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From: Jeff Zephyr
Re: My Dear John Letter, by Jeff Zephyr
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 2002 21:53:43 -0600
On Thu, 19 Sep 2002 18:18:35 +0000 (UTC), oosh <[email protected]> wrote:
"Desdmona" <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:
These are the things that Jeff is wondering about, stated in his own words:
Is the letter writing chaotic teenager POV too confusing for readers, even with an explanation before the letter explaining things?
It's a little confusing, particularly because there's a very large cast of people forming and breaking casual attachments with great rapidity. We're given a very complex social picture, without very much glue to hold it together. Tiffany's letter is very long. I find myself wondering what sort of sixteen year old would write such a very long stream-of- consciousness diatribe.
A letter writing teen with an attention span? Someone like me? Anyway, also like people I knew that age.
I try to keep the focus on the main cast, those four who play a direct role. The others have less impact on the relationships covered in the letter. An attachment for a week or two for casual sex is too casual to need much glue. The big relationships maybe need more explanation?
Or is the number of relationships themselves confusing?
Tiffany's "Dear John" letter itself is maybe 4-8 double sided notebook pages. The "PS" part is a separate letter, and shouldn't be presented by John as a PS, but as what it was: a bit of Tiffany's personal thoughts given to her ex after the breakup was final, a kind of apology for hurting him.
In a similar vein, is the teen writer grammar too confusing? On the one side, imperfect grammar in a love letter from a teenager, even one with good grades in English, seems natural. But did I go too far?
Tiffany's grammar didn't strike me as any worse than John's.
That means I need to fix up John's a bit more? Maybe, I put a bit too much of his thoughts in a "if I was back in high school" sort of mode, rather than trying to keep it in the ten years (or more?) after feeling.
In the revision, I avoided making many changes to the letter part because I wanted to keep the high energy teen girl POV. That is, if I really captured that viewpoint, and not some male fantasy version of it. Did I do that? Does Tiffany sound like a real high school girl?
She convincingly evoked for me a certain kind of person.
The sort of girl who would really do what she said she was doing?
1) 2 positive comments
To present a letter as long as this, in this kind of voice, is a daring experiment.
It works well as an evocation of a teenaged milieu in which superficial social relationships are the dominant concern.
Popularity is a sort of superficial thing, isn't it?
You can't do out with a couple dozen people in a year and not have some degree of superficiality. But some people really do date that many, or more. Not all teens, for sure, but I wasn't trying to write about those sorts. Tiffany and Johnny weren't the average teens, so maybe their worries about social standing and relationships make sense as dominant things?
2) 2 suggestions for improvement
The story would be more lifelike, and perhaps make more impression, if the characters, or some of them, had really strong feelings, both desires and antipathies. I remember my teen years (and beyond) as being characterized by really intense feelings, which I wasn't usually able to show at all. I remember intense misery, incredible elation. Terrible arguments. Cliques. Non-conformists. It was an emotional roller-coaster ride. Tiffany's letter doesn't give me the impression that there's any of this boiling under the surface.
I think maybe I understate things too much for strong emotions. Or just present the facts of them, not enough depth to make that impression?
Tiffany's year with John was a roller coaster ride for both of them. But after a year of "thrills," how strongly should you show your reaction to each new relationship?
Certainly, I could say something about how each time some new hot guy came on to Tiffany, she broke out into love. Or prospective love, hoping that somehow this attention would mean she'd met the boy who'd respect her and love her, and not just her body. Did that feeling come across?
How about Tiffany's reaction to meeting Brian, and her new relationship?
And why, after breaking up with John, would Tiffany want to write him a rose-tinted memoir of their perfect sex together? What is she seeking to accomplish? What would most people feel when their girlfriend wrote to them "Sorry, but I'm not sleeping with you any more. Let's just be friends." There may be a world in which people just shrug and get on with their life - and keep the letter as a memento - but I don't inhabit it.
Tiffany wrote the letters primarily as internal notes to herself. I tried to explain that somewhat with John's intro. So both the "Dear John Letter" and the PS "sex is great" story are really her own thoughts.
I added John's reaction at the end, because the letter alone only explains Tiffany's feelings, not the outcome. What did Tiffany want? The first letter was an apology and explanation to her intimate friends, even if it was - as John explains - something of a practice "speech" which she actually read and retold out loud rather than simply hand delivering. Tiffany didn't say that she wanted to just be friends, either. She just said that her committed (in a free loving sort of way) relationship with John was over.
She wanted Johnny to be happy and accept her new lifestyle, and support it as a friend. She knew that breaking up for a new boyfriend would hurt, and tried to do something to ease that pain.
The PS part really was written well after the breakup. It is a sort of apology for saying that he wasn't the greatest lover (or that Brian wasn't), but mostly it is her own internal reminiscing. Unlike some girls and boys, she felt safe letting Johnny know that she really did enjoy her time with him, even if it was over.
As for mementos, Tiffany and Johnny had a relationship which in some ways was more like very close friends than love. The lack of jealousy and sharing of experiences meant that this last note was in some ways just another of those - but it was the last one.
John didn't just go on with his life either. I might want to expand on that a little. Johnny in high school would be a bit embarrassed to explain how horrible he felt about the breakup, and might not admit to tears. But he was very upset, and Tiffany made it up to him by meeting him after school, just like usual, for the usual things they did.
Only now, Johnny got to listen to her tell about how her new relationship was going while they did it. After a week of that "easing away" he was becoming rather uncomfortable about the whole thing. Tiffany was risking her own new relationship with Brian in order to make him happy.
John loved Tiffany, but he was about as "faithful" to her as she was to him over the summer. He hadn't met "Ms Right" like she had, though he'd come close. That itself doesn't bear on the story, but part of him was more than ready to jump off Tiffany's teen swinging roller coaster and into a happier relationship.
Maybe he should say more about that part? Also, during his year with Tiffany he'd had nice offers for love, not just sex, if only he'd dump "the bitch" and he hadn't taken them. Tiffany dumping him made him available and popular, with all the girls who had some inkling as to why a school slut had stuck with him so long.
So he was very mad but confused by Tiffany's comforting in that first week, and torn between anger and the gift of freedom she'd given him. He wasn't willing to break up with her, but he hadn't yet met someone - but he had met several girls who could have been his special someone, if only he'd been free. Tiffany as a friend was much better for his social life than a lover.
Several years of perspective cut down on the pain, but not the appreciation for the relationship they had. The breakup was followed up by a lot of nice attention, and though the story isn't about Johnny's later high school relationships, he does explain that falling in love (presumably with a girl who didn't sleep with his friends and classmates on a regular basis) made life better for him.
While I think that Jeff has succeeded in portraying the kind of stream- of-consciousness style in which a sixteen-year-old might write, I found such a big chunk of it hard going.
Maybe the letter and PS need to be separate stories? Put them together as part of a set, along with John's explanations, but present each separately?
Is Tiffany's "Dear John" letter itself too much?
Jeff
Web site at http://www.asstr.org/~jeffzephyr/ For FTP, ftp://ftp.asstr.org/pub/Authors/jeffzephyr/
There is nothing more important than petting the cat.
