# The Writing of "Life after Matrimony"



## LadyF (Aug 13, 2017)

I decided to write a story a day for my blog. This very story tormented me so much, that I had to present it in such manner, or throw it entirely away. 
It is about two humans, who believed they would live  happily ever after. Their names: Charlie and Lilian. No surname. No  background. Just life after matrimony.*
Goodness, –  Charlie thought when the first rays of sun opened his eyes after the  first night. He soon realized that the view in the gloaming is his  missus Lilian without the makeup. “Goodness…Waking up next to the person  you love is terribly overrated.” – he sighed.*
​From  the very beginning the author’s lack of logic is manifested. I’m  thinking Charlie is waking up after a disastrous first night, he isn’t  even waking up, he hasn’t slept well. For a very good reason – she fell  asleep during foreplay. The dusk introduces the features of his beloved:  such imperfect features.  All the bridal make up has been smeared upon  the pillow and unto her face. It’s a scary way to start your honeymoon.
I  wrote the next paragraph, when I felt the characters should be  introduced in some way. In fact, we the readers know nothing of them,  and things start happening and we don’t really care. So, what are  Charlie and Lilian like?

*Charlie  wanted to be an alpha man – the dominant in the world of male  specimens, but he was too well-behaved to be this. He was also easy to  give in to the charms of the fair sex. When she looked at herself in the  mirror, Lilian perceived she was the fairest of them all. Therefore,  she believed she deserved a man of good fortune, who would pamper her  and take her out often. She just wanted to be the kind of woman who has  fun the entire time.*
​I  based Charlie and Lilian on people I know, but the characters are much  shallower than their prototypes. The humans I based them both upon have  got amazingly rich personalities – each of them extremely fascinating in  his own way…while in these descriptions  I am scratching on the surface  of what they are and what they want.*
“Goodness!”*

*That  was a loud sigh of relief. It made the missus open her eyes in such an  unexpected and even startling manner he felt the urge to fall out of  bed.*
​Normally, people don’t fall out of bed when  their fiancée wakes up. One should avoid such supernatural phenomena in  their writing, if they want to touch the reader. Lazy author, lazy  author! Anyway, the reader keeps wondering who Charlie and Lilian are,  exactly.*
His looks aside, Charlie could be described  as a notorious catch. She came upon him in a karaoke club, she was a  little tipsy, and when he caught the microphone, she sighed a lot of  times. Well, he didn’t have a six-pack tummy, he was rather rounded, but  oh these eyes were sparkling and after a few beers, he held the  microphone with such confidence, as if he had six thousands of fans  greeting him from the audience.*

*Even though he was prosperous financially, Charlie did not have any special requirements concerning marriage material.*

*All  he wanted was a woman decent. So when he met Lilian at the karaoke  club, Charlie felt like he was listening to a long-forgotten melody. In  night clubs romance happens so fast.*
​All this should  be reduced to saying that Charlie was a rich, rich but uncomely man,  who is financially attractive, to Lilian, who looks like she doesn’t  sleep around.*
Several months later, they were blessed  in a small chapel by a venerable priest, to hold and to have each other  until death parts them. He carried her through the door threshold to a  sacred space called “home” – where they would have to share blankets and  the same toothpaste.*
​Wedding! I imagine one of my  friends, who hates everything wedding, to scream out indignantly: “Poor  people!” Still, the reader wants to know what happened during those six  months. But back to the morning after their first night:*
Missus  stretched her arms and with a gentle kick informed him: “I want a  pancake and a coffee. “Coffee and a pancake?” –he thought – “What am I,  room-service?”*
​I was wondering just how gentle the  kick should be. This paragraph is about a woman, who believes, she  should be treated like a princess, and all her obligations is to doll up  for the Paris scene. Charlie, however is annoyed, because she  practically fell asleep while they were having sex the first time, and I  don’t know how to say this without sounding really offensive neither  does he.*
For the first day of her honeymoon, Lilian  had an agenda. She had arranged lunch with her high-school friend  Anabel, in a fine Parisian restaurant, where they would nibble on  croissants and drink hot tea. She imagined how she would flaunt with her  affluent and well-mannered man, who always pays the bills.*
​Lilian  wants to boast with her “notorious catch.” She wants so much to impress  Anabel, who outclassed her by being the best student in class. She  can’t wait.
*
It  was Sunday, the first day of my honeymoon in Paris. For breakfast,  Charlie unwillingly took me to the nearest diner, and ordered coffee and pancakes. You should have seen his sour countenance. This grouchy man looks 10 years older when he’s frowning…*
​First  day, ugly Charlie is unwilling to make gestures for her. Again I  wondered how should I put into words the infamous fact that they didn’t  get lucky on their first night. Bad sex is a deal-breaker and it  immediately makes the married couple sober. Now let’s see shit happening  when Anabel arrives.*
And  Anabel came in sight soaring on her high-heels, the perfect summer  attire and swinging her hips like a woman of no virtues. The tasteless  rimmed glasses and entangled hair were replaced by well-arranged wavy  locks and a happy smile. In the beginning of a honeymoon, after a  disastrous first night, she’s not the sort of thing I wanted to meet.  Charlie,  however,  ogled like he was in the land of candies at that  hen, the greatest crammer in class.*

