Climbing - My Commentary

There are spoilers in here, so read the story first!

I started this story on a whim, taking a break from another story that was starting to drag. Initially, I was going to use a standard structure, a single storyline. I wrote a short introduction and skipped ahead to the climbing part.

I realized pretty early the climbing would be too intense, and it would get tedious in one long scene. And I didn't like having a sex story where no hints of sex happened for half the story!

So I decided to try the alternating structure. I kind of chopped up the story I had already written and pieced it back together, and started writing the intermediate chunks. It turned into a mess. So I started over again, and I actually mapped out the whole damn story, what each section would be. The climb pretty much determines the whole story. I think I ended up with 18 sections in the climb, and they mostly wrote themsevles. I just needed 18 other scenes to fill the gaps.

I knew I wanted to have a sex scene coinciding with him reaching the top. And I had this dumb stream-standing thing from the first draft. And I had the pull-up discussion. Which left me about halfway there.

That's when I decided to really play up the confidence aspects. It started as a fill, but it gradually took over the whole damn story. I made a major rewrite to get the confidence more prominent. And it gave me a reason for the stream-standing. And a reason why she was alone wandering around in the campground. And it let me stick in the "I got fucked!" line, which I like a lot. I couldn't believe how easily it all fit together.

As for the ending, several people complained about it, and I'm not sure I wrapped it up successfully. I was surprised at the number of people who asked why she had married that clod boyfriend. To me, it didn't really matter who she was married to, just that he was a nice guy, and she was climbing Yosemite on her honeymoon (in case you're wondering, she climbed El Capitan :-) I thought people would wonder if it was the old boyfriend, but I didn't think anyone would think so for sure. Well, a lot of people thought so for sure. And I can understand why that might be puzzling. If I had to do it again, I would not try to be ambiguous with the husband's identity. I'd probably have her definitely married to somebody different. But I think that is a very different ending, and I'm not sure it makes the point as strongly.

The parts I like best? I like the section where he's feeling her climb through the rope; it's probably the part I worked on hardest. And I liked the section where she first comes up over the top edge. In my mind, the most erotic sections were the two leading up to the first coupling, where she is fingering his hands, and when he touches her for the first time. I loved writing the back massage part, but I'm not sure it's important to the story.

The dumbest part was when she takes off her shirt at the halfway point on the climb. But it's the only part of the whole damn story that really happened!

I'm generally very happy with it, however.