good, thanks, that's --

Um. Wait. Not better after all.

Sigh.

*Yes, I know that characters in YAs can have sex, in general. I read the Alanna books when I was a kid, too. But in specific, no, not for another two books yet.

Comments

[mkhobson.livejournal.com]

You've cracked me up before I've had my morning coffee. Thank goodness, or I would have snarfed it all over the keyboard.

M

[jebbypal]

and I think you just summed up my inability to even manage to approach romance...because I know it might eventually lead to sex in a story and my southern Catholic upbringing just gets to out of whack to give in to that yet. *kicks upbringing*

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

Quantum mechanics and sex? Do I want to know? Have I possibly lived that moment myself -- being married to a physicist-rocket scientist after all? Inquiring minds get you in SO much trouble.

MKK

[retrobabble.livejournal.com]

Oh, I laughed at this! Specifically,

Oh, dammit, it's actual sex in my actual book! Can't you people do this offstage? It's awfully personal! I -- ooh, oh, oh, did I need to know that? I did not! You people!

I've had that conversation with my characters. Usually with one hand over my eyes.

[ckd]

Well, what with quantum and all, presumably you've both lived that moment and not lived that moment. Or perhaps you know what you were doing at the time, but not where you were.

[ckd]

Same here, except without the coffee part. It's a very good thing I wasn't actually taking a swig from my water bottle when I read this. The desktop team gets so upset when I spray water all over my keyboard.

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

Heee. You made me laugh so hard I had a coughing fit. Bad Man.

MKK

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

Wanna borrow a poet?

[lutin.livejournal.com]

ROFL.

On the "Not Okay" front

[gaaldine.livejournal.com]

I queried both a native Floridian and a native Ohio-an about the "Okay" versus "Not Okay" thing, using the story you cited as an example. They didn't get the humor of the story either, and completely understood the distinction between "Okay" and "Not Okay." In other words, they really didn't think it was a just-Minnesota or just-Northern thing.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

markgritter's grandfather is occasionally a sticking point for me. My grands don't really read SF or fantasy on their own, but it's something that appeals to Grandpa Lyzenga even aside from one of his grandkids writing it. So I occasionally become too aware of that. Still, he'd rather I write what I need to write, I think.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

ckd answered this much more amusingly than I could, I think.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yah, because what we all need when the dirtiness of our characters is bothering us is more poets. You're a very helpful Bear.