They say a picture is worth a thousand words – and while we probably don’t need that many words, us writers can use some number of words to create our own pictures (and feelings) out of nothing, which is even better. You don't want just any picture though; you want a picture that is visceral and gripping and to create a gritty, beautiful, and emotional image, you've got to give those gritty, beautiful, and emotional details that will paint that picture you want.

These are my 5 favorite ways to create visceral images in writing.

1. Use the five senses

Most writing classes and writing advice will tell you to incorporate sensory details. This is how you “show”. This is how you paint a picture with words. This is how you put a reader in the scene, so they’re right alongside the characters.
 
The five senses: Sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch.
 
You don’t let the reader figure these things out on their own, but you guide them. By incorporating these specific details, you paint the exact picture you want the reader to look at.
 
“He let me in the threads of yesterdays.”
I used such a small detail like threads to incorporate the element of touch. Also, think about how different this picture looks compared to something like: He told me his memories. What makes the line above more visceral?
 
“You’ve never used your teeth to drink the juice of berries.”
I can imagine what it looks like for someone to try and bite down on a berry with their teeth, then swallow the juice, but also imagine the taste of the ripe berries' juice here.
 
Part of this comes down to word choice. Pick one or a few words to focus on that strongly connect(s) to one, or more than one, of the five senses. Your readers don't know anything about the scene except what you show them. They don't know which details are significant or emotional, but by picking senses (or an object that appeals to the senses) to describe in depth, you make sure they do.
 
(Writing poetry will help you practice this, as you'll in some of my examples below see below. You’re focused on way less lines, and really hitting each of those lines home.)

2. Use the natural world

The natural world can be beautiful and dark and complex and so many things that can complicate and heighten an image you're creating. While I don't claim to be an accomplished poet (I mostly write and publish fiction), sometimes I write poems. I’m going to share three poems I’ve written because in each of them I incorporate elements of the natural world, and you can see why I did that and how those details create more visceral images. In the first, I reference honey, harvest, and sunshine to work as symbols. In the second, I use twilight, cliff, and night to offer create a strong setting for what is otherwise a piece that doesn’t have a setting (all of these poems are focused on emotions). In the third, I’m talking about lilacs and rocky hills.

Most of the poems I write are based on an experience or emotion and they try to recreate that emotion as opposed to tell a story. By using the natural world, I can still create a sense of place, and draw on the five senses (scent, taste, sight, touch, smell). Without saying “this smells like X, or this taste like X,” I still offer those sensory details by just referencing things in nature that inherently smell or taste like those things.

Like I mentioned above, referencing nature sometimes does double duty. It may create a sense of place, and it definitely incorporates sensory details. Not only do these details strengthen the picture I'm trying to create, but these images work to create that crude emotional response in readers.

3. Color
(describing colors, sure, but I’m also talking about using grapheme-color synesthesia to write texts). This one probably doesn't apply to most people, but it's definitely in the top 5 for me.
 
Yes, using colors and telling readers what something looks like is great – it’s sight, one of the five senses, but when I talk about creating visceral images with colors in writing, I mean something a little different. I’m talking about a form of synesthesia.
 
Synesthesia is when someone experiences one of their senses through another (like tasting color or seeing sounds). I have grapheme-color synesthesia. This is when someone associates a color with a symbol such as letters and/or numbers. For example, the letter e is a dark, navy blue for me. The number one is a very pale yellow, close to white. The name Justin is a blue. I don’t know why these things are what they are, they just are (and the colors associated may be different for different people).
 
I’ve noticed that my synesthesia affects the things I read and write. I find that I especially love books or stories or poems that use words with strong colors, and when all of the words in the piece tend to lean toward a cohesive color scheme (like the story tends to use words with colors that create a black, red, and silver color scheme or a variety of navies and purples). This probably isn’t anything the writer’s thinking about when they do it, and even if they were thinking about it, they probably weren’t writing words that fit the same colors I see, BUT when it works for me, it really works for me.
 
I also find that when I write, and a piece isn’t working for me, it’s probably because the colors are too loose. I need to tighten up words so they create a stronger color scheme.
 
So this number is a very personal way that I create visceral images in my writing, because it doesn’t apply to most people (unless you also have this). (Side note, I love when musical artists have synesthesia because it’s great to see it in their writing. I also have chromesthesia, which is associating colors with sounds – I use these forms of synesthesia to make really great mix CDs that I’ll eventually write about on this blog).
 
Anyway, here's another poem (because it’s easy to focus on a small, complete text)

Worship these wounds at the altar,
smeared,
tender and sore,
and once the sacrifice-
a blood war that
washes me in
memories that bring me back
to a time when I should have said
yes instead of
taking the long way home-
is over,
we will host a blood drive
to share the wealth.
And as everyone leaves,
admiring their new robes
made of crimson,
Your Majesty will grin at his
sophisticated sense of fashion.
 

Many of the words in here are dark colors for me (which align with the subject matter). Worship, wounds, tender, sore, sacrifice, blood, war, memories, everyone, majesty, and sophisticated are reds, blacks, or blues that are nearly black. Words like alter, back, and admiring are lighter – yellows or browns, but paired with the majority reds and blacks it almost creates a small highlight on the colors.
 
Additionally, my short story “If the Rainbow Exploded” published on PANK leans into grapheme-color synesthesia.
 
This probably sounds wild, BUT I swear it’s a thing, and it’s an element of how I, personally, find writing that feels concise. It’s also probably why I frequently use fragments in my stories because extra, small words (like prepositions and things) add in a whole bunch of extra random colors that don’t work so well.

4. Fruit

Fruit, I’ve found, is a beautiful (and easy) way to pull in the five senses, and it also just makes writing sensual. This can lean into sexuality, or not, but I find that it definitely creates visceral images, regardless of the route you’re taking it in.
 
The poem below uses a clementine to really draw out touch, scent, and sight and provides so many beautiful images. Fruits are great symbols, and here, I’m talking about the way that fruit flies are attracted to the fruit, and this image is a metaphor for the dirty nature of having to remove the things we don’t want. Over and over again.
 
Anyway, I absolutely love cheating with the use of fruit, because it can incorporate many senses, can act as a strong symbol or metaphor, and can paint a beautiful, poignant picture for a reader.

A sweet clementine
feels tough to the
soft fingers
that strip it,
but it’s an easy peeler,
yawning open as the finger
pulls apart the skin,
ready to climb inside,
where it’s saccharine,
smooth and glossy, and
oils scented like fresh
suck the palm.

Eggs are laid
on the surface,
feeding on fermentation
and swallowing the juice.
They pull out suffering from the
vulnerability.
Hundreds of
swarthy fruit flies
swarm and infest.

Cut out the damaged flesh now.

This is the cycle of
life.

