My Views on Writing "Dreams Hereafter"

by Serene Cherry

INTRODUCTION

To start off, I've never written an entire foreword for any of my stories before, but I thought
that it would be appropriate for this particular story seeing as how it became my new favorite
story even before I was finished writing it. Even more so, this is the first story I've written
that has made me physically cry and feel happy all in one sitting, a rather strange difference
from some of my more sexually based stories. Regardless, I've gotten a lot of questions and
comments on this story as to my intentions and feelings as I wrote it so I thought it would be
only right to express them.

When I first sat down at my computer with a blank page on my notepad, I looked back at some of
the other stories I've written as I always do. Before this one, my most recent story had been
"Sapphic Nocturne" which in essence was a gentle tale but still very dark and seductive. And
before that I wrote "Moonlit Temptations" which was basically a 57k sex romp. Not that I don't
like writing those kind of stories, of course, rather quite the opposite. I like to write for my
enjoyment first and foremost, but with each of my stories I always look for some kind of response
from my readers, hopefully a good one though not every one has been. For "Dreams Hereafter" I
wanted to write something different, something that meant a lot to me on a personal level,
something to express my values and my feelings as a lesbian. I wanted to write a story that
shows how I respond to my relationship with another woman, how I consider love to be one of the
most important aspects of my life and not the actual physical attraction of two women who have
sex with each other.

I knew when I wrote the first chapter that this story was going to be something different, and
from then on I tried to curve the story to more a level of being a love story rather than a
traditional erotic story. I did this once before with my story "Tender Euphoria", but even then
the underlying fear that my readers wouldn't accept it was on my mind. For that story I
hesitantly wrote in more sex than I personally thought was appropriate for the characters, and
as a result the theme of love I was going for was partially drowned out by the elements of a
regular sex story. So, after writing the first chapter of "Dreams Hereafter" I knew I was at a
point where I could either turn the story into another erotic tale, or turn it into something
that I actually believe in. From then on I decided to write an emotional story above all, and I
wanted it to be more about love than anything else.

THE TITLE

As all of my readers have probably figured out by now, every one of my story titles follow a
sort of basic formula: two words. For "Dreams Hereafter" this formula is still obviously intact,
but for a time I considered several other titles that, in the end, I thought did not respect the
story's theme. The original title of my story was "Tranquil Gardens", the name of the park in
which Holly and Grace spent most of their time together. I thought this title was too vague, and
that it didn't respect the theme of hope and dreams I was going for, but I ended up keeping it as
the name of the park itself.

My next choice for a title was "Diary of Dreams", which would have been the first exception to
my title formula, and incorporated a deleted element of my story. In my original draft, every
chapter was preceded by a diary entry of Holly's written in the first person. I ultimately
abandoned this idea given the fact that it was too redundant in the plot. I felt that enough
emotional and physical descriptions were given by the main character as she played out her
relationship with this new girl. Still, though I decided not to use that particular title, a
number of other similar titles were on my mind in it's place. A few of my unused titles for this
story are: "Whispers to My Heart", "My Heart's Song", "Wings of My Heart", "Forever's Song" and
"Hope and Grace", which incorporated an unused character name for the one who I later decided to
be Holly.

Finally, after discarding countless titles for this story, I looked up the word "heaven" on the
internet, hoping to find a word that would fit with the word "Dream", which I thought had to have
a place in the title for sure. I'm not the most religious person, but I am a Christian, and I
do believe in heaven and God. But, as an author, I don't like to personally incorporate religion
into my stories, they are two very separate elements I believe. But, after searching for words
similar to heaven and life I found the word which I thought fit the theme perfectly, "Hereafter".
It literally means the afterlife, or what is to follow something, and this became an important
element to my story in the end. So, I went with the title as "Dreams Hereafter" which I believe
is just right for the story.

THE CHARACTERS

Unlike my last romantic story, "Tender Euphoria", which incorporated four main characters to an
extent, I wanted this story to be about just two people. There are a few minor characters in
this story, but they ultimately do not have anything to do with the relationship between my two
main characters.

