Analysis of Romance Scene from Middlemarch Part II: the delicious misunderstanding

Here is Part I.  Here is what I learned from my previous analysis: I don’t know why, but I know that romantic misunderstandings which cascade into further romantic understandings feel wonderful to read.

We love it when our main characters are in pain because they both feel that they are being rejected, when we, the reader, know that they actually love each other.

It is especially delicious when one misunderstands the other’s anger/upset/angst and this triggers insecurity/anger/unwillingness to speak up and they get further mired in miscommunication.

I left off in the middle of an analysis of Chapter 62 (if I read my roman numerals correctly).  Will felt he hinted at his feelings, but Dorothea, misjudging his anger, held back.  Will interpreted this as “cruelly neutral” and was hurt.

But the “cascade of misunderstandings” is not over.

Dorothea asks about his future plans.  Will is still hurt, so he speaks in a tone that seemed to waive the subject as uninteresting.  This makes Dorothea so emotional she is about to cry.  Will then dares to come as close as he can to being explicit: “What I care more for than I can ever care for anything else is absolutely forbidden to me…Of course I shall go on living as a man might do who had seen heaven in a trance.”

Will believes he has absolutely committed himself there. {{Yet still insecurity prevents him from being absolutely explicit. Technique of feeling like they communicated but actually held back because of fear, which leads to further misunderstanding.}}

But now the previous plot point comes into effect: Dorothea has previously been told that he had flirted with another married woman. “The thought that she herself might be what Will most cared for did throb through her an instant, but then came doubt.”  She immediately {{because of insecurity and the previous misunderstandings}} interpreted it in another way.  “Everything he had said might refer to that other relation, and whatever had passed between him and herself was thoroughly explained but what she had always regarded as their simple friendship.”

She feels sick about this, but also understands that he is saying he never did anything inappropriate.

Will, in another delicious cascade of misunderstanding, misinterprets her sick feeling. “Will was not surprised at her silence.”

“His mind also was tumultuously busy while he watched her, and he was feeling rather wildly that something must happen to hinder their parting.”  {{Contrast–he is a mass of seething emotions, but on the surface they both appear stilted and unfeeling.}}

They hover their together, each hoping the other will commit, each being held back by their own fears plus the piles of misinterpretation.  And the footman comes to say it’s time to go.

Oh, but we are presented with two more misunderstandings!  This is masterful.  Instead of ending it on that throbbing tension, George Eliot manages to tease out two more incidents to hit the reader with the tension in more ways.  {{I would have ended it there–but let me learn from the master!}}

Dorothea takes the moment to urgently try to express herself in a final way.  “You have acted in every way rightly,” said Dorothea, in a low tone, feeling a pressure at her heart which made it difficult to speak.

Will completely misinterprets this; “her words seemed to him cruelly cold and unlike herself.” {{Technique: she is SO emotional but holding back, he misinterprets it as lack of caring.}}  This leads to more misunderstanding: “Their eyes met, but there was discontent in his, and in hers there was only sadness.”

This sadness triggers his anger and her anger triggers more sadness.  All for nothing, since they actually love each other!  And then that leads to the poignant moment:

“I have never done you injustice.  Please remember me,” said D, repressing a rising sob.
“Why should you say that?” said Will, with irritation. “As if I were not in danger of forgetting everything else.”
He had really a movement of anger against her at that moment, and it impelled him to go away without pause. It was all one flash to Dorothea–his last words–his distant bow to her as he reached the door–the sense that he was no longer there. She sank into the chair, and for a few moments sat like a statue.

Oh, the drama! Oh, the pain!

But George Eliot has one more flourish.  This is an excellent dramatic technique.  Dorothea drives away and passes Will walking away.  Her thoughts are full of regret as he raises his hat to her.  We get treated to a full analysis of her sadness about the futility of the situation.

As Will watches the carriage pass, he is bitter. “Very slight matters were enough to gall him in his sensitive mood; and the sight of Dorothea driving past him while he felt himself plodding along as a poor devil seeking a position in a world which in his present temper offered him little that he coveted…” The author has physically put the characters in a situation that represents their experiences.  And manages to give us one final twinge of the conflict tearing them apart.