From: oosh
Re: My Dear John Letter, by Jeff Zephyr
Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2002 14:19:42 +0000 (UTC)
Jeff Zephyr <[email protected]> wrote in news:[email protected]:
On Thu, 19 Sep 2002 18:18:35 +0000 (UTC), oosh <[email protected]> wrote:
"Desdmona" <[email protected]> wrote in news:[email protected]:
These are the things that Jeff is wondering about, stated in his own words:
Is the letter writing chaotic teenager POV too confusing for readers, even with an explanation before the letter explaining things?
It's a little confusing, particularly because there's a very large cast of people forming and breaking casual attachments with great rapidity. We're given a very complex social picture, without very much glue to hold it together. Tiffany's letter is very long. I find myself wondering what sort of sixteen year old would write such a very long stream-of- consciousness diatribe.
A letter writing teen with an attention span? Someone like me?
Ha ha!
Anyway, also like people I knew that age.
I try to keep the focus on the main cast, those four who play a direct role. The others have less impact on the relationships covered in the letter. An attachment for a week or two for casual sex is too casual to need much glue. The big relationships maybe need more explanation?
I think there's a surfeit of explanation.
Perhaps "glue" was misleading. What I was trying to say was that a succession of events is just that - a succession - unless we get some sense of connectedness, of some kind of development. Without that connexion, the events become like a set of disparate objects on a tray - look at it for thirty seconds; take it away for thirty seconds; now how many objects can you remember?
Or is the number of relationships themselves confusing?
Umm ...
Tiffany's grammar didn't strike me as any worse than John's.
That means I need to fix up John's a bit more? Maybe, I put a bit too much of his thoughts in a "if I was back in high school" sort of mode, rather than trying to keep it in the ten years (or more?) after feeling.
I doon't know whether I agree with Mat that the John bit should be omitted entirely. If retained, I think it should be drastically shortened.
She convincingly evoked for me a certain kind of person.
The sort of girl who would really do what she said she was doing?
Yes!
You can't do out with a couple dozen people in a year and not have some degree of superficiality. But some people really do date that many, or more. Not all teens, for sure, but I wasn't trying to write about those sorts. Tiffany and Johnny weren't the average teens, so maybe their worries about social standing and relationships make sense as dominant things?
Absolutely.
2) 2 suggestions for improvement
The story would be more lifelike, and perhaps make more impression, if the characters, or some of them, had really strong feelings, both desires and antipathies. I remember my teen years (and beyond) as being characterized by really intense feelings, which I wasn't usually able to show at all. I remember intense misery, incredible elation. Terrible arguments. Cliques. Non-conformists. It was an emotional roller-coaster ride. Tiffany's letter doesn't give me the impression that there's any of this boiling under the surface.
I think maybe I understate things too much for strong emotions. Or just present the facts of them, not enough depth to make that impression?
Yes, and I think that given the form you chose to narrate those events, that's inevitable. When you're writing to someone you know or knew intimately, about people you both knew and events in a shared past, it's inevitable that you'll allude to them in a pretty summary fashion. You aren't going to bring them alive as a novelist might.
In order to involve the reader in a complex situation like this, I'd suggest that the whole treatment needs to be far richer.
Tiffany's year with John was a roller coaster ride for both of them. But after a year of "thrills," how strongly should you show your reaction to each new relationship?
Certainly, I could say something about how each time some new hot guy came on to Tiffany, she broke out into love. Or prospective love, hoping that somehow this attention would mean she'd met the boy who'd respect her and love her, and not just her body. Did that feeling come across?
It came across loud and clear, but as an idea rather than as a feeling. Yes, Tiffany wanted to be taken seriously. But I didn't get the sense that this was a real personal ache, something close to the heart. I didn't sense the underlying suffering. Did Tiffany really care about other people's superficial judgments? Somehow, I don't think Tiffany would tell us in a letter. To present the reality, we'd have to see Tiffany suffering in secret, suffering doubts she perhaps wouldn't even admit to herself.
And why, after breaking up with John, would Tiffany want to write him a rose-tinted memoir of their perfect sex together? What is she seeking to accomplish? What would most people feel when their girlfriend wrote to them "Sorry, but I'm not sleeping with you any more. Let's just be friends." There may be a world in which people just shrug and get on with their life - and keep the letter as a memento - but I don't inhabit it.
Tiffany wrote the letters primarily as internal notes to herself. I tried to explain that somewhat with John's intro. So both the "Dear John Letter" and the PS "sex is great" story are really her own thoughts.
I added John's reaction at the end, because the letter alone only explains Tiffany's feelings, not the outcome. What did Tiffany want? The first letter was an apology and explanation to her intimate friends, even if it was - as John explains - something of a practice "speech" which she actually read and retold out loud rather than simply hand delivering.
This is explained again and again in the story. But it doesn't make it any easier for me to understand Tiffany's motive for sending it to John.
Tiffany didn't say that she wanted to just be friends, either. She just said that her committed (in a free loving sort of way) relationship with John was over.
Your concept of "commitment" is precisely what is giving me trouble. I'm not denying that a lot of people do view commitment as a temporary intensifier of feeling. "For ever" means "until someone better comes along." "I'll never let you down" has the silent caveat "unless ..."
If you have two committed people in a committed relationship of this kind, it's hard to distinguish from a couple of mates having a lark and filling in some time together. When their view of commitment exactly coincides, you have a very free and easy equilibrium: if one of them suddenly feels uncommitted, well, it doesn't really matter, the other can shrug and smile and get on with his other commitments. This is fine, and I'm sure that it does happen in real life.
More often, I suspect that people do in fact care just how committed the other person is - it's part of youthful insecurity, and it is a perfectly reasonable thing to worry about. People often avoid commitment themselves because they're not sure how committed the other party is. I would guess that this situation is somewhat more likely than the perfect equilibrium.
My point is that people who find themselves more committed than they'd like to be, or who suffer anxiety about commitment, are to me more interesting and engaging than those who, with the best will in the world, aren't all that terribly much bothered about anything or anyone. The only really interesting thing about your really happy-go-lucky types is the suffering that they often unwittingly create.
She wanted Johnny to be happy and accept her new lifestyle, and support it as a friend. She knew that breaking up for a new boyfriend would hurt, and tried to do something to ease that pain.
The PS part really was written well after the breakup. It is a sort of apology for saying that he wasn't the greatest lover (or that Brian wasn't), but mostly it is her own internal reminiscing.
More and more explanation, but it doesn't really explain.
Unlike some
girls and boys, she felt safe letting Johnny know that she really did enjoy her time with him, even if it was over.
Yes, perhaps she did feel safe. Having cast him off like an old pair of shoes, presumably she knew that John was one of those people with an indiarubber soul.
John didn't just go on with his life either. I might want to expand on that a little.
<lots of expansion cut>
I'm not worried about John. If he were going out into life's emotional maelstrom weak, vulnerable and apprehensive, I might want to follow him, hoping that he would survive. But since he's successful, good-looking, intelligent and emotionally bullet-proof, I might just as well get on with the washing-up.
Is Tiffany's "Dear John" letter itself too much?
Well I do think so. Others quite evidently didn't. I'll admit that you got the voice right, and your sympathetic understanding of Tiffany's state of mind does you credit.
