Tunnel of Love Pt. 05

When a film is released on DVD, the studio often will try to entice buyers by including "extras" such as "making of" documentaries, director's commentaries, deleted scenes, etc. For my re-release of The Chanceys as Tunnel of Love, I thought I'd try to add value with some similar extras. It also seemed like a convenient way to collect, reflect on, and respond to the feedback I received and maybe help other new authors avoid some mistakes I made.

If knowing how the sausage gets made tends to spoil your appetite, if you prefer to develop your own interpretation a story, and/or if you have no interest in becoming a contributor to Literotica, you may want to turn back now.

FROM READER TO AUTHOR—PART I

"Longtime reader, first time author"—that was me, when I started writing The Chanceys. I'd begun a few potential submissions to Literotica but had never finished them. I had pretty much decided to remain just a reader when The Seducer: Mission Impossible ("TS:MI") by Austin.erotica posted and spurred me into action.

I was perplexed by the Jennifer Chancey character, an ambiguous heroine who seemed to have unresolved "issues" that could warrant a spin-off. Also, I was intrigued with how her husband Mike—who barely appears in the story—could have been in the dark the whole time of her adventure with "The Seducer," how Mike might eventually have discovered it, and what consequences might have ensued. Furthermore, I thought TS:MI raised interesting questions about the Loving Wives genre, which I'd been trying to explore in my unfinished stories.

I'd seen precedent on the site for alternative endings or continuations of other authors' stories. Just to scratch the itch, I penciled out a very rough outline of a sequel to TS:MI and wrote about a chapter and a half. I expected I would lose interest in the project, as I had in others I'd begun—but I didn't. So, I sent the draft to Austin, half-hoping he'd tell me to get lost!

But when Austin graciously gave me the green light, I decided to go for it. I found a volunteer editor (CopperSkink) and sent him Chapter One while I worked on Chapters Two and Three. CopperSkink's remarks about Chapter One were, ahem, honest, but when I got cold feet, he dared me to post it anyway. So I made some revisions, sent it in, and totally freaked out when it posted.

"The Chanceys" being my first time out—with a risky concept and a first chapter that didn't do much on its own—I was prepared for it to bomb. Sure enough, Chapter One didn't make any Top Lists. But the feedback exceeded my modest target, so up went Chapters Two and Three in pretty quick succession.

Though I pillaged my other, unfinished original works for ideas (and even scenes) for this story, the foundation of course was TS:MI. Having some "givens" from which to start got me farther off the ground then I'd gotten on my own. They also proved constraining at times; staying true to the original plot and characters sometimes felt like a "mission impossible," when my own ideas and readers' comments were pulling and pushing me in other possible directions.

However, I refused to change, ignore, or "explain away" any "given" from TS:MI. I thought it would be disrespectful to Austin and cheating on my part. Many readers who commented on my story—including Austin—appreciated the consistency between his tale and mine. Funny, now that I think about it, that fidelity was my golden rule when writing a story about infidelity.

Speaking of infidelity, I tried to learn from (or more accurately, imitate) titans of the Loving Wives genre, including S-Des, K.K., Ohio, and Longhorn_07. In fact, my story is as much about the Loving Wives genre as it is a part of it; that was the secret agenda of the project. Sadly, I must have disguised the agenda too well, because it didn't seem to catch many readers' attention.

DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY—PART I

Prologue & Chapter One

What kind of man is Mike Chancey? Very little is said about him in TS:MI. He's identified as a software engineer. We're told that "in Jennifer's heart and mind," Mike is "manly" and "very good looking." Speaking to James, Peter Wombert derides him as "a fucking boy scout. You know what I mean? The kind of man who cries at movies, shares all his deepest secrets with his wife...."

Mike appears in only four scenes in TS:MI. There's the quickie sex scene in the morning on the day that Jennifer meets James, the blowjob scene that night, a brief morning scene on the day that Jennifer first visits the hospital, and a dinner scene after Jennifer returns from that first visit. Presumably because it's inessential to TS:MI, we're told nothing about how Mike gets along as "the weeks pass by" or what happens when Jennifer comes home after being at James' apartment.