In summary, we learn two techniques here:

1. Insecurity and holding back CAUSES the other party to misinterpret the depth of feelings, which causes further insecurity and holding back, which leads to more misinterpretation, etc. etc.
2. It is delicious to read the contrast of having deep, strong passionate feelings underneath the surface coupled with restraint, withholding, and control on the surface.  This contrast also leads to further misunderstandings.

 

Finished my Fourth Book!

I did go over by almost three thousand words.  Not enough for Harlequin Special Edition, too much for Harlequin Romance.  (However, perfectly fine for self-publishing, which is where it will most likely end up.)

As I was sitting down to work on my Blurb, I realized yet again how weak my conflicts are.  If I can’t even figure out THE conflict for the blurb, then clearly the conflicts are weak.

It’s not like I didn’t start out with better intentions.  In fact, when I first dreamed up these characters (and this book did literally start with a dream I had), I sketched out their personality profiles and basic conflicts.  I envisioned an older, sexually jaded player who felt pulled towards a more sexually innocent, fresh younger woman who would tempt him away from his strong desire to be noble by an even stronger desire to be with her.  The conflict would be his better nature fighting against the physical and powerfully emotional desire she stirred in him.  The excitement would be when he gave in to what he knew was a bad idea.  The thrill would be when she discovered the potency of her own sexuality.  The internal conflict would be how he falls in love and has to believe he is worthy of her.  The external conflict would be how her family doesn’t trust this player with their beloved daughter.  His family would believe she was after his money.

Well, that was the original plan.  And I’m sure a blurb would like that would have worked.  However, that’s not what happened when I started writing.  The characters had their own personalities.  She wasn’t an innocent, fresh younger woman.  She ended up confidently going after what she wanted.  And he wasn’t jaded at all.  I had to let them do what they wanted; after all, who is in charge–the writer, or the characters??

Here’s my first attempt at the Blurb:

Jack Harper, senior editor and troubleshooter extraordinaire, is energetic and impulsive, impatient and larger than life.

Olivia Asami Lee is meticulous and disciplined.  She looks like a delicate princess but writes grisly murder novels.

When Jack is brought in to consult on marketing, sparks fly…

I’m not thrilled about the cliche of sparks flying.  But as I keep finding, cliches say exactly what I want to say and convey precisely the emotion I want to convey.

Next step.  Write the synopsis.  Then the query letter.  It feels like an exercise in futility since I don’t think this fourth book has improved significantly in quality over my third book but on the up side, I am getting pretty efficient at writing a synopsis.  And maybe it’s not about significant improvement.  Maybe it’s lots and lots of incremental improvements, which will add up to a lot of long term skill.

 

Analysis of Romance Scene from Middlemarch Part I: the delicious misunderstanding

The Background: Will loves Dorothea and Dorothea loves Will.  They fell innocently in love back when she was married to the weak and petty Casaubon, but never acted on it, nor even allowed themselves to think they were in love at the time.  But the sickly Casaubon was jealous and made it a condition of his will that if Dorothea married Will, she would be disinherited.

When this was made public, Will, who had hopes of Dorothea now that she was single, refused to cause her to be impoverished.  He had planned to go seek his fortune and then ask to marry her, but he found out his hitherto unknown parents were actually people with horrible reputations, and now he didn’t feel he could ever ask her to marry him.  Dorothea, who had hopes of Will, felt that Casaubon’s actions were the highest insult to Will since of course there had been nothing inappropriate during her marriage.  And the codicil implied that there had been.

The Immediate Events:  Will was going off to seek his fortune, but comes to say one final thing to Dorothea.  Their love is doomed.  This is in Chapter 62.

It starts off with a number of conflicts.  In a simple pragmatic sense, Will sends Dorothea a note asking her to see him and she’s not at home to get it so doesn’t respond.  So they start off with him feeling upset that he hasn’t heard from her.  {{There is high agitation and tension before the scene even starts.  The reader feels Will’s intense emotions.}}

While she was out, she heard a rumor that Will was flirting with another married lady.  Dorothea sharply defends him, but is now insecure, especially because she saw them once together looking very cozy.  {{Both characters in a state of agitation.  She is jealous and insecure.}}

So in their meeting, he was not expecting her to come back and she was not expecting him to be there and she additionally was just grappling in a misery of doubt about him.