5. The body

Referencing number two, number four, and the poem above:
the body is another way to bring in the natural world, create strong images, and incorporate the senses (think of the colors, textures, and shapes of different body parts. Think of how many emotional experiences we associate with things like eyes, lips, ears, and hands). The body is also so personal. In "Bodies and Permissions: Breaking Rules & Conduct" and "How to Destroy the Body", I talk about all the ways the body can be used and broken to elicit strong feelings (and create social commentary). Consider which body part(s) you want to describe, and which details will help convey the mood you want (the thesaurus can be great!)
 
Even in the poem above, I reference fingers and talk about stripping, and climbing.
 
It’s again an easy way to do double duty and include multiple senses at once.
 
In my short story "Fat Girls" published on Hobart, I use the female body, messages American culture sends about the female body, and the insecurities this causes to write a story. I try to use the way bodies are seen and represented to create memorable imagery that helps convey the story’s themes. It's not a pretty story, but I don’t claim to write pretty stories.
 
The body does give writers many avenues though to paint a strong, meaningful, and visceral picture. Images that use the body well can create substantially thought-provoking content that invites readers to explore its impact (and your theme(s)).

If there’s anything you should take away from this: be specific.
Each number on this list requires you to be very specific in your word choices and images:
What part of nature, what type of fruit, what body part?
What is the texture or shape of the collar bone you described? Does describing the collarbone show how poor the person is because they can't afford to eat, or that this person is sick, or has an eating disorder?
How does the fruit feel? What does it taste like? Is it pulpy? Do the seeds press hard into someone's fingers?
What is the texture of the wildflower? Where is it growing? Why is that significant?
What is in your character's garage? Is it an old Santa Claus figuring? Does he have a busted nose? How can you describe that?

Once you pick those out your specific words and images, get even more specific in the way you describe their taste, sent, and feel. Do they sound like anything? What do they look like? Make sure the words you use paint this picture (and if you’re so inclined, paint literal colors too for your grapheme-color folk).

Sociopath: A Memoir by Dr. Patric Gagne is a detailed depiction of Gagne’s experience growing up, realizing she was a sociopath, learning how that affected her, and doing much of her own work to treat herself since there is very little resources about sociopaths available.

What an emotional roller coaster. By the end of the book, I was crying, like actual tears running down my cheeks (which is funny and ironic that I’d feel so emotional from this when, from my understanding, the author probably doesn’t). I don’t remember the last book, if there ever was another one, that made me actually cry. But this did.
 
To put it very simply, sociopaths have a hard time experiencing emotions like the general public does because they have a limited emotional range, thus rarely feeling “learned” emotions (like love and guilt). Based on Gagne’s experience (and research), sociopaths will partake in antisocial behavior to try and feel something other than apathy.

Gagne’s introduction ends with, “I am a criminal without a record. A master of disguise. I have never been caught. I have rarely been sorry. I am friendly. I am responsible. I am invisible. I blend right in. I am a twenty-first century sociopath. And I’ve written this book because I know I’m not alone” (xvii). What an intriguing way to start this book – it comes across sinister and dark, but also somehow inviting. I love how candid Gagne is (or seems, which I’ll explain soon). The book continues with Gagne’s childhood and how she came to understand that she was different from the people surrounding her. She did not feel the same things they did, and she had no problem doing things that others saw as bad. Through this, she learned how to develop and or manage relationships in her life. From a craft stand point, I found the way she revealed herself building relationships with other people fascinating. The details and pacing of it made me feel something, but I had to acknowledge that it probably didn’t make her feel anything, which was an odd thing to accept. It made me wonder where her relationships were going to go when her actions and other people’s reactions got increasingly conflicted.
 
Gagne writes in a way that made me feel sorry for her, empathetic, but it also made me wonder if she was a reliable narrator or if she was manipulating me. I don’t like that I thought this, because she explains that this kind of mindset is exactly what she tries to fight, but it was hard not to think it. By the end of the book, I definitely found myself trusting her, but still wondered if I should. This, however, made me acknowledge that trust is blind. Sure, people can behave in ways that give us more reason to think they won't betray us, but also everyone can betray us. We can't really trust anyone, so what makes them anymore trustworthy than her? I naturally trust everyone though, so I guess we’ll assume she was being honest in everything she wrote.
 
I found myself thinking that this book helps people understand a lot about others, not just sociopaths. Reading Gagne’s experience with wanting people to value her, even when her personality, something that's not her fault, was hard for others to understand, helped me when thinking about the conflict my husband and I face with his mental health diagnoses. He is not a sociopath, but reading this book has allowed me to stop reacting to him based on how I want him to feel, but rather, simply be there for him. I found myself wanting to be more like a David, Gagne’s husband.
 
The other existential thought I was led to have was this: what is good and bad? After studying psychology, putting in a lot of work to reflect on and understand herself, meet her own therapist, and then do clinical research, Gagne admits that she no longer wanted to be like other people; rather, she wanted people to accept her as she is... but then she did want to be like other people? In the epilogue, she ends up working really hard to decrease the anxiety and pressure she feels from her sociopathy. This means stopping certain behaviors. I wonder what made her decide that that choice and type of life was right? Especially when so many people envied her behavior and the apathy she experienced. I mean, I was rooting for her, and wanted her to get ‘better’, but what does that say about me? And who decides what better is?
 
I’m not suggesting everyone run around doing whatever they want, hurting people, or taking things, but Patric is right when she talked about guilt being a learned emotion, and what does that say about people? Society? Why do we choose what we choose to be guilty about? And then we expect everyone else to feel guilty about it too? So I was rooting for her, and for her to "manage" her behaviors, but then I realized that I didn’t know how I felt about my “rooting” once she got there.
 
Really, by the end of the book I had tears streaming down my face. I don’t even know what I was feeling, but what a testament to the storytelling she did. This book paces her experiences and conflict so well, develops “characters” profoundly, and truly lets you inside Gagne’s experiences, really hoping she’ll achieve the things she wants. Like I said, I think this is great insight into the mind of someone who experiences sociopathy (which is a relatively rare experience), but also just a great reminder that we all experience things differently and should be patient with people.
 
Originally, I started my blog in part to encourage myself to continue researching and writing about how transgressive fiction can be used to create social change. Life got in the way, and that research fell to the wayside. I do think that Sociopath has given me some more things to research when I pick it back up. While books in general have been shown to support empathy, this book worked especially hard at it, and it makes me think about how strongly developing empathy in fiction might play a part in social change.

If you're interested in the darkness that is mental health disorders, understanding people, and overcoming challenges, I highly recommend this book. I found it engaging, and easy to like and root for Gagne. You just might need a box of tissues.

A few of my writing friends recently pointed out how well I maintain my writing. They said I “keep at it,” and I guess I do. I write most days, but I told them I haven’t always been this way, because I haven’t.

