::mslexia workshops::

Write on the Wild Side #16
a writing workshop with Margaret Wilkinson

THEME: ROMANCE

INTRODUCTION

DON'T EXPRESS your emotions in emotional terms. Romantic writing may be matter-of-fact. If you want to write about love, write about a carpenter building a table. About sharpening a pencil. Watching a plane’s trail in the sky. Using one of these scenarios, write about the morning after a night of love.

From After You'd Gone by Maggie O’Farrell
Alice and John sit in a café in the Lake District. It’s early autumn. She holds a sugar cube between finger and thumb, the light behind it making its crystals the massed cells of an intricate organism under a microscope.

‘Did you know,’ says John, ‘that someone did a chemical analysis of sugar cubes in café sugar bowls and that they found strong traces of blood, semen, faeces and urine?’

She keeps her face serious. ‘I didn’t know that, no.’

He holds her deadpan gaze until the edges of his mouth are tugged downward. Alice gets hiccups and he shows her how to cure them by drinking out of the opposite side of a glass. Beyond them, through the window, a plane draws a sheer white line on the sky.

She looks at John’s hands, breaking up a bread roll, and suddenly she knows she loves him. She looks away, out of the window, and sees for the first time the white line made by the plane. It has by this time drifted into woolliness. She thinks about pointing it out to John, but doesn’t.

EXERCISES

#1
Focus on place.
Describe a lake from the point of view of someone who has just: drowned their lover in it; had a passionate moonlight swim in it; been jilted beside it. Do nothing but describe the lake. Let your description alone convey the emotion. After you’ve finished the piece, if you feel it needs it, add one sentence revealing what has happened there.

#2
Explore romance using accidental metaphor.
In a newspaper piece select four to six nouns (or noun-adjective combinations). Put the indefinite article ‘a’ or ‘an’ in front of each. Using an article on what wines to choose for a barbecue, I came up with: a glowing coal, an old grape, a barrel, a big steak.

Complete the following with any of your random nouns. For example:

My lover is… a big steak.
My secret lover is… a glowing coal.

In either poetry or prose-poetry (a short burst of prose) try to make sense of any of these strange statements.

From The Accidental Tourist by Anne Tyler
Macon wore a formal summer suit, his travelling suit – much more logical for travelling than jeans, he always said. Jeans had those stiff hard seams and those rivets. Sarah wore a strapless terry beach dress. They might have been returning from two entirely different trips. Sarah had a tan but Macon didn’t. He was a tall, pale, grey-eyed man with straight fair hair cut close to his head, and his skin was that thin kind that easily burns. He’d kept away from the sun during the middle part of every day.

Just past the start of the divided highway, the sky grew almost black and several enormous drops spattered on the windshield. Sarah sat up straight. ‘Let’s hope it doesn’t rain,’ she said.

‘I don’t mind a little rain,’ Macon said.

Every now and then a gush of wind blew up. Rain flattened the long, pale grass at the sides of the road. It slanted across the boat lots, lumberyards, and discount furniture outlets, which already had a darkened look as if here it might have been raining for some time.

‘Can you see all right?’ Sarah asked

‘Of course,’ Macon said. ‘This is nothing.’

They arrived behind a trailer truck whose rear wheels sent out arcs of spray. Macon swung to the left and passed. There was a moment of watery blindness till the truck had dropped behind. Sarah gripped the dashboard with one hand.

‘I don’t know how you can see to drive,’ she said.

‘Maybe you should put on your glasses.’

‘Putting on my glasses would help you to see?’

‘Not me; you,’ Macon said. ‘You are focused on the windshield instead of the road.’

They shot through an underpass. The rain stopped completely for one blank, startling second. Sarah gave a little gasp of relief but even before it was uttered, the hammering on the roof resumed. She turned and gazed back longingly at the underpass. Macon sped ahead, with his hands relaxed on the wheel.

‘Macon, I want a divorce,’ Sarah told him.

Macon braked and glanced over at her. ‘What?’ he said. The car swerved.

#3
Translate the emotions of love, romance, jealousy, betrayal, or parting into concrete images, places, things. Write a piece of prose in third-person past tense based on Anne Tyler’s excerpt. Notice how she conveys this couple (headed for a break-up) by the contrasting clothes they wear, their reactions to the weather, the driving conditions and dialogue that says nothing about their emotional states and everything about their conflict.

Write about a couple of strangers falling in love on a journey using dialogue about the weather, the journey, their physical description, to communicate their growing attraction. Don’t say anything directly about their interest in one another. Show don’t tell.

#4
Write in first-person present tense about either falling in, or out, of love. First think of a setting – a café; a churchyard at dusk; a foreign beach; the maternity ward of a hospital. Then complete the following:

We fell in love in… the maternity ward of a hospital.
We broke up on… a foreign beach.

Now describe this scenario, focusing on precise but not poetic description, action and narration. Use neutral, rather than idiosyncratic observation. Withhold all feelings, reflections, interpretations and emotional responses.

The more emotional the situation the more interesting the neutral approach may be. Because we expect intimacy not distance, emotion not coolness, in first person (and given the subject matter), the result will possibly be a strong and paradoxical piece of writing.