spiny fear in her stomach pit all happening too fast too fast much too fast feeling them all around smelling them smelling was it could it be
Fear. They were nervous too. She sighed and smiled and
taking hold of herself blindfold off grinning at the smiling faces looking down at her it will be okay it will be the best ever just let me have a few to start then more and more and more
And things went quite well after all.
Paging Captain Obvious. Your story is ready.
The only reason this is even worth your time is that it's pretty much autobiographical, in as far as stream-of-consciousness can be. Actually, it'd be my advice to anyone at their first gangbang: honey, they're just as scared of you as you are of them. Sure, that's not always true; sometimes you wind up with a bunch of pros while you're still a newbie. But usually, even then, there are nerves.
That's where my second bit of wisdom comes in, the one I tell people with stage fright. They want you to be good. The audience is rooting for you. Even if you're the villain, the audience wants you to be good at being the villain. They're not waiting for you to fail, they're hoping for you to succeed. In a sexual situation, thinking about that does help diffuse the nerves too. Your partner(s) want you to have a good time (or at least they should) because if you have a good time, they will too. Certainly, there are audience members who are assholes who want you to fail, just as there are partners who want you to have a bad time so they can enjoy that, but really, why give them the pleasure?
Okay, enough of that. I tried a bit of technical trickery this week, going from fast to slow back to fast. Maybe it worked, maybe it didn't. With more words, I probably could have pulled it off better, but that wasn't the assignment. I suppose one could read it as visceral versus mental, the italics setting off the gut reaction, the brief interlude of perception as more traditional prose.
I hate stream-of-consciousness for the most part, which is why I'm somewhat amused at myself when I employ it. For something short, I guess it's okay, but I'll be damned if I'm going to read Joyce again. For one thing, I'm a big fan of sentences that scan properly, and spacing, punctuation, and capitalization go a long way to helping that. Those of us who don't employ these simple devices to make things easier to read should really start (I'll even excuse spelling and grammar if people would start hitting the Enter key once in a while). If you're one of the people who hate stream-of-consciousness too, I apologize. But on the plus side, a happy ending and sex was had. Not entirely bad.
Maybe you love stream-of-consciousness. Maybe you'd like to prove me wrong and write the next stream-of-consciousness magnum opus which I'll read and love so much that I'll revise my whole weltanschauung (yep, I said it). A good way to start would be to join in for Flash Fiction Friday next week. It might help if more stream-of-consciousness featured sex. Think about that as you're writing.
11 comments:
Very interesting insight.
I never would have thought of things that way.
Thanks.
Interesting approach, Lexi. I think it's good to experiment with different styles. While I agree with you that sentences are a good thing, I think you delivered on the stream-of-consciousness very well.
Nice work, Captain Obvious. ;-)
I tend to agree with you -- stream-of-consciousness, when done in almost-abstract format like this, can be enjoyed if it's kept short. Once you start taking it beyond a couple hundred words it can get really really tedious. This is why (on the rare occasions when I do SOC stuff) I tend to do it in complete sentences, or at least sentence fragments, with proper capitalization and punctuation. The stream just jumps a lot more randomly than my usual stuff does.
I really hadn't thought about the role of fear in something like this. It's easy to guess she might be panicked, but the idea that they might be scared too -- geez, you're right. After all, aren't they waving the most vulnerable parts of themselves right in her face, close to sharp teeth and potentially squeezing fists?
Nicely done, as per usual for you. Thanks for playing along and making our FFF more interesting.
-- PB
@PAT: Glad I could be illuminating. Wish I had something more illuminating to say right now, but I think I may have already said it.
@Dioneo: Sentences are indeed a very good thing. But as you said, experimentation is a good thing too. Glad the one wasn't completely outweighed by the other.
@Max: The Captain has turned on the Obvious Sign as we're coming into Obvious International. Please be sure to do the things that... well, they should be pretty... you know...
@PB: I think the lesson for many of life's trials is that everyone else is nervous too. Or maybe, even more generally, everyone else probably feels somewhat the same way. It's how you deal with it that counts, I guess. And I'd use that as a segue into talking about stream-of-consciousness, but at this point I'm almost sorry I didn't just use sentences. I think I could have maintained the style without the technique if I'd really tried. Bah. I'm never happy.
Fear. Perhaps rooted in the pressure of their pleasure completely in her hands (or mouth). Love that certain ache in the pit of my stomach of the unknown in sexual situations. What I loved is how you broke the typical pattern of writing between the stream of consciousness and proper sentences. It allows for the readers mind to drift into the scene with her. Bravo!
@Drenchxoxo: Wow. I don't know how to respond to compliments this good that I clearly don't deserve. I'm really glad you liked it and it inflates my ego tremendously that my technique worked for someone. Careful or you'll encourage me to do stream-of-consciousness every week, and we wouldn't want that ;)
I don't comment very often because I am intimidated by all the other critiques. They all use real critique words like allegory and insight and illuminating and stream-of-consciousness and crud I cant even spell consciousness I had to cut and paste it after three failed tries. then there is the discussion of actual sentence structure.
I can say this I liked it very much. I liked the way the words flowed and delivered the slight feeling of anxiety based on the smells of the scene and the over coming of that fear and the bring it on exhilaration at the end.
@Big Geek: They're just big words that mean small things. I'm perfectly happy to get comments which say, "Hey, I liked this." Wait, that sounded horribly egotistical. There's no "real" critiques; if you have something to say about the piece, I for one welcome the contribution even if it doesn't use 50 cent words.
Brilliant. I really liked that.
@slowburn: You're too kind, my dear, but thanks :)
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