Stein on Writing (24 page)

One exercise writers in my classes have found to be exceptionally beneficial is writing an exchange of ten lines of dialogue, alternating between two lovers. The object is to have the reader experience two things from the ten lines: that the characters are quarreling and that they are lovers (not ex-lovers). You might want to try your hand at the exercise yourself. You may use more than one line for each turn, but keep the exchanges short:

Lovers’ Quarrel in Ten Brief Exchanges

He:

She:

He:

She:

He:

She:

He:

She:

He:

She:

The “Lovers’ Quarrel” exercise is not easy. Some writers, in their early attempts, find it as difficult as rubbing the belly with one hand while patting the top of the head with the other. But that is precisely the kind of thing a writer must do in the best of scenes, have more than one thing going on at a time. Students have been known to revise and rerevise drafts of this short exercise week after week until they achieve the objective: having the reader feel that the characters are in love
and
are quarreling. Let’s look at a bad example:

He: Where are you off to now?

She: None of your business.

He: You step out of this door, we’re finished.

She: I’m glad you noticed.

He: Noticed what?

She: That we’re finished, stupid.

He: You’re not taking my car.

She: It’s half mine. Community property. Now get out of my way.

He: I’ll report the car stolen.

She: I’m sure the cops will love finding out you reported your car stolen by your wife.

What’s wrong? We have a quarrel but no indication that, though married, they are still lovers. Let’s look at another example:

He: You touched me.

She: I’ve got a license to touch.

He: I just got home, hon.

She: I know.

He: Hey, I haven’t even had a chance to wash up.

She: I know.

He: I’ll fall walking backwards.

She: I know.

He: The couch is in the way. Hey!

She: Gotcha!

It’s clear that they’re lovers. There is tension in the scene, but they are not really quarreling. The wife’s repetition of “I know” is a nice touch, and the exchange has a coherence, but it is not a lovers’
quarrel.
The point of this exercise is to learn how to do two things at the same time. When students develop their skill, I encourage them to add some narrative to the dialogue and even to increase the number of lines, if necessary, to complete the scene. The following miniscene is what one of my male students came up with after some revision:

“I never wanted to see you again.”

“Then why did you come back?”

“The roses,” he said.

She turned in the archway, gilded by rays, back to him, walled, protected, and stared into the tangle of exploded flowers. They had opened and fallen back upon themselves like silent film stars, dried leaves, brittle branches.

“You came to see a dying garden, Ryan.”

“We planted it together.”

“I didn’t know you were coming.”

“Meg, I didn’t know you would be here.”

She felt his eyes on her back. The Bukhara sucked in his footfalls as he crossed the room. He edged beside her.

“It needs water, care ...”

“Maybe it will rain,” she said.

“Can’t count on rain. It needs ... some care.”

“You were always too busy,” Meg said and turned slowly toward him. “It was beautiful once. Wasn’t it?”

“Like a meteor shower,” Ryan said. “I’m sorry.”

“So am I.”

We know they are still lovers. At the outset they are having a strong difference of opinion. The reader can’t help feeling some emotion when reading this short scene. I encourage you to try this exercise from time to time as your skill develops. You may find a story or even an entire novel blossoming from it.

Another age group to consider is older lovers, perhaps from the age of fifty to the so-called golden years celebrated in the film
On Golden Pond.
The underlying drive toward procreation is at rest. Companionship increases in importance. Shared experience in the past becomes a vital part of the present. Security, both economic and emotional, becomes more important. And there is the omnipresent fear or acceptance of inevitable death. But one should consider certain liabilities of this fertile ground for the writer.

In Western countries, sadly, there is far less respect for the wisdom that comes with age than in Eastern countries. As a result, among the young there is little interest in the aged. When love relationships among older persons are handled expertly, the results are felt by audiences of all ages, but the marketing of such material is encumbered with difficulty. As the population in developed countries lives longer, however, there may be a shift in interest that will make love stories involving older characters easier to market.

Questions to ask yourself if you are considering a story with older lovers:

In developing your love scene, is there a hovering notion that the lovers do not have all the time in the world?

Have you included the need for companionship, often the most urgent need of older people?

Have you included touching or some other physical relationship that will enhance the poignancy?

The key to writing an effective love scene is to imagine it from the perspective of each of the partners. If the writer is a woman, she should give
special thought to the perspective of the man in the scene. If the writer is a man, he should give special thought to the perspective of the woman. Then the scene can be written from the third-person point of view, or from the first-person point of view of either of the characters, but the writer will have imagined the thoughts and feelings of both partners, which should enable the scene to be written as richly as possible.

A scene can also be enriched if either of the participants gains an insight about the other person.

What are some of the things a writer can do to enhance a love scene?

You can place an object in the room that is meaningful to one or both lovers. If possible, plant the object before the love scene. Don’t let either of the lovers notice it until an important juncture in that scene, when one of them sees the object, turns off, and the other lover has to rekindle the relationship. This is really a modified version of what happens in most stories, with obstacles in the way of the protagonist getting what he wants.

Another obstacle can be the weather. If the lovers are preparing for an outing in the countryside, a sudden storm will interfere with their plans. They seek refuge in what looks like an unoccupied building. But is it unoccupied? Or will a sudden snowstorm keep illicit lovers housebound in a house to which the spouse of one of them will be returning soon? These suggestions, and those that follow, are not meant to be specific plot points for you to pursue. They are examples of the kinds of obstacle one might use to prolong a love scene that can become a love sequence.