For Holly, I suppose I don't mind confessing that she is basically me at age nineteen. A lot of
my readers tend to notice that no matter how much I try to make my characters different from one
another they all maintain the underlying personality of the author. I accept that as a part of
my style now. For Holly though, I wanted to create a character who wasn't happy all of the time,
which I have to say is closer to the way I am than most might suspect. Holly had the basic
elements of imperfection that we all feel, including myself, though not to the extent that it
made her depressed, of course. The shyness, her lack of true self-confidence, her old shoes; all
personality traits that I possess to an extent. For her name, I wanted the character to sound
soft, fragile, and loving. I originally intended to name her Hope, which would have worked well
with one of my discarded titles, but I decided to change her name as I thought her partner
character would work better with the noun based name. I did not abandon that name entirely
though, but instead incorporated "Hope" as a very important theme to the story next to love.

Grace, I felt, was the most important character in the story and I knew that her name had to
portray her caring, and gentleness as a character. I didn't have any trouble naming her, as I
had the name in my mind even before I wrote "Sapphic Nocturne". Some might view it using it's
religious aspects, but I chose the name "Grace" more so because of it's parallels with beauty and
goodwill. Though it may not be apparent in the text of the story, I wanted both Holly and Grace
to be the same person in a way. Both are almost identical except for their minor physical and
lifestyle differences. When I first wrote the opening chapter, though, Grace was very different
from Holly. She was originally a very active, athletic, and proud girl who took an interest in
the gentle Holly asleep on the park bench. I later changed this, looking for a more emotionally
fragile character who was very similar to Holly. In the final version, I made Grace even more
fragile with her bifocals and small cough.

Other than these small differences, both Holly and Grace are the same woman, though born into
different lifestyles. They both basically have the same hair color and style, the same
personality, the same basic appearance, and the same values of love and hope that I have as a
person.

THE STORY

For the actual content of the story I wanted to write about settings and actual things that I
personally enjoy, as a matter of fact. I thought a park was the perfect place to use as the
main setting as I don't see much of nature myself. I also wrote in a number of things that I
actually do on a daily basis including: a bit of yoga, (the position I wrote about is real, for
those who aren't familiar with yoga), taking walks by myself, not liking smoking etc... I suppose
I added that little fact more to try and make smoking seem less glamorous than it appears in most
stories and erotica. But, through every little detail I added, I wanted the majority of the
story to be about the relationship between Holly and Grace, and up until about chapter eight they
are almost always together.

When I originally wrote this story I didn't intend for it to be sad in any way, as it's usually
been a part of my style to make my stories lighthearted, but I always love to try new things, of
course. Though I'm more of a comedy lover myself, I love to go see a good emotional story from
time to time and I actually watched a number of my favorites before writing this story. I
actually had no idea that it would be so emotional for me once I read it, but I certainly did
cry. I felt very emotional to the point where I actually removed an entire scene from the story
itself, figuring that it went a little too overboard in the tears category, if you can believe
it. In the original version, Holly did hear from Grace days after her absence and went to visit
her in the hospital where they had their last conversation and Grace later died in Holly's arms.
I thought it was way too sad to leave in, and by removing it I let the idea of Holly's dream
being almost mistaken for reality to remain intact.

But, I didn't write this story to be just a plain sad tale, or at least I didn't intend to. I
wanted to really portray a sense of love, mixed with hope and dreams. Those are the three basic
themes that I think are the basis of this story, and I'm very happy with how it turned out. But,
of course, a story by me wouldn't be complete without at least one love scene. This ended up
being a very hard sequence to write, as I wanted to maintain the theme of love and not lose it to
the sex the way I felt I did with "Tender Euphoria". For a time I considered not having any love
making in my story at all, or having it without the explicit descriptions I usually write. In
the end I chose to keep it in, as I feel making love is an important part of my relationship, and
I don't personally think that sex always means lust and impurity. I tried to keep the
descriptions lighthearted and more about love though, and I think I did well.

The only other two characters who really have any lines in my story are the waitress at the diner
and the middle aged woman in the park. I've actually received a few e-mails concerning people's
interpretations on who the woman in the park was, and some are very interesting. It never really
goes into very much detail, as was intended, but some have offered the idea that she was in-fact
an angel. I didn't really intend this, but after looking back at what I have written I can
certainly understand why people might suggest this.

All in all, I'm very happy with "Dreams Hereafter" as a story and I would definitely like to go
back and write another emotional story sometime. It's definitely my favorite story, and I had
an interesting time writing it to say the least.

...

I hope this little narrative hasn't been too boring to read, but I had a few things to say about
this story that some people might be a little interested in. *smiles*

I would love any comments at serenecherry@hotmail.com