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?
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.