But if I were approaching the same subject, I'd have John absolutely gutted, and maybe only able to reach some kind of acceptance after a year or so. I'd have him yearn for Tiffany. I'd drop her desire to be taken seriously, and substitute a craving for love and affection. I'd have her quite explicitly uncommitted to John - she rolls in the hay with him cheerfully enough, because she doesn't believe that he's particularly committed to her, but she wouldn't want him as the father of her children. Most of all, Tiffany wants a child, someone who will look to her unconditionally for all nurture and affection. I would have a scene in which some of her contemporaries bitch about her behind her back - perhaps a thwarted John might be a willing participant. I wouldn't have her write to him about the sex they had together. By the time she's found her man (or thinks she has), it has ceased to matter. The only part of her relatively short letter that I'd reproduce in the story is the last paragraph; because after he'd torn it up, it was the only piece John couldn't bring himself to throw away (or perhaps burn). And why did he keep it? - Now there's an excuse to use a little poetic imagination!
O.
From: Jeff Zephyr
Re: My Dear John Letter, by Jeff Zephyr
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2002 13:41:04 -0600
On Tue, 24 Sep 2002 14:19:42 +0000 (UTC), oosh <[email protected]> wrote:
Jeff Zephyr <[email protected]> wrote in news:[email protected]:
On Thu, 19 Sep 2002 18:18:35 +0000 (UTC), oosh <[email protected]> wrote:
"Desdmona" <[email protected]> wrote in news:[email protected]:
These are the things that Jeff is wondering about, stated in his own words:
I try to keep the focus on the main cast, those four who play a direct role. The others have less impact on the relationships covered in the letter. An attachment for a week or two for casual sex is too casual to need much glue. The big relationships maybe need more explanation?
I think there's a surfeit of explanation.
Perhaps "glue" was misleading. What I was trying to say was that a succession of events is just that - a succession - unless we get some sense of connectedness, of some kind of development. Without that connexion, the events become like a set of disparate objects on a tray - look at it for thirty seconds; take it away for thirty seconds; now how many objects can you remember?
OK, I can see that. Trying to link all the things runs into the problem, that they don't quite connect except as shared experiences for the participants. I didn't want to spell out the entire relationship, just a microscopic shot of it at a critical moment.
Tiffany shouldn't have a solid perspective on it, not when the letter is written. She is still finding her own place, and hoping that she's reached it.
John, OTOH, could put more effort into putting things into perspective. I let him gloss over some of the outcome and situation, when he really should be condensing the tale, but not minimzing the impact.
It is OK for him to let go a bit, relive that fateful week where a very important relationship ended. He kind of blows it off in the end, but that doesn't match what he says it means to him. Why can't he rant a bit, even if at the time he was more inclined to break down in tears?
Or is the number of relationships themselves confusing?
Umm ...
Once you get past the number you can count with fingers and toes, keeping score doesn't matter?
Tiffany's grammar didn't strike me as any worse than John's.
That means I need to fix up John's a bit more? Maybe, I put a bit too much of his thoughts in a "if I was back in high school" sort of mode, rather than trying to keep it in the ten years (or more?) after feeling.
I doon't know whether I agree with Mat that the John bit should be omitted entirely. If retained, I think it should be drastically shortened.
And intensified. He has no reason to avoid saying what he felt. Tiffany was long gone, so why didnt' he finally say what it all meant to him? He explains how it ends, but not how it affected him. How it affected Tiffany, he does that OK.
Maybe stick more of John's story into a separate story, rather than try to treat it as part of this piece? The intro is a bit long, telling more than needed to set up the letter. I still think he needs to explain things a little, because Tiffany - if her letter is to be natural - can't really explain it all.
She convincingly evoked for me a certain kind of person.
The sort of girl who would really do what she said she was doing?
Yes!
Shows I have some potential as a school girl who likes to have fun, if I get reincarnated?
I did model her on someone in particular, and I'm glad that I got some things right.
You can't do out with a couple dozen people in a year and not have some degree of superficiality. But some people really do date that many, or more. Not all teens, for sure, but I wasn't trying to write about those sorts. Tiffany and Johnny weren't the average teens, so maybe their worries about social standing and relationships make sense as dominant things?
Absolutely.
Well, I'm glad. It makes my time in high school make a lot more sense.
2) 2 suggestions for improvement
The story would be more lifelike, and perhaps make more impression, if the characters, or some of them, had really strong feelings, both desires and antipathies. I remember my teen years (and beyond) as being characterized by really intense feelings, which I wasn't usually able to show at all. I remember intense misery, incredible elation. Terrible arguments. Cliques. Non-conformists. It was an emotional roller-coaster ride. Tiffany's letter doesn't give me the impression that there's any of this boiling under the surface.
I think maybe I understate things too much for strong emotions. Or just present the facts of them, not enough depth to make that impression?
Yes, and I think that given the form you chose to narrate those events, that's inevitable. When you're writing to someone you know or knew intimately, about people you both knew and events in a shared past, it's inevitable that you'll allude to them in a pretty summary fashion. You aren't going to bring them alive as a novelist might.
In order to involve the reader in a complex situation like this, I'd suggest that the whole treatment needs to be far richer.
I chose the letter form to give me an unadulterated POV from Tiffany, no other people interrupting, no narrator to clarify what she meant.
John's epilogue (or maybe it should be a separate story) can try to add more to the situation. I fear that I could expand it greatly (read my original rom fest post for a clue), but I don't want to do more than present the result of this relationship.
For John, it gave him something memorable, painful, frustrating, and ultimately rewarding - given enough time to recover from the roller coaster ride. He could say a lot more about how it felt to lose her, and why he didn't forget her nor hate her afterward.
Tiffany's year with John was a roller coaster ride for both of them. But after a year of "thrills," how strongly should you show your reaction to each new relationship?
Certainly, I could say something about how each time some new hot guy came on to Tiffany, she broke out into love. Or prospective love, hoping that somehow this attention would mean she'd met the boy who'd respect her and love her, and not just her body. Did that feeling come across?
It came across loud and clear, but as an idea rather than as a feeling. Yes, Tiffany wanted to be taken seriously. But I didn't get the sense that this was a real personal ache, something close to the heart. I didn't sense the underlying suffering. Did Tiffany really care about other people's superficial judgments? Somehow, I don't think Tiffany would tell us in a letter. To present the reality, we'd have to see Tiffany suffering in secret, suffering doubts she perhaps wouldn't even admit to herself.
Right, I can't do that and put it into the letter. I want to show what John saw from all this, and just getting her words right was hard enough. Thoughts, those are harder to guess.
Not that he wouldn't know some of it, but it isn't the sort of thing which either would have easily talked about in depth. Tiffany acted like a "tough girl," not hurt by the bad things which happened, and John played along with that. Both knew it wasn't so, but why mess up their relationship by bringing out all that pain? Besides, if that happens, one or the other will try to fix things up with some physical comforting, one thing which they can do to make each other feel better without exposing their inner pain.
Tiffany wrote the letters primarily as internal notes to herself. I tried to explain that somewhat with John's intro. So both the "Dear John Letter" and the PS "sex is great" story are really her own thoughts.
I added John's reaction at the end, because the letter alone only explains Tiffany's feelings, not the outcome. What did Tiffany want? The first letter was an apology and explanation to her intimate friends, even if it was - as John explains - something of a practice "speech" which she actually read and retold out loud rather than simply hand delivering.
This is explained again and again in the story. But it doesn't make it any easier for me to understand Tiffany's motive for sending it to John.
I thought about this part, and maybe John should explain it? The dear john letter itself, Tiffany wants closure and acceptance. What she asks for in it, that John let her go, and still be her friend. He can read it again, as a reminder of both things.
