What I Learned About Kissing

/
I spent a lot of time the last couple of days bouncing around to other blogs that participated in the YA Highway Blog Carnival (see previous post) and I learned some interesting things about teenagers, human nature, and kissing in general.

Since most of you are smarter than I am, these may not be revelations but I’m hoping that they’ll act as reminders.
  1. Teenagers are awkward.  I can’t count the number of times I read the word ‘awkward’ as I checked out authors’ retellings of their first kiss. I have nerdy, shy, strange, pimply, quiet teenagers in my manuscripts.  But reading first hand accounts of teeth bumping, spit swapping, alcohol-induced stupidity from real people was very eye opening.  
  2. Everyone dreams about the perfect kiss, but fiction sets them up for disappointment.  Does that mean my characters are going to have horrible first kisses because most people do?  Heck no!  There are plenty of good first kisses out there…I just didn’t realize how lucky I was to be among them.
  3. First kisses are memorable. Both good and bad, everyone remembers the details of their first kiss…unless they were really drunk (btw, I only came across one of those). 
  4. Anticipation is usually better than the real thing. The tension, wanting, electricity before the first kiss is so HOT!  I loved how many people were able to build up the ‘before’ even if the ‘after’ sucked.
  5. Boys are yucky.  Sorry my three(ish) male readers, but it’s true.  So many stories related that Mr. First Kiss immediately became Mr. Make Out.  Hormones…eesh.  In other words, if you’re writing a “polite” male character, you really need to give the reader a strong foundation for his lack-of-attack.  Apparently, that doesn’t happen in real life all that often. 
  6. Stale gum, pizza, cigarettes and alcohol kill the sex appeal.  If you want to write an awful first kiss, just include those flavors.  Lots of people will sympathize.
Even though I may have had the best first kiss ever, I also probably had the worst kiss ever.  Actually, make that plural, the worst couple of kisses. 

Without getting into all the nasty details, Worst Kiss No. 1 involved a guy blowing a snot bubble onto my face during the kiss.  Worst Kiss No. 2 was a rapist-esque kiss that happened two days after I had my tonsils out. Can you say super disgusting?

Anyone else have a Worst Kiss story to share? 

32 Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

css.php