Story Discussion: January 10, 2007. "Connections" by Selenakittyn

[neonlyte]

Oh, wow- great observation! I totally missed all the time frame stuff. Then again, my father and brother are both Beatles *nuts*, so I guess I didn't want to think too much about it, you know? I did find it a really nice touch that, not only does she name her fish, but she doesn't want to name them after a dead person. Our fish is "Sharky-larky". Not sure what that says.

The more I think about it, the more I think that brilliant last line doesn't work anywhere near as well in the past tense.

Isn't that the great thinking about posting here. What each sees is different, like you, I didn't pick up on the music references and went back to read it again; you see it from a slightly different view point.

On that great last line - I'm betting the post Dylan section was part of the first write. Bloody good for a seventeen year old, and by the way Selena, you don't look at all 'old' from your AV

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Isn't that the great thinking about posting here. What each sees is different, like you, I didn't pick up on the music references and went back to read it again; you see it from a slightly different view point.

On that great last line - I'm betting the post Dylan section was part of the first write. Bloody good for a seventeen year old, and by the way Selena, you don't look at all 'old' from your AV

Damn, you're good, Neo!

Yes, the post Dylan section was from the first write... are you saying I was a better writer at 17 than I am now? lol

Thanks for the compliment(s)...

 

[neonlyte]

Damn, you're good, Neo!

Yes, the post Dylan section was from the first write... are you saying I was a better writer at 17 than I am now? lol

Thanks for the compliment(s)...

You gave a big hint in 'your confession'

Actually, it was the 'bra and panties' and Seth in his sleeping shorts that had me convinced. Considering you age when you wrote the first part, it shows remarkable emotional insight. It is has a refreshing writing innocence, progressively more difficult to find as we mature in age, and as writers. When inexperienced, we are not afraid of speaking out, trying a voice or style. That is really what signalled the difference between the two sections on my first reading, the sexual scene is overwritten compared with the rest (IMHO). Doesn't mean it's not good, but the writing is experienced writing in content and description.

I'd like to see you re-acquire that first voice for the sex scene. You can visualise it, which is why it works so well if you skip the scene, writing it might be demanding.

You were a different writer at seventeen, not better, just different - which is as it should be.

 

[Pure]

that's interesting feedback, selena, about the early composition of the first part.

that goes towards explaining what i and others noted as a lack of story/action in the second half. in sum, there weren't any obstacles to overcome, and the new outcome is not set up at the start.

it's rather as if i were to take Romeo and Juliette and write a 6th act where they turn out not to be dead, but in deep comas, and the families have to attend to their 'sleeping' offspring. finally, the kids succumb (for real) and the families in grief, agree (again) to bury the hatchet.


i guess this is what's called 'unity,' and the first half-story has more of it, more tightness as well as complexity. for the addition to succeed as well, enough probs set up at the beginning have to surface and be resolved or do the people in, in the second part.
i.e. there has to be a new unity, larger, for the whole piece.

for instance if she, as virgin, was quite scared about penetration, and it turned out to go smoothly. she has connected, except for the fulfillment, as of the end of the first part; the lovemaking is more a manifestation than a feature of further development in the relationship.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Ok another question...

do you think this story is novel-worthy?

 

[RogueLurker]

Ok another question...

do you think this story is novel-worthy?

Just Cathy meeting Seth and their budding relationship? Probably not.

You could take that as a jump-off point - the begining really does catch the reader's attention and that is half the battle in attracting readership. Cathy is a fascinating character with a fantastic "voice". This is a story that has stayed with me since the first time I read it.

I would like to get a better idea of why she is so disconnected, whether she can stay connected and how she turns out. There are hints and glimpses that could be expanded on ... and things that you could follow through with. There are lots of elements and themes that you could bring in to expand this into a larger story ... novel length.

You probably could re-tool the story a bit and publish it mainstream as a short story. To do so, you could go back and try to merge the original style with your current style ... and the sex would probably be better toned down (not for censors, but more that it doesn't make the story any better - it would still resonate with many readers if you went with more of a "fade to black" approach). The problem with short stories is that they don't get the same attention as novels and the audience would be smaller.

