Stuck on a touchy piece of writing

[valarltd]

Shell-shocked is a piece Naomi and I are working on at the moment.

It's touchy in a lot of ways. There are political, religious and disability issues brought up in it.


We want to make sure of a few things:
1) We're not exploiting disability or mental illness.

2) We're not exploiting or being disrespectful to veterans.

3) We're not squicking our audience by presenting a pair of disabled lovers.

4) Our guys are likeable and strong enough to carry the story.

5) We're getting the religion right and not being idiots about it.

Anyone who wants to help, bounce over, have a read of the first 9K words, and tell me your opinion.

We're thinking of going novel length and we want it to work.

Comments

[samcdermott65.livejournal.com]

With this character's name the first person I thought of was Sean. :)

The Jarhead reference was here or at least I interpreted it as such:

>Lately, he'd been seeing a lot more calls for gay romances. Bless >Billary and Don't Ask, Don't Tell, he thought as he saved his editing on >the treacly Christmas cowboy piece. He'd put in a good hour on a science >fiction story, getting six pages written. Typing wasn't his strongest >skill. The edits had taken another hour and a half. Now it was his time >and he'd found a great idea under the soap dish in the shower this >morning.

I hope the feedback helped some.

shari

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

It sure did. Thank you so much.

Nice to know we're not out on a limb with this.
I felt like we were really getting whacko

[samcdermott65.livejournal.com]

Cool!

This is one story that could easily turn that way. You'll need to remain cognizant of that throughout writing this story. Right now, it's the start of a what will ultimately be a loving, caring relationship.

shari

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

That's exactly where we're trying to keep it.

Sean becomes Gabe's legs. Gabe talks Sean back from the edge when he's freaking.

Then there are complications... false abuse reports, pneumonia, eviction, etc. And they cope.

[samcdermott65.livejournal.com]

Sounds like it's going to get a bit ugly, but real life isn't all peaches and cream. I wish it were. I'm very interested to see how this turns out.

shari