The 'Almost Kiss'
I'm pretty new to the romance genre. Despite always loving the romantic subplots of any books or shows I watched the most, or my necessity to always follow romance options in video games, I always wrote it off as boring. Yet since my introduction to the genre a few years ago, I read one about every other month. I even intentionally sought out a horror novel with a very prominent romantic B-plot. Check out my blog entry on The Hacienda by Isabel Canas
So, when I decided to write Deep in the Heart of Texas, I wanted to familiarize myself more with romance and how to build tension.
During tonight's writing session, I wrote the 'almost kiss' scene.
For the context, it is the end of the first week of school and many of the staff at the school have convened on an open-air bar just outside of town for a bit of community building. Our two leads end up meeting, and decide to split a hamburger together from a food truck, and proceed to get drunk with two more of their friends.
The two friends leave, and the two MCs are alone, sitting on a hay bale in the pasture, a bit removed from the main crowd. They realize they are sitting extremely close together, and all the growing chemistry begins to bubble. As they are sitting there, the live music at the bar begins to play an acoustic version of Dancing in the Dark by Bruce Springsteen.
Once I had decided on the song that would play, I decided to find an acoustic version of the Springsteen classic and found something truly magicak. Check it out below, y'all.
The moment I heard this cover by Jordan Caiola, I went back and re-wrote some of the details of this chapter (usually a no-no in Writing Month) to change the performer from a country-western style artist to an acoustic rock style artist.
I'm going to check out more of this dude's music. It's wonderful to discover new things.
I'm at 16898/50000 words as of finishing my writing tonight. I am actually two hundred words or so over where I needed to reach tonight, but I couldn't stop writing until their friends return when their lips are just a breath apart.
Thank you if you read to this point.