I was trying to think of a word yesterday when I was writing, and the comedian George Carlin popped into my mind. He was famous for using words in unexpected ways. Here are a couple of examples. “That’s why they call it the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it” and “The main reason Santa is so jolly is that he knows where all the bad girls live.” Back to my search for a word yesterday. It has to do with my feeling that anything that goes into a novel or a short story must have a purpose. Sometimes I’ll put in the scene just to distract the reader. If I am writing a mystery, there’s an apparent reason for that. However, there are other times where the intensity of the story can overwhelm the reader, and I need to back off.
The scene I was about to write was about a man and a woman who are friends, but they frequently engage in sex. They both know what is going on and even call it “friends with benefits.” In this scene, they have just had intercourse, and it is at that time when it is just over, and they are more open to honesty. I was stopped short by the opening line of the scene. I started to write, “they had just made love,” but realized there was no love involved in what it just happened. If I use the word love, I would be misleading the reader. On the other hand, if I wrote, “they had just had sex,” I would also be misleading the reader. Further complicating my choices of words was the fact they both attempt to satisfy the sexual needs of the other. There was both a bit of love and sex in the relationship, but neither word describes the relationship.
I’m afraid I just punted. “While they were still together, he traced the outline of her nipple.”
2 Responses
That was perfect actually, for me, it made me wonder was it really love or sex? To me, those expectations are more to do with love and not just sex but I accepted straight away that this could be his way of avoidance.
They describe their relationship as “friends with benefits,” but they clearly do not understand what it means. They constantly talk about love and what it is and what it isn’t. She is divorced. He has always been single. She divorced her husband because it felt like he didn’t love her anymore.