I don’t often write from personal experience. While
everyone says that you should write what you know, what you know is different
for everyone. Writing from personal experience can lead the writer to become too
attached to memory and force that into their fiction. On top of that, forcing
embellishments on characters based on real people in real situations can fall flat.
Having said that, this is definitely a story in need of revisions because it is
based on real people in real situations.
This event was based on the first time I took my wife to
Florida to meet my parents. It was my dad’s birthday week, and we had bought
tickets for my parents and us to go to a Florida Gator football game since that
is my family’s college team of choice. One night, after dinner, the
conversation took a turn exactly like the one here, although the aftermath was
considerably different. The result is that I was unable to really flesh out the
mother character and she came across as overly villainous. The revelation of
Olivia’s brother being gay and having AIDS also seemed overly convenient, even
though that actually happened.
I’m not divorcing myself from this story, there are a lot
of things that I really like about this story, and I think that I could craft
it into a good or even great story dealing with themes of family dysfunction,
religion, and politics and I have a few ideas of what I want to do for a future
draft. So make sure to stay tuned for a better version of this story.
No comments:
Post a Comment