Subtle Cheese

I’m allergic to cheese.  Not the tasty stuff you eat.  That’s my lifeblood.  I’m talking about fictional cheese, like cringe-worthy dialogue and surprise happy endings that bring out my inner cynic.  You know, when it all gets overwhelmingly sappy and you have to either laugh or cower in secondhand embarrassment.

Subtlety is a real art, a fine line that exists between saying nothing or going too far.  The deceptive thing about subtlety is that it necessarily looks easy, but it is really hard to convey, especially in writing.  Everything that happens has to be described, so that even an understated head turn announces itself.

Often I read through my fiction with a finger on the backspace key, ready to delete anything that even approaches the cheese line.  When I’m successful, what’s left is subtle but meaningful character interactions in language that’s not all, HEY! LOOK AT ME!!!  When I’m not successful, what’s left is horribly boring and lifeless.

Because cheese isn’t all bad.  It can be fun or moving and not cringe worthy. Sometimes, cynic be damned, my face lights up when she’s missing him and she turns a corner to find him standing there.  And he tells her how much he loves her.  And she gives him a Dawson’s Creek-style mouth-full-of-big-words response that’s more of a speech than a “hey, I love you too.”  Sure, if you break it down and read it in a mocking voice, you can go on about how people don’t really speak that way and how did he know he’d find her there? and eww, love.

Cheese: it does have a place.  It’s pretty hard to write interesting fiction in a monotone-like style where nothing too dramatic ever happens.  Even real life often lacks subtlety and fiction is not real life.  So, cheese, I’m learning to embrace you or eat you or whatever makes sense in the context of this metaphor.