Rated R.
Big time.
I have tried writing proper fiction. I have read about the sort of thing you women like and I have had a go myself, with the apprent-requisite level of contempt that the authors and publishing houses have for their readers. Just call me Stephanie E.L. Shitty Bastard Biscuits. Here goes sod all.
Blanche Canvasse was just an ordinary girl, which was fortunate. She had a relatable fault, such as clumsiness or a weird mole, which, she mused, would probably make it easier for readers in need of some escapism to identify with her. She was also a virgin because apparently that’s important.
Despite there being plenty of penis in whatever town she lived in, most of it attached to men who were sane and healthy, Blanche Canvasse found herself attracted to an unhinged man who lived in the woods/bins/a swanky apartment. His name was Dick Metterfore, and he liked Blanche back for no adequately explained reason.
As soon as she saw him, Blanche’s heart/lady-business erupted in a glut of positive adjectives. She assumed she wouldn’t be good enough for him because a) she was just an ordinary girl and b) because of her relatable fault, but Blanche had forgotten that she was the only woman in the book who had been talked about at all, and thus a relationship of some kind was in the narrative interest.
Blanche wrote in her diary/talked to her subconscious about some necessary inner turmoil she had going on.
‘Dear Diary,’ she wrote, ‘can I just make it absolutely clear now that Dick Metterfore is superlatively excellent in every possible way? I don’t want to have to keep repeating myself over and over and over and over and over again, or else I shall doubtless go a bit insane and compare him to a statue or let him tie me up and abuse me or something. He is dreamy. End of.’
As Blanche closed the diary/repressed her subconscious with her prescribed medication, Dick Metterfore himself showed up unannounced like a sex criminal. Something was in the air. Was it lust? Was it pheromones? Was it carbon monoxide poisoning? Only time would tell.
Dick undressed her with his eyes, but he didn’t have that power, so he did it properly with his hands. Then they had sex. It was moderately okay. Nothing to write home about.1
With a thick wedge of book still in the reader’s right hand, Blanche and Dick had an obligatory wild adventure, during which their love was questioned, tested and pushed to its conceivable limits, and also much sex was had.
Then someone else turned up that demanded both Blanche’s affections and a decent amount of narrative attention. Much jealousy happened and there was some big climactic event and –
You know what? Fuck this. I have some pride.
Normal service will resume forthwith.
1I think this is my favourite paragraph of anything I’ve ever written.
Anxiety & Biscuits 
As a romance novelist I am sorely offended. Or I probably would be, if I had ever actually read a romance novel. I prefer to think of mine as an erotic thriller. My leading lady has a big nose, and my man’s name is Thomas Swetecok. I nearly died of laughter when I discovered that surname was common during the researched time period. It HAD to be used!
Did you spybot my computer and discover that I was about to post several chapters of my book on my blog, you shameless attention whore? You’ve stolen my thunder! The internet is ruined forever. Thanks a lot.
My sincere apologies; however you need only be worried if your novel is lazy, hack, illiterate, toxic, derogatory, glorifying of unhealthy relationships, degrading of women, a selfish and narrow-minded exploration of your own fantasies and sexy only because sex sells. It won’t be any, because you don’t read them 😉
Swetecok is an incredible surname. It would be a different story entirely if his name was, like a bloke I heard about the radio, Randy Bumgardener.
Hahahaha I do have a flamboyant homosexual vampire hunter named Justin… Perhaps a rewrite is in order!
Chris,
Well, you’ve used a few keywords Googlebots like (pervets) and WordPress readers – see? I’m here. Now next time, link these words to well ranked Google page – articles about sex, and Lady Gaga, and you should drive traffic. The Kardashians might even drop by.
Le Clown
“Dick undressed her with his eyes, but he didn’t have that power, so he did it properly with his hands. Then they had sex. It was moderately okay. Nothing to write home about.” My favorite part. Brilliantly written.
