Abs – Overt Expectations in Fiction
ABS (SOLUTELY NOT)
(OVERLY) GREAT EXPECTATIONS
Don’t you love it? You meet a character in fiction who spends his nights drinking and carousing. Then he passes his days lounging by the pool, drinking double martinis, while his only form of exercise seems to be bedding a different woman every night. And yet….
“Tabitha held her breath as Tristan removed his shirt to reveal….(now, get this)….a set of tanned, perfectly sculpted washboard abs.”
Really? How come no one I know – not a single person – has a set of perfectly sculpted washboard abs?
Do I only hang out with losers?
And yet many books – mostly romance novels – are overflowing with them. They’re literally everywhere, on nearly every page.
Couldn’t someone, somewhere – at least once – write a line like this:
“Tabitha held her breath as Tristan removed his shirt to reveal a pasty white mass of gelatinous flesh, mottled with purplish-pink stretch marks sagging four inches below the waist of his too-tight 501’s.”
Sure, it wouldn’t be as titillating, but at least it would be more realistic. And it would sure as hell make ME feel a lot better about myself, and not such a worthless, lazy, loser, just because I have a NORMAL pasty-white gelatinous mass of flesh for a stomach.
Instead of always creating perfect specimens for characters, why not try peopling your stories with….(here’s an idea) PEOPLE! REAL people. People with flaws.
It’s okay. It really is.
In fact, some people might even like your characters more if they had flaws they could identify with.
