Do you feel like you've ever written a Relationship Writing Fumble?

Courtesy link.

I'm curious. Does anyone ever feel like they've written one of these, or in the case of those of you who have been published in any way, been told by readers that you had? How did you try and handle it if you did?

This is, by the way, a purely hypothetical question with no relation to my own works, which don't have enough romantic relationships to have had this happen. At least in my opinion, which isn't saying much seeing as they are my works...

It's always a lurking possibility. I abhor traditional methods of setting up romances so I could always end up miscuing the audience who are probably used to something more traditional.

I don't think I've done it yet, but there's a nagging thought that even with Zaf's take on things being dramatically different, it's already happened.

Nous restons ici.

I think I've had them in rough drafts. Editors are your friends.

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

As of late, I would like to think of this as being one of the strongest aspects of my writing. For the most part, my relationships are not especially romantic, but I tend to write characterization and dialogue very well.

It helps that I tend to write my characters (especially male) as thinking somewhere on the same level that I would. One of my chief mottos when I write is, "if the audience should figure it out, then so should the character". An example would be if it's blatant that if character A is trying to attract the attention of character B, then I feel obligated to have character B realize it. Even if I can't have him/her act on it right away for the sake of dramatic tension, I find it more of a challenge and an aversion of cliches to at least acknowledge it. Even if character B is a Celibate Hero and character A did something unintentionally sexy without any romantic intent, I would at least have one of them go: "Hey, this doesn't make you feel weird, does it?" or "Um, before we go any further, would you mind covering up a little? Thanks."

edited 15th Aug '11 3:10:25 AM by KingZeal

i went to read teh trope, and the qoute scared me. clean his tonsils? motherly thing? WTF! im horrifed now! What was that link?!?!

oh it was a trope, but really, that qoute was really freaky

idk, i will have to read the trope offline and comment later, my batteries are dying

as of the 2nd of Nov. has 6 weeks for a broken collar bone to heal and types 1 handed and slowly

I'm still nervous about one of my main characters and his obviously adopted sister coming off as doing the Not Blood Siblings pseudo-incest thing — I'm not sure whether the best thing to do is have my most perverse character lampshade the potential and have them respond with squicked-out disgust, or just never mention the possibility and hope for the best. I'm leaning strongly towards the latter, though.

edited 15th Aug '11 4:00:34 AM by KillerClowns

If there's a lot of chemistry/friendliness between them, Shipping Goggles will take care of the rest.

If you want to avert Not Blood Siblings, the best thing to do is either give them a One True Pairing, or make one of them Asexual or just plain gay.

If they're both single, and get along swimmingly, there's no way to stop shippers from doing their thing. Hell, even if none of that applies, it still won't stop the more hardcore ones, but then...nothing will.

All of my character relationships are fumbled.

Such is why I don't typically let romance go past subtext. One time—and only one time, so far—the subtext thing actually made the story better, to boot.

I'm just going to have to give Word of Bisexual at any fan conventions I go to later on...

edited 15th Aug '11 6:45:39 AM by USAF713

I am now known as Flyboy.

Waaaaaaaay back when I started my story, I did. Mostly because my hormones got in the way of two male characters, and they seemed to start bleeding sexual tension whenever I pictured it.

This was bad, since one was supposed to have motivations and an ending that would have contradicted that tension.

It took me a very long time to patch it up.

Read my stories!

Every time I write two guys interacting I reflexively show it to my betas and ask if they sound slashy.

But I don't get the perceived unintentional UST problem when writing people of the opposite sexes interacting. Huh.

Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am...

I'm not sure I've had enough readers to judge, given that it's an audience reaction trope.

Well, of the beta readers I've gotten, I already have one gigantic Fan-Preferred Couple that most of my readers seem to be into. However, one of the characters was meant to be a subversion of the Love Interest. Basically, he (the guy) made a Childhood Marriage Promise to the girl, and begins fawning over her as soon as he sees her again as an adult. She rejects his advances. But part of his character development over the story is coming to reject his childhood crush (which was based more on an idealized version of the girl than her actual self) and come to like her and befriend her for who she actually is, leading to a Platonic Life-Partners relationship between them as he learns to respect her feelings (and she learns not to be a douche to him).

Considering I still give them a good friendship, I probably shouldn't be surprised that everyone wants to ship them, but sometimes I do wonder. While I do want to make my point across, I don't want to engage in petty Ship Sinking because I'm shocked! Shocked! that my fans would dare misinterpret my work.

"Proto-Indo-European makes the damnedest words related. It's great. It's the Kevin Bacon of etymology." ~Madrugada

I like that idea, but it's an extremely delicate balance. You'll probably just have to accept the shipping.

Come to think of it, I've got two married guys who are best friends (and co-oligarchs), and then in quick succession one of them gets killed and the other's wife leaves him. I'll probably have a very hard time convincing people that the remaining two people aren't going to hook up.

I was told my fight scenes are occasionally rapey, so there is that RWF for me.

Read my stories!