From the limited "givens," I imagined Mike as an intelligent, logical, decent, and sensitive fellow. Discounting Jennifer's impression of Mike for her love factor, I imagined Mike as decent looking, but not "very good looking." (I never described him physically, however; I thought I would let the reader do that.) I also imagined someone who in his formative years was insecure around pretty girls, who felt himself unable (or perhaps just unwilling?) to "compete" with smoother, better-looking men, and who took years to feel confident and secure in his marriage to Jennifer. Good stuff, I thought, for making drama out of what he would discover about Jennifer's adventure with James.

Sensitivity is one thing, but most LW readers dislike wimps; being one such reader, I didn't want Mike to be a wimp. While Peter's "fucking boy scout" comment was meant to ridicule Mike's "good guy" persona, I thought it could also suggest someone with a strong sense of duty, great discipline, and toughness. I imagined that those virtues would vie with his long-dormant insecurity and his heartache and moral outrage over Jennifer's indiscretions for an interesting conflict.

I also liked the idea of Mike actually having been a boy scout. This cemented some of his characteristics and helped me imagine his relationship with his son, Mikey. It also came in handy later in the story, as a reservoir of experiences Mike could draw upon in reflecting and acting upon his situation.

Plotting Chapter One was blessedly simple—I just imagined everything Mike could have perceived, thought, and felt in connection with what happened to Jennifer in TS:MI. I began by rewriting, to fit Mike's perspective, the four "given" scenes with Jennifer; then I interpolated and extrapolated. This was an interesting exercise for me, but I wasn't sure anyone else would find it interesting. I hope it works better now that it's integrated into a larger story part.

It seems clear from TS:MI that through the end, Mike was in the dark about Jennifer's adventure. One objective of Chapter One was to lay some land mines for Mike to step on in Chapter Three that would blast him into the light (if you can call it that). Jennifer's cover story as to whom she was volunteering with ("Susan") is briefly described in TS:MI, and being a big fan of the "lie coming back to haunt you" device, I built it up in my story.

Imagining that Mike would at some point express interest in visiting the hospital with Jennifer, I invented her further deception (regarding the "hospital rules"). I also considered having Mike go to the hospital despite Jennifer's lie and having him see Jennifer leave with James (or having Mike get there a little later and hear about it from the staff). I decided against that, but I still had Mike almost go to the hospital, only to be prevented by Mikey getting sick.

Chapter One includes an appearance of Collette Davis, a new character. I trust it was obvious that Mike's behavior during and after the "fundraiser flashback" was meant to provide a contrast with how Jennifer behaved with James. Some readers may also have suspected that Collette would return in later chapters as a love interest; after all, a cheating/consequence story must have another, better woman who catches the victimized husband on the rebound, right? (But jeez, a drunk divorcee? Would Mike really get so desperate?)

Chapter Two

Speaking of fallen women, what are we to make of Jennifer Charlotte Chancey? I'm not sure there is a definitive answer; readers of TS:MI certainly didn't agree upon one. Chapter Two was the beginning of my effort to imagine how this so-called Loving Wife went off the rails—and how she hoped to recover.

It wasn't easy. Jennifer is mass of contradictions in TS:MI. She's a "pretty boring person" who keeps "fluffy bunny slippers" by the bed; she's also smoking hot and sucks cock like a porn star when she's in the mood. She's naïve and vulnerable one moment, calculating and assertive the next. Is there any hope for making sense of this character and what she did?

It's quite possible that Jennifer was never intended by her creator to stand up under a microscope as a realistic character. She wasn't even the main character in TS:MI—that was James Coltez—and clearly, Jennifer's behavior was meant to serve James' story arc. She had to get involved with him, but she also had to pull back—otherwise, James wouldn't have had an opportunity to learn and change. Furthermore, there would have been little suspense and eroticism if Jennifer had not been described as a happy, faithful wife (James' mission to seducer her was supposed to be "impossible," remember)—or if, despite that premise, she had not fallen under his spell.

So arguably, Jennifer was more of a plot device than a rigorous, serious character. Arguably, I say, because on the other hand, Austin invested Jennifer with a lot of background, and he gave her a lot of screen time. Indeed, many scenes in the second and third chapters of TS:MI were from her point of view. Perhaps we were meant to take her seriously after all? Perhaps we were meant to be convinced that she had reasons to dally? Not good reasons, necessarily—but plausible reasons?

