On Grittiness

Earlier this week, my boyfriend suggested an article for me to read (you can read it here); it was by an author that neither of us had read, but my boyfriend is intending to.  The article deals with grittiness in fantasy, and, from what I read, I quite like his point - that getting into the gross, honest, painful details of the story is one of the best ways to make the tale compelling.  I do like, however, that he notes that including gory details of death scenes isn't always necessary, but those scenes should be included if that is what drives the story - the fights, the deaths, the moral ambiguity, the pain of doing unpleasant things.

I think that America in general, especially in politics, is starting to get rather polarized - black and white, good and bad, they're-not-my-party-so-they're-an-unenlightened-moron kind of deal.  I'd like to use more grittiness, but, to be quite frank, none of my writing demands gory death scenes.

What all stories demand, though, is honesty.  Telling things like they are.  Though there is some sort of poetic way to imply some things without saying, "That night, these two characters had passionate sex, and it was great," I do think that you should only use implications if the words that would have been said in the scene don't directly forward the story - if it isn't critical that someone's self-esteem is built or broken in bed, then the scene should simply be, "THEN THEY HAD SEX," and then cut to the next morning.

I believe honesty is necessary in fiction, but sometimes honesty and straightforwardness can be simply boiled down to someone saying that the sex was great last night.

Snowball fights!

Last night, our campus got its first snow of the season (and of 2013).  Of course, being college students, some of my friends and I went out and had a snowball fight, complete with our friend Editor (her nickname), who is normally very sweet, getting really sassy and one lens on Romanov's (another nickname) glasses getting popped out after she took a snowball to the face.

Possibly the best part of the snowball fight was that it was on and near the football field.  The Dean of Students sent out an email earlier in the day saying that the lights would be left on until 10:00 PM, and that the football field would be a good place for a snowball fight (as opposed to Freshman Village, where a supermassive snowball battle took place last year; it resulted in broken windows, snowballed cop cars, and a few trips to the hospital).  He concluded the email with "YOLO," which kind of made my day.  It also made me wonder about the administration here, but that's another matter.

Anyway, those are the adventures that college students have, in case you were wondering.  I mean, some college students get drunk; some go to frat parties and have sex.  Editor is going to a frat party tonight, but (I think) she's only going because it's on her College Bucket List, and her roommate got invited, so she knows someone there.  We're going to play capture the flag tonight (or maybe it's hide and seek), and I'm pretty sure that it's going to be bigger than last time.

The best college memories are the most innocent: the ones that involve reliving childhood without alcohol, so we'll actually remember them.