 

[Penelope Street]

Okay... confession time. I wrote this piece in a creative writing class when I was seventeen years old.

...

The sex was implied in the former version but not explicit

Great job, Young Selena! I never would have guessed. Any chance we could have a glimpse at the original- at least the portion after they meet?

Ok another question...

do you think this story is novel-worthy?

It's a great short story. I don't think you should expand it.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

I would like to get a better idea of why she is so disconnected, whether she can stay connected and how she turns out. There are hints and glimpses that could be expanded on ... and things that you could follow through with. There are lots of elements and themes that you could bring in to expand this into a larger story ... novel length.

But then I run into what Pure is talking about... there has to be conflict, resolution... in the short story, the conflict/resolution is (however effective) the sex... I imagine I'd have to delve into Cathy's relationship with her mother much more... which would be interesting, I admit...

Great job, Young Selena! I never would have guessed. Any chance we could have a glimpse at the original- at least the portion after they meet?

It ended... I didn't take anything out or delete anything, I just added.

So it "faded to black" ... it jumped from this scene:

“Hi,” he whispers. “I’m Seth.”
“I’m God,” I whisper back. “Nice to meet you.”
He laughs and hugs me. I put my arms around him and close my eyes, marveling at the human contact, letting the warmth envelop us.
“I’ve waited so long to do this,” he says into my hair.
“Too long,” I reply. His arms tighten around me.

to this:

I sit in front of my quiet aquarium wearing a bra and panties, looking into the secret world of fish. My hair feels silky across my arms as I hug my knees to my chest.
“Cath?” I look up and see him wearing a pair of green plaid sleep shorts. I see his ribs when he stretches before he sits beside me and it reminds me of the picture I have of him stuck into the corner of my mirror. Amazing, that they are both one in the same. “Are you okay?”
I don’t answer him but I marvel, as he puts his arms around my shoulder and leans his head against mine, that he is here at all, in my world.
“I called my mother yesterday,” I tell him. “She hates me.”
“No,” he says, stroking my hair. “No one could hate you.”
I shrug, watching Doc poke around some plastic seaweed.
“I guess.” I put my head on his shoulder, an already familiar gesture.
“Are you sorry that you let me stay?” he asks after a moment.
“No.” I kiss his collarbone. “I’m sorry I didn’t ask you to come sooner. I was just afraid.”
“Of what?”
“That you wouldn’t like me, I guess.”
“Oh, Cath.”
We sit in the dimness, listening to the gurgle of the aquarium.
“Seth?”
“Hmm?”
“Do you ever get depressed?”
He squeezes my hand. “Sometimes. Not too often.”
“How come?” I ask, tilting my head at him.
He lifts his eyes to look into mine. “Because I like myself.”
He smiles—I have fallen in love with his smile—and he kisses me, tender and lingering.
I am too small to contain what I feel.

All the rest in the middle was added... including the Dylan song. Although the Dylan and Beatles references in the beginning were always there.

 

[drksideofthemoon]

Ok another question...

do you think this story is novel-worthy?

I met a man by the name of Duris Maxwell once. He was giving a clinic to drummers and was discussing the number of drums that a drummer needed for his drum kit. The one comment he made that has always stuck with me was "Sometimes less is better."

I think this story is an example of where less is better. I think it is an exquisite short story that makes the reader think and wonder.

 

[Penelope Street]

It ended... I didn't take anything out or delete anything, I just added.

So it "faded to black" ...

I like the fade to black version. Is it a coincidence that I found the sex scene dull on the first read, skimmed it on the second read, and skipped it on the third?

 

[Verdad]

Hi, Selena. I'm coming late to your thread, so I'm probably not going to say anything that hasn't been said already, but your story gripped me and held me from the very first line, and if nothing else, I'd love to give you my compliments.

One of your first questions was about the tense, and let me get that straight out of the way: I think the tense worked impeccably and lent Cathy's voice much of its atmosphere of alienation. Probably that was an instinctive choice on your part, and the way it works on the reader is instinctive as well, but thinking about it now, I'm thinking of the way in which isolation can feel like being locked in an endless, never changing present, and it makes me appreciate your choice all the more.

