Finding the Fire (Day #83)
Help me.
It’s Day # 83 and I’ve just discovered a giant, glaring hole in the middle of my story.
Okay, so I’m exaggerating. It’s not really a hole so much as a weakness. A place in my story – a single scene – where I need to go further and deeper. But I have 17 days to finish this thing. Strengthening weak story points is simply NOT ON THE AGENDA.
Except now it has to be.
So that’s what I spent yesterday doing: trying to make a tepid moment into a fiery one. For most of the day it felt like I was banging my head against a brick wall. I just couldn’t seem to crack this scene. And then I realized my problem: I was trying too hard. I was trying to manufacture its fieriness when I should have been trying to uncover its fieriness.
The scene I’m struggling with is one in which two best friends, both mature, intelligent, and likable seventeen-year-old girls (yes, I believe such creatures exist), get into a huge, potentially friendship-ending fight. I spent yesterday morning focused on what triggers their fight — the thing that sets them off — until I realized that the trigger doesn’t really matter. Think about your biggest fight with your best friend. Was the thing that set you off really what you were fighting about?
So I changed tactics. And while I made some great progress, I’m still not 100% there.
Which is why I need your help.
I need BFF fight stories. What triggered your fight doesn’t matter — I’m interested in why you were really fighting. What underlying issues came spewing out once the gloves were off? I’m thinking of things like jealousy and insecurity and guilt and anxiety and fear and arrogance. Things that influence both our actions and our reactions. Issues that may have affected the distribution of power in the relationship. Were you the pretty friend? The smart friend? The funny friend? The popular friend? Or was it the other way around? Or maybe you and your BFF were equals, but she (or you) had a tendency to monopolize conversations or spill secrets or hog the spotlight.
In the case of my characters, the fight happens after my protagonist, Abby, tells a guy that her best friend, Caitlin, likes him. Abby has a feeling that Caitlin secretly likes this guy (who, by the way, has a girlfriend), and thus (in her mind at least) is just trying to facilitate what she thinks would be a good relationship. But it’s not true. Caitlin doesn’t like this guy. And even if it were true, we all know that telling a guy that your best friend likes him without your best friend’s authorization is a clear violation of the BFF code. When Abby comes clean about what happened, Caitlin blows up, accusing Abby of doing it out of fear that the guy Abby likes really likes Caitlin.
Did you get all that?
What I’m trying to nail down now is why the fight escalates the way that it does. Because really, what I’ve just described isn’t a HUGE deal, even for high school girls. So why does it become one?
Here’s what you should know about my characters (and, be warned, I’m going to do this fast and off-the-cuff): Caitlin is beautiful, confident and smart (in a very left-brained, practical way). But she’s not arrogant – at least, not when it comes to her looks (mainly because she doesn’t notice them). She’s unemotional, but not cold. She just thinks with her head not her heart. Hyper-focused on what really matters to her — her passion for science and her career as a scientist — Caitlin often gets frustrated with stupid high school crap. She’d rather be in a physics lab then hanging out with other high school kids. But she’s a great friend.
Abby, on the other hand, thinks mostly with her heart. And although she’s driven, her drive stems from deep-seated perfectionism, not passion. Abby is a constant overthinker, yet at the same time, she often says things without meaning to. She’s well-intentioned but has a tendency to be self-involved. She’s also never completely satisfied, always somewhat anxious, mostly because she doesn’t live in the moment – she’s too busy projecting to next week or next year. Abby has never been jealous of Caitlin – or at least, has never thought of herself as being jealous of Caitlin – but it does bother her when the guy she currently likes seems taken with Caitlin (something that has definitely happened before).
But I’m telling you all of this just for context. What I’m really looking for are YOUR stories. Real-life fiery moments. Complicated friend dynamics. The deep, gritty, not-so-picture-perfect stuff.
The stuff that makes our friendships real.
JB
Saturday, 24 April, 2010 at 19:36When I was in eighth grade, I actually got into a wrestling match with my best friend! We were NOT the kind of girls who did this kind of thing. We were both cool nerds–meaning we were friends with the cool kids but were ourselves in honors classes, band, etc. The problem was, we were in EVERYTHING together. The same classes, the same after school activities, the same social group. We had other friends that we hung out with, but we just couldn’t escape each other. I loved sharing everything with her…BUT everything that she did drove me crazy–and I think vice versa. I felt like she was self-centered and didn’t care about me.