Ultimately Jennifer did what she did because it's what Austin wanted her to do, and maybe we should leave it at that when we read TS:MI. In order to tell a consequence story, however, I had to do more. I resisted the temptation to seek inside information; I didn't ask Austin for explanations or clues. I worked with what everyone else had to work with—the text of TS:MI.

"If Jennifer had one flaw," we're told in TS:MI, "it was her pride." Pride, in her case, particularly involves vanity. "She worked hard to maintain a good figure," we learn, "and she loved it when men still noticed her...she secretly loved the attention she got." Soon, we see Jennifer's pride leading her down a dark path with James.

When we last see Jennifer in TS:MI, that pride rears its head again. She seems remarkably free of guilt—instead, she's filled with embarrassment and anger. "I can't believe I was handled by two people I really trusted," she reflects. "I can't believe I bought [James'] bullshit! And to think, I almost ruined my marriage for him!"

It struck me that Jennifer spoke of "ruining her marriage" like one might speak of ruining one's car. She didn't seem to feel bad for the car—rather, she felt bad that she almost lost something she liked having. Worse, she felt bad that she almost lost it out of gullibility. That didn't seem to sit well with her ego, and to compensate, she patted herself on the back for supposedly triumphing over James and Peter in the end.

Jennifer's pride and smugness seemed like the right starting place for my continuation of her story. However, just as I didn't want to make Mike a wimp, I didn't want to make Jennifer a monster (at least, not any more of a monster than she might already have seemed). Jennifer demonstrated some positive traits in TS:MI, and I suspect she was meant to be a sympathetic character. I thought it important in my story to show that she's a sweet person and a devoted teacher, and that she loved (and still loves) Mike.

Jennifer's lingering feelings for James at the end of that story was one of the things I found most difficult to handle but obligated to acknowledge and maintain in my story. So in Chapter Two, I tried to flesh out those lingering feelings and imagine how they might have affected her when she returned home from James' apartment and through her last scene in TS:MI, when she plays her little games on James and Peter. Chapter Two also explores how, once she'd played those games, she might have tried to put her feelings in perspective and move on.

Don't let this discussion of character study fool you, though. First and foremost, I intended my story to be a suspense story. Intrigue, danger, mystery, twists—I wanted my story to be kinetic, though enhanced by character development. So I was smirking with glee as I ended Chapter Two with a cliffhanger—Jennifer's world seeming about to unravel, but for reasons yet unknown to her and the reader.

Chapter Three

Chapter Three was the first of several chapters in the story to skip around in time. In fact, the entire chapter is a skip. It begins with the clock resetting to Sunday morning, where Chapter Two had begun.

Why? First, at this point, I was trying to stick to one character's point of view per chapter. Telling the story of both characters' Sundays, chronologically, would have required hopping from head to head, and I wasn't ready to try that yet. Second, after putting the reader in Mike's head for all of Chapter One, I thought we should dwell in Jennifer's for a while before returning to his. Third, I didn't want Mike's unfolding day to distract from Jennifer's reflections. Fourth, I like twists, and Jennifer's encounter with a somber Mike upon her arrival at home wouldn't have been a twist if readers had known what Mike had experienced that day. So, Jennifer got Chapter Two all to herself, and Mike got Chapter Three.

To lead Mike to his discovery of Jennifer's indiscretions, I wanted to employ as many elements from TS:MI as possible. I'd already built up the "Susan" story in Chapter One, and now, I was able to pay that off. Jennifer had spent time with James at the gym and the hospital, so I wanted Mike to go to those places. Arranging those elements, however, was tricky, and I struggled with Mike's single-day progression from trusting, oblivious husband to doubting, suspecting wreck. (I applied some fine-tuning in this revision, which hopefully makes the progression more compelling.)

Chapter Three is where I began experimenting with imagery and metaphor. I don't know how the tiger motif came to me, but yes, it could be from Rocky III. As for the wall, that was a play on a couple of references in TS:MI to a wall around Jennifer's heart, which kept out other men. Jennifer's wall didn't last long in the face of James, and I thought it would be interesting to give Mike a vulnerable wall of his own, albeit a wall that served a different purpose. I had the Great Wall of China in mind, but also "the Wall" from George Martin's Song of Fire and Ice books—walls raised to keep out barbarians and demons. Pink Floyd's "The Wall" was probably a factor too.

