Printer-friendly version
Author:
Taxonomy upgrade extras:
What or how do you work past an issue that makes you uncomfortable. It sounds trivial but for the life of me I cannot seem to, or want to, write scenes that can affect a childs' relationship with his/her parent. I can envision it but I'm unable to put it to paper. I've known several people that have had a poor relationship with theirs but mine was never like that. Its like a stumbling block for when I have to write it. It's essential to the story so there's no way for me to skirt around the issue. Unless the parent is a total bitch (which she is not) I cannot write it.
Suggestions would be helpful. No I cannot fake the relationship in this sense.
Comments
Just describe
what you see in your head, or try drawing a picture and describing that. Then describe what each of the characters is feeling.
Angharad
hmm...
One of the things that the professional writers talk about, is giving yourself permission to do it badly.
That is: While writing your first (and/or early) draft(s), don't spend a lot of time worrying about if you got it right. Just get something down on the paper and move on. It's always easier to go back and revise once you've gotten something down to work with.
Additionally, once you've got a first draft, find a beta-reader or two you trust who can look over what you have and make suggestions. Someone whom you can point out specific spots where you think your story is weak and can ask for suggestions.
Another thing to try is to find a book you like where the kind of relationship you want to write about (but are having trouble with) is represented and study it in detail. Then, try re-writing some of those scenes yourself, borrowing material from the sample work. Write the key scenes from someone else's perspective (if possible).
Be methodical, make a list: What sorts of things do you envision as being the kind of scene you want? Write down the sorts of incidents and elements you can recall, ask friends to describe things that fit your criteria from their own lives. Then sand the serial numbers off and run your key characters through those incidents. Figure out how they might react and write it down.
As for wanting to write them, hmm .... I'm not sure how much help I can be there. Clearly you do at least to some extent, or you wouldn't have asked about it. Perhaps it might be helpful to remember that one element of story telling is that it's not about how you feel, but about how you want to make the reader feel. What's the reader supposed to glean from the scene(s) in question? Shift your perspective and it might be easier to write about.
Personally, the thing I have trouble with is confrontation. My mother was an alcoholic, my childhood training was to avoid confrontation. It's ingrained in me. Confrontation usually meant a disaster. As a result, I have to make a conscious effort when I'm trying to write a confrontation scene. It just doesn't come naturally to me.
I wish I knew
I have an unwritten story because it calls for an unforgiving, intolerant father who would rather punish my hero/ine than love and support. I have nothing to draw from. My father, though highly opinionated and unbending in his thinking was supportive in the only way he knew how as I grew up. He was confronted three times with my cross-dressing and never once did he speak in anger or take any punitive measures. Instead, twice he chose to say nothing and the only time he did say anything he simply cautioned me that people seeing me do that might think I was crazy. Then in my adulthood when I decided to come out to him, and start visiting him en femme, he simply accepted it without comment,save once when he told me my boobs were crooked.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann
In that
In that males communicate differently physically then verbally I would say he was supportive of you. He apparently did not stop loving you but it could also be cultural. Some people fail to understand the upbringing of our own parents. They grew up with different values or beliefs on what to say. It was difficult for my own mother to verbalize what she had experience as she grew up, either ashamed or more likely trying to deal with the trauma from the war and its aftermath. Just as she was starting to open up about her past we as a family lost her. I heard some of what she endured but now I'll never know the rest of the stories.
If he never belittled or condemned you then it was his way of acceptance. He never disowned you, forbid you and such. I'm not saying its right, I'm just saying that's how he dealt with it.
And there you have your story of your dad. "My lopsided son."
Don't get me wrong.
My father and I had what I would describe as a good relationship. In my teen years, some of my fondest memories of my father were when we'd sit around after dinner, over coffee and debate. Usually, he'd make a comment about something, and even though I might totally agree, I would defend the opposing view and we would debate for hours on the subject. Normally, I'd make one or two line comments and then listen for ten to twenty minutes as he explained the fallacy of my argument in great detail. My father dropped out of school in the ninth grade (he was born in 1910; when he was 14 the country was still in the grips of the depression) and went to work. But he was well read and could hold his own on nearly any topic with any college grad that I ever met. I learned so much from my father in those times, an education I could never have paid for.
Dad was not a demonstrative man. He wasn't a huger, not even to my sisters. He showed his love by doing thing with and for us. The oddest picture of my father I've ever seen was taken at my wedding. The photographer wanted a picture of my wife's father on one side and my father on the other as the each kissed her cheek at the same time. That was so unlike my dad.
I never doubted his love.
My statement that he supported in the only way he knew how was because in those days, (the fifties and sixties) there was so little information about trans anything, vestite, gender or sexual that he had no resources to call on and rather than say the wrong thing, he chose to say nothing. Read my submission, Silence Is Golden, if you want better inscription of my relationship with dad, as well as my wife.
Hugs
Patricia
Happiness is being all dressed up and HAVING some place to go.
Semper in femineo gerunt
Ich bin eine Mann