*As  if that wasn’t enough: she came accompanied with that extremely  handsome man with a scarf. She stared at me from the top of the  Cathedral. Well, I managed to work into the conversation that Charlie is  still one of the richest guys in our home town.*
​Anabel  is a nuisance. She has turned into this great, attractive woman, who  can outclass Lilian in all aspects, and it turns out she got the better  male specimen. Lilian is humiliated, and in her heart doubt settles,  that she has made a brilliant deal with this marriage.*
Then,  Anabel’s fiancée, a boy from the capital, bought a rose for us from the  flower-girl. Charlie frowned and said he should have saved the money  for museums and he said that in front of Anabel, such a shame! Then I  told him the truth in front of everybody, I happen to distaste museums,  for everything in them is dead. He was so insulted, he refused to pay  the entire bill.*
​Anabel’s  fiancé rocks. Does it get any worse than this? Yes, it does – the  affluent Charlie refuses to treat her guests. Lilian cannot believe it,  that hurts! This will really make her hate him the entire honeymoon.
*
“I  shouldn’t be thinking about this gorgeous woman we had lunch with, when  Lilian is holding my hand,” – Charlie was thinking, “Lilian is holding  my hand, and that would have been beautiful, if all men didn’t turn  around as if she is naked. Well, she is almost naked – her dresses are  black, white and red, and most suitable for a starlet…*

*“Yes, darling!  Of course I will take a photo of you in the red dress and the Eiffel Tower.”*



But  Lilian does not want one photo, she wants a photo shoot of at least 50  great photos with the Eiffel Tower. Telling about the honeymoon was half  of the experience. This means obviously, Charlie will have to take  about 500 snaps of her with the Eiffel Tower, so that she may choose  among them. Then there’s the Notre Dame Cathedral…and tomorrow she will  be wearing her little black dress… And nay, she doesn’t want to  photograph herself together with Charlie, not a single shot, he is not a  landmark of any kind

Smile. I understand Charlie very well, since  I got into a similar mess, when I was at the sea this year. My  household ordered: you have to take at least 50 good photos of yourself  with the sea.  This resulted into me running around my friends asking  them to snap me at any time… needless to say they didn’t have the time  of their life photographing me with the stairs, the chairs and the  street signs.