You should have added a cheesy old-fashioned sparkly vampire to the story. Then you would have had the perfect combination of what women seem to like these days.
Why thank you, it’s the part I’m most proud of.
This post, oddly enough, grew out of something I wrote in frustration when the Twilight films were coming out, and my opinion of ‘the films are unhealthy’ was dismissed because it wasn’t the popular view. I believe in the original rant I implied that Edward Cullen is made primarily of shale, because it’s a rock with sparkly fragments in.
The problem I have is not so much with the male characters, who are all so superfluously excellent it’s transparently ridiculous, but rather with the female characters. A girl reading these books at an impressionable age will lust after a paradigm of perfection that doesn’t really exist, but she will also be dull, emotionally retarded and have absolutely no ambition, and THAT is the fault of the author’s selfish desire to insert herself (no innuendo intended) into the narrative to live out a fantasy, and is unforgivable.
I can’t stand how old-fashioned Bella’s character looks like. Just another damsel in distress: dependent, empty, clumsy, stupid, a person with nor self esteem nor self-respect that only pays attention to her loved one.
In my opinion, the worst part is that, after all those decades (even centuries, Henry James and Jane Austen come to mind) trying to introduce more influent and powerful female characters girls and women can look up to, I find it kind of a step back that a book (awfully written and that lacks of any literary quality, by the way), establish a type of role model completely outdated in the 21st century.
Unfortunately for her readers, Stephanie Meyer was brought up as a Mormon, and her principles prevalent throughout the novels. It’s not particularly indicative way of displaying the world to impressionable eyes, and whilst I would never attempt to challenge someone’s religious beliefs, I would ask that they not force them upon others.
Bella is a vessel; she isn’t exceptional, she’s a way for the reader to insert themselves into the story, which is fine, but she’s treated within the book LIKE she’s special. She undergoes almost no growth as a character (or that would make her loveable by the male characters) and you’re right that she conforms to an archaic view of women and their role in society. To be fair, a lot of popular culture does this; almost all RomComs are interchangeable and as you said earlier, Rihanna is perhaps the biggest proponent of the other kind of woman: you can be a damsel in distress and wait for a big man to save you, or you can characterise yourself via your vagina and call it a woman’s independence. On no account must you develop interests or a personality.
haha! clever parody with that wit of yours i envy for how it flows so naturally.
Why thank you Carly, these compliments are doing wonders for my ego…
Dick Metterfore is a great name, it congers the “Biggus Dickus” scene from Life Of Brian.
I’m a big fan of the silly name; Grant Canyon, Ewan Mee, Sue Dunnim etc. Dick Metterfore could quite easily have been called Willy Bell-Shaft or something equally obscene.
I hear Biggus Dickus is a good man to call on if there’s a thudden crithith.
Part of me wants to take this and rewrite it as ~SWOONY~ Twilight-esque erotica… but the rest of me loves how hilarious and wonderful this is… as soon as I saw the line “Dick Metterfore himself showed up unannounced like a sex criminal” Michael Jackson’s “Smooth Criminal” started playing in my head and continued for the duration of my read.
As a dare, I once wrote a Twilight-inspired YA vampire love story about lesbians. I even had a creepy possessive vampire stalker and overdramatic purple prose. It was called “Reloved” because the Bella character had been KILLED IN A PREVIOUS LIFE and the vampire character FOUND HER IN A SECOND LIFE and thus… REloved her.
‘You’ve been snared by . . you’ve been sniffed by . a sex criminal.’
Feel free to give it a new lease of life, but please bare in mind that the initial impetus was satirical contempt for bad writing. By all means, add some sex, hell, add sex, drugs AND sausage rolls, but please maintain that level of ultimate dissatisfaction and offensively stupid lust. You can kill of the characters if you want, I don’t really mind.
‘As a dare…’ What social circles of you move in that friends are daring you to write literature? A bit of teen lesbian romance on the shelves would probably do a world of good for social progression. RELOVED sounds awesomely shit, if you’ll pardon my French. The sequel could be called ‘RERELOVED: Sloppy Seconds’ and the finale could be ‘RERERELOVED: Menage a Trois.’
