Writing

My husband saw me first. He popped in front of me at a London party and said, "Would you like to dance?" I danced--the Mexican Hat Dance. Have you ever executed this ungainly process of leaping from foot to foot and kicking the airborne foot out in a sort of stumbling, off-balance parody of kick boxing moves that resemble a tribal pre-nuptial ritual?

You haven't? Aw shucks--you don't know what you've missed. The event did turn out to be pre-nuptial, even if the blessed ceremony didn't take place until eighteen months later.

My point? Look at the title of this piece. That's exactly what happens in fiction as in life, only in fiction we writers get to pull the strings--sometimes based on our own experiences, more often on a combination of experience, imagination, and an understanding of what it takes to catch and hold the attention of one man and one woman.

Visual Triggers: Regardless of how nice it might be to fall for the man's, or the woman's mind and not give a fiddle for the way they look, the truth is that in most cases, initial reaction is to purely visual stimuli (stimulating stimuli--I like that). The writer's job is to reproduce emotional and physical reactions to visual triggers during the first meeting with enough power to make sure the reader "sees" and reacts to the scene.

Why is this scene so important? If there is no magic, no mystery and excitement on the page during the first encounter, readers are disappointed. If they aren't instantly involved with the characters we want them to care about, the likely result is that they never get into the book.

When a hero and heroine meet, the world around them should stand still, or at least move away and become a blur, a surreal storm with two people alone at its eye. Movies and plays give us some memorable examples. Check out THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS--the silent attraction is powerful. There are early scenes in CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON that are incredible examples of sexual tension without sex--the connections are palpable and when there is the touch of a hand, the result is electric. BOUNCE is a smaller, more down to earth story but take a look at the endearingly awkward--and aware--scenes when the hero and heroine are face-to-face for the first few times.

How do we pull off the perfect, heart-stopping first encounter on the page? Probably not through a "cute" incident. The ditzy heroine who backs her car into the hero's, or runs her grocery cart over his toes, followed by the hero's reaction--either the angry, "Just what I needed to start my day, an idiot female who needs training wheels," or the condescending but supposedly promising, "Hey, calm down. It's okay. These things happen and that foot's a prosthesis anyway."

A hackneyed incident does not a story or a relationship make.

Tie the first meeting to the major conflict in your story, then hit the reader between the eyes with a forceful physical and emotional punch.

Danger is a great place to start. These two are driven together by danger and the question is, are they at more or less risk if they get together? Everything rides on what happens next, and next. A woman runs from a would-be murderer. She goes to a man who seems to have all the right credentials to help her. Apart from on the Internet, they've never met. Hope and fear make for a stomach churning cocktail. The woman's mixture of doubt and longing squeeze out evocative feelings. She arrives at her destination but doesn't see a man who fits her expectations. She speculates on possible candidates and doesn't find even one--although she does notice someone who can't possibly be her man, much as she wishes he were. And the man? He is there, he's waiting, and watching arriving passengers, but not a single woman resembles the description he's been given.

Then, WHAM! No more travelers arrive and all those waiting for someone have moved off, except the man with toe-curling appeal, and the woman who sits surrounded by her scuffed baggage and feeling like the one who just got passed over for the troll part in the school play. At last these two people get it: they're looking for each other and they like so much of what they see. This beginning is loaded with cautious attraction and anticipation. (Olivia FitzDurham and Aiden Flynn in GLASS HOUSES).

Mystery, possibility, awareness, shyness, fear, and yes, sex appeal. This is an intoxicating pot to stir and it's based on character and conflict, longing, and the readiness and opportunity to get involved.

A Myth: Women don't react sexually to a man who interests them. Women are into mind first and only consider the physical when they are attracted to personality. My temptation is to write, baloney, and that's pretty close to the way I feel about this assumption, but I also believe that although women are often as visual as men, they do move quickly into wanting an emotional connection together with the physical. Women, I think, like to believe they are more than a tool designed to get a specific job done.