As far as mainstream publishing goes, I think you definitely should give it a try, but I'm with those critics who were leaning toward cleaning up the story rather than expanding it. Maybe it's my partiality toward short fiction, but if it works great as a short story, the possibility of expanding it seems to me rather like ruining the magic.

What I loved the most about the story was the basic idea of trying to connect with the world and the way it came brilliantly into focus through Cathy's character and the phone symbolism, and I fear that further exploration of some other ideas might hurt that layer, turning the story into something else.

One of the questions raised was that of Seth's character. Personally, I found nothing lacking about him. (At least not till the sex scene, but I'll address that separately.) This is Cathy's story, as someone already said, and all I need to know about Seth is how and why he's able to affect her. That, for me, comes through very clearly in their first conversation. He's immediate and unburdened and opened, everything that Cathy isn't, and more than that, he's 'real', the quality that Cathy, unanchored and on the edge of drifting out of reality, is craving the most.

His interest in her feels intuitively understandable to me as well. I see nothing amiss in the way their relationship starts and progresses, and (call me a romantic) I see nothing phony in the way it's able to "save" Cathy, either.

However, the sex scene truly is problematic, and I think that all the complaints rightfully stem from there; the complaints about Seth, as well as those about the predictability of the resolution.

My first impression, even before I was able to put a finger on anything specific or read other comments or your own words about the genesis of the story, is that my eyes simply glazed over and my brain happily ignored the best part of the sex scene, emerging back into consciousness only on the other side. In my opinion, the scene truly doesn't belong in the story, too long, yet saying too little.

That doesn't mean I think the idea wrong, though. In your response to Pure, you explained more or less that the sex isn't a magical resolution, that the real change occurred through time and interaction and culminated with Cathy's call to her mother and agreeing to see Seth, and I did see all that the way you intended.

The sex scene should simply provide a culmination of the process, and perhaps be in itself that last test of the relationship. (In that I agree with Pure, but rather than added episodes, I believe that the existent one could be employed better.)

The scene as it's written now fails to perform these functions, though. I think with her initial irresponsiveness you were on the trail of showing her inability to open up and making her sexual opening up a final test, but the message got lost in the amount of detail and graphicness. In the end, instead of providing a catharsis and an answer to some immediate problem and giving me some powerful detail or two to hold on to, the scene translated in my mind in a simple "Okay, so they fucked" and left me cold.

So I guess I'm at the same time agreeing with those who thought the sex scene instrumental and with those who said that it didn't quite work. I'd like to see the sex scene featured, but in some form that would be shorter on mechanics of sex and longer on meaning.

One last thing I should address is the Dylan business. Well, I'm not too enamored of people who idolize musicians, and the quoted lyrics were another place where my eyes glazed over, but then, it strikes me as so symptomatic of someone like Cathy, seeking one-sided, risk-free connections, that I can't object too much. In fact, I saw her attraction to music that's not of her era as symptomatic, too, rather than anachronistic, and I wouldn't change that.

The thing about Seth playing Dylan for her was a bit too much for my tastes, though. I thought it a bit sappy, and also, it was there, as well as in some parts of the sex scene, that I lost the feel for Seth. That quality of impatience and honesty and energy he'd had in the first calls, the very thing that made it so clear to me that he's got what it takes to be her complement, got kind of diluted.

This is just a thought, but it kind of feels to me like Seth would be more likely to play her new music or his own music, something that he likes and that matters to him, something that's about his dreams. He's the one who's more penetrating, more in the world, and on some level this means to me that he'd be the one to bring new things, bring Cathy back into the world.

(As far as sappy goes, my sappy old heart can almost hear Cathy thinking how it's not quite Dylan, but how she could learn to like it…)

At any rate, these are just some random thoughts since everyone's written a lot by now, but let me just repeat how much I loved this story. It feels very close to my heart, featuring some of my own favorite obsessions, and the flaws aside, everything that matters the most, everything that touches, is superbly written.

Best of luck,

Verdad

 

[Otto26]

As usual I'm coming late to the discussion and I don't really have any answers to your questions. You write well enough to publish in the mainstream but I'm not sure this story is good enough for Salon or Playboy (which is where I would see this type of story).

The story worked well for me and put me in mind of Chuck Palahniuk. The story hooked me at the beginning and I wanted to see more so I followed along. The typical stroke-reader probably won't, but I don't really think of that as a bad thing.

I know the short-story is stripped down to the bare minimum, but I'd flesh this out a little more and try to cut down on the number of transitions as Seth and Cathy bond. The dialog was very enjoyable. Thanks for sharing.

 

[SimonBrooke]

Oh, wow, I remember reading this story the first time...

Connections

1. I've been told I should take the sex out of this (or dampen it down) and send it in for mainstream publication. What would it do to/for the story?

2. Any suggestions where there might be a market for this story in mainstream? What about in erotica?

3. Any comments are welcome. Does the story work for you? Do you like/are you interested in these characters? Is it believable? Does the tense/POV work for you?

This is a wonderful story. The voice character is so compelling, her weird complexity so utterly convincingly portrayed. I viscerally feel for her. Yes, it's undoubtedly good enough for mainstream publication (I may, indeed, have been one of the ones who said so). Having reread it though, I don't think you should take out the sex. I think you might 'damp it down a bit', or make it a bit more off-stage. But it's critical to the story, it's critical to the movement of Cathy's character, that she reaches the point that she can trust someone enough to make love; and I think you have to show her making love.

I actually don't think you should - or need to - cut much, even for main stream publication. You may need to edit around words like 'pussy', 'slit' and 'clit'; I think you may need to trim out two or three paragraphs around love making. But the progress of the seduction - particularly the detail of their hands on her belly, and the breathing - you have to keep in. It tells us so much about both of them.

And this passage:

"Yes," I breathe. I want what he wants. Beyond want, my body is opening, my arms, my legs, my pussy, like one wide open ache. He moves onto me, reaching between our legs to slide his cock over my wet mound, seeking and finding the give. I've never had anything but fingers inside of me before.

"Oh! Wait!" I stiffen, clutching his arms and crying out. He stops, his cock angled right there, seeking entrance. He rocks his hips back and forth, looking down into my eyes, moving just the tip of him in and out.

"You feel so incredible," he whispers, his eyes closing for a moment and then opening back up to me. "Please."

I nod, moving my hips, lifting my legs to help him. He moves forward, pushing into and past my burning edges. I gasp and close myself around him, gripping him tightly.

We don't just need to know that they have sex; we need to know how they have sex. Because this is a story about a girl who has made herself so cut off from human contact. So maybe try something like

"Yes," I breathe. I want what he wants. Beyond want, my body is opening, my arms, my legs, my center, like one wide open ache. He moves onto me, reaching between our legs, seeking and finding the give of my wet, unplundered mound.

"Oh! Wait!" I stiffen, clutching his arms and crying out. He stops at my very entrance. He rocks his hips back and forth, looking down into my eyes, waiting, patient, gentle.

"You feel so incredible," he whispers, his eyes closing for a moment and then opening back up to me. "Please."

I nod, moving my hips, lifting my legs to help him. He moves forward, pushing into and past my burning edges. I gasp and close myself around him, gripping him tightly.

Throughout the story there are so many beautiful, compelling touches. Dumping the telephone books and then crying over the loss of them... and the tortured, hurtful phonecall with her mother. This narrative doesn't just deserve a wider audience; it cries out for a wiser audience.

I usually greatly dislike stories which muddle their tenses or which are inappropriately told in the present tense. But this story is strong enough and well told enough to get away with it.

I'm also passionate about Highway 61 (the album, not the road)

 

[SimonBrooke]

Pureed questions...

Here are some questions related to those of Selena:

1. Does the present tense work? What makes it work, if it does?

Normally I would be hostile to this misuse of tense. But great story telling breaks rules, and this is great story telling. In this case the tense thing tells us about the disconnect of Cathy's world - that it floats disconnected from the timestream of the world outside her life.

2. Is the sex and 'add on' or essential; Is the amount of detail appropriate to the story?

Essential. The story would lose a great deal without it and only modest bowdlerisation would be possible without damaging the story.

3. It is an age-old idea, intimate connection through sex; this would include emotional connection. Often, we know it's illusory; one or both *believe* they're close; one or both trust; but things are not as they seem.

Does the author give any reason to think that this sex is truly intimate? better stated: ...that this new couple have achieved true intimacy? (I appears she means the reader to have that impression.)

OK, Cathy, from Seth's point of view, is intriguing and a challenge. But young men are not on the whole patient, and the process of getthing through Cathy's barriers has taken eight months - eight months in which he has not even met her. And when, finally, they are in bed together he's still gentle, caring - the detail of the breathing, of their hands on her belly, is extraordinarily tender. So yes, I think that at least Seth has a sincere commitment and affection for Cathy. Intimacy? What's that? I think these two are honest and sincere and reaching towards a connection which might be both durable and healing. What more can you ask?

4. What about the pacing of the story? My impression is that the story-story happens pretty much in the first half, up to her saying, 'come visit.' We see hesitations, etc.

The second half is the visit, which goes just fine, no hitches. We expect something, and it happens, step by step.

One might look at this two ways: do we have the fulfillment of a promise, so to say? Like long separated lovers finally unite.

Or, from another POV, does the second half essentially 'tread water.'

The second part is not entirely devoid of question; the main question of the second half is, 'will Cathy open up and experience sexual loving'. But...

I find the second half just as compelling as the first. Perhaps I've been around very damaged people a lot, but there is a real question about can she do this. When he's at the door, will she let him in? When she goes to the bathroom, will she have the courage to come back? If she had found a razor blade in the bathroom and cut her wrists, would that have been out of character? Would it have been a shocking twist?

For me, it wouldn't. For me, even in the context of an erotica site which loads expectations onto the story, it wasn't inevitable to me that she would find the courage to return to the bedroom.

And I think the detail of the lovemaking, the incident of the breathing as I've mentioned before, the tenderness, are integral to the story. Without a lover as tender and caring, Cathy either could not have gone through with it or would have come out of it still worse damaged. And it doesn't seem to me that that will be the outcome.

5. Does the author leave enough suspense or doubt about this? or is it totally expected? If the latter, is that a flaw.

For me, there was plenty of suspense.

6. The girl appears to be a virgin. Is 'loss of virginity' or 'gaining of experience' handled well? Is too little made of this change, or are we to assume she's basically a sophisticate (ready for the change).

I don't think overloading the virginity motif is needed here. The transition that Cathy is making is not from nymph to imago; it is much more profoundly a transition from injured to health. Yes, she's a virgin, and her virginity is a part of the consequence of her injury. But her injury defines who she is far more than her virginity does.

7. What larger frame for the presently narrated events would make sense, if that's a possibility?

My answer to this, Selena, is that I could see this being maybe 3-5 times as long. Why? Because some issues need to be worked through. A social isolate can't fuck her way to intimacy, like a knife through butter.

Maybe you might consider another, say, two chapters, where her issues come up and get or don't get resolved. For example, cutting off, is her preferred way. Let some small thing happen and have her draw back; perhaps almost fatally for the relationship. Then let there be a coming together or an attempt that reflects some maturity or knowledge gained (or her failure to gain such).

I think this narrative is sufficient unto itself. I think you could construct a longer piece around this situation and these characters, but I don't think that's necessary. I agree that '...a social isolate can't fuck her way to intimacy...', but that's not what happens here. Seth and Cathy together unpeel Cathy's cocoon of isolation over eight months of phone calls. They build a very strong connection before they ever meet. And that connection, that extended process is shown to us in the passages

Leaning against a windowpane...

Lying on my bed in the warmth of a sunbeam...

Curled up next to the refrigerator...

It's subtly and sensitively and exquisitely done - story telling of a very high order.

Thanks Selena for a fine story, extremely well crafted.

Amen to that!

 

[SimonBrooke]

Catriona likes Dylan...

You're absolutely right about Dylan and the Beatles being iconic, and they certainly transcend generational barriers in ways other music from that era doesn't. And I don't at all disagree that it makes perfect sense that Dylan be important to Cathy.

But it struck me as curious that all her cultural references precede those of her own generation. it suggests there's a little layer to her character that is left mostly hidden and unexplained.

In my story Catriona (which I know you like, Varian), the protagonists both know and quote Dylan, and that shared cultural reference forms part of their connection. They're in their twenties and the story is contemporary. I worried about that in writing and developing the story, but there is so much richness in Dylan's work (and especially in the Highway 61 period of his work) that it cries out to be used in this way.

 

[SimonBrooke]

Leave it in the past

Okay... confession time

I wrote this piece in a creative writing class when I was seventeen years old.

Wow! Now I'm insanely jealous. That's an incredibly mature and sophisticated piece for a seventeen year old!

But this was written in a time before cell phones, even before the Internet was very popular... and frankly, it was after Bob Dylan and the Beatles were popular (they were considered "classic rock" by then) but Bri (Drk) was right about Cathy's tastes... looking for something with meaning...

I wonder if I should just leave it in the past? Any ideas how to do that? Just indicate that this is 1987, or whatever... but how would that affect the story, I wonder? Just thinking out loud...

I agree that Seth needs some more depth to him... (what did I know about men when I was 17? )

I think leaving it set in the past is the right thing to do. You can slip in just a passing reference - perhaps to Cathy's mother's new husband's car, or to some major news event - to establish the date. Things like cell phones and the ubiquity of network connections really change stories like this.

 

[SimonBrooke]

A novel idea

Ok another question...

do you think this story is novel-worthy?

I've taken a story that I originally posted here and built around it a novel which I intend to try to get published mainstream. No, what you've got so far is not a sufficient framework for a novel, and part of the power of the piece is its extremely spare and dense story telling - you pack far more into every thousand words than is normal. So actually expanding this to novel length would be hard, and I think it would damage it.

But you could explore Cathy's backstory; we could learn more about her relationship with her father, about her parents' relationship, about the death of her father, about the appearance of her stepfather. We could learn more about Cathy's descent into the very damaged state in which we find her at the beginning of the current narrative. You could look at issues like anorexia and self harm (Cathy reminds me strongly of someone I knew who used to cut herself, not (or not often) to the extent of suicide attempts, but...).

I think it would be hard to maintain at novel length the impact this story has.

As to a market for it in its present form, you might try BBC Radio 4; they have several fifteen minute story slots in the schedule, but they'd probably want a week's worth of stories and you might need to find four more.

 

[Selena_Kitt]

Simon, thanks so much for your thoughts... much appreciated!

Your feelings about Cathy (the eating disorder/cutting) are right on...

there is a lot of me in her.

 

[nici]

I didn’t like the sex part of the story. The whole story seems, to me, to be about emotions and the physical of the sex seemed misplaced. It might be needed in part, so that it can’t be taken completely out of your story, but I felt disassociated with the main sex scene. Maybe you could replace parts of the sexual action with emotions or dialogue?

Also I agree with Pure. Your heroine goes from introverted, avoidant (APD) and virginal to sexually active and socially/relationshiply active without many shown emotional problems. Maybe my dissociation with the sex in the second part is exactly because of this. It’s not her.

I will though agree with the others that she is transitioning. Only, between the first part (which I adored) and the sex scene is something missing. (I just can’t put my finger on it though…)

I feel you could lengthen your story considerably, maybe not into a novel, but a novelette. I would like to see more of Cathy’s conflicts as she develops towards her relationship with Seth. He isn’t there for "no reason". Chance is always subjective. Her willingness to communicate with him is her “learned experiences and behavioral traits”. Where are they? From where does this willingness to connect with Seth come from?

For her to step beyond and out of her isolation, Seth needs to be acting in ways, saying to her things, that from her learned experiences she can associate with and open up to him. Why is he unique?

In the end, I almost have the feeling she is tending towards becoming too emotionally dependent (DPD) on him. Why is she doing this? Where do these feelings, emotions come from? Where will their relationship go from here?

No, I can’t see this story as a sex story. Any sex in this story is solely because people do have sex. This is a story about emotions, emotional/psychological problems and changes. Sex scenes should have emotional development (and emotional conflict) going into them, and out of them.