If Tiffany could just drop John, she wouldn't need such an elaborate explanation. As it turned out, she found it hard to simply drop him, and in a way, the letter was his cue: if he really loves her as a friend, he has to let her go. John ended up doing that. Would he have without it? Hard to say, maybe. Written down, her words aren't subject to persuasion, seduction, charm, or even the simple compassion she feels for her soon to be ex-boyfriend.
The second one, that is a gift for John's ego. Guys can't handle being told they aren't the best lovers. OK, maybe John can, but Tiffany felt that she owed him something for helping her - letting her go and still being her friend. I don't know, I think that is something worth thinking well of. And if Tiffany thinks that John thinks a lot of her in a sexual way, and she does so of Brian (and John and other boys), what is wrong with that?
Tiffany didn't say that she wanted to just be friends, either. She just said that her committed (in a free loving sort of way) relationship with John was over.
Your concept of "commitment" is precisely what is giving me trouble. I'm not denying that a lot of people do view commitment as a temporary intensifier of feeling. "For ever" means "until someone better comes along." "I'll never let you down" has the silent caveat "unless ..."
Yeah, I'll point out my nice "Guilty for Life" rant on my JZL story page, about how hard it is to explain that kind of lifestyle.
If their relationship wasn't like that, it wouldn't have lasted a month. Neither one wanted a permanent, forever sort of relationship at that point. Or at least, it was a scary thing and it was safe and fun to enjoy a friendship with a lot of affection.
If you have two committed people in a committed relationship of this kind, it's hard to distinguish from a couple of mates having a lark and filling in some time together. When their view of commitment exactly coincides, you have a very free and easy equilibrium: if one of them suddenly feels uncommitted, well, it doesn't really matter, the other can shrug and smile and get on with his other commitments. This is fine, and I'm sure that it does happen in real life.
I don't think this one was so even. There was also Margy in the picture, and maybe I should do more to explain about her. Tiffany wouldn't, not too much - John already knows about her, and Brian knows as much as he "needs to" at the time of the letter. John, after the fact, can recognize friendship with sex between the girls as being a lot like what he had with Tiffany.
Filling in time, that applies to some of their other relationships - making out at parties with no worries about whether you'd see that person again, or at least, not more than a couple of times.
More often, I suspect that people do in fact care just how committed the other person is - it's part of youthful insecurity, and it is a perfectly reasonable thing to worry about. People often avoid commitment themselves because they're not sure how committed the other party is. I would guess that this situation is somewhat more likely than the perfect equilibrium.
My point is that people who find themselves more committed than they'd like to be, or who suffer anxiety about commitment, are to me more interesting and engaging than those who, with the best will in the world, aren't all that terribly much bothered about anything or anyone. The only really interesting thing about your really happy-go-lucky types is the suffering that they often unwittingly create.
I wasn't trying to show a happy-go-lucky type. At least, I didn't think I was doing that. Tiffany is trying to be confident and happy about her situation, and not too apologetic about her past. To do otherwise is to make her very unhappy, and she is looking forward to a happy future. So a bit of rose color on her glasses about her "slut" year makes sense for her.
She is very worried about hurting John, and John - though I didn't have him explain it well enough - was at least as worried the other way. She'd given him ample reasons to quit on her, and he'd had offers he'd turned down, only because he'd have to break up with her.
The summer separation turned down the stress between them. She'd done what he hadn't - found someone else who loved her, and - though she doesn't come out and say it outright - isn't "enabling" her slut lifestyle. Johnny had the same chance, but the timing was bad. Mid-school year, she had boys after her and no reason to explore a new, possibly monogamous (or at least a threesome with Margy) relationship. If there wasn't significant friendly affection between them, they'd never have spent months together as friends.
As for the others, I don't show whether they suffered or not. A couple of times partying together or having sex probably won't cause much suffering; someone who mistakes willingness to have sex on a first date for love probably was already suffering ;-)
She wanted Johnny to be happy and accept her new lifestyle, and support it as a friend. She knew that breaking up for a new boyfriend would hurt, and tried to do something to ease that pain.
The PS part really was written well after the breakup. It is a sort of apology for saying that he wasn't the greatest lover (or that Brian wasn't), but mostly it is her own internal reminiscing.
More and more explanation, but it doesn't really explain.
Ok, it is an apology. Outright, Tiffany knew that she hurt Johnny, hurt him in a part of his ego - his status as her lover. By making him and Brian equals in that way, she makes it up to him. She still likes him, still thinks he is her friend, still would have sex with him (but despite her statement expects that he won't ask - he has new girlfriend(s) and isn't stupid enough to mess up her new relationship that way).
Part of her might want to prove that by making love with him again. the letter acts as surrogate. She hopes that he will think well of her, and forgive her for giving him up even though he was a boy she could have loved for life.
Maybe she should say it that way, but since she's with Brian now, telling him that he was as good to her as her new love is as close as she can come.
Not sure whether that needs explaining? How much should either one explain how they really felt, rather than showing it through words and actions?
Unlike some
girls and boys, she felt safe letting Johnny know that she really did enjoy her time with him, even if it was over.
Yes, perhaps she did feel safe. Having cast him off like an old pair of shoes, presumably she knew that John was one of those people with an indiarubber soul.
At the least, being chased by girls who wanted Tiffany's ex-bf simply because of that status wasn't entirely bad for his ego. As I mention above, letting John know that he was special to her was another way to show that she was, really, a better girl than most.
John didn't just go on with his life either. I might want to expand on that a little.
<lots of expansion cut>
I'm not worried about John. If he were going out into life's emotional maelstrom weak, vulnerable and apprehensive, I might want to follow him, hoping that he would survive. But since he's successful, good-looking, intelligent and emotionally bullet-proof, I might just as well get on with the washing-up.
Does he come off quite that way? I don't think that should be so. He's as vulnerable as most teens, and while he might act confident, I doubt he thinks himself perfect in any of those ways. Even being chased by girls isn't enough to make him believe he is all that good looking.
Is Tiffany's "Dear John" letter itself too much?
Well I do think so. Others quite evidently didn't. I'll admit that you got the voice right, and your sympathetic understanding of Tiffany's state of mind does you credit.
Thanks. That was my main goal, to show her POV, her view of romance.
But if I were approaching the same subject, I'd have John absolutely gutted, and maybe only able to reach some kind of acceptance after a year or so. I'd have him yearn for Tiffany. I'd drop her desire to be taken seriously, and substitute a craving for love and affection. I'd have her quite explicitly uncommitted to John - she rolls in the hay with him cheerfully enough, because she doesn't believe that he's particularly committed to her, but she wouldn't want him as the father of her children. Most of all, Tiffany wants a child, someone who will look to her unconditionally for all nurture and affection. I would have a scene in which some of her contemporaries bitch about her behind her back - perhaps a thwarted John might be a willing participant. I wouldn't have her write to him about the sex they had together. By the time she's found her man (or thinks she has), it has ceased to matter. The only part of her relatively short letter that I'd reproduce in the story is the last paragraph; because after he'd torn it up, it was the only piece John couldn't bring himself to throw away (or perhaps burn). And why did he keep it? - Now there's an excuse to use a little poetic imagination!
That would make him a different man. I could see that happening, but it just didn't turn out that way :-)
Jeff
Web site at http://www.asstr.org/~jeffzephyr/ For FTP, ftp://ftp.asstr.org/pub/Authors/jeffzephyr/
There is nothing more important than petting the cat.