I do write a lot now, but there have been periods in my life where that wasn’t the case. I’d go days with struggling. Or months. Or, sometimes, years. After writing for close to three decades, I’m going to share with you what has worked for me when I’ve found myself in an uncomfortable hole, and when I’m feeling not myself because I'm not writing. While some of my ideas might seem basic and common (although I’ll actually tell you how and why to do them), many of the ideas on this list will be new ideas that offer an action plan. They should inspire you, because these will be the things you want to write about, even if you don’t know it yet.

5. Just do it
Okay, so I will steal this one from other articles. But I’ll give you some concrete ways to ‘just do it’, even when you don’t feel like you can.
 
When I realized how much of myself I was missing by not reading or writing for a few years, I decided that it had to change. I needed to write, and regularly. So I challenged myself – to write one flash fiction piece a week. This number was manageable. I could write 1,000 words or less in a week (although it did take time to figure out how to write flash fiction – I had to learn what to focus on in a story since I could *only* write ~1,000 words!).
 
1. So when I tell you to “just do it”, I also first tell you to give yourself a required word count/limit. This can be flash fiction at around 1,000 words per week, or it might even be less, at 500 words per week. Up to you and your schedule.
 
2. Then, second, if you’re still struggling with what to write about, I tell you to ask for help. If you’re not sure what to write about – ask other people. This might mean specific story prompts (from the internet, from friends), or it might mean words (I hate plot prompts – they never align with my style, so I find it so hard to use them. I like words. I ask people to offer me word they like, and then I write a story inspired by that one word).
 
Then commit to it. I used to attend a writer’s meetup on Wednesday nights for a year. It was at a Panera Bread restaurant, and I just went and sat by myself and wrote for a few hours and knocked out my once-a-week flash fiction piece. After having not written for a few years, this is what got me back into writing.
 
Having the outside location and other people there with the intent to write really helped me focus. It may have been more difficult to do at home when I was already struggling with writer’s block.

4. Give yourself an audience
I wrote a ton when back in high school, because I had friends reading it. I was also posting on websites like Fanfiction or Wattpad. Then I graduated from high school, grew distant from those friends, and stopped posting on sites. I wrote less.

When I went back to school for my third degree (Creative Writing), my classes' workshops gave me an audience which reignited my desire to write. Having people I am writing for or who intend on reading has always been helpful for me.
 
Examples
Giving yourself an audience can look like finding friends who write and workshopping with them, or finding an online community through social media. It can look like using the workshop’s deadlines to motivate yourself. It can look like using your friends to bounce ideas off of – it doesn’t have to be after you’ve written. When you’ve got writer’s block and aren’t sure where to go, it can be helpful to throw the idea out there and have a friend give you an idea on where to take it that you haven’t already thought of.

If you haven’t already, consider joining a Facebook group for writers to start building that community for yourself.

Here are some I'm in:

• Writers Helping Writers
  
• Self Publishing Support Group
  
• 20Booksto50k
  
• Women Writers, Editors, Agents, and Publishers
  

3. Pay attention to everything
This includes the notes scribbled on bathroom walls. The Santa Clause figurine inside someone’s open garage. The word that you think is beautiful in the book you’re reading. The misheard song lyric that you think is genius – why did someone else write it and you didn’t? And then you find out that they didn’t write it because they wrote something else and you heard it wrong… so, score! Now it’s yours! That weird conversation you have with your partner on the way out the door. The thing you read in the news that sounded wild and you can’t believe someone did that in real life. All of this is gold.
 
The thing is, most experiences are not completely original. Besides, you can always change some things to make it new, but these experiences give a great place to start when wanting to write very specific details that help build characters or scenes.
 
Examples
On my walk today I saw two little girls in cowboy hats playing on the sidewalk with chalk. I’d have never of thought of this on my own, but how interesting. I saw them and immediately came up with character ideas and plot ideas. If I wanted to change it further to make it less specific to that person, maybe it’s one girl. Maybe she’s not playing with chalk but bubbles. Whatever. It’s a good starting point.
 
Even George Saunders used something he noticed in his neighborhood to inspire a story. See the story and his comment about the house he noticed and wrote about here.
 
Most of my stories and characters are a Frankenstein’s monster- they are usually never completely imagined, but also never based solely on one person or experience. Typically, they are made up of some imagination as well as many little people and experiences I’ve met or had in my life.

2. Internet Forums
Seriously. Whenever I need any kind of inspiration or information on a topic that I have not personally experienced, places like Reddit or other internet forums are the jackpot. People discuss all sorts of experiences they’ve had on there, which can help when trying to incorporate experiences into your own writing that you haven’t had yourself.
 
Example
I wanted an experience with fire because I was writing a scene where I wanted fire to be a symbol. I am not a firefighter, no real experience with it, but a whole bunch of people on Reddit have had an experience, and people on Reddit like to talk about their experiences. I Googled "Weird Fire Story Reddit", and on one post, a few people talked about how the smell of bodies in a crematory smell like steak or burgers being cooked. This gave me something new to write about that I otherwise would have been stuck on.

Then the thing that helps me most of all is:

1. Making a document (dun dun dun)
Seriously, this might feel anticlimactic, but the biggest thing that has helped me write regularly has been a Google Doc that I created.
 
Whenever I have any type of thing that inspires me (title ideas based off something I heard someone say at the gym, details I noticed on my walk, character ideas because of the person I saw sitting in the car next to me, etc. – really anything you paid attention to up in number 4) I list them in this document. This document has been my writing life saver.
 
When I was working on my creative writing degree and had to write regularly for workshops, I needed many things to write about. I don’t always have things to write about though, and my memory is very bad, so when I had an idea at one point, it’s gone now and I’ve got nothing. This is why this list is great. All the ideas I have had are listed in one place, and if I want to write, I already have the things that inspire me right there. I don't have to wait for inspiration!
 
My Google Doc’s list includes the following categories:

• Titles (My forthcoming story, “Who Branded Jesus?”, has a title I thought of when looking at someone’s Jesus fish sticker on the back of their car. I asked that question and then thought it would be an interesting title. That’s all I had. I wrote it down. Eventually, when I sat down to write a one-sentence story, I decided to take this title and turn it into the story. I decided to tell a story using Jesus, a religious figure, as a symbol for a complex theme about branding and how other people understand us.)
  
• Details (things like upper teeth, a ladder on top of a truck, the Santa clause in someone’s garage. A lot of these are either things I notice on walks or in public, or things I think of when reading other books.)
• First Lines (sometimes I think up some random line that just seems like it’s begging to be a first sentence! So I have a category for those.)
• Plot Ideas (this can come from my real-life experiences, news stories, or random things I think of.)
• Strange Facts (random things I might learn that could be very interesting to incorporate into a story one day that I don’t want to forget but will.)

