Episode #129: Dad Is Kind Of Willing To Explain Himself Once

"Let's wash away our current sins, whatever they may be, and focus on creating new sins to drive everyone nuts."

So last week, I gave you the reader, a peek into what makes me tick as a writer, a sort of 'then and now' look.

This week, I thought I would dive a bit deeper into the kind of tropes that I prefer to use in my stories, both then and now.

1} Then: Violence. Back in my early years, I was the typical angry writer (the why isn't important), so what I was writing had a very unhealthy dose of violence contained, almost to the point of being grossly cartoonish. Seriously, watch like an Itchy and Scratchy short from The Simpsons, or any bad action film from the 90's going forward and you'll get the basic idea of what my early stories contained. An all-around cringe-fest that even made me cringe. Just...ewww.

Now: Violence. Starting with this Hot Mess manuscript, the violence started becoming less cartoonish and more concise and relevant. Now what I mean by concise is that it wasn't overly dramatic butt instead it was more contained, like it took a max three paragraphs to describe a scene as opposed to a half to full page description. As for relevant, that means if the scene called for some kind of violence, on any kind of level, I made sure it was important to that particular scene and not sticking it in for the sake of having it there. Which leads us to the other well known trope of choice.

2} Then: Sex. Looking back on my early years, I can confidently say that if I wasn't able to properly write fictional stories of any kind, I think I could've hooked up with an adult movie company to write film scripts. Let that sink in for a minute. Actually, the only book that I had traditionally published, which is now know as The Inner Sibling, was basically a woman's (mis)adventures working in the adult movie industry (there are reviews for the original version of the book entitled Line 21 that you can find on one of the tabs for my book blog when you click on the book link).

So....yeah, it was just. that. bad. Bad enough for me to cringe once I was actually able to properly ascertain just how...pornographic....my stories were turning into.'Nuff said about that.

Now: Sex. I want to say that starting after way after this particular manuscript, at least in the original form, was when I started writing my sex scenes far less gratuitous and more of being relevant to the overall story. Must of my published work, as well as the currently unpublished stuff I have sitting on the back burner waiting for my c/c situation to improve, the sex scenes have been toned down from the X rated variety to more of the NC-17/R mix that I currently strive for. In fact, the last truly X rated sex that I had written was in the aforementioned book, because duh, adult movie industry. Since then, it has been toned to the point where it does seem to be a more...real/plausible for the scene in question.

A good example of this would be the new iteration of the Hot Mess manuscript. I've toned it down quite a bit so as to not make so hardcore, but it's still there. And there is one particular scene that I had to completely rewrite, because, you know, doing research into mythological names for my characters brought up some very interesting facts. Good for the reader, but not so good for me the writer. Essentially, it took me the better part of two days to re-write that scene.

3} Then: Violence & Sex. Note: If this particular topic bothers you just as it does me writing about it, by all means please skip this paragraph and read the "Now" regarding this topic. I promise that it will be a far more pleasant read than this one.

The fascination with sex and violence essentially peaked and cratered with the Hot Mess manuscript. I was writing a particular violent story (fantasy is the genre in question) which was, and to a certain degree still is, my preferred choice of a writing trope, and I while I like writing sex scenes of all types, I thought to combine the two with this story. So I did. This story contains at least three SA of varying degrees. While they weren't completely over the top, they were very much a necessity to the overall plot of the story.

As I take a fresher look at them while rewriting this story, I do have the cringe factor as well as deeper thoughts about writing them to begin with going for me. While I don't regret writing them, as I believe they were absolutely necessary as both background info and advancing the plot further down the road, I didn't feel one hundred percent comfortable writing them. I also realize that with the way this story is unfolding, I might have to write one more further down that road. So...yeah.

4} Now: Violence and Sex. After the initial peak and cratering of writing those types of scenes with the Hot Mess manuscript, the only other time I had to write (yes, had to) another SA scene, not counting the manuscript about two serial killers, in the proceeding eleven years was when I was writing one for a crime story about drugs last year, the one with the working tag of The Great American Novel.

So yeah, writing those types of scenes really weren't my cup of coffee at all. They really do bother me enough that I decided to make a genuine effort of not writing those kinds of scenes in any of my upcomin stories. I have no problem writing trope number one nor trope number two as complete separate entities, but will not combine the two going forward.

So thus, we come to the conclusion of the deeper dive into what I enjoy using for tropes in my writing. As for genres, I lean very much towards fantasy and a few sub genres contained within. Next week we'll do a deeper dive into what I listen to for music for writing.

Have a great rest of the week.

{c} 2022 by G.B. Miller. All Rights Reserved