From: celia batau
Re: My Dear John Letter, by Jeff Zephyr
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 15:18:05 -0700
hi Desdmona and Jeff!
"Desdmona" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected] ...
These are the things that Jeff is wondering about, stated in his own words:
Is the letter writing chaotic teenager POV too confusing for readers, even with an explanation before the letter explaining things?
it made sense. :)
In the revision, I avoided making many changes to the letter part because I wanted to keep the high energy teen girl POV. That is, if I really captured that viewpoint, and not some male fantasy version of it. Did I do that? Does Tiffany sound like a real high school girl?
we think it came across, except for the repeated reference about how she was so hot, that felt really off, and her self-assuredness, which felt kind of off.
FishTank guidelines apply:
1) 2 positive comments
2) 2 suggestions for improvement
3) Try not to repeat!
pozzie one: it was a nice story. it definitely felt like a Jeff Zepher story. very relaxed and easy to read. :)
pozzie two: as a speach, it worked. we could feel that she was talking to several ppl, yet didn't lose her focus on John.
neggie one: there was too much detailed sex. maybe that sounds weird bc this is a sex story, but we've never read that kind of intimacy in letters, talked about it yeah, but not in a letter meant for several ppl.
neggie two: the ps letter doesn't add anything to the story. it feels more like an explaination for herself, but we think it prolly would have been better within the first letter, if at all.
thanks for sharing the story. yay Jeff! yay! :)
-cb
My Dear John Letter (mf rom cons anal oral, mff, fg. 2nd person) By Jeff Zephyr [email protected]
From: Jeff Zephyr
Re: My Dear John Letter, by Jeff Zephyr
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 2002 22:06:05 -0600
On Thu, 19 Sep 2002 15:18:05 -0700, "celia batau" <[email protected]> wrote:
hi Desdmona and Jeff!
"Desdmona" <[email protected]> wrote in message news:[email protected] ... These are the things that Jeff is wondering about, stated in his own words:
Is the letter writing chaotic teenager POV too confusing for readers, even with an explanation before the letter explaining things?
it made sense. :)
Thanks. It makes sense to me, partly because I wrote it and partly because I think I still understand "teenager".
In the revision, I avoided making many changes to the letter part because I wanted to keep the high energy teen girl POV. That is, if I really captured that viewpoint, and not some male fantasy version of it. Did I do that? Does Tiffany sound like a real high school girl?
we think it came across, except for the repeated reference about how she was so hot, that felt really off, and her self-assuredness, which felt kind of off.
Hmm, Tiffany really wouldn't think she was so hot. She knew that boys wanted her, but I think her comparison to a porn mag girl would have embarrassed her. So would dissing her best friend Margy. She might have wrote those things, but then interjected something explaining more.
Like how the boys all want her, and like seeing her body. And when she says she wears sexy clothes, she really meant slutty, but she's trying not to think of herself that way. Yet she does that because she isn't really so pretty, and maybe is a little fat. I don't know which things she'd put into this letter; some she'd know that her best friends and lovers would know, and would realize that her "I'm all that" attitude was fake.
She is trying to be happy and self-assured, though, in both letters. Moreso than her average situation. Still, she should be more confused maybe about her decision to break up with John, though I think her explanations about how nice it was being with him might reflect those mixed feelings.
FishTank guidelines apply:
pozzie one: it was a nice story. it definitely felt like a Jeff Zepher story. very relaxed and easy to read. :)
pozzie two: as a speach, it worked. we could feel that she was talking to several ppl, yet didn't lose her focus on John.
It was supposed to be like notes for Tiffany's breakup speech.
neggie one: there was too much detailed sex. maybe that sounds weird bc this is a sex story, but we've never read that kind of intimacy in letters, talked about it yeah, but not in a letter meant for several ppl.
Hmm, I have. OTOH, mostly in letters from lovers, but in this case, Tiffany was writing it to her three best friends who were also her lovers. Does that make it make sense, to be so intimate in her writing to them (especially as it was more practice for her talk) when she'd done much more than talk with all three?
neggie two: the ps letter doesn't add anything to the story. it feels more like an explaination for herself, but we think it prolly would have been better within the first letter, if at all.
The PS part is really a separate letter, and maybe should be a separate story. Yet without it, and without John's epilogue, we miss out on some of the aftermath of that letter.
The PS part would be written after Johnny was with someone new, and things with her new boyfriend Brian were going OK. It is an intimate apology to Johnny, but mostly it is her internal thoughts, her explanation for why she isn't losing out by having just one lover. Sharing it with Johnny because she was thinking about him when she wrote it makes sense, since he is still her good friend and there aren't many people she can tell that sort of thing too.
She probably wrote a very similar thing for Brian, with a focus on him. Maybe even cut and paste, to save time? OTOH, she could just tell him in person about why she loved him so much, while acting out the details in that letter. Maybe that is what it was about?
John might not know about why that happened, but when Tiffany gave him that "note" as a thank you for their time together, I think he'd keep it and find it a pleasant reminder. At least, after high school was over.
thanks for sharing the story. yay Jeff! yay! :)
Thanks!
Jeff
Web site at http://www.asstr.org/~jeffzephyr/ For FTP, ftp://ftp.asstr.org/pub/Authors/jeffzephyr/
There is nothing more important than petting the cat.
From: Jeff Zephyr
Re: My Dear John Letter, by Jeff Zephyr
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 2002 22:52:49 -0600
On Thu, 19 Sep 2002 15:18:05 -0700, "celia batau" <[email protected]> wrote:
hi Desdmona and Jeff!
In the revision, I avoided making many changes to the letter part because I wanted to keep the high energy teen girl POV. That is, if I really captured that viewpoint, and not some male fantasy version of it. Did I do that? Does Tiffany sound like a real high school girl?
we think it came across, except for the repeated reference about how she was so hot, that felt really off, and her self-assuredness, which felt kind of off.
I thought of something else in this part to bring up.
I didn't think that Tiffany would say too much gushy and gooey about her relationship with Margy, but when she compares herself to her best friend, she both makes herself look too good and her friend look to bad.
She might write that, but if she reread that part I think she'd want to fix it. Both, maybe. Saying she looks really hot would embarrass her, and a glance at a mirror would bring out all of the negatives she has in mind.
Most of us do; it is hard to think of yourself as hot and sexy. I cover that part before, but Tiffany really meant that when boys saw her naked, they'd say she looks like a centerfold girl - at least, before they have sex.
After, when they don't want to talk with her or are disrespectful, she can look in the mirror and see reasons why they lied - should I stick in something more about that, or is the fact that she kept finding boys who were only worth dating a couple of times at best enough?
In her letter, she was trying to feel more self-confident, psyched about her decision to be exclusive with her new boyfriend. So maybe, she should sound self-assured and confident. But I doubt she was feeling that way, so some hints of that might need to slip in more.
With the comments about her friend Margy, I think she needs to explain that "John thinks she's cute." And maybe something about how she thinks that Margy looks nice naked too?
If there are specific spots where she comes off too strongly confident, let me know.
Hmm, another quick thing: I make reference to a song, "No Self Esteem". Should I stick in a bit of a lyrics quote? I hear the song on the radio just about every day, but maybe some readers just don't listen to that kind of music or don't pay attention if they hear it?