Freezy: I'd say keep on doing what you're doing, and don't let them get to you. If you're feeling devious, you could engage in some Milholland-esque Ship Tease, but that could well backfire on you (I know I stopped reading Something Positive once I knew Davan/PeeJee wasn't going to sail).

online since 1993 | huge retrocomputing and TV nerd | lee4hmz.info (under construction) | heapershangout.com

I've said this before, but I'll say it again since it's relevant to the thread: the best way to deal with shippers is to totally ignore them. Don't pander to them, and don't give them a "screw you" either. Just ignore them and do what you're doing with your story. There is literally no way to stop them from forming, so just don't let it bother you.

Just to be clear, that's not to say you should totally ignore your fans' opinions. But don't bend over too far to avoid shipping Fan Dumb. It's not worth the trouble it can cause and it won't work anyway.

ya, definately don't say 'screw ypu', it will give them the wrong impression.

After reading the trope, I have to say no. But it would awsome if I could actually do this with my characters Logan and Jason, although Logan IS asexual. It just more comes off as good friends and blood brothers though.

edit: when i say awesome i mean hilarious. I just want to mess with my readers' heads is all really. It is a noble goal, messing with the sub-text in that way.

edited 15th Aug '11 3:27:28 PM by jasonwill2

as of the 2nd of Nov. has 6 weeks for a broken collar bone to heal and types 1 handed and slowly

I'm having a similar problem with sibling relationships in my story. Theo (m) and Addy (f) grew up thinking they were twins (Long story

), and one of the key problems in the book is that Theo feels abandoned because he thinks his adopted family is just a sham. (He's also separated from his family for most of the novel, due to quest-iness, compounding the problem.) Addy returns near the end to tell him he's still her brother and she still loves him, damn the bloodlines. Problem: The way it's written, the conversation sounds more than vaguely romantic. It's just the first draft, so hopefully I can edit out the suggestiveness and make it more sibling-banter-y. I know I'll never stop shippers (if I get shippers :P), but hopefully it won't make everyone else see something that isn't meant to be there.

edited 15th Aug '11 3:39:12 PM by Ronka87

Thanks for the all fish!

See, things like that aren't a Relationship Writing Fumble.

A fumble, if we're going to limit it to the trope, is basically handling a relationship so piss-poor that the audience is utter confused about what you expected. For example, if you have the twins still sleeping naked together or bathing each other well into adulthood, then yeah...not only are you inviting shippers, but you're likely to piss them off by being the Master of the Mixed Message. It's cool if your goal is to make the characters' relationship seem alien and/or awkward, but even then, playing with your audience's emotions invites trouble.

It's not a fumble if your characters just have a little chemistry or there's a kinky sort of vibe between them.

Of course not, but it seems like we're drifting onto the topic of "help, my work has shippers" again...

But obviously a Relationship Writing Fumble is supposed to go a bit beyond "characters have unexpected chemistry".

Edit: @jasonwill 2 - Yeah, that was poor word choice. I meant that you shouldn't do things to try and deter or attack shippers, because it won't stop them anyway and you'll have angered a segment of your fan base to no positive effect.

edited 15th Aug '11 4:15:40 PM by nrjxll

^^ Well, it's not a fumble, because my work hasn't been written yet and I'm fixing it. If I published the story with the scene as is, guaranteed it would be a fumble— people would see a relationship where there is meant to be none, which is the trope's definition. *

So yes, if there is a kinky vibe where no kinky vibe is meant to be, it's a RWF.

Thanks for the all fish!

I don't actually mind the shipping so much. My public stance on shipping (should I ever have a more sizable fanbase) is "Have fun, but understand that most of it won't ever be canon." My concern was merely that I've trodden on the wrong line of Platonic Life-Partners.

edited 15th Aug '11 7:00:03 PM by FreezairForALimitedTime

"Proto-Indo-European makes the damnedest words related. It's great. It's the Kevin Bacon of etymology." ~Madrugada

Except you know there's a kinky vibe. If you write the scene out knowing that some people may interpret it that way, but your characters won't, then it's not a fumble. (At least, not in my estimation.) A true fumble would be if you did something that was ridiculously provocative but had no clue or dismissed the possibility entirely that people would see it that way. Like, if if I wrote a scene where Alice and Bob kiss because they're Undercover as Lovers, then I know damn well that the shippers are going to see that and have a field day. However, if I have a scene in which Alice gets drunk and offers to have sex with Bob and then act surprised when people start shipping them, that's a different story.

I think the stories here are when people have caught their own unintentional kinky vibes some time later, and dealt with them as they saw fit. I'm sure everyone has encountered those "how the fuck did I not see this before" moments, and been thankful they didn't become permanent ink upon unchangeable pages. If these "kinky vibes" were intentional, we'd not be mentioning it, and if we required that only uncaught fumbles be mentioned... well, that's somewhat self-defeating, since we cannot describe what we are not aware of.

That was more or less what I was going for, yes (along with cases where you didn't catch it, but your readers did).