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Love Story AnatomyCynthia's Column January 2006 Let's talk about love. Whether you write novels or screenplays, memoir or biography, more often than not, a love story will be a part of your fabric. How do we craft these so that they feel real and more importantly, so that the hearts of readers will be captured along with the lovers'? First let me be clear how not to write a love story. Don't assume that your two main characters will fall for each other because they will hopefully be played by gorgeous, sexy movie stars. Two beautiful people that you slam together like little plastic Barbie and Ken dolls -- trying to make fire from rubbing two sticks together-- do not make a relationship. You won't even get sparks from this. (Okay, the writer may get a little hot picturing Brad and Angelina going at it, but it will leave the reader cold.) In other words, sex is not love. When I was twelve The Beatles and The Rolling Stones hit the world simultaneously and all of us adolescents got the difference here. The Beatles were singing about love. They wanted to hold our hands. And the Stones were singing about getting no satisfaction looking for the other thing. I might also note that the girls rushed out to buy Beatles records and the boys bought The Stones. Come on women, admit it. Mentally go through the box of LP's in your garage. Am I right? Secondly do not have your people falling in love by using the movie or literary equivalent of the Love Montage. A beautiful couple walks through an open-air market buying French bread, flowers and wine. They walk on the beach at sunset. They picnic in a field of flowers or stand kissing in the rain. DO NOT DO THIS. First because it's cliched. But more importantly because it's not how people really fall in love. It's not real. It's generic lovers not individual human beings that are specifically perfect for each other in all their quirky particularity. The Cute Meet is a Hollywood institution. You've seen it a hundred times. Boy bumps into Girl and spills orange juice down the front of her shirt. June Carter, rushing to the stage, gets her dress caught on young Johnny Cash's guitar strap. Go ahead. Create a Cute Meet. Just know that this is flirtation. Maybe infatuation. We're not to love yet. Romantic Banter is also normally the order of the day, and is also pretty cute, usually fueled by tension between the two. They almost never like each other at first. The reason for this is that scenes without tension are flat and lifeless, and in a love story often the only tension to be had is between the lovers. When this banter is well-written we love it. Richard Curtis is a master of this. Notting Hill, Four Weddings, Love Actually. But this is flirtation, and while, like sex, this is fun, it isn't love. People don't fall in love because he does great dialogue. Well, okay, I admit it. I have fallen in love for the dialogue, but it's unwise. Don't have characters do this. Using Walk the Line again, it is a huge relief when June and Johnny in their first real scene, abandon the Cute Meet flirtation and are open and honest with each other. Which brings us to my point. People fall in love with each other when there is a crack in the shell that keeps us separate, and we fall into each other's hearts through this crack. It sounds romantic, but I'm going to talk about this technically because it is also a writing technique. Sometimes you have to have the right tool to get to the heart of the story. The crack can be a kind of wound. In Walk the Line (one of two terrific, love stories to come out over the holidays, the other being Pride and Prejudice) the crack occurs in their second meeting (referred to above) at two a.m. in a coffee shop where June and John are open and honest with each other. He shows her a picture of his wife and baby girl. She also has a baby girl at home. A tiny hairline crack begins to appear. He mentions how he and his brother Jack loved a particular song and it comes out that Jack died. The crack grows a little longer. Then she looks into his eyes and says, "You're tired, John" and suddenly all of his exhaustion and sadness open up in front of her, a huge crack exposing his wounded heart. And June falls into that opening. She falls in love with him right there. She is hooked. Paul Simon wrote the line on his Graceland album, "Losing love is like a window in your heart. Everybody sees you're blown apart." This is what we're looking for. The window into the heart. To wrench it open or break it. You choose. In Witness, the young Amish woman doesn't have any feelings for John Book (Harrison Ford) until he is shot and almost dies. As he is unconscious and she is nursing him, she falls for him. In this case the crack is literally a wound. By the time he wakes up, she is in love with him. (Ivanhoe is another Wounded Knight story.) The wound can be inflicted by the lover. In You've Got Mail. Meg Ryan's Kathleen doesn't even like Tom Hanks' Joe until the scene in the cafe where she insults him, telling him if someone cut him open they'd find a cash register instead of a heart. This cuts him so deeply that he can't even respond. He's devastated and simply stands, excuses himself and walks away. And takes her heart with him. At that moment she is hooked. See how this works? A side note about Mail people do not fall in love on the internet or by writing letters. Sorry. They can get interested. But real love generally only happens between two human beings coming together. Abelard and Heloise situations (love letters only) happen about once in a century and even then they are made up of fantasies about who the other is. They might not like each other face to face. Stephen Foster may have said it best. "In the eyes abides the heart." Why does Rhett Butler fall in love with Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind? Because the first time he meets her he is hidden on a sofa and overhears her completely humiliate herself, in love with a man who does not love her and is marrying someone else. This is the crack in the perfect, Plantation Barbie veneer and Rhett falls right into it. The crack doesn't have to be a wound. Sometimes it can be simply a surprising humanizing touch. In Pretty Woman, Richard Gere falls for Julia Roberts when he thinks she is doing drugs and it turns out she is flossing her teeth. That small human detail hooks him. All she has to do is reel in the dental floss and land the poor fish. In Pride and Prejudice, the moment Mr. Darcy (ten bonus points if you know his first name) falls for Lizzie Bennett when she breaks through the veneer of his perfect drawing room world where he is being bored to tears by his best friend's shallow, pretty and petty sister. Lizzie is suddenly standing in his breakfast room hair wild, cheeks red and hem muddied from tromping across the fields, caring only about her sister who is ill. She stays only a moment, but her vivacity (physical, emotional, intellectual and spiritual) is such a breath of fresh air that he is blown away by her and never recovers. Also think about need. Why do these two people need each other? Complete each other? Why would it be tragic if they didn't get together? In Pretty Woman, would Julia Roberts' character be okay if they didn't end up together? Yes. Would Richard Gere's? Not even close. Start looking at love stories with this in mind. Find those moments where cracks appear in characters' shells that allow for connection. Exposing hearts. Creating the possibility for real love. Who is the ideal lover? Well, his first name is Fitzwilliam. Cynthia Whitcomb is president of Willamette Writers, and has had 29 of her screenplays produced. She is author of The Writers' Guide to Writing Your Screenplay and The Writers' Guide to Selling Your Screenplay. She teaches screenwriting classes at Portland State University.and through Willamette Writers. |