Johnny's relationship with Tiffany isn't quite like that of the song, but I think he can relate to it. A girl who says "she loves only me," and he thinks "then why does she sleep with my friends", seems to fit the situation. Even after a long time, he might not want to say that he stuck with his "bad girl" because he didn't feel he deserved more from her than friendship and sex?
I don't really want to write out a longer story about their relationship. The letter is the centerpiece, explaining the ending and giving some idea why it was meaningful for both of them.
I'm not sure if people who don't have sex without love would quite get their relationship, nor its lack of sexual jealousy. I tried to explain how they felt, but maybe it is just too alien to understand?
I sometimes get that feeling in RL as well; the idea that someone would be entirely unfazed by their partner going out with someone else is outside their experience and not comprehensible?
Jeff
Web site at http://www.asstr.org/~jeffzephyr/ For FTP, ftp://ftp.asstr.org/pub/Authors/jeffzephyr/
There is nothing more important than petting the cat.
From: Mat Twassel
Re: My Dear John Letter, by Jeff Zephyr
Date: 20 Sep 2002 16:03:02 GMT
The preface and postscript are interesting but I don't think you need them. I'd stick with the basic letter.
- Mat Twassel
Mat's Erotic Calendar at http://calendar.atEros.com
From: Jeff Zephyr
Re: My Dear John Letter, by Jeff Zephyr
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 2002 22:09:50 -0600
On 20 Sep 2002 16:03:02 GMT, [email protected] (mat twassel) wrote:
The preface and postscript are interesting but I don't think you need them. I'd stick with the basic letter.
I thought about that, and posted it like that as part of the rom fest. I tinkered with the letter slightly here, but not much at all.
The basic letter gives one short momentary look at Tiffany's feelings. It covers more time in her story, but from the viewpoint of the end of her relationship with John, not in the "as it happens" sort of way.
I'm not so sure about not needing them. Tiffany's letter doesn't introduce people very directly, while John's explanation in the preface sets things up and gives it some perspective.
The PS is a separate story, and I think it was a mistake to stick it into this one as if it were part of the single letter.
John's ending explains the outcome, and adds a bit of depth, combined with the preface. His perspective on things might not be necessary, but without it, wouldn't you wonder just what happened after Tiffany delivered her message?
Jeff
Web site at http://www.asstr.org/~jeffzephyr/ For FTP, ftp://ftp.asstr.org/pub/Authors/jeffzephyr/
There is nothing more important than petting the cat.
From: PleaseCain
Re: My Dear John Letter, by Jeff Zephyr
Date: 21 Sep 2002 20:47:22 GMT
That's some letter, all right! To my ear, you pulled off the teenage voice well. Her coltish energy and flip, hip attitude come through, and some of her language brought me right back (my high school sweetheart was a prolific letter-writer, and probably used some of these very phrases - I thought of her with "I did him on top"). I wonder if you could write convincing teenager dialogue?
Anyway, the letter is erotic and exhibitionist; for instance, the anal sex scene at the party worked well. It's fun to read, although it rambles, and then this phrase derailed me, "You are really hot, Brian, but you aren't quite the ultimate guy" (she means John, not Brian, right?). I don't know if or where I would suggest cuts, because again, the voice sounds authentic, mistakes and all.
I would tighten some of the language of the introduction, as it is spoken by someone older, and it should be differentiated more from her letter. I'll echo Mat's suggestion about cutting the final section, and perhaps the introduction can be chopped, as well.
One final point - and I hate when people quibble about the physical positioning and all, because with sex it is usually Where there's a will there's a way - but at one point two girls are playing in a 69 (and not a classic one, Mr. VT) while a guy is having intercourse with one of them, and all this is in a shower. It stopped me for a second.
Fine stuff and voyeuristic thrills, I like it!
Cain
Mat's Erotic Calendar at http://calendar.atEros.com
From: Jeff Zephyr
Re: My Dear John Letter, by Jeff Zephyr
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 2002 22:24:34 -0600
On 21 Sep 2002 20:47:22 GMT, [email protected] (PleaseCain) wrote:
That's some letter, all right! To my ear, you pulled off the teenage voice well. Her coltish energy and flip, hip attitude come through, and some of her language brought me right back (my high school sweetheart was a prolific letter-writer, and probably used some of these very phrases - I thought of her with "I did him on top"). I wonder if you could write convincing teenager dialogue?
I hope so. I have only two stories with more or less ordinary teenagers in them (JZL and "My Niece's Christmas Spanking"). I'd like to think that the dialog is OK, proper teenage phrasing and all that.
Anyway, the letter is erotic and exhibitionist; for instance, the anal sex scene at the party worked well. It's fun to read, although it rambles, and then this phrase derailed me, "You are really hot, Brian, but you aren't quite the ultimate guy" (she means John, not Brian, right?). I don't know if or where I would suggest cuts, because again, the voice sounds authentic, mistakes and all.
She meant both of them, it should say John, then mix Brian into that, and segue into how happy she is with Brian now.
What she means is that being in love makes him her ultimate guy, but saying that outright would seem odd. The PS thoughts are her way of apologizing and explaining this comment.
On the other hand, it is also honest. Neither boy is yet a rock star or movie actor or even a sports hero, with charm, grace, a sexy body, and money :-) Her comments near the end about finding her "Prince Charming" kind of fit into this; she was like Cinderella, sort of in a reverse role way, though she wasn't trying on shoes to see if she could find a match.
So, how should she phrase her confused recognition that someone who "can love a slut" and help her "reform" is worth more than any amount of sexy charm or money or fame, or even just high school "coolest guy around" status? I tried to say it without spelling it out, because I didn't think that she could quite articulate it that well.
I would tighten some of the language of the introduction, as it is spoken by someone older, and it should be differentiated more from her letter. I'll echo Mat's suggestion about cutting the final section, and perhaps the introduction can be chopped, as well.
I think that some of the intro fell into "high school speak" in the way of thinking back on John's life then, but he should try not to sound too much like a high school kid now.
The final sections give closure to the situation. But maybe they could be a sort of "sequel" rather than presented as part of the main story.
The PS part should be shown as what John says it is - a private letter by Tiffany, and given to him after he'd found a new girl and Brian was making things good for her socially (making it possible for her to say "no" to guys, because she had a good boyfriend). It is more her own internal thoughts, but she can share them with Johnny, one last goodbye with love, a way of letting go of him and letting him know that she is truly happy with her choice.
One final point - and I hate when people quibble about the physical positioning and all, because with sex it is usually Where there's a will there's a way - but at one point two girls are playing in a 69 (and not a classic one, Mr. VT) while a guy is having intercourse with one of them, and all this is in a shower. It stopped me for a second.
Hmm, some showers are big enough for three people to lay in. I like those.
But I think they got out of the shower, even if the playing around got started there. That position just wouldn't be so easy on the shower, and maybe not even on the bathroom floor (some have carpet, though, and might work). While leaving out the step of running naked to the bedroom together to celebrate might be natural in a teen storyteller, it is confusing, and probably could be "edited" in easily enough (by John, presumably) to help the reader.
Fine stuff and voyeuristic thrills, I like it!
Doing my part to support respectability for sluts.
Jeff
Web site at http://www.asstr.org/~jeffzephyr/ For FTP, ftp://ftp.asstr.org/pub/Authors/jeffzephyr/
There is nothing more important than petting the cat.