Well, of course; I mostly just wanted to find a 50 Shades of Gray-esque way to describe mediocre sex.
I’m trying to dig up the link to RELOVED… I think it’s still out there haunting the internet, at least in pieces. I wrote it about four years ago… oh my wild college years.
Oh! Found it. The writing is intentionally god-awful, and I never finished it, but if you feel so inclined… http://www.journalfen.net/users/reloved
I’m REreading through it now and I think one of my favorite things I’ve done is maintain every kind of inconsistency I possibly can. Breakfast is at nine in this section but seven in the next! There is a manor house that is half castle and has no gas light!
Oh Lux, what a maverick you are…
The thing is, you could finish this, and perhaps vamp up the sexual tension (see what I did there?) and if you were earnest enough, someone would publish it. We demand so little of the publishing industry these days…
I feel one of my humorous amendments form earlier deserves a wider audience, if you don’t mind.
‘Adele Leigh stepped off the train. She had hoped to arrive gracefully, in a way that denoted a lead character, but the wheels of her suitcase got stuck in the little gutter bit that the door slides in and out of and she had to pull quite forcefully on the handle. The case clattered onto the platform behind her, titling on one of its wheels and swinging painfully into Adele’s leg.
Adele stood on the platform with golden hair, hazel eyes and a red shin.’
I might REread it later…
REreading it last night made me want to go back and write the entire thing and sell it to the right publisher. I would have to include plenty of straight and lesbian sex to make sure I appealed to a wide audience.
Those little quips are quite wonderful, I am especially happy with them.
‘Shall we eat?’ she said. ‘ – each other?’ her eyes seemed to append.
Knock me up and call me Fanny!
I think we should write two versions… I’ll write the overdramatic Twilight-esque version and you can write the quippy, snarky version. We really can appeal to the masses!
Your half is going to make so much money…
I mean, sure! Let’s agree on a 50/50 split on sales, yeah?
Hmmm… *rubs chin*
Maybe I can write it and publish it under a fake name, and then you can become internet famous based on your snarky recaps of my purple prose masterpiece?
Well to be honest, the above tirade is only fun to write because Stephanie Meyer and E.L. James are not good writers. I know you’re better than that, and it would honestly upset me to see something of yours of deliberately bad quality get published over something you put your heart and hard work into.
I’d feel bad slandering the work of a friend, and whilst we’d be knowingly exploiting our talents (and our audiences), we’d also draw the ire of critics (in your case) and rabid feckless fans (in mine). Neither of us would deserve those haters, but we would deserve any abuse we’d get for cynical advantage-taking.
That said; bugger it. It’ll be a larrff.
See, this is my plan:
1. Write something god-awful (and equally tongue-in-cheek to the correct reader) and publish it under a fake name.
2. Reap the monies from said god-awful publication.
3. Spend the rest of my time writing excellent fiction and publish it under my real name (or pen name, if I so decide).
That way I can gain monies from the unwitting masses to support a full-time occupation writing intelligent fiction.
What an unscrupulous Lux you are… An unscrupuLux, if you will.
I look forward to seeing you fend off your slathering fan base with a pointy stick.
‘EURGH MAH GURD! WHAT HAPPENZ TO ADERLE?’
‘She’s dead! I killed her off so I could write books that stand for something!’
‘EURGH NEURGH!!’
I plan to cultivate my RELOVED fans into the absolutely most batshit insane fandom ever. Someday we will have a West Side Story-esque fight with the Twilight fandom.
I will play into all of their fiendish desires and sell them more shit than they know what to do with and laugh all the way to the bank.
Then I will gracefully depart and disappear into nothingness… though I may occasionally reappear to encourage my fans to either read better books (aka the good ones I write).
Hmm… unscrupuLux. Perhaps that will be my next username.
