Anybody Go to BU? (and NaNoWriMo Update)

According to my writing spreadsheet, I’m on track to finish NaNoWriMo, but I’ll need to come up with more scenes in the novel. I’m averaging 616 words per scene, which is around half what I had originally estimated. Not a problem, because I have a number of additional, unplanned scenes already on the back burner, as well as several related side stories that can be developed to enhance the main story.

I’m also discovering that this story is emotionally exhausting to write, because it’s such a powerful story. This is the first story I’ve written in which I really think I can empathize with my female point-of-view character. In the past, I’ve written female POV characters by imagining a situation that would make me as a man feel and think similarly to my female character, and then translate. But that trick can only take you so far. Eventually, you run into situations that have no analogue in the opposite sex. At that point, you simply have to put yourself in your female (or if you’re a woman, male) character’s shoes, and write what she experiences and what she feels.

Today, my female character wrote a memoir, telling the story of how a boy she liked made advances on her—clumsily. That’s something I as a man have never experienced, and will never experience.

Note that this is not about understanding the “female mind,” or “a woman would never do that,” or any such thing. That’s a different subject, because you can understand how a character thinks and feels—male or female—and still not be able to step into her shoes. This is about putting myself fully into someone else’s skin and understanding the world from their perspective. It was actually quite enlightening.

My characters went to BU, but I didn’t.

I also got held up today researching Boston University. Both of my characters went to BU, but I’ve never so much as been on-campus. (I’ve driven Commonwealth Ave through the campus, but that’s not the same thing.) And even if I had toured the campus, that alone still wouldn’t have imparted to me the gestalt of the experience of actually taking classes there.

So, if you’ve attended BU, please read through the following scene, and leave a comment below to let me know where I missed the BU experience. Thanks.

-TimK

Background: Gail is a psychology major. George doesn’t know where he’s going (i.e., liberal arts). Both then are in the College of Arts and Sciences, where this scene takes place.

I first met Gail Bishop because of an English Lit course I took as a freshman in college. It was one of the only useful things college ever gave me. My friends and I were chatting about something or other, before class started, when I happened to glance up to see from across the room a pretty brunette walk in. She wore plain clothes—a T-shirt, jeans, and sneakers—and to most men, she probably would not have appeared incredibly sexy, but my eyes were captivated by her. Quietly, she scanned the seating area, selected a lone desk along the edge opposite to me, and sat, placing her book on the desk before her.

Some friend had been speaking to me at the time, and I must have missed what he was saying, because he noticed my shift of attention. He asked, “Do you like her?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t met her yet.”

“I have. She’s in my psychology class. She spent almost the whole first class arguing with the professor.” He chuckled. “What a dork,” he added.

I thought that was a pretty rotten thing to say. Of course, I had not been there. I didn’t know what the disagreement was about. But if her psychology professor, I reasoned, allowed her to go on, and if she was still in the class, then it must not have been that bad. For all I knew, she might have been the only one in class who actually got what the professor was talking about, and cared about it.

“I’m going to go talk to her,” I said.

I think he might have laughed at me behind my back, but I didn’t care. I walked over and sat at the desk in front of her. She was intently examining a map.

“Hi,” I said, smiling.

She looked up. “Hi,” she responded.

I introduced myself, but she didn’t tell me her name.

“Can I help you with that?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I was just trying to figure out how to get to my next class.”

“Makes sense,” I said. “So where is it?”

“STH 525”

“That’s a couple doors down from this building. It’s across the plaza.” I pointed to an area on her map. “You know, with the crazy sculpture in the middle here. So we’re here right now. You go down, past the chapel, and then it’s the building right across on the other side.”

“Oh,” she said. “That’s simple.”

“Yeah. Pretty much. I had a class there yesterday. I actually don’t have anywhere to go after this class, so I can show you where it is.”

“That’s okay. You don’t have to do that,” she said.

I didn’t know whether she was just trying to be polite or whether she was pushing me off.

“I heard you had a blowout with your psych professor.” I changed the subject. “I didn’t believe it, though, not until I heard it from you.”

“What?” She stared quizzically at me. Then she shook her head. “It was nothing.”

She paused.

“We just disagreed about what psychology was.”

I chuckled at that, which prompted a dissertation on the subject. I don’t remember what she said, but by the time she was done, I agreed with her point of view, and I knew in my gut that the professor didn’t know what he was talking about.