The Incompletionist: Hot and Wholesome in June
Entry 003
I feel like this may be a theme for a while, but I’m glad to be on the other side of June.1
This month for me was a month to rebound and set my intentions for the second half of the year. I plan to find more clients for my editing services and be less bashful about advertising them.2 I know for a fact that I want to get back to submitting my short fiction to other publications. It is good to know that my work always has a home in Queen’s Muse if my work doesn’t exactly fit the taste of whoever is open for submissions. I’ve grown a lot over the course of this newsletter’s run, and it is time to spread out into new places for more people to find me as a writer.
As for my reading, it is beginning to change already with my shift to doing more fiction writing. While I’m still making my way through all of the nonfiction (and trying really hard not to add more), I’m finding more novels to read and learn what works when creating a good narrative. Right now, I’m paying really close attention to character relationships.
What makes a relationship compelling? What makes it believable? Why are they perfect for each other? Why does their circumstances work for/against them? For right now, I will share only one book in which I’ve made good progress.
Fiction: Romance
The Kiss Quotient by Helen Hoang
The Kiss Quotient has been a wonderfully informative experience of reading a romance where the two love interests are so well-matched.3 In the first two sentences of the book, we get Stella’s starting goal from her mother:
“I know you hate surprises, Stella. In the interests of communicating our expectations and providing you a reasonable timeline, you should know that we’re ready for grandchildren.”
The goal Stella starts with at the beginning of the story is to make her mother happy by giving her grandchildren. Stella, one of the main protagonists, approaches things in her life logically and methodically. It’s how she makes sense of a world that is overwhelming and has odd, unexplained expectations of her. Stella spends her weekends working at the office, she has her favorite routines, and keeps to herself to minimize the risk of embarrassing herself with a missed social cue.4
Her mother tries to frame having children with Professional-ese because Stella seems to excel at work more than any other aspect of her adult life. However, because her mother is terrible at creating SMART goals, all it does is send Stella into an internal tizzy.
Notwithstanding the horrors of child-rearing, how was she to have children without a husband?
To get a husband, she needed a boyfriend first.
To get a boyfriend, she needs to date.
And if she has to date, that means she has to have sex.
In Stella’s Hierarchy of Baby-making Needs, sex is the foundation she needs to figure out. But to do that, she must practice. And who better to practice with than a professional?
So she hires an escort.
Few things get me as excited as being able to see writing done with great efficiency.
In the second chapter, we are introduced to Michael, Stella’s escort. The first two sentences of his chapter is just as telling about his character and his initial need:
“Which envelope should he open first? The lab results or the bill?”
We see that he is not only under financial stress, but also putting his health at risk due to the nature of his work as an escort. He clearly needs the money, and escorting is only present means he has to handle the flow of bills coming to his door. He has a clear motivation to meet with Stella for their first date, and approaches it with a dispassionate professionalism. He prepares himself to serve, to be paid for his service, then discarded. Then he is presented with his own dilemma.
Stella is absolutely gorgeous, almost plucked directly from one of his sexual fantasies. And more importantly, she doesn’t see him as a piece of ass or meat to consume. Stella treats him as an equal, or rather a subject matter expert, looking to him for teach her a new skill.
Unbeknownst to Stella, she completely disarms him with her honesty. His cold cynicism melts away and allows him to be the absolute softy he really is. Michael takes intricate care of the people around him, but his nightly profession prevents him from doing so beyond performing in bed. Even though what Stella proposes to Michael is a business arrangement for sex lessons, it is done so from an earnest desire to learn. With no ulterior motives, she is safe for him to be more of himself.
For someone like Stella, who struggles to locate her needs under the overwhelming expectations of others, Michael gives her the ample space to grow and spread her wings. These two characters met because they had a need that the other person seemed to meet, and what moves the story forward is the discovery that they fulfill a much deeper need that neither could do (or even see) by themselves.
The introductions of these characters are efficient in their characterization and presentation of their current circumstance. They set the stage for us to quickly get acquainted with Stella and Michael, while also preparing us for their respective story arcs. It makes it clear as to why they’d eventually meet, but also set the stakes as to why they would want their arrangement (and relationship) to succeed.
Few things get me as excited as being able to see writing done with great efficiency.5 Romance, despite its wide proliferation and propensity for formulaic plots, are hard to write well. Characters must be believable, and so must their relationship. In the same way that a good mystery’s solution can be traced back to the beginning, a romance’s central relationship should feel the same way.
I look forward to finding more good romance novels (or short stories), but in the meantime, I still have plenty of other books to read.
Read more from Queen’s Muse!
It is a marvel how we maintain our sanity in the midst of impending climate disasters, the systemic murder of the hungry, extrajudicial kidnappings, job losses, pestilence, debt, our crumbling legal systems, gentrified Pride events, etcetera, etcetera, and yet more etceteras. Or maybe we’re not sane. Maybe we never were. What use is sanity anyway? It feels arbitrary as our understandings of the world are undone seemingly by the minute, bombarded with new information that we struggle to comprehend before it is replaced with more.
The anxiety I felt when sending out the public announcement of my business made it trouble to sleep after sending it. I made a public announcement on LinkedIn earlier today. LinkedIn is the equivalent of a never-ending networking event; a purgatory of performative professionalism that’s sustained only by our collective hope that nepotism might work in our favor for once. In spite of this, I must do what I can give Acquainted Muse as many opportunities to grow as I can.
A special human and I are alternating reading chapters to each other. Reading aloud is still fun, and romantic when done between two adults. Highly suggest it!
This novel is also really good with depicting a main character with autism. The author also has autism, which definitely explains why Stella is such a well-thought out character written with care.
Says the person with footnotes that holds all the asides that didn’t fit the present purpose of their newsletter