I have often heard a woman say, "I don't know what he sees in me." Evidently the man in question is too consumed with self-gratification to hand out affirmations to the woman in his life. Very hastily I must add that we're in an age when lots of women have similar feelings about sex. But the desire for that old magic is still there and that's why our readers keep turning the pages.

When your characters meet for the first time, they are attracted to each other regardless of any risks attached to a relationship between them (that only sweetens the tension anyway). Remember some of the universal types/situations that titillate and why. The way a man stands, the angle of his head, his smile, the way he wears his clothes and what he wears. His walk, mannerisms, confidence. Similar points go for the woman in the piece. Character shows through these things. Does the man have that cowboy lure? Is he a knockout in the suit he wears so easily, his jacket pushed back, hands in pockets, top shirt button undone and tie pulled a little askew? How about the special forces types? Just how does that body look in a wet suit? Or without the wetsuit? Remember, good first impressions come in all shapes and sizes! Blue jeans and a white T-shirt, Middle Eastern robes (the sheik lives on)? Just be sure your man makes his clothes, and that the impression is unforgettable.

The initial meeting should make sure readers absolutely cannot stop reading to find out what happens after the first meeting.

After the first meeting? The rest of the story and, depending upon the level of sensuality intended, progress to a sexual relationship.

I don't think it's shocking to pull truth into the open--truth as it applies to a great many relationships. From the moment two people meet, if the relationship is sexual/romantic in nature, they are moving toward making love/having sex. The two activities are not the same.

In a sweet romance these elements must be dealt with more carefully than in many books. The pure, to-the-heart-of-the-romance-genre story, will accentuate what characters think rather than what they do, even though there is frequently some wonderful, gentle eroticism in the books.

In a more graphic novel, love and sex tend to be approached directly, if to different degrees of voluptuousness. Let's imagine a woman under tremendous stress. She has been alone and struggling with an ex-husband's attempts to control her from a distance.

They have a child in common and through devious means the husband has gained primary custody. The husband doesn't want his ex-wife anymore (other than as a source of income) but he doesn't want anyone else to have her, so he threatens her with the biggest hammer he has: if she does anything to annoy him, he'll make sure she never sees her child. This vibrant woman meets a man of the toe-curling variety--not simply because he's easy to look at, but because she feels his strength and can't imagine him using a woman purely for his own ends.

This is fertile ground for a growing relationship and this relationship, (Max Wolfe and Carolee Burns in TELL ME WHY, September 2001) grows fast. In an atmosphere of the forbidden, Max sends out all the right, if subtle signals, and Carolee picks them up. The lady has been alone too long and she's vulnerable, and this seems to be her perfect man. Result? She seduces him and Max doesn't cry, "No, no!"

How do you go about writing a love scene? Don't force it. Don't build up performance anxiety! You don't worry about what Aunt Mabel will think. Don't disdain what you're writing. As my friend Ann Maxwell (Elizabeth Lowell) says, "It's tough to type and hold your nose at the same time. Don't worry about getting all the appropriate tabs inserted into the appropriate slots. Spontaneity is the key to dynamic fictional relationships, just as it is in life--in this case fiction does mirror life. Get comfortable, allow yourself to see and feel what's going on, and let your senses take your writing wherever it needs to go.

Suggested Exercise: Pack up your laptop, portable typewriter, or pad and pen and go to a place where you won't be interrupted. The woods, a motel room, the attic or a shed at the bottom of the garden--anywhere you can make yourself comfortable and feel closed away with your characters. Now write. Write much more than you'll ever need. Write a scene that covers hours of your characters being intimately together. I once did this on a portable electric Olivetti, in the midst of tall firs, with a heavy duty extension cord snaking from an outlet at a camp site. And I was there for hours. It's like stretching before working out, the pain goes away and the rest is a breeze--sort of.

Try it, and remember--this is supposed to be fun, and foreplay doesn't always have to be goal-oriented!