Boy Meets Girl

I think I've seen too many chick flicks. Probably read too many love stories. Frankly, I enjoy them. I like the butterflies I get in my stomach at the lovers' initial meeting. I feel their twisting pain in my gut when they hit rough waters. Best of all, I experience the soaring ecstacy of their triumph over hardship in the end, and the anticipation of long years of incandescent happiness to follow.

Who doesn't appreciate stories like these? They are hope that love can conquer any obstacle and endure through the end of time. They speak truth to the heart of humanity. I believe hope, love, fear, and the will to triumph are in our nature. It's easy to glory in the happiness of a character, to agonize with them in their troubles, to rejoice in their successes.... It's quite another thing to experience that for yourself and realize it's nothing like literature and the media portray.

I've been learning that real life doesn't match up with the stories I read, the movies I see. I get far too comfortable playing God with my character's lives; I can make their love story whatever I want it to be. But I can't do squat about my own. It isn't hard to write conflict between Michael and Cecily because I know exactly how they will react, what they're thinking, what they want (because they want whatever I want). When I come back to reality, I find conflict in my relationships much harder to deal with. Suddenly I only know how I will react, what I'm thinking and wanting.

Where I can't complain about my love life (there's relatively little heartbreak to speak of) it hasn't exactly gone as I hoped, or planned, for that matter. The older I get the more I realize I have no idea how I'm going to meet my husband, much less of the journey to becoming his wife. I am frustrated with love stories that make it look so easy. One trial is thrown in to test the endurance of love and everything wraps up into a nice little wedding bouquet by the end of the ninety minute flick or 150 page novella.

If I, an average American youth, don't know the course of my own love story, how much less will my protagonist know his standing with the Caesar's daughter when everything he believes of the Jewish Messiah is considered treasonous to her position. I want to avoid cardboard cut-outs. I want avoid cliche endings. I want to steer clear of unrealistic endings, in light of the culture and time period. But I also want to satisfy my readers. Having my characters marry other people, or die tragically, or go their separate ways in mutual consent never pleased anybody, and is a cop-out as the author.

So how do I reconcile a happy ending with a realistic approach to the culture and time? There are four things I can do to work toward a believable love story.

Firstly, I must give myself some license as a fiction writer. Where 90% of my story is going to be an authentic recreation of Roman times, 10% of it is going to be made up, including some of the characters and some of the norms of the day that I'm going to break. (How much association would a swordsmith, however renowned, really have with the princess? None, but this is fiction.)

Secondly, I must do my research and keep my characters consistent. What interactions these two unlikely candidates will have must be built on the records of male-female interactions of the time. This includes being accurate with Michael's addresses to Cecily as his superior, codes on propriety, speech, and body language. The emotions that I tap into must fit their characters and be influenced by their past and the experiences they've had with the opposite sex. Michael will view Cecily's plight rather like he sees his infirm little sister, treating her gently, but perhaps too much like a child that needs to be protected and patronized. Cecily will view Michael like all other men she's known--deserters, promise-breakers, chauvinists. A relationship would never work if they can't break down the predisposed ideas they have of the other gender.

Thirdly, I must let my characters have their own way. A writer shouldn't keep his characters rigid, creating every scene just so, having every person know exactly what to say, orchestrating every moment perfectly. If he does this, he will lose the potential for three-dimensional development because he's not letting the characters voice their opinions. I might be surprised by what Michael and Cecily will do when I loosen my hold on their perfectly plotted lives.

Fourthly, I must stop watching so many chick flicks. Instead, I should draw from real life, asking different couples what their experiences have been like, how their relationships lived up to the Hollywood standard, how they didn't get close, or how they have been unbelievably better than anything an actor and actress could exemplify. I must look at my own life and the struggles I've had in making relationships work. All the times I've had to apologize for a misguided action or word, all the heartache and all the joys, all I have lost and all I have salvaged, all the ways I've changed and grown from one experience to the next.

These, after all, are the real stories.