Date: Fri, 26 Jan 1996 10:21:05 EST From: a tangled tpol Subject: EXERCISE: A Romantic Bone Comments: To: "warp, woof, and weave!" [another friday, another week gone to bits, and here we are again. let's see, class, what shall we contemplate? a romantic skeleton buried in the closet? let us get the rascal out of there and into our viscera, shall we?] Let us consider the denouement. Since you may not have your dictionary handy, let me quote the Oxford American Dictionary..."1. the clearing up, at the end of a play or story, of the complications of plot. 2. the outcome of a tangled sequence of events." Now, in the case of the classic romance, we are looking for one (or more) of our central characters to learn something about that pristine peculiarity of extravagant emotional involvement--love. Along the way, of course, it is quite conceivable that the character may stumble into the arms of another, may be swept off their feet by strange and suspiciously unmotivated gestures by various players, or even misled into the briarpatches of emotional dependence... So, without further hesitation, let us offer a few choices. Pick a number from...oh, say one to six? You have your number? Proceed. 1. Love does not cause suffering: what causes it is the sense of ownership, which is love's opposite. Saint-Exupery, "The Wisdom of the Sands" (1948), 49, tr. Stuart Gilbert. 2. Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction. Saint-Exupery, "Wind, Sand, and Stars", (1939) 9.6, tr. Lewis Galantiere 3. Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind; And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind. Shakespeare, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" (1595096), 1.1.234 4. Love sought is good, but given unsought is better. Shakespeare, "Twelfth Night (1599-1600), 3.1.168 5. Let the dead have the immortality of fame, but the living the immortality of love. Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds, (1916), 279 6. Love's gift cannot be given, it waits to be accepted. Rabindranath Tagore, Fireflies (1928) Take that quote (from the International Thesaurus of Quotations, Rhoda Thomas Tripp) and think about it. Think of a character and situation where someone might need to learn the essence of your quote. Think about who might teach them, and how. Make a few notes about this and continue. (start your engines!) Now back up. Make a list of at least five mistakes, misinterpretations, or just plain lies that might mislead our character before they come to understand the essence of the quote. Think about characters who might benefit from leading our main character along the wrong paths, away from the truth, and pick at least two or three of these options. Sketch quickly what you are thinking about -- a line or two, maybe a paragraph about it is enough. (and the starting flag is up, in the air!) And back up once more. You now have a main character and the person who will teach them the final lesson, free them from the bondage of the villian, or what have you. You also have one or two characters who will try to get in the way, along with reasons for them to try to confuse the issue. All we need now is a beginning. We would like a situation where several of the characters can be introduced, along with some way of posing the question--will our character learn the important truth about love or not? So spend a few moments considering where you'd like to start. If you want to, you may use the following... She had just arrived alone at the party when the lights went out. Introduce your characters and let the good times roll... (and... Go!) Fill out your beginning; complicate the scenes that show our character being misled, confused, hoodwinked, and otherwise betrayed; and build gradually but relentlessly to the shocking finale when truth, justice, and romance poets triumph or fall in showing our character what love can be...in the denouement of our days. [a bit worded, are we?] tink