A tack you might consider is to have something unexpected happen that causes a misunderstanding. The more one of the lovers tries to clear up the misunderstanding, the deeper it gets. Make it seem that the impasse is unsurmountable. Then introduce a third character, who can make the impasse worse, or who can provide a way of clearing up the misunderstanding.

Another tack would be to have the third character not know that the two are lovers, and the lovers have a reason for not wanting the third character to find out about their relationship. That involves unrehearsed play-acting by the lovers, ripe for mischief.

Conversely, a couple can pretend they are together, when in fact they are not. Then if a third character were to say or do something that makes it absolutely necessary for both the lovers to continue the pretense, you have an interesting development. The moment the third character leaves is a moment of high tension. Will the couple drop their pretense? Or will the pretense have started something they didn’t expect?

The intrusion in a love scene doesn’t have to be from a third person related to either or both parties. It doesn’t even need to be a person that is intruding. We’ve just discussed the weather intruding. An earthquake, a firestorm, or any other catastrophe can be a mighty intrusion provided it is handled realistically rather than as melodrama. But note this. Though an action is the ideal interruption, a thought can also interrupt, particularly a significant thought or memory, and it can be a lot more effective than the local volcano blowing its top.

A love scene and a sex scene are not the same. A poignant love scene can be written with the lovers not coming close enough to touch. As an instance, consider the prisoner, unjustly tried and accused, who has to communicate with his beloved on visitors’ day through a glass shield, speaking on phones, though they are only inches apart physically.

Conversely, a sex scene need have nothing to do with love, as in a scene of casual sex between strangers, or a rape.

If it is your plan to make your love scene erotic, a few points are worth considering. As I noted earlier, the most important erogenous zone is in the head, which means that if a man’s head isn’t turned on, he won’t be able to function. If a woman’s head isn’t turned on, her failure to experience may lead to faking.

The “rabbit” approach to sex has little to do with the relations between the sexes that can be experienced by readers. The same is true for mechanical recitations of sexual play without regard to what is happening to the emotions of the people involved.

Many years ago I met Maurice Girodias, the French publisher who became notorious as the publisher of sexually explicit novels in English. Those green-covered paperbacks infiltrated into America in the luggage of tourists long before the liberation of sexuality in literature in the late fifties and early sixties. Quite a few of Girodias’s pseudonymous authors later made their reputations under their real names.

Girodias was a master at teaching his authors how to handle erotic material. One Girodias-sponsored title had what I remember as the ultimate seduction scene: it held the reader for about a hundred pages before the relationship was consummated. This is not something to strive to imitate. It demonstrates a principle. The point to grasp is that the mere description of multiple sexual acts does little or nothing for the reader. A single act, kept at bay, warmed to, stretched out, can have a marked erotic effect.

In preparing to write an erotic scene, the writer has to be clear about the relationship between the couple, and has to know what he is trying
to accomplish in his story through the sexual intimacy. The most common possibilities include an assignation, colloquially a “quickie.” Though it has nothing to do with love, this kind of scene can be erotic. But even a so-called quickie can’t be quick on the page and have an effect on the reader. It must move the story forward by having an effect on one or the other character. Even a meaningless assignation has to have a meaning for at least one of the characters or it doesn’t belong in the story.

More common in fiction is the one-night stand. A brief, not-to-be-repeated encounter has greater potential for a story than a meaningless copulation, but to have an important effect on the reader it, too, has to convey something about each character. Why is each of the participants doing this, and how does each of them react to the experience while it’s happening and afterward?

More interesting is the sexual encounter that is the budding of a love affair. Because it is a beginning, the scene can be full of nuances, problems, thoughts, actions. Think of it as a back-and-forth experience and not a straight line. Each digression—if it doesn’t take the reader away from the fundamental goal of the scene—can heighten and extend the experience.

My novel
Other People
contains a number of scenes between George Thomassy, a forty-four-year-old lawyer, and Francine Widmer, a twenty-seven-year-old client who becomes his lover. The scene I will refer to runs about six pages. It’s not about continuous lovemaking. Other things happen. The interruptions—planned by the author—stretch the tension between the beginning and its consummation. But the interruptions are all part of the story.

Thomassy and Francine were brought together as a result of Francine being raped. Her father, a corporate lawyer, persuaded Thomassy, a criminal lawyer, to help his daughter, who was seeking to get the rapist put in jail. Francine had not had sex since the rape until the scene I am about to describe. An important choice was to write the scene from the woman’s point of view.

The scene starts with a detailed description of a meal that Thomassy is preparing for both himself and Francine in his home. The fact that she is in his house in itself sets the stage for the possibility of an erotic scene. That possibility hangs in the air, as it were, over the scene that follows, when they talk and think about other things. Note that what they talk about is specific, for instance a painting that is prominent on Thornassy’s
wall. From a few words about the artist, Francine’s thoughts wander to the idea that good art lingers into posterity, while the work of most people in the professions is forgotten, except perhaps for the rare work of an innovating genius. Francine is surprised that artists aren’t hated more by those whose work is by its nature transient. Thomassy, a successful criminal lawyer, responds: