So it's a mini blog today. I have some household chores I am doing plus I am trying to get a short story to pull together in my head by Saturday so I am focusing most of my bathroom fume enhancing creativity on that today. But I have a question for you all to ponder....
In a fiction piece, the sort that I seem to do, the relationship, slice of life stuff, could you ever root for a heroine that was an unapologetic adulteress? I have had this woman in my head...this scene...for YEARS. She opens her door one night to find her lover on the other side of it. He's holding his suitcase and he's come to move in with her. His wife has kicked him out and now he thinks he can go live with his mistress and life will be grand. But the thing is, she doesn't want him. She likes being the other woman. Likes being on her own. Likes the dating with no risk of commitment. Doesn't want it. Doesn't need it. But now it's sort of forced upon her and what does she do? In my head, in my outlines, she starts working on getting him back together with his wife in the present and we see scenes from her life on how she got to the point where she was someone's mistress in the first place. And more importantly why she likes it.
AND...it's a comedy.
So what do you think? Could you get past the part where what she is doing in her social life is the thing that most of us married women find to be the unforgivable sin? Could you find her to be charming enough, funny enough, to want to spend a few hundred pages in her life? Or would the concept be such a turnoff that you couldn't even pick it up?
And yes, I know you don't write for your potential readers, you write because the story needs to come out and since this woman and that scene have been in my head for at least 10 years, maybe more considering I think she is wearing shoulder pads, I am pretty sure she will eventually see a fully realized light of day... *deep breath* BUT....could you read it? Would you read it? And more importantly could you see yourself liking her? Because I see her as likable. Just morally ambiguous.
Okay, off to think about Princes who have been turned in to Beavers.....
Yes, yes and yes. The challenge is making her a real person not just some stereotyped villain that most women would want to make her out to be. She may not be liked by the reader, or at least her actions, so you have to find other ways for the reader to sympathize with her. (I had a similar premise in mind once, but never came up with anything too solid.) The fact that its a comedy would lend to that for sure.
ReplyDeleteBlanche Devereaux!!! FTW!!! I loved her character (Golden Girls, for those playing the home game). She was strong and happy in being the independant woman she was. My favorite line of hers: "I love married men, they're other woman's problem".
ReplyDeleteIn a dramatic role, I couldn't say that I would like the character of someone who enjoys being the other woman...but comedy is totally different. Which is the idea of comedy right? To be different than real life.
Oh I loved Blanche! Just her walk cracked me up!
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