Part 10 (2/2)

Editors will tell you that love scenes are often among the worst-written scenes not only in rejected work but in published work. Such scenes are often mechanical, overly physiological, hackneyed, or sentimental. However, editors know that trying to discuss the flaws in love scenes with their authors is like walking across a mine field. One never knows when a flaw in the writing of a love scene derives from a buried discomfort in the author's life.

In recent decades we have had both a s.e.xual revolution and a counterrevolution. Along about 1960, a prominent publis.h.i.+ng attorney named Harriet Pilpel asked me if I was willing to go to jail for Henry Miller. I was then heading an upscale book club whose judges were interested in distributing a forthcoming Henry Miller t.i.tle that dealt with s.e.xual matters explicitly, and Ms. Pilpel, well known as a civil libertarian, seemed quite certain there was then a real risk of allegedly criminal conduct in distributing works by Henry Miller that are today found in bookshops throughout the world.

A few years later the floodgates opened not only to books that treated s.e.xual conduct openly and with some degree of seriousness, but also to transient novels that mocked adult lovemaking as much as misnamed ”adult” movies did.

Adults are in general knowledgeable about the physical apparatus and actions involved in lovemaking, and concentration on these can quickly become repet.i.tive and boring. Some people, and consequently some writers, have never learned that mechanical description of s.e.xual activity does not usually arouse readers who are no longer adolescents. Moreover, female readers, who account for the purchase of most hardcover fiction, often lose patience with male writers who continue to fabricate love scenes solely from a male point of view. Men who write love scenes as if they are dealing with the mechanical parts of an engine should know that such scenes have zero erotic effect and do not accomplish their primary mission of evoking a loving experience between people.

Readers remain interested in pa.s.sion, if not in the mechanical details. Moreover, any novel accrues an advantage by including a love story. It is one of the easiest relations.h.i.+ps to plot, a fact that is most obvious in the field of musical comedy. A handsome young man appears at one side of the stage. A beautiful young woman appears on the other side. The audience immediately wants them to get together. It is the author's job to keep them apart as long as possible.

The gestation of love can be the central dramatic event in the lives of characters. The loss of love is one of the most devastating things that can happen to a human being. Both possibilities can generate enormous emotion in life and, if skillfully handled, in fiction.

The gain of love and the loss of love are powerful combustibles. It is doubly powerful to have both gain and loss of love in the same story. Suspense, tension, and conflict inhere in love stories. An endless cornucopia of relations.h.i.+ps is available to the writer.

Of course, disadvantages offset this. The prevalence of love in so much fiction requires the writer to exercise his imagination in order to come up with scenes that will seem fresh. Love stories also carry the danger of sentimentality.

The writer invokes sentimentality when he elicits superficial emotions that are exaggerated, excessive, or affected, obviously designed to elicit the reader's sympathy. Sentimentality in fiction usually comes across as patently insincere, mawkish, or maudlin, and should be avoided. A writer's sensibility should be directed toward evoking a depth of feeling in the reader, not to fabricating superficial excesses of emotion on the page.

The main flaw in most love scenes is similar to that of the main flaws in all other scenes: the reader's emotions have been insufficiently considered by the writer. The primary erogenous zone is in the head, and that's where the reader experiences writing.

The reader wants to identify with a character. Love scenes can be especially effective when the reader is identifying with both characters-that is, with the hoped-for success of the relations.h.i.+p-experiencing more than each of the characters individually. This can be accomplished if the writer considers the love scene from the point of view of each of the characters even when writing from the disciplined point of view of one of them. The reader needs to understand the relations.h.i.+p between the lovers better than either of the lovers do.

The two most essential ingredients in love scenes are tension and tenderness. A crisis in the relations.h.i.+p or postponing lovemaking, keeping the lovers apart as long as credibility permits, generates tension. It's a mistake to let the reader know early the likely outcome of the scene.

No love scene should be the repet.i.tion of a familiar ritual. To sustain the reader's interest in the outcome, the attraction should seem new even in a longstanding relations.h.i.+p.

