When was chapter 10 released again? Mid-April? Earlier? Probably. Well, hey, I said I’d get GBM 11 out two weeks after I published Only If You Want, and here we are.

SPOILERS AHEAD

This chapter was an interesting one to write. Definitely a transitional chapter. A lot of crazy information has been given, now we have to see how the characters adapt to it. And God knows it wouldn’t be a Bashful Scribe story if the characters reacted to it reasonably and well.

I don’t regularly consume alcohol. I don’t think I’ve ever been drunk in my life before. I got drunk alone one night and wrote all of Molly’s dialogue, then cleaned it up when I was sober again. There are certain things we’ll have to speculate as writers (for example, I’ll never be able to 100% accurately write from the perspective of a woman, but I won’t give a hard no to writing from a female perspective for a protagonist), but as a general rule, experience as much as possible.

You can’t write about nature having stayed cooped up in your bedroom for the last four months (unless detached longing is your goal). You can’t write about entire walks of life purely out of speculation. Even if you wanted to write about being in the mafia, if you watched a mafia movie that’s good enough for a baseline, but you can’t hear about the mafia and immediately know how to write a story about them.

For that reason I broke my rule on drinking. I specifically called up a friend before I drank and let them know what I was doing, that I was being safe, and that I was going to call them later and have an argument with them. They were confused but accepted. So I did, and I used not necessarily what was said, but what I felt, to fuel what later became Molly’s weird stubbornness in this chapter.

It’s important to get inside the minds of characters to the best of one’s ability. Feel their emotions, understand their goals. Even in erotic writing, this will help. Even as a reader, knowing what experiences characters are going through helps deepen the story. It’s why we read stories, to relate to the characters, or to laugh at them for making mistakes they made that we didn’t when faced with the same hardships. It’s a fine line between relatability and setting an example of what to do and what not to do. I’ll talk to you all next week.