Showing posts with label hopeless romantic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hopeless romantic. Show all posts

Saturday, December 29, 2018

Storytelling: What is Love? Can We Read Our Way to Fulfillment or Should We Demand a Refund?

As a writer, I am faced with making life choices for my characters and how love affects their lives. 

Do they have Eros, or erotic love? A fancy, an admiration? Or is their love quest something deeper? Perhaps even unrequited? 

How a writer views love in their own reality often reflects how characters in their imagination view the concept. Have you been thwarted by love? Been love sick? Maybe even a hopeless romantic? 

Eroticism can be written and sold like an old hooker in the night. No one sees. No one cares. The reader just needs a fix like an addict. Sex, please. Served in fifty shades of something.

RomComs are always fun to watch on the screen. For some reason, we [the audience] do not get tired of the retelling of Shakescpeare's Taming of the Shrew. 

Then there is the unrequited variety. We see someone from across the room we would like to hold and cherish but never do. We sit in our own delusion while life passes us by. That can be so dissatisfying to the audience. 

The next category is my favorite one besides the Taming of the Shrew, and that is the hopeless romantic. I agree with Jane Austen's assessment that every girl should marry up. I qualify that statement with a handsome, generous soul with means and connections. If a girl is going up in the world, she might as well go all the way. Shouldn't we say? 

No matter the love genre, a writer needs to write the characters as people and not as literary devices just for a boring sex scene. We want the meat and potatoes! The audience expects a well rounded couple for a good old fashioned romp! Ups and downs, heartache and pain, finally the reward for the faith and fidelity of their hearts. 

Unless of course you just want to stare at him or her from across the room for the rest of your life?

If you want to experience the beginning of a budding romance, then check out my first book in the vampire series, Nocturnal Redemption: In the Eye of the Beholder. 

Ryan Blackburn is a mythology professor. She has studied and built her life around her family legend: the protectors of humanity from the creatures that walk the night. One slight catch: she actually meets a pack of werewolves and a lone vampire on his nightly rounds. Her legends weren't so mythical after all.

In the coming days and weeks, Ryan is lured into the vampire's world called: The Lair. A slow but strong bond is formed between the vampire captain, Jeremy, and Ryan. Just as the politics that brought them together could easily tear them apart. 

Will Jeremy and Ryan choose each other? Or, will they go their separate ways? 

So when you write about love in your stories... what color of love are you? Black and white? Gray? 

We have to remember when we write about the heart, that we must write that the love story is the heart of the matter. And what matters is how the readers see us reflected in our respect for the affairs of the heart. I want to mirror the hopeless romantic in all of us. Love is a gift. When two people find love then we should nurture their inquisitiveness. No one is ever satisfied with a love that is unrequited. 

We as writers have to be the love Santa for a love starved populace. We have to write that great love story to keep our love Santa from getting stuck in the chimney of life. What did you expect? Cupid wasn't helping this along anyway...

Speaking of which, Valentine's Day is only 46 more days away!

Have a great and wonderful day.
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Friday, December 7, 2018

Babylon 5, the Lady or the Tiger are Analogies to the Life Decisions We Make

In high school, our class read a short story called: The Lady or The Tiger. I won't  discuss much about the story, but the end. It is not much of a spoiler. The main character is posed with a choice of two doors, One door has a lady behind it. The other one has a tiger. 

His decision is either life or death. 

The story struck me because that was the end. We, the audience, were not informed by the writer which one of the two doors the character chose.

That pretty much sums up our life choices. When it comes to making a decision, each of us have to weigh our options. Do we pick the door with the lady. Or, do we choose the tiger? 

Sometimes we decide to take the lady and really we end up with the tiger.

So what does Babylon 5 have to do with this line of inquiry? Comet TV is replaying the old episodes from start to finish. The third season has just concluded and a day long marathon will commence on December 25th. 

One of the most dissatisfying subplots in the whole series is that of the relationship between Susan Ivanova and Marcus Cole. Fan outcry led to the creator and writer of the series, JMS (J. Michael Straczynski) to pen a short story reuniting these two characters. The fans were not amused. 

Actually, a good portion of fandom still dislikes the story to this day. 

Then I thought of the story from high school: The Lady or The Tiger by Frank R. Stockton. We all have choices. Our decisions affect the world around us. What if... Marcus' sacrifice to save Susan had a significant consequence on the evolution of our species? What if... love is more powerful than death itself?

In the end... why should love be unrequited? 

This fan fiction piece delves into the longing, questioning, and confusion caused by expectation, accident, and suicide. Survivor's guilt... how can we go on knowing our love is gone? But does love ever truly leave us? Or do we convince ourselves we are just unworthy of her?

Although I am not blessed with love in this lifetime, I cannot face creativity without the hope of love for someone. That is why I strive to bring love to characters. Why I also wrote this Babylon fanfiction. 

Love should win out the day... even ten thousand years later. 

I guess it is just the hopeless romantic in me. 

Circles We Find Ourselves In, Part I will make an appearance here on Undawnted... Stay Tuned!

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A writer at heart, Undawnted's own creative spark, DL Mullan, began writing short stories and poetry before adolescence. Over the years, Ms. Mullan has showcased her literary talents by self-publishing several collections of her poetry. She also writes novels, designs apparel, and creates digital art. Ms. Mullan‘s creative writing is available in digital and print collections, from academia to commercial anthologies. As an independent publisher, she produces her own book cover designs as well as maintains her own websites. She is an award-winning digital artist and poet. This year, DL Mullan has begun sharing her knowledge via A Novelist Idea Newsletter. If you too want to become a Fearless Phile, then subscribe to her newsletter on Substack.

Her innovative style teaches writers how to reach their creative potential, and write more effectively.

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