Scribbling on the Heart - 1. Crazy Little Thing Called...
Welcome to the start of a couple of very brief brainstorm on writing emotions. Before I invite the rage, this isn't supposed to be rigorous. I'm just chucking ideas at a page, and you're welcome to join in.Still to come: hate, fear, ambition and lust, but first up...
Love, wow, That's a big beast. Its the thousand pound tiger of the emotional kingdom: huge, beautiful, lethal and in some indefinable way, possessed of an air of insufferable smugness.
Everyone wants it, everyone craves it, most people have done it (at least we think they have, which makes us crave it all the more: "everyone else is doing it, so why aren't you?"') Love is a prize, the treasure at the end of a rainbow. That's why there are so many more stories about *falling* in love, than *being* in love.
Obviously... many splendid thing etc: Love has more faces than Tony Blair in a fun house, but is there anything that they all have in common? Anything that explains their MSG-like magic ingredient effect on stories?
Sure there is - risk. A lot of stories need risk, because they need questions the reader cares about the answer to. Will they won't they kiss/marry/fucklikerabbits/getheirintestineswrappedaroundtheirnecks?
Venus is the planet named after love, but it really ought to be Mercury. The naked planet, with its atmosphere stripped away, amere few million miles from the colossal, flaming object of its orbital obsessions. Whatever kind of love you have it will involve vulnerability, because love is something you treasure right? And that means losing it is catastrophic. This makes it teh awesome for teh storiez that involve teh peril. Just tie someone to a train-track and zomg, Stakes!
But there's more risk to love than simply losing it. There's the deeper risk of discovery. Paradoxically, thats why the people we love can make us feel so safe, and yet put us in the greatest danger. We let them take our hands and they take us on a guided tour straight into the jungle: the wildest reaches of ourselves, they show us what *they're* in love with. But the greatest betrayal happens when, right in front of the thousand pound tiger, our love goes native and melts into the trees. And then, boy do we shit ourselves! Night's setting in, and its getting cold and we have to find our own way home in the dark through a landscape of the heart suddenly more threatening than anything we've ever seen.
But the impact of Love in stories isn't just about risk either, is it? Love is a means as well as an end. One of the best things about being in love is being constantly and surprisingly *moved* by the girl or boy you're in love with. Same as one of the best things about a book.
Recently read The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier and Clay, (which by the way I loved? and there's a bit where Sam and Joe are trying to come up with a Superhero concept:
"He turns into fire, he turns into electricity, he turns into...uh...acid"
"He turns into Gravy, he turns into an enormous hat, he turns into a can of fucking creamed corn..."
Writing love can be a bit like that. To quote Q-tip, "Its this and like that and like this and uh..." How you capture love? How on earth you put a cage made only of words around something that can break *hearts?*
You can't, but that's one of the things that makes writing about love so perfect. Because you can't pin *anything* down in text, not exactly. There's always space for interpretation, gaps for the reader to fill with their personal experience. Writing about love is the simplest and most powerful form of this. Writing about love isn't a cage, its a cheaply wrought door (words are after all, proverbially cheaper than chewing gum) into the hearts of the readers. But the only way to get there is through scribbling on your own.
I'm going to leave your with a sneaker pimps line: "If you can't live on love alone, it isn't love."
You guys are mostly writers, right? What do you think?
Love, wow, That's a big beast. Its the thousand pound tiger of the emotional kingdom: huge, beautiful, lethal and in some indefinable way, possessed of an air of insufferable smugness.
Everyone wants it, everyone craves it, most people have done it (at least we think they have, which makes us crave it all the more: "everyone else is doing it, so why aren't you?"') Love is a prize, the treasure at the end of a rainbow. That's why there are so many more stories about *falling* in love, than *being* in love.
Obviously... many splendid thing etc: Love has more faces than Tony Blair in a fun house, but is there anything that they all have in common? Anything that explains their MSG-like magic ingredient effect on stories?
Sure there is - risk. A lot of stories need risk, because they need questions the reader cares about the answer to. Will they won't they kiss/marry/fucklikerabbits/getheirintestineswrappedaroundtheirnecks?
Venus is the planet named after love, but it really ought to be Mercury. The naked planet, with its atmosphere stripped away, amere few million miles from the colossal, flaming object of its orbital obsessions. Whatever kind of love you have it will involve vulnerability, because love is something you treasure right? And that means losing it is catastrophic. This makes it teh awesome for teh storiez that involve teh peril. Just tie someone to a train-track and zomg, Stakes!
But there's more risk to love than simply losing it. There's the deeper risk of discovery. Paradoxically, thats why the people we love can make us feel so safe, and yet put us in the greatest danger. We let them take our hands and they take us on a guided tour straight into the jungle: the wildest reaches of ourselves, they show us what *they're* in love with. But the greatest betrayal happens when, right in front of the thousand pound tiger, our love goes native and melts into the trees. And then, boy do we shit ourselves! Night's setting in, and its getting cold and we have to find our own way home in the dark through a landscape of the heart suddenly more threatening than anything we've ever seen.
But the impact of Love in stories isn't just about risk either, is it? Love is a means as well as an end. One of the best things about being in love is being constantly and surprisingly *moved* by the girl or boy you're in love with. Same as one of the best things about a book.
Recently read The Amazing Adventures Of Kavalier and Clay, (which by the way I loved? and there's a bit where Sam and Joe are trying to come up with a Superhero concept:
"He turns into fire, he turns into electricity, he turns into...uh...acid"
"He turns into Gravy, he turns into an enormous hat, he turns into a can of fucking creamed corn..."
Writing love can be a bit like that. To quote Q-tip, "Its this and like that and like this and uh..." How you capture love? How on earth you put a cage made only of words around something that can break *hearts?*
You can't, but that's one of the things that makes writing about love so perfect. Because you can't pin *anything* down in text, not exactly. There's always space for interpretation, gaps for the reader to fill with their personal experience. Writing about love is the simplest and most powerful form of this. Writing about love isn't a cage, its a cheaply wrought door (words are after all, proverbially cheaper than chewing gum) into the hearts of the readers. But the only way to get there is through scribbling on your own.
I'm going to leave your with a sneaker pimps line: "If you can't live on love alone, it isn't love."
You guys are mostly writers, right? What do you think?