“Dorothea’s heart seemed to turn over as if it had a blow,” but also “the sense that Will was there was for the moment all-satisfying to her, like the sight of something precious that one has lost.”  {{Description of high emotion of meeting.  Classic “showing” not “telling” of D’s physical state to express intense emotion.}}

He starts off by saying that when he said good bye before, he had hoped to come back some day.  But now he won’t and he wants to explain.

Next, he says that he has been grossly insulted and his character assassinated.  He is agitated.

Dorothea wants to tell him that she never thought badly of him.  She walks over to him to emphasize her consistent good opinion of him.  “When Will saw her there, he gave a start and moved backward out of the window, without meeting her glance. Dorothea was hurt by this movement following up the previous anger of his tone. She was ready to say that it was as hard on her as on him, and that she was helpless; but those strange particulars of their relation which neither of them could explicitly mention kept her always in dread of saying too much.  At this moment she had no belief that Will would in any case have wanted to marry her, and she feared using words which might imply such a belief.”

The technique used here is “romantic misunderstanding.” D assumes Will is angry (at her?) when he is actually just agitated about the situation.  This leads her to be insecure and reluctant to state her true feelings.

She responds to Will that she didn’t doubt him.  This leads to a technique of “romantic misunderstanding cascade.”  SINCE she is now insecure and holding back, Will now misunderstands her and believes she is “cruelly neutral.”  Then the cascade builds on itself because he looks “pale and miserable after his angry outburst.”

“What could he say, since what had got obstinately uppermost in his mind was the passionate love for her which he forbade himself to utter? What could she say, since she might offer him no help–since she was forced to keep the money that ought to have been his? –since today he seemed not to respond as he used to do to her thorough trust and liking?”

Now they are both entangled.  He loves her but thinks she is better off without him.  Classic “dumping for noble reasons.”  She might have spoken up, but he seems to not like her today as much as usual, so she is too insecure.

Will is now feeling rejected.  “I must go,” he said, with that peculiar look of the eyes which sometimes accompanies bitter feeling“.. So now we the reader feel all the delicious pain of the misunderstanding.  He is hurt, because he thinks he is being rejected.  But he isn’t really rejected–D is just too insecure to speak up because she thinks he is angry at her.  And now he is going to leave, which hurts D.

Why does this feel so good to read?  Why do we love it when they are in pain because they both feel that they are being rejected, when we, the reader, know that they actually love each other?

And why is it extra delicious when one misunderstanding triggers another misunderstanding so they are both mired in hopelessness?  When we know that they actually are both misreading the situation?

How Bad Are Cliches?

Cliches pour off my fingertips and onto my computer screen.  Every feeling I want to convey comes out in a cliche.

“tugged his heartstrings”
“his heart leaped with joy”
“his eyes burned into hers”

I’m writing romance so maybe they can be forgiven. But really, who wants to read cliches?  They are trite, annoying ways to say things.

But they say EXACTLY what I want to say!  They convey the emotion SO precisely!  I search for synonyms and NOTHING is PERFECT except for the CLICHE!  (Yes, I’m screaming.  Sorry about that.)

The Final Lap

I’m up to my last chapter!  And WHOOPS I went over 50k words, which I have to say has never happened to me before.  I had to decide whether or not to cut the last conflict/resolution down and decided to write it as I originally envisioned it.  I can always cut it down later (hahaha, I actually hate editing and rarely pull a knife on my own work).

I have less than two thousand words to go and it’s mostly outlined with notes so I hope to chug along.

My process is 1. Write 50k.  2. Submit it to Harlequin. 3. Cry at rejection. 4. Self publish.  Almost done with Step 1 and happily anticipating Steps 2-4.

However, which Harlequin line to submit to?  (Are there other romance publishers?) The Harlequin Series (which I have been reading since I was a teenager) are SO rigid that my stories don’t quite fit into their guidelines.  Over the years I’ve read some authors who were off the beaten path who were so good, they were published anyway.  But sadly, my skill level is not there (yet?).