Taking the Latin translation into account, that would make you ‘unscrupulight’, which is an excellent name for your follower hordes. Better than RELOVERS at any rate.
‘I’m Lux, and these are my unscrupulites, and they are all, without question, gullible fools. Now, my personal army; attack.’
*evil giggle*
Also, these are some of the footnotes I created during the original (pre RELOVED title) version:
http://nabokovnocturne.livejournal.com/4462.html
First off, I award you a metaphorical/imaginary A+ for this superb piece of fiction.
Second, thank you for including the rating at the top — I don’t know if I would have been able to handle the incredibly detailed and graphic content had I not been forewarned.
Third, this sounds a lot like Abed from Community (my most favoritest character). I advise that you start watching the show immediately. Unless you have already done so, in which case I propose a trans-Atlantic high five.
Thank you for your wonderful A+! I’m going to print it off and stick it on the fridge.
I know that young eyes may be reading, and let’s face it, the obscene acts detailed in the above passage are pretty full-on, so I’m glad that my ‘heads up’ was of some use. The last thing I want is for a young lady to lose their breakfast over my sensual activities. Not again.
I now own Community Season 1, but I haven’t watched it because I’ve got too much work on. I want to enjoy it (in fact I want to love it and be inspired by it) but from what I gather it rewards those who pay close attention, and I want to do it justice. When I do, I’ll notify you right away, and beg you to reconsider that high five.
Hoorah! Don’t judge it too much from the pilot episode. But episode #3 is one of my all-time favorites.
Wow, I didn’t realize what I was reading until a few sentences down (I was admittedly half ass perusing). Then, I realized It might be in my best interest to actually read. You are hilarious! I’m looking forward to reading more. Also, I grinned at Dick Metterfore,
Thanks for stopping by! I think I might have that on my gravestone:
‘Here lies Chris Biscuits. We thought he looked boring, but we were wrong. And now he’s dead.’
Sorry, that’s a bit morbid for first introductions isn’t it? You are most welcome, I’m glad you enjoyed my scribblings and I also look forward to becoming best blog buddies with your good self.
If I know Dick Metterfore – and I don’t want to – he most likely took one look at your two X Chromosomes and grinned right back at ya!
Score! I didn’t mean to say you come off boring, but rather that I had been reading for hours on end and was getting lazy. That’s supposed to be a compliment that your writing snapped me out of it! I too look forward to a blogger-ship (friendship of the blog kind) as well!
Sorry, I did know what you meant – it does take effort to sift through the reems of text that WordPressers publish every day. My thanks for deeming me worthy of a compliment!
Holy carbon monoxide poisoning, I totally identified with Blanke Slate. Wait, was that her name? Dick Metterfore is sooooooooooo dreamy, like, my perfect dream man. Does he curl or purse or arch his lips and/or eyebrows? You need to continue on, my friend, I am hooked.
The character’s name isn’t important, as I’ve forgotten it as well. I think it was M. T. Shelle. What is important is the emotional roller coaster that she embarks on; surely she’s just an extended metaphor for women everywhere.
Dick Metterfore, Esq is flattered by your compliments, and would like you to know that if you wanted to, he would. He can do all of those things with his lips at the same time, and he calls this move ‘the aneurism’.
I will see what I can do about continuing the story – there’s a requisite level of ire that I could only get from actually reading more of them, or alternatively, just reading your work. The sequel might even be called ‘I Didn’t Even Know Plasticine Vaginal Balls Were A Thing.’
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Funniest thing I’ve read since opening my electricity account after the Jo’burg municipality installed a new computer to improve “service delivery” (sic)
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This was great. And the names, brilliant.
Thank you Lily, I aim to please. Dick Metterfore would like me to tell you that he finds both of your X chromosomes deliriously attractive, and would probably allow you to sleep with him.
I hate Dick Metterfore. He is a twat.
Haha, thanks for making me laugh this morning. 😉
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