Interruptions in a love scene can be useful. Not the grocery boy ringing the doorbell, but the lovers themselves noticing a picture, listening to some special music, talking about memories that arouse-all the while postponing the consummation to increase the tension of the scene. Literary foreplay does not necessarily involve physical contact. If the possibility of contact is in the air, nuances in actions and dialogue can affect the reader's emotions. A woman brus.h.i.+ng her hair can have a powerful aphrodisiac effect. Less produces more in the reader. In the following example a couple stand in front of the door of his house. The reader senses that once inside the house, they are going to make love. The writer's first temptation might be to let them in the house, to get on with it. But delay builds antic.i.p.ation. It can be accomplished by minutiae: I was waiting for him to say something. Instead he reached into his pocket and removed a key ring with three keys on it. Holding the first key, he said, ”The garage.” Then he held the second key, dangling the others, and said, ”The back door.”

He must have seen me smile.

He took the third key between his thumb and forefinger and said, ”The front door.” Then he handed the key ring with all three keys to me and said, ”Welcome.”

Among the many advantages of a love scene is that it provides excellent opportunities for characterizing both partners and for creating sympathy or antipathy toward one of the characters.

Love stories exist about each of the seven ages of man. Three of those ages are most useful to the writer.

The youngest lovers may be inexperienced, tentative, nervous, worried about pregnancy, disease, getting caught. Any or all of these can become a writer's Petri dish for brewing conflict and drama. External obstacles loom in abundance. The young lovers may be separated by distance because of school, work, and family. They may have to overcome cla.s.s differences, family incompatibilities, peer pressure, or rivalry from another young person, or from an older, more experienced individual. Keep in mind that you don't want to tell the reader what they are feeling, but to evoke feelings in the reader as a result of what the young lovers say to each other and what they do. It helps to make each of them vulnerable in a different way.

With adult lovers in the child-bearing age group, one of the most powerful forces of nature is at work, the drive toward procreation, often unknown to or unacknowledged by lovers. The human race is perpetuated by drives that are endocrinal in origin. Romantic love, as it is experienced by most (but not all) people, is a cultural invention. While these are things that the average reader doesn't want to hear about, it is important that the writer know them.5 Love scenes deal with the consequences of these physiological drives and cultural customs. Writers need to be knowledgeable about the nuances of human relations.h.i.+ps and the origins of feelings; hence, it helps for writers to know and understand as much as possible about the psychology and physiology underlying love- what the pulls are, whether or not the partic.i.p.ants are aware of them.

An obstacle commonly faced by adult lovers is the threat of a competing person and the consequent loss of security in a relations.h.i.+p. An adult wandering from a relations.h.i.+p can get involved with persons of questionable character and can blunder into acts of violence. The consequences of infidelity have inspired hundreds of plots. Some obstacles encountered by adult lovers are internal, such as guilt over conduct disapproved of by the person or by society. Also casting a shadow over both old and new relations.h.i.+ps is the fear of pa.s.sing age boundaries, of getting older.

In plotting a love story, a writer must remind himself that plot grows out of character. What happens in a love scene should come out of the writer's understanding of his characters and their motivation, and the clash between such characteristics or motivation in different characters. Some basic questions to ask yourself about your prospective love story: Does each of your lovers have one thing that distinguishes his or her physical appearance from that of other people? Is there something distinctive in the way your lovers dress?

Keep in mind that the most boring kind of relations.h.i.+p is one in which there are never any problems. He loved her and she loved him, they never quarreled, is the ultimate turnoff. In devising a love story, search for the root conflicts based on character and upbringing, but also ferret out surface conflict by asking yourself if you have depicted your adult lovers at a moment of crisis. If not, can you add a crisis that will increase the tension of the relations.h.i.+p? Does the woman want something reasonable that is refused by the man, perhaps for reasons that he keeps secret and that arouse her suspicions? Does the man want something that is refused by the woman because she is afraid of the result? Whatever your plan, remember that if there is no friction between the lovers, there is no interest on the part of the reader. And if there is ma.s.sive friction, will the reader be convinced that they are nevertheless in love? If they are not, you don't have a love story.