 
Honestly, this document has been my writing savior because when I want to write but don’t know what to write about, I have a treasure chest of ideas right in front of me. Ideas that I came up with. Things that inspire me. Things I want to write about anyway, so why not do it now?

So start your document today, and keep adding to it. Seriously. Then in the future, whenever you want to write something, you'll have a list of ideas.

Because writer’s block, to me, is the inability to write. Not knowing what to write about, even if I want to.
If that’s what it’s like for you, you don’t need to worry about that anymore!
They say that luck is when preparation meets opportunity. That’s how I view writing. I practice. I observe. I read. I learn things from other people. I practice more. I keep this list. And when I struggle with writing and don’t know what to write about, I have my preparation (the list) and opportunity (the desire or need to write), so I just sit down and make it happen.

And that’s it. That’s my writing magic. I cheat. I make my own luck and kick writer’s block out of the way.

And, surprise, two (simple) bonus ways that have helped me manage writer’s block:

Go for a walk
This isn’t original. I’ve seen it on other lists. It probably doesn’t sound especially helpful, right? What does moving your legs have to do with writing?
 
Walking can actually be very helpful, but only if you’ve honed in on observing. Meditating isn’t useful if you don’t know how to do it, right? Same goes for walking. But once you’ve trained yourself to pay attention to everything, it’s one of the best ways to get ideas to add to your list. There are so many interesting details to notice in the world. I also find that when I’m away from distractions and technology, my mind pays attention to those details and thinks a lot of things about them – so I immediately add those thoughts to my list!

So get up right now, go on a walk, and notice strange things about your neighborhood's houses, or about someone you pass. Walk down a main road and look at the shops or people driving.
 
Examples
There’s construction happening on the main road by my house. I pass it every day on my walk. For a few weeks I noticed the crew had some coolers that they just left on the side of the road that said Do Not Open. I don’t know what story this belongs in yet, but it’s such an interesting detail that it belongs somewhere. So it gets added to my list, and then one day, when I’m trying to figure out what to write, I’ll see that and decide it fits, and it’ll find a home.
(The construction guys also left a bottle of Mountain Dew out for a few days. Another strange detail that will get added into some story eventually).
 

Eliminating the need for the perfect story
This isn’t for everyone, but this is the final thing that has helped me with writer’s block, especially when tackling a longer story like a novel (which I was never before able to finish). What I mean by that is: I’m indecisive. Picking one plot that gets developed, and having one ending that’s the best… puts a lot of pressure on me, and I struggle with that, because I’m just not a decisive person. So when I decided to write an interactive novel (that I will eventually blog about), I was given so much freedom to be more creative and write shorter, choppier things, but still develop it way more than a short story gets to experience. I was also able to play with four endings. By giving myself this freedom, I felt like I could write about a lot of different things without them having to fit in the way a normal novel would need them to fit.
 


Writing helps. Moving helps. I think more when there’s nothing in front of me and I’m moving and only have my own head to live in. So go on a walk, go to the gym, and figure out ideas you can add to your list that way. I almost never write about my ideas immediately. They get added to my list. It has to be the right time, where I’ve figured out what these ideas mean to me, or have come up with some other idea that it connects to it really well and can be combined.
Then I can work its magic.


Do you have anything that's worked for you that I missed? Let me know below.

A villanelle is a very structured poem made up of nineteen lines, with five tercets (three-line stanzas) followed by one quatrain (four-line stanza). Additionally, many poets use iambic pentameter (which is when a line has five sets of unstressed and stressed syllables. Each line then has a total of 10 total syllables).


LitCharts provides further information and an example:

“Jean Passerat's poem "Villanelle (I lost my turtledove)," [is] the first fixed-form villanelle ever written. The formal aspects of the villanelle are highlighted: the first line of the poem is repeated as a refrain at the end of the second and fourth tercets; the third line is repeated at the end of the third and fifth tercets.”
 
For those that are more visually inclined, this is what the villanelle looks like (all the lines with A must rhyme, and all the lines with B must rhyme. Additionally, the first lines repeat as lines 6, 12, and 18 as noted by the asterisk below. Line 3 repeats and lines 9, 15, and 19 as noted by the caret below.):
 
A *
B
A ^
 
A
B
A *
 
A
B
A ^
 
A
B
A *
 
A
B
A ^
 
A
B
A *
A ^
 
It’s literally the same two sounds happening over and over, and two lines that get repeated multiple times.

I learned of the villanelle poem and challenged myself to write a poem in that form (which is, in fact, pretty challenging). Although I did it, and am pretty happy with it (for what it's worth), I’m not the biggest fan of writing form poetry. I'm a free verse kind of woman. I do, however, love thinking about how to apply unique form to fiction. This led me to consider the villanelle’s use of repetition in my fiction writing.

I obviously wasn’t planning on rhyming or iambic pentameter-ing my story, but I could repeat an idea, or a line, instead.

This forced me to consider what kind of story would be best suited to include constant repetition.
Like I mention in my article “Stalking Women: Transgressive Fiction Topics” that I wrote last week, I stumbled across a docuseries on stalking that gave me an a-hah moment. Stalking is obsessive… and repetitive… this form would perfectly lend itself to the obsessive behavior a stalker has. Repeating ideas over and over and over.

So I did some research on stalkers – specifically female stalkers – and after better understand who my character might realistically be, I started to plan my own fictional villanelle.
 
This is the outline I came up with:
 
 Villanelle Form Outline
 
A* I used to live on the tenth floor – (of the Watterson towers).
B I saw you in class - you talked about the importance of words.
A^ I want to see you again.
 
A My unfriendly roommate (roommate starts conversation about mom dying and boyfriend leaving).
B My window faced West.
A* I used to live on the tenth floor.
 
A Last day of class.
B Thought about missing him -  'Part of me wishes I hadn't passed my test, because I would have got to spend more time with you'.
A^ I want to see you again - email him.
 
A Show boyfriend breaking up - spiral downward.
B It was small, but from the tower I could see your classroom across campus.
A* I used to live on the tenth floor.
 
A You didn't answer your email that night, so sent another in the morning, two more that afternoon, and three more that night. Why are you not answering?
B I found your number on the internet - and so I called. Needed to hear your voice to fall asleep. Left a voicemail. Each night for seven days - didn't sleep for a week.
A^ I want to see you again.
 
A Now I’m in my car - next to your building on campus - it's easier to see this way. It's west, but it was far.
B I showed up at your house first, and threw a rock at your window - but you weren't home. Window cracked.
A* I used to live on the tenth floor, but now I'm in a car waiting for you.
A^ I want to see you again.
 