From: Souvie
Re: My Dear John Letter, by Jeff Zephyr
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 2002 23:57:42 GMT
On Mon, 16 Sep 2002 09:43:19 -0400, "Desdmona" <[email protected]> wrote:
These are the things that Jeff is wondering about, stated in his own words:
Is the letter writing chaotic teenager POV too confusing for readers, even with an explanation before the letter explaining things?
I don't think it's confusing at all. It reminds of some of the letters I've seen in my sister's backpack (not the content, the form <g>).
In a similar vein, is the teen writer grammar too confusing? On the one side, imperfect grammar in a love letter from a teenager, even one with good grades in English, seems natural. But did I go too far?
I don't think you went too far. It came across as being written by a teenager, but it wasn't over the top. Often when we're talking to friends, or in the rush of emotions, or "schooling" falls by the wayside.
In the revision, I avoided making many changes to the letter part because I wanted to keep the high energy teen girl POV. That is, if I really captured that viewpoint, and not some male fantasy version of it. Did I do that? Does Tiffany sound like a real high school girl?
yes, yes, and yes! :-)
- Souvie
(PS. I like the revision.)
From: Jeff Zephyr
Re: My Dear John Letter, by Jeff Zephyr
Date: Sun, 22 Sep 2002 22:30:20 -0600
On Sun, 22 Sep 2002 23:57:42 GMT, [email protected] (Souvie) wrote:
On Mon, 16 Sep 2002 09:43:19 -0400, "Desdmona" <[email protected]> wrote:
These are the things that Jeff is wondering about, stated in his own words:
Is the letter writing chaotic teenager POV too confusing for readers, even with an explanation before the letter explaining things?
I don't think it's confusing at all. It reminds of some of the letters I've seen in my sister's backpack (not the content, the form <g>).
I'm not sure that I didn't do some brain damage, though, while trying to think like a confused teenager. Especially a confused teenage girl.
OTOH, I'm confused in other ways, so maybe it didn't hurt? I did find it hard to imagine doing a total rewrite of the thing, or carrying on too long in that mode. Maybe some of that slipped off into John's writing too, and it shouldn't because even if he is thinking of his high school good times, he should try to write like a mature adult.
In a similar vein, is the teen writer grammar too confusing? On the one side, imperfect grammar in a love letter from a teenager, even one with good grades in English, seems natural. But did I go too far?
I don't think you went too far. It came across as being written by a teenager, but it wasn't over the top. Often when we're talking to friends, or in the rush of emotions, or "schooling" falls by the wayside.
In the revision, I avoided making many changes to the letter part because I wanted to keep the high energy teen girl POV. That is, if I really captured that viewpoint, and not some male fantasy version of it. Did I do that? Does Tiffany sound like a real high school girl?
yes, yes, and yes! :-)
That is good to know. I feel pretty safe writing like a teen boy, and there are some similarities between the two sexes.
(PS. I like the revision.)
Thanks! I wasn't sure about how to go about it. Peaches and Cream reviews pointed out that the story lacked closure, no ending explanation or conclusion. That was because it ended at the crux of the action, not the climax. Tiffany was planning her breakup and hoping for a good new high school life. She went a bit farther than some girls might in letting her old boyfriend down easily, but in the letter she says nothing much about what will happen there.
Jeff
Web site at http://www.asstr.org/~jeffzephyr/ For FTP, ftp://ftp.asstr.org/pub/Authors/jeffzephyr/
There is nothing more important than petting the cat.
From: Altan
Re: My Dear John Letter, by Jeff Zephyr
Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2002 13:55:39 GMT
Hi Jeff,
On Mon, 16 Sep 2002 09:43:19 -0400, "Desdmona" <[email protected]> wrote:
The following submission was a story originally written for the Summer Solstice. A romance story based on the theme of "Romance from the point of view of ..." In this case, a girl telling her high school boyfriend that it is over. Only she isn't your average high school girl. Maybe she is like some girl you knew.
[ ...]
FishTank guidelines apply:
Apologies to Desdmona for not following the FishTank guidelines, and apologies for Jeff for chiming in so late. I only finished reading the story and comments yesterday.
Actually, I would like to respond to the whole thread and to some of the issues that were discussed, more than to the story itself. I hope that's OK since the FishTank comment period is over.
The impression I get from this thread, Jeff, is that you are trying to do two things: you want to present a stream of conscience type letter from a high school girl, but you also want to tell a specific story, a story about the relationship between Tiffany and John, and about how that relationship ended.
The problem that I sense in the discussion is, that the letter is very good as a stream of conscience letter, but isn't quite adequate in telling the story. Hence the introduction and the P.S. part. However, they seemed to confuse the story, which I guess is why some people suggested shortening them.
I would actually suggest to consider the opposite route: take the letter out of the story. If this were a book, I could see it work as a novel centering around the letter, told by John, and exploring the relationship, how it affected him - all the things you, Jeff, brought up in the discussion. The actual letter would then be an appendix in the back of the book.
This is the solution focussing on the story part. On the other hand, if you would want to focus on the letter part, I think you won't be able to avoid some significant revisions. I don't know why you emphasized that you did not revise the letter much - maybe because it is strongly based on a real letter, or maybe because you have put a lot of effort in it and are happy with the result.
Well, I think it was clear from the comments that the letter was a very good one, well written, in style and everything. The problem seems to be that it just doesn't work as a story on itself. In a number of comments, you said that Tiffany would not write such and so, because it would be obvious to her.
For us, as a reader, things may not be as obvious as they are for the participants. In order for the letter to work by itself, the reader needs a lot more context. You attempt to provide this by John writing the introduction, but that turned out not to be enough. My feeling is, that the letter itself should contain all the context it needs.
Will it be possible to provide all the information and still have it look like a letter written by a 16 year old girl who is riding a teenager's emotional rollercoaster? That would be hard, but I think it can be done. I know that, when I wrote emotional texts when I was a teenager, I often would go into a lot of details about things that I already knew - just because writing them down in a coherent way often helped me understand myself better. In this case, where Tiffany is writing to a specific audience, she would actually want to make sure that the reader is on the same wavelength she is. So she would want to repeat the obvious. Or at least, she could want to - you are not trying to write the letter she actually wrote, but one that she could have written.
Actually, when I think about it that way, the Tiffany you have in mind (and you clearly had a well-developed personality in mind when writing this) could conceivably have written dozens, hundreds of different letters at that point. What you are trying to do is to pick out that particular one that "works" to tell the story you want to tell.
Am I still making sense? This is all basically what I was thinking about last night in bed, after reading the story and the thread. I hope these thoughts can be of some use to you.
A.
http://www.asstr.org/~altan/
From: Jeff Zephyr
Re: My Dear John Letter, by Jeff Zephyr
Date: Sat, 28 Sep 2002 16:30:44 -0600
On Fri, 27 Sep 2002 13:55:39 GMT, Altan <[email protected]> wrote:
Hi Jeff,
On Mon, 16 Sep 2002 09:43:19 -0400, "Desdmona" <[email protected]> wrote:
The following submission was a story originally written for the Summer Solstice. A romance story based on the theme of "Romance from the point of view of ..." In this case, a girl telling her high school boyfriend that it is over. Only she isn't your average high school girl. Maybe she is like some girl you knew.
[ ...]
FishTank guidelines apply:
Apologies to Desdmona for not following the FishTank guidelines, and apologies for Jeff for chiming in so late. I only finished reading the story and comments yesterday.
Thanks, I don't mind. I appreciate all the responses, from everyone.
Actually, I would like to respond to the whole thread and to some of the issues that were discussed, more than to the story itself. I hope that's OK since the FishTank comment period is over.
The impression I get from this thread, Jeff, is that you are trying to do two things: you want to present a stream of conscience type letter from a high school girl, but you also want to tell a specific story, a story about the relationship between Tiffany and John, and about how that relationship ended.
I started out doing only the first. That felt incomplete; Peaches and Cream reviewers made a similar comment. Tiffany comes to no solid, life altering conclusions at the end of the letter. At best, you can say she is about to make a change, and there is hope for a girl to succeed in making a good life despite obstacles.
John's POV lets me show more, not everything but enough to add some conclusion to the whole thing. Make it a complete story, not just a short if interesting insight into the mind of the girl.
The problem that I sense in the discussion is, that the letter is very good as a stream of conscience letter, but isn't quite adequate in telling the story. Hence the introduction and the P.S. part. However, they seemed to confuse the story, which I guess is why some people suggested shortening them.
Yeah, the intro helps but I go on too long with it maybe. And the PS part is really a separate story, and maybe doesn't even need to be treated as part of the same piece. I don't want to lose it entirely - I think it does a nice job of showing the girl's positive view on sex and romance - but it isn't really part of the "goodbye" letter.
I would actually suggest to consider the opposite route: take the letter out of the story. If this were a book, I could see it work as a novel centering around the letter, told by John, and exploring the relationship, how it affected him - all the things you, Jeff, brought up in the discussion. The actual letter would then be an appendix in the back of the book.
Sure, and I can see doing that. Except that it would be a long story centering on "John's" POV mostly, with the letter just being part of the whole thing.
I don't know about the appendix idea - books often have asides showing other POV using an entire chapter. But it would be something like that, a whole new chapter about the ending, with the letter shown in full as a way to really show all that Tiffany says.
OTOH, it doesn't have to be shown that way, and if the letter is "read" at the end of the story, there is far less need to detail all that is talked about. The reader would have read the prior chapters about the various parties, and wouldn't need a long explanation for her apologizing for her behavior during that sleepover incident. Nope, just the apology again, no need for all those details.
This is the solution focussing on the story part. On the other hand, if you would want to focus on the letter part, I think you won't be able to avoid some significant revisions. I don't know why you emphasized that you did not revise the letter much - maybe because it is strongly based on a real letter, or maybe because you have put a lot of effort in it and are happy with the result.
Mostly the latter. It wasn't all that easy to get into the right mindset to write it.
Well, I think it was clear from the comments that the letter was a very good one, well written, in style and everything. The problem seems to be that it just doesn't work as a story on itself. In a number of comments, you said that Tiffany would not write such and so, because it would be obvious to her.
For us, as a reader, things may not be as obvious as they are for the participants. In order for the letter to work by itself, the reader needs a lot more context. You attempt to provide this by John writing the introduction, but that turned out not to be enough. My feeling is, that the letter itself should contain all the context it needs.
That is interesting. I'm not sure about doing it that way. I still think that a short intro works better than trying to rewrite the letter too much.
Will it be possible to provide all the information and still have it look like a letter written by a 16 year old girl who is riding a teenager's emotional rollercoaster? That would be hard, but I think it can be done. I know that, when I wrote emotional texts when I was a teenager, I often would go into a lot of details about things that I already knew - just because writing them down in a coherent way often helped me understand myself better. In this case, where Tiffany is writing to a specific audience, she would actually want to make sure that the reader is on the same wavelength she is. So she would want to repeat the obvious. Or at least, she could want to - you are not trying to write the letter she actually wrote, but one that she could have written.
Sure, but how much of the obvious? Enough to clarify things fully, in her voice, might end up confusing things more. I also do think it would be harder to do that than what I tried to do. Making it tight with little rambling, and I think it would lose some of the feel which makes it such a good "letter."
John's older POV gives him what should be a better perspective on the whole situation. He may need to express it more precisely and concisely.
Actually, when I think about it that way, the Tiffany you have in mind (and you clearly had a well-developed personality in mind when writing this) could conceivably have written dozens, hundreds of different letters at that point. What you are trying to do is to pick out that particular one that "works" to tell the story you want to tell.
Am I still making sense? This is all basically what I was thinking about last night in bed, after reading the story and the thread. I hope these thoughts can be of some use to you.
It is something to think about. I don't know about doing it, though, because I think that the letters - even the PS one - do what I tried to do with them. In fact, as Matt said the "Dear John" letter can stand on its own.
Sure, the reader may need to read it a couple of times to make sense of the situation, and get a handle on who is involved. But it is a nice view into the values of the girl, and how she thinks romantically. I really don't want to lose that part.
Jeff
Web site at http://www.asstr.org/~jeffzephyr/ For FTP, ftp://ftp.asstr.org/pub/Authors/jeffzephyr/
There is nothing more important than petting the cat.
From: Jeff Zephyr
Re: My Dear John Letter, by Jeff Zephyr
Date: Tue, 01 Oct 2002 20:45:04 -0600
On Mon, 16 Sep 2002 09:43:19 -0400, "Desdmona" <[email protected]> wrote:
I'd like to thank everyone for their responses. I know I replied to everyone separately, but I think it is worth saying thank you again.
One thing: I'm glad for the delay before responding rule. Oosh's comments hit home with me, and as some of you may have surmised, I have some personal feelings for this story, beyond the writing of it. Taking time to think rather than react helped me avoid a rough emotional response.
I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the story. A lot of advice, not all the same, and I need to think about it a bit.
Jeff
Web site at http://www.asstr.org/~jeffzephyr/ For FTP, ftp://ftp.asstr.org/pub/Authors/jeffzephyr/
There is nothing more important than petting the cat.
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From: oosh
Re: My Dear John Letter, by Jeff Zephyr
Date: Thu, 19 Sep 2002 18:18:35 +0000 (UTC)
"Desdmona" <[email protected]> wrote in
news:[email protected]:
It's a little confusing, particularly because there's a very large cast of people forming and breaking casual attachments with great rapidity. We're given a very complex social picture, without very much glue to hold it together. Tiffany's letter is very long. I find myself wondering what sort of sixteen year old would write such a very long stream-of- consciousness diatribe.
Tiffany's grammar didn't strike me as any worse than John's.
She convincingly evoked for me a certain kind of person.
To present a letter as long as this, in this kind of voice, is a daring experiment.
It works well as an evocation of a teenaged milieu in which superficial social relationships are the dominant concern.
The story would be more lifelike, and perhaps make more impression, if the characters, or some of them, had really strong feelings, both desires and antipathies. I remember my teen years (and beyond) as being characterized by really intense feelings, which I wasn't usually able to show at all. I remember intense misery, incredible elation. Terrible arguments. Cliques. Non-conformists. It was an emotional roller-coaster ride. Tiffany's letter doesn't give me the impression that there's any of this boiling under the surface. And why, after breaking up with John, would Tiffany want to write him a rose-tinted memoir of their perfect sex together? What is she seeking to accomplish? What would most people feel when their girlfriend wrote to them "Sorry, but I'm not sleeping with you any more. Let's just be friends." There may be a world in which people just shrug and get on with their life - and keep the letter as a memento - but I don't inhabit it.
While I think that Jeff has succeeded in portraying the kind of stream- of-consciousness style in which a sixteen-year-old might write, I found such a big chunk of it hard going.
O.