So we were on the 8th grade trip to Washington DC, sharing a room with two of our other BFFs. We all thought we were so big and cool. But I was always so insecure about how I looked, what I wore, etc. My friend always seemed to look great so effortlessly. Somehow on this particular morning, I was the last one to get in the shower, which was bad because it was going to take me a long time to get ready. When I got done with the shower, there were no clean towels left. I had to drip dry/dry off with a wash cloth. I was really pissed. I came out and asked my friends who had used all the towels and my friend said that she had needed two–one for her body and one for her hair. That really set me off! We started arguing, but not really fighting. We were kind of joking around (or at least pretending to) but we meant what we said. Suddenly, she jumped from her bed onto my bed and kind of tackled me. She was laughing, but I could tell she meant it. And I meant it too! We were having a physical fight! We rolled around and wrestled for like a minute, then we just got up and finished getting ready for the day. And you know what? That really seemed to do the trick! I wasn’t nearly so angry with her and we were better able to enjoy our trip!
Rachel @ MWF Seeking BFF
Saturday, 24 April, 2010 at 14:28Oh ok. Well, in high school I didn’t really get into fiery fights, but I did find myself frustrated a lot with my best friend because I felt like she was uber confident and always talking about herself, and I would be upset because she ALWAYS had a different boyfriend or guy who liked her. I, on the other hand, didn’t really make out with guys in the early high school days, not by choice. mind you. I was every guy’s friend, and I hated it. And was incredibly INCREDIBLY insecure, while my best friend was totally confident (or so it appeared to me). She would talk for hours on the phone to her boyfriend when i was over. So I was 1) jealous of her knack with guys, that she constantly got their attention and I just wanted to feel wanted to and 2) angry that she didn’t recognize what I was going through. I felt like she would talk to me incessantly about guy problems when all I wanted was to have guy problems! Also, keep in mind, that I lived outside the city while she lived downtown so I always always slept over her place. I would get upset that the boys seem to be more important than me when she would talk to them on the phone or ditch me for them or whatever.
The other biggest fight I can remember was senior year of college, when my friend was placed in a city she didn’t want for Teach for America. I’d heard from a friend that this is what happened, but that said friend didn’t want to talk about it. So when another friend and I got to the apartment we all shared, I tried to help her out by not harping on it and instead telling some stupid story about how i was left off some sorority email list. I was doing this because I truly believed she wanted to be distracted and think about other things since she couldnt change her placement. Boy was I wrong. She told me that I was selfish and who gave an f about the sorority listserv and sometimes I needed to get over myself. And I lost it right back, screaming at her about how I thought i was helping, but glad to hear she thought I was a selfish bitch all these years…. I stormed out.
That fight was a bad one. We got over it ,more or less, but it was really about the fact that we were just never perfectly compatible. We’d been thrust into friendship because we were in the same group of friends, and had each had bubbling up issues with the other.
Novel of a comment, but perhaps there’s somethign of worth in there.. Good luck!
Rachel Cotterill
Saturday, 24 April, 2010 at 9:45I wish I could help you, but I just don’t *have* fiery fights. I hardly have fights at all. I was, however, a total Caitlyn at school (not so much with the looks, though I was always the skinny one, but certainly with the science and logic).
Reflecting back to you what you’ve said, I’m not surprised that Caitlyn thinks Abby has done it deliberately: if most of what Abby thinks/does revolves around Abby, then why *else* would she stick her nose in?
One possible point of contention under the surface: maybe Abby does interfere more than she should (however well-meaning she may be). Maybe Caitlyn has a sense that Abby wants Caitlyn to be different, to be more Abby-like, emotional, etc. That’s certainly something I experienced plenty of, and I used to get mad (in a quiet, bottled-up kind of way) with people who wanted me to change.
Hmm, I don’t know if that helps you, but I’ve written it so I might as well post it now 😉
laurenmmiller
Saturday, 24 April, 2010 at 10:16Not only is it helpful, it’s spot-on. That’s exactly the dynamic between the two of them. And I need to use that! Thank you! And interesting what you say about not having fiery fights – Caitlin and Abby have never had one, either, which is exactly because Caitlin doesn’t inspire them with her temperament. Just like you!!!
erika
Saturday, 24 April, 2010 at 9:45the biggest fight i ever got in with my bff, ann, happened when we were on spring break together my junior year of high school. she had a thesis to write (she was in college) and was under a lot of pressure, and we had been travelling together for a week…
what set our fight off was that i was crunching my cereal too loudly! she was trying to concentrate and there i was, chewing my granola too loudly! it was the biggest fight of our 17 year friendship! lol.
laurenmmiller
Saturday, 24 April, 2010 at 10:19i love this because it’s SO REAL. So often, our biggest fights happen over the smallest things. What I want to know is how it escalated from the cereal chomping? What did you guys say to each other that made it such a big fight?