#writing communityt

[joeys-piano]

Happy STS!

Summarize your current WIP (or one of them, or all of them!) for me. What inspired it? What (scene, character, plot point) do you like most about it so far? What's been the most challenging?

Happy STS, peep!

My current WIP is a gen fanfic between a dude bro and his queer bestie as they as they ignore figuring out what they want to do in life (because high school graduation is not far away), and instead spend their rooftop lunch period figuring out what love is.

Or, in other words, the dude bro is a little freaked out when his bestie asks him for relationship advice and our dude bro thinks 1) he isn't paid enough to try to answer this question; 2) he doesn't even know how to put into words what it's like to fall in love or why he's dating or what he likes about his dating partner beyond the simple sense of "she's cute, she's headstrong, and she keeps me on my toes"; and 3) he thinks his bestie is vying for his girl when that isn't the case at all.

And so now, the dude bro has to channel all his cishet energy to try to understand where his queer bestie is coming from to try to give relationship advice that's as sound as a high school student could give.

What really inspired this project was I really like the comedic appeal of the characters from the source material, so I wanted to write something funny and relatable. In my own experience, I've seen people seek relationship advice in high school, and it was fascinating comparing how teenagers thought/defined what love is to how I'm starting to see that definition as an adult.

I think when we're young, we idealize and romanticize a lot of things about love. Until we figure out what it "actually is", and even then. Yeah. So I though it was a fun idea to revisit those old assumptions and give two young characters that stumped moment of trying to figure out something that seems so easy, but so hard to describe. And the added queer element of it is coming from my own experience having to adapt relationship advice I've seen and heard from others in their own troubles and trying to figure out how that applies in my own lens.

Currently, what I've been enjoying is the humor and the particular voice this story is being written in. It's written from the perspective of the dude bro (and I'm not a dude bro), so it's been very funny navigating how he tackles things and has to put into words his own emotions. He's not the most perspective character, in that he doesn't notice the subtle details or the unsaid things. He's very direct, so it paints a nice contrast with the queer bestie who's asking for relationship advice and is being unintentionally vague about it because it's not important in the discussion that he has his eyes set on a guy. And really, just the nonchalantness of how they tackle this conversation and both are figuring out what love is, is what's making this a charming write for me.

Since I've just started this story, the challenging part is like with anything, seeing it through to the end. I'm having fun with it, and it's not a serious thought-provoking write for me. It lets me be looser with the writing, and just see what happens.