Speaking of music, Chapter Three marked the beginning of the lyrical influences in the story. Music occasionally makes its way into Literotica, but musical taste seems rarely employed to define character. In Chapter Three, a lyric from Springsteen's Tunnel of Love album takes center stage in Mike's reactions at critical juncture.

That album took on increasing significance to Mike (and increasingly played in my head) as the story unfolded; so much so that I came to wish I'd named the series after it. I took the liberty of doing that with this revision. I've also added, to the beginning of each chapter, lyrics that had set a tone for what I was writing.

Also for this release, I shortened each of the chapters. The most dramatic cuts were to the sex scenes. I worked really hard on all of those scenes, so trimming them was a hard decision! However, I had written the sex scenes in each chapter last. I'd have an idea for the scene, but I'd just put a marker down and come back to it later. I tried to write a story that could stand up pretty well without sex scenes. Consequently, in this revision, trimming those scenes proved to be a way to shed words without disrupting the rest of the story.

I expect some will still think the scenes are too long or even unnecessary. One reader who emailed me said:

The long, graphic sexual descriptions are not central to the story. The sexual relationship between Mike an Jennifer is central; a concise description would not distract from the power of the plot vector. This is a good beginning to a very good story. Thanks for writing.

While I did trim the sex scenes in this revision, I chose not to eviscerate them because I still feel they serve important purposes. For example, the first sex scene in Chapter One (imported from TS:MI) demonstrates that our "fucking boy scout" is as horny as the next guy, not bad at actually fucking, and in tune with Jennifer's body in particular. That's important because it eliminates sexual dissatisfaction as a reason for Jennifer's interest in James.

On the other hand, that scene also shows that Mike and Jennifer face the typical challenges of the married-with-children crowd when it comes to extended or creative sexual encounters. I wanted to explore the idea that the Chanceys (and by extension, any married couple) "still have it in them" to tear it up if they make the effort. I was interested in the idea that as part of her rededication to and reconnection with Mike, Jennifer might break out of some old molds.

One of the LW genre's civil wars is between those who would interpret "loving wives" literally ("conventionalists") and those who prefer an ironic interpretation ("tabooists"). At the heart of this war is the question of what is erotic. For these early chapters, I tried to write some decent "married sex" scenes to please conventionalists and maybe give tabooists something to think about! However, respecting tabooists—readers who were disappointed by Jennifer's resistance of James in TS:MI—my story would later give them some scenes to enjoy.

READER REACTION—PART I

Chapter One

The first comment on Chapter One was rough:

PURE CRAP, B.S.—You don't need a part two—STOP HERE—don't waste any more brain cells on part two.

Comment #2 wasn't any more encouraging. It was just: "00." For you newbies, that comment corresponded to the old "thermometer" rating that used to be required as part of a public comment. Unlike in the world of James Bond, a "double-o" was not an indication of high rank!

Things started to look up in with Comment #3:

I don't know about those who have rated this poorly, but this is a great opening chapter. It lays out all of the elements of the story, gives suspense as to what 'might' be happening, as well as what is important to move the story along. I like the way you present the story in 3rd person, but also give a 1st person's POV as 'thoughts' intermixed. I visualize this technique more in a movie with the protag's voice-over to give the audience more insight. Very well done.

Over the course of the series, I received many similar comments about the intermixture of third-person narrative and first-person direct thought. I borrowed the technique from TS:MI and other stories, despite reading that technically it's a big no-no. Based on the positive reader response, it seems some rules can be broken on Literotica.

Comment #3 also mentioned "suspense as to what 'might' be happening." I wrote my story so that it could stand independently from TS:MI, but I expected that it would be read by people who had read TS:MI. So, I intended Chapter One to be full of dramatic irony—the reader would know what Mike doesn't. As it turned out, my story reached many who had missed TS:MI. On those readers, the dramatic irony was lost, but in its place, the chapter held suspense. That was a trade-off I had not anticipated, and it challenged and affected my later writing.