Creative Writing: In Theory

Whenever I write fiction or creative nonfiction for my blog, I feel the need to preface it. So here I go.

I want to call this an outline. I have a concept for a story, but this is how far I got. It's kind of a character sketch, kind of not. I haven't decided who the girl in the story is - if she even needs an identity. Well. I'm digressing. Just read:


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He took a sombre satisfaction in thinking that perhaps all along she had been nothing except what he had read into her. (This Side of Paradise, pp. 105-106)

She only liked Alex in theory. She liked the way he might have looked if he dressed the way she wanted him to. She liked the way he would take her out to her favorite restaurant and order her favorite wine and laugh at all her jokes and hold her hand by dessert. She liked how he would walk with her through the woods behind her house, down a path that didn’t really exist, and kiss her for the first time under the brightest moon she could imagine. She liked him for all of that, but Alex didn’t do any of those things. He didn’t even know how she spelled her name, much less her favorite wine.

Besides, she was with Sean and he had done all of those things, except that he wasn’t much fun to daydream about. Because when he takes her to her favorite restaurant, he orders her favorite wine without asking first, he laughs at her jokes but expects her to laugh at his, and he holds her hand from the appetizers to the chocolate cake. And when they walk down through the woods behind her house, the moon isn’t bright enough to keep her footing – she slips, but he catches her.