Based on my research, my character was less likely to stalk a stranger, so it should be someone she knows. She was motivated by a desire to having a more intimate relationship with someone who is older. I decided to make the person she was stalking a professional who she desired being closer with after she experienced great loss in two areas of her life.

On any given day, whenever I come up with story ideas, I write them in a document (I will write about this on the blog soon.) One of my random line ideas I had in this document was “I used to live on the tenth floor” which, as I was looking through the document for inspiration, I decided would be a focal point for the narrator. I also decided that part of the repetition had to be from her obsession, so “I want to see you again” became the other chorus.

In traditional poetry, all the As would rhyme and Bs would rhyme. There’s nothing ‘rhyming’ about the other lines, but instead they are just scenes that help develop the story.

While a different kind of difficulty, this project definitely challenged me like when I was writing the villanelle poem. These very specific parameters to write this story under forced me to be very intentional about how I structured this plot.

If you're interested in working with this form for a fiction story specifically:

• Repetition needs to make sense. Does your plot lend itself well to obsession?
• Do you need to do research to develop your character? Your setting/location?
• Make sure that what happens in your plot lends itself to return to the chorus/repeated idea

"I Used to Live on the Tenth Floor" is the draft I ended up writing.


It was a fun exercise and I encourage you to try playing with this, or any form.
Are there any unique or experimental forms you have tried? Anything you’re interested in playing with?

Stalking: uncertainty over your privacy and safety, being watched at any given moment, continued harassment (sounds kind of like social media, eh?).

Stalking is considered abnormal, wrong, and bad by most people, unless they at first think of it as endearing or a form flattery, I guess. But most people think of it as bad. This alone makes it transgressive, but we’re going to up the transgression ante: female stalkers. (I will use genders described as male and female in this article just because that’s what’s referred to in the data I pulled).

The typical stalker is portrayed as a male. We might also imagine these male stalkers as being in their 30s or 40s, angry over a rejection, and maybe unhinged. This isn’t the only scenario though… women also stalk.

I was scrolling through my husband’s Netflix (which happens once a year — we don’t watch TV or movies more than that — he pays for it for his mom) and found the docuseries I Am a Stalker. I didn’t even end up watching it (ended up watching some other crime, murder, docuseries) but I was mulling over ideas for a new fiction piece at the time. I realized that a stalker story was perfect (because I was playing with a new fiction form based on a villanelle poem, where the structure is based on repetition; it would make complete sense that someone so focused on something, someone — stalking, would repeat things like I was going to have to do).

The story I ended up writing is called “I Used to Live on the Tenth Floor” and can be read here.

In order to write a story about a stalker, I did a little research that would support my character development. Below you can see some of the research I found (all sections are linked in the headers with where the information came from). Feel free to use it in your own transgressive writing.

The definitions of transgressive/transgression: involving a violation of moral or social boundaries. An act that goes against a law, rule, or code of conduct; an offense.

Stalking can be:
Violent
Scary
Uncomfortable
Always nonconsenting
Obviously it goes against social boundaries and the law.

This makes it a perfect topic to finagle and write into a transgressive story. I did the work so you don’t have to; here are the facts and statistics I gathered before I started writing my story so its plot would relatively reflect statistics accurately. I first give you stalking facts in general, and the source that I got them from, and then I provide statistics specific to female stalkers. Many of these links include more information that I’m not listing here, so I’d recommend checking them out if you’re interested.

Stalking: Define the Crime
Stalking is a repetitive pattern of unwanted, harassing or threatening behavior committed by one person against another. Acts include: telephone harassment, being followed, receiving unwanted gifts, and other similar forms of intrusive behavior. All states and the Federal Government have passed anti-stalking legislation. Definitions of stalking found in state anti-stalking statutes vary in their language, although most define stalking as “the willful, malicious, and repeated following and harassing of another person that threatens his or her safety” (1).

Stalking:
· Men commit stalking the most
· 4 out of 5 victims are women
· Stalking occurs most frequently between people who know one another
· Women are most likely to be stalked by someone they were/are intimate with
· Less than ¼ of women are stalked by strangers
· Less than 1/3 of men are stalked by strangers
· The majority of women stalked by intimate partners report having been physically assaulted by them (1/3 also report having been sexually assaulted by them)
· Most stalkers are not psychotic (but often suffer from other mental health conditions including depression, substance use, and personality disorder)

And from Safe Horizon:
· 7.5 million people are stalked every year
· About 1/6 women have experienced stalking at some point
· About 1/17 men have experienced stalking at some point

While female stalkers occur less, statistics do provide trends for them. Statistics show differences between who they stalk and how they do it compared to their male counterparts (although many characteristics are similar among both).

Female Stalkers are:
· Less likely to have criminal offenses or substance abuse diagnoses
· Less likely to stalk a stranger
· More likely to pursue a prior profession conflict
· Often motivated by a “desire to establish a close and loving intimacy with the victim”
· Females are less likely to threaten and then assault
· Slightly less likely than males to assault (just 1 out of 5 female stalkers attacked their victim)
· Ages vary from teens to above middle age
· Many female stalkers seem to be single women in their mid-30s (comparable to male stalkers)
· Education and IQ appear to be higher in female stalkers than female criminals in general
· Females are less likely to follow their victims
· Female stalkers threaten their victims at about the same rate as males (50–75%)
· Violent female stalkers target males 67% of the time
· On average, female’s victims were men at least a decade older than the female victims of male stalkers
· Women are more likely than men to engage in same-sex stalking

Because this research is one study and less than fifty people, I don’t plan to generalize here other details the researchers discuss, but I do suggest reading it. It includes data on 33 female stalkers, including their mental health, sexuality, who they stalked, motivations for stalking, criminal history, pursuit, threats, violence/deaths, escalation, and victims’ demographics. The researchers include data from their study, as well as data from other studies in their discussion.

While females do stalk females, they also stalk males. In addition to female stalkers being less common and therefore less heard of, men being stalked is equally cut from the social narrative. It does happen though. This article offers a great personal account of a man’s experience, which helps provide story to the female stalker statistics.

The short story (“I Used to Live on the Tenth Floor”) inspired by this research ended up being about a woman stalking her professor.

Other ideas for people a woman might stalk:
· Her counselor
· Her best friend
· A former coworker or boss she wants revenge on
· A former lover
· Previous maid/nanny
· Physical trainer/coach
· Lawyer
· Family doctor

For more information on female stalkers, check out The American Journal of Psychology’s “A Study of Women who Stalk”.

This behavior has a wide-reaching deep dive you could jump into if you’re interested. The information I collected here helped me develop my character for the story I wrote. Like I mentioned, I was using a form that required repetition, and so having a character focused on a man allowed me to explore that. Next post, I’ll be talking about the form I used for this story (and how I really enjoy playing with different narrative forms in my prose).