Her man turns out to be parsimonious. Moreover, he  needs more physical attention than she presumed. This is something  peculiar, for women are usually cuddlier than men. She is beginning to  think, he might impregnate her with an ugly child. That would have been a  disaster for the beautiful Lilian. She begins fathoming all kinds of  scary, paranoiac thoughts about their marriage. While Charlie thinks:*
I  am a positive person. Positive about all things, I take delight in the  surrounding world, and I often view it through the prism of my eternal  smile. I was looking for someone positive to come home to after a long  day. But no, this woman is so negative. Would you like to see the museum  honey? – No, museums suck. – Would you like to go to the zoo? – No,  animals stink.  Let’s go to bowling? I can’t play. Well, what would you  like? To go to the toilet, please, give me a banknote of $100 for I have  no change. And she beams so brightly when I give her the banknote. I am  a bag of money for her.*
​Charlie views himself as  positive, with the only thing he is negative about being Lilian. It was  so funny to see his face, when she asked for a banknote of $100 to go to  the toilet. This is a lot of money, your readers won’t believe it.  Well, some of my readers have read Breakfast in Tiffany, where a young,  pleasant lady was dating old rich men, and provided for herself from the  money they gave her to go to the toilet. Remember Miss Holiday?
*
So,  Lilian was walking in her high-heels fast, knocking on the pavement of  her home town, and Charlie was dragging one meter behind her like a  docile Chinese wife. Both of them felt incredibly annoyed by each  other’s presence.*

*“A honeymoon was over, and the best days of lovers dead and gone…”*
​*Were that really their best days; forgive the prosaic smile… What was left? How worse could matrimony get?*
*Charlie  was walking the dog and thinking to himself: She gave the last portion  of my favorite dessert to the dog. And she bosses me around the entire  time as if I am a puppet. We don’t have sex, she is probably cheating on  me as well? I have had enough. I will no longer talk to her.*

*He  didn’t buy me that pair of sexy red high-heels. He insisted I have more  shoes than Celine Dion. There was no room for new shoes. “If you buy  yourself all the shoes in the world, where would you put it,” said that  parsimonious lout. I have had enough. I will no longer talk to him.*
​Both  of the spouses do not talk to each other, I feel the story is  challenging my poor nerves. I want to have them not talking to each  other for years. And then one day they would look at each other in the  eyes, and cry indignantly:
*
Fuck that shit!*

But  because there should be a happy ending, lovers end up together. They  realize they are so attached to each other, that they cannot live  without their quirks. And one day, in 60 years Charlie dies, he orders  his missus to bury him with all his money. She places a box inside his  coffin, and one of her friends asks: “You really didn’t leave all his  money in the grave, did you?”
“I promised to.” Lilian says, “I  should keep my promises. Therefore I deposited the money with a bank on  my account, and I drew a check for him.”


----------



## Jay Greenstein (Aug 16, 2017)

Okay, I have no idea of why you presented this. Is it that you think it's an example of how best to write a story, as a demonstration to newer writers? Or are you asking if your logic in how to present things is flawed?

Since that's unclear, I'll comment on the presented lines as if the "what my intent for the lines" section isn't there.





> Goodness, –  Charlie thought when the first rays of sun opened his  eyes after the  first night.


 Have you ever, in all your life, had as your first thought on working, "Goodness."? What can this mean to the reader, who doesn't yet know where we are in time and space, who we are, or what's going on? Nothing. It's not story, because story happens. Story isn't explained or talked about.

Next: Thoughts are in italics, so there is no need to tell the reader that it's a thought.

Next: Use a comma or an em-dash, not both.

Next: The ray of the sun do not open anyone's eyes.

Next: After the "first night?" First night of what? 

Throughout, this is a transcription of a storyteller talking _about_ the events, primarily in overview. That cannot work for several reasons. First because the reader cannot see or hear the storyteller's performance, and how you tell the story matters every bit as much as what you say. But the medium we work in cannot reproduce the performance, so the words are emotion-free. As you read your own work you "hear" the narrator, but the reader can't. Because you know the characters and the story before you begin reading you have context. No one else does. 

And because you're using the fact-based and author-centric skills of nonfiction instead of the emotion-based and character-centric skills of the fiction writer the writing informs the reader, but cannot entertain—the goal of fiction. Spending some time acquiring your professional knowledge would be time well spent.


----------



## LadyF (Aug 16, 2017)

You made my day!


----------

