I WANT TO WRITE A LOVE STORY!

After finishing Giant’s Wife, I said that I swore off love stories until I’m at least engaged. Why? To summarize, because I haven’t even dated yet, so I don’t know how to exactly write about it.

This morning I came up with a brilliant plot  though.

Guy, we’ll say a lord, gets maimed in an accident. Very badly maimed where his whole side is at best useless. He lost part of his arm and can barely walk. But he doesn’t want anyone to know because he’s slightly ashamed and he used to be really athletic and now he’s lucky if he can make it from his room to his office. He’s getting better but it’s slow. This is a recent accident though

Girl was married earlier to him by proxy, had been postponed in coming to him for some unexplained reason on his part, and then finally arrives. That’s all I know. They get married shortly afterwards.

They get married.

But guy acts weird. Things like, he doesn’t ever rise or walk much in her presence. He always has a cane with him, which could be an ornament but it’s still weird for normal, everyday life. He also doesn’t show his hand/arm much (because he wears a prothesis) or uses it.  He also keeps to himself and never once sleeps with her.

Now, I don’t know where this would go much. My obvious solution would be that the girl starts to love the guy and then finds out and then is like, “Oh well,” but that’s so cliché.

The next idea was something along the lines of a servant of some kind who has been helping him recover for the last six months has basically fallen in love with him. He wouldn’t notice because he’s a nice, strong, lord, she’s just a common, and they are technically already married.

Then, the girl finds out, declares that she didn’t bargain to marry a maimed husband and wants out and he, because he’s feel all miserable, agrees and lets her go back.  At some point in time, the servant girl comes out that she loves him and he finds out that he loves her and–tada!–everything’s happy.

The only problem is I can’t write it because I refuse to write a love story like this. I would like to pursue this idea more or less and see where it goes, because it sounds interesting. (It actually sounds like something that my friend and I would roleplay if we still did.) It would be a blast. But I can’t because I am not going to write a love story.

Why does love have to be such a difficult topic anyway?

Maybe I’ll try to convince my friend to roleplay this summer.

On a different note, I’m trying to think of short stories to write for the characters in mindskill (besides Isaiah) because then I would get to know the characters better and I like that idea.

what is in a story

One interesting fact is that since I started blogging, I’ve also been reading more blogs. I’m not good at finding them but when I find one that I pretty much like, I end up reading it off and on. It’s like a little world of mine on the internet where I can be a little braver than I am in real life.  (Introverts tend to be braver on the internet; did you know that?)

Anyway, the question came from Cassandra Jade about what is the most important element in a story. I bounced between characters, because characters that you cannot click with are just bad, and plot, because a good plot might make up for bad characters and support the characters. And I found out  last night I’m wrong. The answer is tension.

Tension can come from the plot and events or from the characters and their relationships.  It moves the plot forward, while keeping it interesting and exciting so that hardly anyone wants to put down the story. Always, the reader will be asking the question of, “What about this? How does this fit in? How can he get away with this?”  Because of these questions, he will keep reading.

When tension is added between characters, it creates arguments, distractions, and complications. Two stick figures can work as a team but what happens if one of the team members wants the other one dead because the latter flirted with the former’s sister? What happens if one of the team members is on this team because his brother died from it? Tension adds to characters just as much as it adds to plot.

The only sad thing is how difficult it is to create good tension in a story, especially in the plot. Out of all the other elements, tension is probably the hardest one to master but I think it is probably the most rewarding.

Now I just have to decide if I’m going to send my answer to her by the end of the day.