I used to live on the tenth floor. It isn’t the highest floor of the Watterson Towers because the building is actually twenty-eight stories high, but it’s still pretty high. High enough. It overlooks a lot of campus, but I didn’t realize how important that was until recently when I lost everything.

The first time I saw you was the first day of class, Intro to Psych. You had a terrific laugh. You had slick hair, round glasses, and a suit coat that fit you like it was a tailored Armani. Man, do I like tailored suits.

You said to us that psychology was important, even if we never became doctors, because it explained people, and why people do the things they do. People are interesting. You paced the floors, talked with your hands.

I sat in the fifth row of the lecture hall and that was the last time I sat that far back.

You talked about words. We each speak thousands of words a day and many of us slip. Our words spill, they bend, they are messy. We say things we don’t mean. We grab words, and we have to do it so quickly that sometimes we grab the words right next to the correct one. We say things we think. We say things we don’t mean to say. One experiment showed that people who had first read the phrase “damp rifle” later said “wet gun” instead of “get one.”

I watched your shoulders slump, your throat sigh. I watched the corners of your lips reach up.

I wanted to see you again.

My roommate stole my book last week. She stole it once before, but I found it. Underneath clothes of mine that she also took and threw on her closet floor. She thought she could take them since I’d flagged them as a soon-to-be thrift store donation. So she took them. The book though, there was no excuse, and then she took it a second time. I know this because it wasn’t sitting on my desk where I left it.

I asked her for it back.

“You’re only acting this way because your mom died.”

Seriously, she said that.

Then she said that I could try being a little friendlier, she didn’t mean anything by taking my stuff. She thought I didn’t want it. Was this because my boyfriend broke up with me right after my mom died.

I told her I just wanted my book.

And when she left the room she told me that I misunderstimate, which doesn’t even make any sense but it made me think about your lecture on slips.

I still had no book. I sat down at my desk and I, I’m embarrassed to tell you this, but I guess I want you to know that I cried.

I come from a poor family, and we were always getting sick. We got sick, sick like dogs, sick like those on welfare, sick like people with broken hearts. The sickness hurts, but what are you going to do? So I left. I started college, I moved East and left mom in Nevada. She loved me like her daughter, but I left her like a son. I went to school and she knew nothing about school and I started dating Spencer who definitely wasn’t dating me for my looks, but then she died. And he left.

I lived in that room for the last four years and by the time she was done stealing my stuff I didn’t have much left besides my bed, desk, and some of my books. My desk sat in front of a window that faces West which mostly matters because I used to live on the tenth floor.

It was the last day of class. Mom would never get to see it, me walking, the whole thing, but I would be graduating. I tapped my pencil. I tapped my pencil once, twice, three times, and then I tapped it to a four-four time signature. You came over to me and tap tap tapped my desk with your soft finger. You whispered to me to shh. We were taking finals and I was a distraction. Spencer told me I wasn’t pretty, that’s not why he was with me. He told me I could be charming when I tried to be. I should cheer up a little more often. I’ve never been a distraction.

In-between drawing bubbles in the shape of a whirlpool with my number two pencil, I watched you pace the front of the room. The soles of your Beckett Simonon dress shoes made a clicking noise as they met the ground. Look who’s the distraction now? Your eyes scanned the room, your palm reached inside your hip pocket. I would miss you.

Later that night, I should have been packing up, I’d need to leave the dorm in two days. I sat down, logged onto my laptop, and the thief threw my book at me. It hit my desk leg and page ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, and fifty-two all bent. She didn’t say anything. Nothing. I carefully unfolded the pages, trying to decrease them, and she left.

My hair is long like a cobweb stretched straight across the corner of a room and I’m thinking about this because it tickled a little, wisped along my shoulders, which made me feel even more nervous when I sent you that email. You scanned in my final exam result that afternoon, quicker than any of my other professors, and I passed.

Part of me wishes I hadn’t passed my test, because then I’d have gotten to spend more time with you next year. Send.

I want to see you again.

Spencer rubbed my back when he told me he was breaking up with me. He worded it more like “I think this will be best for us” but he doesn’t know what’s best for me. Cups of coffee, half smiles from other people, and fitted suits are what’s best for me. Spencer knew my mom had just died, but we were both graduating. We were in my room. His eyes slanted forward when he tried not to look me straight on. He wasn’t wearing a shirt underneath his Chicago Bulls hoodie, but he never wore a shirt under his hoodies. He hadn’t washed his hair in a week. After the breakup, his friend Jeremy told me it was best. Spencer’d been kissing girls in bars, big sloppy wet ones after he drank too many Old Fashions, with lipstick tire tracks smeared on his chin. There was a blond he kept taking home on the weekends he wasn’t with me.

I need you to know that I didn’t really love him that much.

DeGarmo Hall is small, you know. Square, with brick foundation and translucent windows. Each wall of the building is made almost entirely of windows. I could see it across campus, barely, but I could see it. It’s the building that your office is in, and I could see it out my window when I would sit at my desk.

I used to live on the tenth floor.

You never answered my email that night. I told myself it was because you were grading other final exams. You were packing for vacation. You were cooking an old Italian, secret-family-recipe for dinner. I told myself it could have been a lot of reasons, but I didn’t believe any of them.

No. You were avoiding me. You were embarrassed of me. Or maybe you wanted what you sent back to sound perfect and it would take you time.

I spent all night with the taste of my own snot and spit as I cried, on my back, staring at the cottage cheese ceiling in the dim light of my floor lamp. I still hadn’t packed.

In the morning I sent another email. Just want to make sure you got my email. By the afternoon I sent you two more. Throughout the night I sent three. Why aren’t you answering?

It isn’t hard, the internet, to find things. I typed in your name on Facebook to find your city, I typed in your name and city into the search engine to find your phone number. And your home address. And then I stared at the two numbers in front of me like they were a diagnosis. I typed and my heart raced and my typing sounded like the four-four time signature of my pencil tapping and, just like before, I’m never a distraction.

I called. My skin wet with sweat went numb like when you burn it on the stove, and my breath shallowed like the simmering water above the flame. I typed your number into my phone and each heartless ring left me. Left me. I needed to hear your voice to fall asleep but you never answered. Your voicemail message was just the phone number said by a bot. I left you a voicemail, asking you to call me back. Telling you I missed you.

I told your voicemail good night, like a soft kiss, each night for seven days and I didn’t sleep for a week.

I wanted to see you again.

Now I’m in my car next to DeGarmo Hall on campus. It’s easier to see it this way. It’s West, and my window faced West, but it’s far from up there. From here, I see the grain of the bricks, burgundy sand weathered by years. I see my face reflected in the translucent windows but I can’t see in.

