Happiness in Death

Love scenes: some of the hardest writing I do.  I don't know why I have such a hard time writing a decent romantic scene.  Maybe I'm dead inside and don't feel emotions like other people, or maybe it's because I go too far when I write them, either too cheesy, too aggressive, too pornographic...who knows?  All I know is that I struggle with them greatly.

The irony of that opening statement is that I can't stand to read a novel without some element of love.  I enjoy that giddy sensation that gives me a chance to change the emotions I'm experiencing during the rest of the novel.  It adds climax and excitement to the story.

So, while I know what I like, making my characters act that way, making my brain think that way is difficult.

With my work in progress, there is an element of romance that builds and builds.  At the height of this romantic relationship, I felt like the scene where it all came together fell flat.  Something wasn't right.  All of the actions were right, but it didn't fill me with that sense of giddiness, that excitement of something that had been developing throughout the novel coming to its climax.  It just wasn't working.  I wrote this scene a few months ago and moved on with the novel, knowing I was going to need to come back to it.  That time finally came this month.  I read it and changed a few things here and there, but it still didn't feel right.  I left it and came back the next day, and the next, and the next.  It just wasn't working.

Finally, it came to me in the dark of a sleepless night after being stuck for about two weeks: the protagonist wasn't behaving like she would.  Her emotions weren't congruent with her character.  I was writing her acting, feeling in a way contrary to any way she would ever act or feel.  When morning came, I eliminated all traces of the previous emotions I had given her and rewrote that romantic scene.  She no longer felt things she would never consider; she was focused and driven, just like she had been since the beginning of the book.  While her actions surprised us, her motive didn't.  It was the same as it had always been.  The scene came together.  The feelings I had been trying to force onto the reader came, not because I wrote them, but because our protagonist acted like herself.

Killing that scene, which I would have loved if I didn't know my protagonist like I do, brought the emotions it had been deprived of.  While it sounds hard, and it is, it is always worth the change.  I won't ever regret erasing that scene and changing it like I did.  I love it now and it brought the energy to the novel, to that plot element that I had been missing.  Have the courage and kill them.