One exercise writers in my cla.s.ses have found to be exceptionally beneficial is writing an exchange of ten lines of dialogue, alternating between two lovers. The object is to have the reader experience two things from the ten lines: that the characters are quarreling and that they are lovers (not ex-lovers). You might want to try your hand at the exercise yourself. You may use more than one line for each turn, but keep the exchanges short: Lovers' Quarrel in Ten Brief Exchanges He: She: He: She: He: She: He: She: He: She: The ”Lovers' Quarrel” exercise is not easy. Some writers, in their early attempts, find it as difficult as rubbing the belly with one hand while patting the top of the head with the other. But that is precisely the kind of thing a writer must do in the best of scenes, have more than one thing going on at a time. Students have been known to revise and rerevise drafts of this short exercise week after week until they achieve the objective: having the reader feel that the characters are in love and are quarreling. Let's look at a bad example: He: Where are you off to now?

She: None of your business.

He: You step out of this door, we're finished.

She: I'm glad you noticed. He: Noticed what? She: That we're finished, stupid. He: You're not taking my car.

She: It's half mine. Community property. Now get out of my way. He: I'll report the car stolen.

She: I'm sure the cops will love finding out you reported your car stolen by your wife.

What's wrong? We have a quarrel but no indication that, though married, they are still lovers. Let's look at another example: He: You touched me. She: I've got a license to touch. He: I just got home, hon. She: I know.

He: Hey, I haven't even had a chance to wash up. She: I know.

He: I'll fall walking backwards. She: I know.

He: The couch is in the way. Hey! She: Gotcha!

It's clear that they're lovers. There is tension in the scene, but they are not really quarreling. The wife's repet.i.tion of ”I know” is a nice touch, and the exchange has a coherence, but it is not a lovers' quarrel. The point of this exercise is to learn how to do two things at the same time. When students develop their skill, I encourage them to add some narrative to the dialogue and even to increase the number of lines, if necessary, to complete the scene. The following miniscene is what one of my male students came up with after some revision: ”I never wanted to see you again.” ”Then why did you come back?” ”The roses,” he said.

She turned in the archway, gilded by rays, back to him, walled, protected, and stared into the tangle of exploded flowers. They had opened and fallen back upon themselves like silent film stars, dried leaves, brittle branches.

”You came to see a dying garden, Ryan.” ”We planted it together.” ”I didn't know you were coming.” ”Meg, I didn't know you would be here.”

She felt his eyes on her back. The Bukhara sucked in his footfalls as he crossed the room. He edged beside her.

”It needs water, care ... ”

”Maybe it will rain,” she said.

”Can't count on rain. It needs ... some care.”

”You were always too busy,” Meg said and turned slowly toward him. ”It was beautiful once. Wasn't it?”

”Like a meteor shower,” Ryan said. ”I'm sorry.” ”So am I.”

We know they are still lovers. At the outset they are having a strong difference of opinion. The reader can't help feeling some emotion when reading this short scene. I encourage you to try this exercise from time to time as your skill develops. You may find a story or even an entire novel blossoming from it.

Another age group to consider is older lovers, perhaps from the age of fifty to the so-called golden years celebrated in the film On Golden Pond. The underlying drive toward procreation is at rest. Companions.h.i.+p increases in importance. Shared experience in the past becomes a vital part of the present. Security, both economic and emotional, becomes more important. And there is the omnipresent fear or acceptance of inevitable death. But one should consider certain liabilities of this fertile ground for the writer.

In Western countries, sadly, there is far less respect for the wisdom that comes with age than in Eastern countries. As a result, among the young there is little interest in the aged. When love relations.h.i.+ps among older persons are handled expertly, the results are felt by audiences of all ages, but the marketing of such material is enc.u.mbered with difficulty. As the population in developed countries lives longer, however, there may be a s.h.i.+ft in interest that will make love stories involving older characters easier to market.

Questions to ask yourself if you are considering a story with older lovers: In developing your love scene, is there a hovering notion that the lovers do not have all the time in the world?

Have you included the need for companions.h.i.+p, often the most urgent need of older people?

Have you included touching or some other physical relations.h.i.+p that will enhance the poignancy?

The key to writing an effective love scene is to imagine it from the perspective of each of the partners. If the writer is a woman, she should give special thought to the perspective of the man in the scene. If the writer is a man, he should give special thought to the perspective of the woman. Then the scene can be written from the third-person point of view, or from the first-person point of view of either of the characters, but the writer will have imagined the thoughts and feelings of both partners, which should enable the scene to be written as richly as possible.

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