From the outside, it’s not easy to tell that everything I own is in my trunk and back seat with me.

I went to your house first. Five, six miles away. No, maybe twelve. I drove until I needed to turn left in your neighborhood, right down the dirt road, and another right until the end of the block. Your house is quaint. Yellow siding, white shutters, and a grey roof with a patch that’s starting to sag. A picture window in the front would have made it easy to see inside if your curtains weren’t closed. What were you doing in there? You should let me see. I threw a rock at your window, a small split zippered down the center, but you didn’t answer your door.

It doesn’t matter that you weren’t home. I’m eating some potato chips out of a bag I picked up at the gas station because I can’t eat in the cafeteria now that the dorms are shut down. Also, I’ve graduated. If mom was still around, she would have begged me to come back. I try not to think about how Spencer would have reacted to us graduating.

Crumbs fall on my seats, I suck grease off my fingers, as I wait in the parking lot of your office. I don’t mind waiting though because waiting isn’t an email or a voicemail. You’ll see me, and I’m hoping to lick you up after work.

Hah. Lick you up. You have to admit that’s kind of funny. Just a slip of my tongue.

I used to live on the tenth floor.I want to see you again.

Are you nosey? Because if you are, Boy Parts is for you and isn’t for you, all at the same time.

Somewhat of a fever dream of sorts, Boy Parts is a novel centered around the narrator, Irina, who is a photographer in the middle of her own crisis. Based in New Castle, she obsessively takes photographs, mostly dark and sexual photographs of men. Her photographer path began in art school in London where she developed her edgy path of challenging the way women are typically portrayed by spinning men in a similar light. After a series of impactful relationships and critiques, Irina left school and works at a bar while handing out her business card to strangers she meets in public of whom she’d like to take photos of. By the end of the book and her quest for capturing men, things turn dark.

In the midst of desperation for an art career that she wants but would never admit to, she spirals in and out of the drug, alcohol, and sex scene with friends. She manipulates everyone around her, including herself.

Irina is not a great friend, and unless you want to be invited to the party, you probably wouldn’t want to be her friend either. That being said, she’s convincing, and it’s easy to listen to her and follow along — that is, follow along until there’s not much left to follow. Throughout this dizzy story, Eliza Cark points fingers at gender roles, consent, and reality.

The book uses graphic scenes to draw attention to thematic elements. The plot is dark and unexpected, especially being that it comes from a woman in (I think) her 20s, which really develops those thematic elements even more. This plot feels like a journey and insight into the modern damaged psyche and how our society fuels it. While it’s easy to hate Irina, the reader also has to ask him or herself, is she that much different from them? Could anyone else’s life also ended up this way had a few things been different? What is the cost of being the best, or making it out on top?

Underneath the chaos and scenes that seem unrealistic, there’s a lot of serious messages woven in the middle. Being driven by an outright perfect antihero, this book makes absolutely no sense in a maddening way (as is life), but all the sense at the same time because of course, after reading that other thing that happened at the beginning, it makes sense somehow that she’d do this here near the end. I kept thinking that over and over, but all the same, didn’t want to. It didn’t need to turn out this way… did it?

For anyone who likes transgressive work, like the edgy, dark, and unacceptable things, this book will give you what you expect, while also addressing modern taboos and issues around gender, sexuality, consent, and control, all combined with truth.

Last week, I wrote about Young Adult Transgressive Fiction — texts that fall under the YA category, but simultaneously have characteristics of transgressive fiction. Thinking more about it though, YA transgressive fiction books are more closely related to what I call mild transgressive fiction (a text that breaks some norms, but is not focused on making a political statement through the norm breaking). This is just because transgressive fiction seems to be so much transgression and criticism that that’s the whole point of the book, making it a genre that stands on its own, and I’m not sure the transgressive fiction of the YA world completely fits under that… It does question norms and exposes them though.

Push by Sapphire 100% falls somewhere in being a YA book and addressing the socially unacceptable. Claireece “Precious” Jones is a teen who deals with sexual abuse from her father, physical and verbal abuse from her mother, as well as the judgement from a society that doesn’t know her story. She unfortunately can’t read or write which just adds to the mountain of adversity she faces.

Precious gets bullied in school, does not speak up (because of her illiteracy), and is thought of as the bad and stupid kid. She gets pushed out and ends up joining an alternative school, much to the dismay of her mother who doesn’t leave the house and continues to abuse Precious. Precious’s dad has raped her and gotten her pregnant, twice, and her mother calls her a slut, clearly jealous of Precious (in some weird, twisted way).

While disgusting and difficult at times, this is a book that needed to be written. People need to be reminded that this behavior happens in the real world and that there are girls who are forced deal with this.
Precious wants more for her two kids than the life they were born into. She works hard at the alternative school she joins and finds a group of other girls in her class who become a support system to her, one that she never had before. Through learning to read and write and reflect, she learns more about herself and what she’s capable of.

Further tragedy happens to Precious, which was hard for me as a reader because I was rooting for her. She doesn’t let this stop her newfound outlook on life though, which is the best we can hope for in this situation.

The book is written from Precious’s point of view, taking on the writing of someone who is illiterate. As her writing improves over time through school, the book becomes easier to read as well. The writing, paired with the detailed descriptions of incest and abuse make some of the book difficult to read, but as someone who reads transgressive fiction, it didn’t stop me. Even though it’s similar to the book Tampa in that the plot is difficult, I consider this to be a strength of the book — these things happen in real life, don’t get talked about enough, but were very blatantly placed on the table here in Push.

While the content that can be challenging to read, this is what makes the novel a YA transgressive fiction piece, no doubt in my mind. Exposing the dark sides of humanity (horrific ways little girls are sometimes treated), this book tackles multiple transgressive topics through the story of a young adult. The way in which this story can be relatable for young adults also furthers this concept.

For anyone interested in transgressive fiction, I would recommend this book. It has a hopeful end to it, but it makes you earn your way there by traveling through dark, difficult paths first. It brings you to corners of horrific realities which are arguably worse than the imaginary scenarios used to fight against norms in a book like Fight Club.

I’m curious, for those of you that have read Push — what about the book makes it YA? What about the book do you think makes it transgressive?

Young Adult (YA) Literature is another tough genre to pinpoint. Romance is easy, horror is easy, but YA and transgressive fiction both seem to include other genre elements, thus hiding under other genres.

When defining YA lit, I ask myself:
Is it a genre written for young adults?
Do the characters need to be young adults?
Do the stories need to be about common topics that young adults like?
Is it all of the above?

I think about things that I read as a young adult, which included transgressive fiction. I asked for Chuck Palahniuk’s Haunted for Christmas and my mom, who bought it for me, told me that the bookstore clerk told her that people had passed out from reading it (I couldn’t wait to get through it — and I didn’t pass out). There’s no way this would be considered YA, right? But I was his audience and, indeed, YA.

