by Beth Pugh from the October 7, 2024 issue
Tagline: As she's about to lose hope for making the night perfect for her niece, Amanda finds help from an old "friend."
Observations: The thing that stood out in this story to me was the heroine. We all know the readership for the magazine skews toward older women, but let's not make the mistake of assuming this demographic expects or wants protagonists to behave as if they were from the 50s.
Yet, it wouldn't be wise to swing the other way and make your heroine the type of woman who doesn't need a man for anything.
So there's a balance you need to achieve. You want your heroine to be strong and capable and confident. But you still want to keep the hero, well, heroic. This story hit the nail on the head.
Amanda is understandably daunted when faced with changing the tire on her own, but she's also resourceful and turns to the internet for help. (However, if it had been my story, I might not have had Amanda pretending everything was fine for her niece. Better to set the example on how to problem solve.) So there's your strong, capable woman at work. And then Jake arrives. He is not pushy and there's no man-splaining, just an honest offer of help.
On a side note, are there still drive-in theatres where you live?
Photo by Mike Mozart via Flickr CC License
3 comments:
I loved this story but it also made me laugh. I learned to change a tire when I was 14. However, everyone knows that the average person can't do it today. Why? Because of those electric lug wrenches they have today. The lugs are so tight they can't be manually removed. So this guy is truly a hero!
No drive-in movies here for a long, long time. However, Hubby and I went to Williamsport, PA on vacation about 25 or 30 years or so ago and there was a drive-in theater there. We had planned to go see a Disney movie that was playing; but, of course, it rained that night. lol
I will mention that there was a drive-in about two long blocks from the house I grew up in. We could see the screen from our front lawn...no sound though. I was torn down in the late 1950s or early 1960s.
I remember driving past drive-ins and craning my neck to try to identify what movie was playing!
I'm a bit behind on replying to these. It was a cute story. We had a drive-in theater until it was destroyed by a tornado in 2008. I think my state of Nebraska still has two or three.
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