Randall Jarrell (American poet/novelist) said “When you organize one of the contradictory elements out of your work of art, you are getting rid not just of it, but of the contradiction of which it was a part; and it is the contradictions in works of art which make them able to represent us – as logical and methodical generalizations cannot – our world and our selves, which are also full of contradictions”*
I’ve always thought that characters needed consistency above all else. If Talulah loves pizza on one page, she can’t hate it on the next. It just doesn’t make any sense. But there’s a whole other level of contradiction that plays within our lives – one I’m just coming to appreciate as an artist attempting to portray reality.
The contradiction I’m working with now is love. People often fall in love with individuals who make them crazy. Most anyone who has ever dated can remember loving and hating someone at the same time. It is a very human experience.
Currently, in my own story, I’m struggling with how to write the love story that unfolds within the larger plot of the novel. In mulling over that quote, it occurred to me that perhaps my love scenes (the scenes in which my characters fall in love – not the gettin’ down) are too simple. They meet, they fall in love and every time I write it, it just comes out dull and cliche. Maybe what I’ve been missing is that inherent contradiction that makes us truly human.
Yes it’s true that in real life some people do fall in love and never argue, never break up then get back together repeatedly, are never torn apart by disapproving families, but there’s a reason we don’t tell their stories very often – they’re boring.
So I guess what I’m realizing is that my young lovers need more strife. Maybe I’ll make him a republican. Maybe he’s already engaged and they never get together at all. I’m not sure, but the story needs something…
From now on I’m keeping my easy loving between me and my guy – and out of my fiction.
*This quote is pulled from Jonah Lehrer’s “Proust was a Neuroscientist” – a book you really must read, if you haven’t already.
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