Mom I’d Like to… er… Talk To

[gunhilltrain]

The story is set in an unseasonably rainy July, which adds to the cabin fever aspects.

Emily

In the 1960's, I was living on the sixth floor of an apartment house, yet we could be stuck at home if it was raining a lot. Snow, after the storm was over, was great because we could go out and play in that.

We certainly watched a lot of TV even though there were only three networks and three local stations. I would watch almost anything as long as the set was on.

I had three siblings, so my mom often did expect us to play or do something else if we were at home. My grandpa (maternal) was often around (he only lived three blocks away) and he taught us card games. He was a widower, so he took some of the pressure off my parents in raising us.

 

[gunhilltrain]

When I was a parent myself in the 1990's, it was in suburban houses and I had no relatives within walking distance. So we had more space, but in some ways it was more difficult to have kids around. In one house we could walk to a couple of parks, or drive to another. In the first house (a rental), when my daughter was very young, there was another park that we drove to.

 

[intim8]

What I have written so far is a combination of vicarious experiences and, frankly, stuff picked up from TV and movies.

Which isn't necessarily bad, so long as you can distinguish tropes and stereotypes from reality.

I'm all for getting feedback from people with real experience, but that is still second hand, still somewhat in the above category. My fallback when I'm writing outside my direct experience and don't have access to another brain that does have that experience, is to think of the characters as a person, first. Get my head into their point of view, just try to walk in their shoes through a mundane day. Then put them in the situation of the story. What do they know that people without that experience don't know? What are they feeling about that specific situation? What is it they want from this experience, or from life in general?

There's no substitute for direct experience, but 80% of what a particular experience is like for them is more or less common to what it is like for any person, and some of what the experience is like can be exrapolated from analagous experiences I have had. The other 20% though, is where the story really happens. I just try my best to apply my vicarious experience and or what I learned from media on top of all of the above.

Three and a half of my stories (Bay Window, Then there were Five, and Santa's Little Helpers, Aces2-Jennifer (one scene from a female pov)) are written from the female's perspective, something I obviously have zero experience with. I'd love to get some feedback from actual women how believeable/relatable the experience of those characters is to them. Two of those four are at the bottom of the ratings of my stories, but still over 4.3.