Writing Young Love

Let’s talk about young love. No seriously, I need your help. I’m trying to write the opening of a book that absolutely depends on two young people falling madly in love before they are separated around page 30. If their love isn’t a burn-down-the-house-and-everyone-in-it, stab-myself-in-the-heart-because-you-drank-all-the-poison kind of love, the separation isn’t so crushing and the story isn’t as compelling as it could be. Problem is: I’ve been in love with the same man for over 20 years.

Normally, I don’t count that as a problem. In fact, I consider myself pretty effing lucky, but it has made writing young, impulsive, irrational love a little challenging. And it’s not that we didn’t have that young, impulsive and irrational thing back in the day, but since then I’ve learned how love changes as you share it with someone for decades and I’m not really trusting myself to remember the all the details of how we started out.

Mining My Own History

As a starting point, I pulled an old journal off the shelf. I’ve been journaling off and on for most of my life, but it only became a daily practice in 2015. So the entries are a little sporadic, but there is some good material there. There’s an entry on July 12, 2001 that starts:

I met a boy… 26, greying at the temples, smart, funny, gorgeous…

After that there’s a lot of hedging. He was just getting out of a long relationship (so was I)… “who knows where this is going…” Blah Blah Blah. Jump to August 29 of the same year:

F**k it, I’m crazy about him. And it scares the pants off me. It’s like falling, and it’s fun. In fact it’s wonderful.

So there’s some material to work with.

Best Selling Romances

I’v also been re-reading the first chapters of a few of my favorite romance novels (most of which are written by Tessa Dare – so delicious), but a lot of those stories, or at least the ones I seem to be drawn to, are the ones where the young woman and her soon-to-be lover start off opposed on some key point.

They can’t stand each other, but then circumstance pulls them together and they realize they’re meant to be together. Great reads, but it’s not quite what I’m aiming at. The main issue is I don’t have time to do the whole enemies-to-friends thing. I’m shooting for love at first sight.

When I shared my dilemma at a recent Very Important Meeting, someone suggested reviewing Romeo and Juliet. Kinda can’t believe I hadn’t thought of that.

Romeo and Juliet

What makes the story of Romeo and Juliet so compelling? Is it that their families are at war with each other? That’s what give the narrative such great conflict, but is that what makes them fall in love? You can see the distinction I’m trying to tease out here. What makes two people fall in love? Are they both just THAT gorgeous? Romeo says:

O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
Like a rich jewel in an Ethiope’s ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!
So shows a snowy dove trooping with crows,
As yonder lady o’er her fellows shows.
The measure done, I’ll watch her place of stand,
And, touching hers, make blessed my rude hand.
Did my heart love till now? forswear it, sight!
For I ne’er saw true beauty till this night.

Maybe she was just that gorgeous. That feels insipid. Frankly, it’s not their love that makes this story a classic, it’s their death.

A Modern Take on Love

This article in Psychology Today says there are 11 reasons we fall in love:

• Similarity
• Propinquity
• Desirable characteristics
• Reciprocal liking
• Social influence
• Filling needs
• Arousal/unusualness
• Specific cues
• Readiness
• Isolation
• Mystery

This I can work with. It’s clinical, yes, but I can envision a scene where social influence nudges two characters together. Likewise for propinquity. My characters have actually known each other all their lives, they just don’t fall in love until circumstance pushes them together. I guess they are filling a need for each other. Yes, this list is much more helpful.

It would seem that the challenge is to understand the underlying needs of the characters and then have them act on those needs in the way of impulsive, myopic, and naive teenagers. Writing is hard.

Help a Writer Out

I would love to hear some book recommendations for stories where two young people who have known each other peripherally all their lives click and fall in love. Or maybe you have your own story you could share? What made you fall in love (young or not)? Was it something s/he did or said, or was it just pheromones?