So what makes something YA Lit? Southern Connecticut University says this:

“The term “young adult literature” is inherently amorphous, for its constituent terms “young adult” and “literature” are dynamic, changing as culture and society — which provide their context — change. When the term first found common usage in the late 1960’s, it referred to realistic fiction that was set in the real (as opposed to imagined), contemporary world and addressed problems, issues, and life circumstances of interest to young readers aged approximately 12–18…”

I appreciate they acknowledge that this genre can change as culture and society and the interest of young adults change.

But considering that YA lit refers to a realistic, contemporary world that addresses problems and life circumstances… doesn’t this sound like transgressive fiction? Or at least Mild Transgressive Fiction?
I guess it might depend on the concern we’re addressing, but please, we all have to know that kids deal with taboo things too.

Which leads me to what this blog post is about:

Transgressive fiction doesn’t talk about YA transgressive fiction enough — I mean, ever. When Googling “Young Adult Transgressive Fiction”, the same pages come up that appear when searching for “Transgressive Fiction”. This includes listings of the same novels and authors that adults who are interested in the genre are reading. The stories that are listed aren’t about teenagers (but is that a characteristic of YA lit? If YA lit just has to address problems that interest young readers, can they be about adult characters?). The ones popping up on Google would never be on the YA Lit shelves.

But there are stories that are written about teenagers dealing with transgressive topics, transgressive topics ESPECIALLY for teenagers. Many adults like to pretend teens are too young to be involved in violence and sex, but by trying to keep them away from those plots, these topics become even more “transgressive” for this age group. Right?

Here I list some contemporary novels, probably identified as YA novels, that are either outright transgressive or mildly transgressive.

Push by Saphire
Losing It by Keith Gray
Ask the Passengers by AS King
One Death, Nine Stories by Marc Aronson (Editor), Charles R. Smith Jr.
Go Ask Alice ????
Monster by Walter Dean Myers
Cut by Patricia McCormick
Books by Ellen Hopkins (like Crank, Burned, Glass, etc.)

So it appears that YA transgressive fiction, while not really identified as a genre, does exist.

Are there any other books you would identify as Young Adult Transgressive Fiction?

(Which I guess, at this point, I’m just defining as books focused on transgressive plots with teenager main characters.)

I am honored that my short story “Fat Girls” has been published on Hobart. I’ve received some curiosity surrounding the inspiration for this story, so here are the ‘behind the scenes’, so-to-speak, below.

You may have read this in some of my About Me writings, but in 2011 I was in a fatal car accident. I survived, but was in a coma for a week. When I “woke up,” I was constantly falling in and out of sleep for another week maybe. Then, when I was consistently awake, food sounded disgusting to me for some reason (which was a new experience). I would only eat to stop hunger — once the hunger was gone, my body wanted to eat no more. On top of that, the only food that sounded remotely appetizing was fruit. So for a few weeks, all I ate was fruit, and very little at that. Then I slowly started eating other food, but still, only until I was no longer feeling hunger pains. This lasted for probably three months before I returned to eating more regularly.

By the end of those few months, I ended up losing about 20 pounds.

If I’m being honest, I didn’t even feel like I had lost weight for probably the first year. I remember returning to school for the first time after my accident and a classmate had said something about me losing weight. I didn’t know what she was talking about. Eventually, I’d come to realize that I did lose weight.

Eventually, I began to think that even though everything I went through was horrific, at the very least, I was kind of grateful that I had lost weight without having to do any of the work (and that sounds so awful but think about the culture that made me feel this way).

The thing is, I was never “fat” — and saying that makes it sound like “fat” is inherently bad, which isn’t true. But my culture taught me not to be it. To be anything but it, even if I looked at other “fat” woman and thought they were beautiful. So I tried losing weight, to be “skinny”, or skinnier, by eating a little less or walking more, but nothing did much for me.

Many of the things that happen in “Fat Girls” are very real experiences that people in the world have had when existing in their body image. I actually cut some of my own experiences out because beta readers said they felt too fake/fabricated (despite having actually happened to me in real life). This includes my (now) ex telling me that I was hot, but I’d be hotter if I lost weight (and was shorter). Originally in “Fat Girls,” this is how Tony broke up with the narrator, but I changed it.

After reflecting on having lost weight from a coma and how ‘easy’ it was to do it, to not realize you’re not eating because you’re knocked out, I thought about a world in which people did that intentionally and how it could be a story. I sat on this plot for at least eight years before I finally started writing it. Then I wasn’t sure where to go with it… so it sat for a little while more. I go to the gym, and that’s where some of the plot points I needed hit me. While this is a fictional story and is not about any one person’s experience, it is made up of many real experiences.

The same day that I closed my laptop and considered the story done, I was (coincidentally) at the gym and overheard two girls in the locker room talking about their pant sizes, if they felt like they looked like what the number told them they were, and how they felt about their appearance. The same day, I overheard someone else talking about their weight.

Parts in the story about the mom questioning what the narrator eats were inspired by someone’s blog post I read.

Emmy saying “Oof, I’m full. I should stop eating” is something I accidentally do.

Being hit on at the gym is another thing I’ve seen happen.

Men making comments about women, like the narrator’s Dad at the bar.

Mothers and grandmothers making comments about women, about how much someone weighs, has happened in my own family. “Maybe she shouldn’t eat as much. It’s not the dress’s fault.”

Woman making comments about women, looking at other women and judging them happens. All the time.

Heifer/Jennifer mentions “How to Get Skinny Fast” in Women’s Health magazine. This is a real article that I saw as I was checking out at the grocery store. I wrote the name down so I could use it in this story.

The narrator says, “I heard there’s health reasons and that keeps people from losin’ weight sometimes and I wonder if that’s me. Sleep. Genetics. Thyroids?” — I’ve heard these things, read these things, looked these things up even.

Men like Zillo, sexualizing, idolizing young girls. I was 12 the first time a man honked at me while he drove past me walking up to 7–11 to get a Slurpee.

And so many other small, cultural things that happen in this story are things that I and many other people are a part of and have experienced or done.

So I thought it would be interesting, to write a story that explored the life of someone so desperate to “just be skinny”, and to get all the perks that come with being skinny, that she would put herself through a coma to accomplish it. What would happen? What does that say about her? What does it say about everyone else? I did a bunch of research on which drugs would be able to sedate and not kill to accomplish this, and how one would even get access to that drug, and came up with “Fat Girls”.

In this story I explore my experience as a woman being inundated with imagery of what bodies are considered socially acceptable and beautiful, and the kinds of culture that perpetuates this imagery.

I don’t have any answers, but my hope for you is to read “Fat Girls” and walk alongside the questions. Do you have answers?