I was planning to submit to Harlequin Romance (“feel good” and “sweet” romances) since I am still struggling with conflict.

But as I inch closer and closer to 55k, I wonder if maybe after it gets rejected from Romance I should submit it to the Special Edition line.  I have read quite a few of those over the decades, and although mine doesn’t quite seem the same tone, it does say

Harlequin Special Edition features relatable characters who strike a chord with the reader regardless of the book’s setting or plot points.

which is pretty darn vague, if you ask me!  Definitely leaves room for my subgenre. Scanning the rest of the elements: “Strong internal and external conflicts.”  I might get dumped on that one.  Anyway, it is something to think about.

In the meantime, my hero and heroine are in conflict and miserable, so let me get back to them and their happily ever after!

Modifying the Plotline

I put all the different arcs into scenes.  Then I put all the different scenes in a kind of order.  Then I started writing.  As I wrote, some elements didn’t seem to go where I thought to put them, and some elements came out a little differently.

xparents meet jack underwhelmed (cute jack and o)

xlana calling and he takes half an hour during their time o is xjust being insecure

xlovely them

xdanny insults her

xhe wants to chase him down and give it to him? she says xlet him have his feelings???  he insists on respect for her

nicer dinner where he is civil.  drops bomb he is dropping out of school

lana calling, o understanding

convo o helps jack understand things are happy between j&o (make love on chair?)

lana comes in to talk about the situation (o finds it intrusive) when j leaves room, tells o about chair and making love on the chair

danny walks in on them playing danny boy thaws a bit? hard to tell

big fight

lana lunch regularly w/ him o shocked

j’s thoughts

seeing j at office, awkward miserable ask how danny is

parents tell her to see jack, lisa and drew talk it over w her

danny comes home for summer tells him he’s miserable and to see olivia

reconciliation *

The X’s are the scenes I wrote.  And the ones in different font are the ones I moved around a bit as I started writing.

Right now I’m trying to figure out whether I should have his son thaw a bit and THEN move into the next conflict with him.  Or have the next conflict and THEN have him thaw out, like it is in the outline.  As I started writing, it seemed to me to be more natural that he thaws out first and THEN drops the bomb.

My next question is do I show him dropping the bomb or do I just have the hero talking to the heroine about it?  I decided best to show it.  That, too, led to a decision: is the heroine there when the son drops the bomb or not?  I haven’t decided yet.  Sometimes these minutiae of decisions keep me from writing.

 

How to build a plotline with more than one arc

I have about seven thousand words left in my book.  I just got them together last chapter, so now I am going to ramp up the conflict, attempt a black moment, and reconcile them.

I was trying to figure out how to be organized about this.  I have a bunch of threads that the book has been building up to.  A few different conflicts and plot lines.  (This is a basic 50K romance, so it’s not like there is a lot of “plot.”)  I don’t want to just “write and see how it goes” because I want to make sure all of the pieces come together.  (Frankly, I know there are different writing styles but I mostly prefer to plot everything out first and write from an outline.  Even though in practicality, I often have trouble figuring out a direction and the best way to do that is to just let the characters behave and see how they emerge.)

So I was thinking and thinking about how to do it, and then I had an idea:

Take each person or conflict or arc and think about it individually.
Then after I’m done, I can shuffle the scenes like cards and make a general layout of the different scenes for maximum impact.

So I figured out a few different categories and imagined the growth/conflict I wanted or types of scenes I want to write.

For example, the Parent Arc: Parents don’t love him/Parents urge her to patch things up with him

I want to do an arc that shows a contrast.  So in the beginning of the 7k, they meet him and are unenthusiastic.  But in the end, they see how much the relationship means to her and after the black moment they are supportive.

This is just a small piece of the plot but I like how it gives a frame for the story.

Another example, the Son Arc: the son insults her/sees them sing a song about him/becomes supportive

I don’t know how much that shorthand means to you without my plot notes, but again, it’s 3 scenes that shows how the relationship turns around.  I don’t know exactly how he will insult the heroine and I don’t know exactly how he will become supportive of her (I do have a fair idea of the piano song scene), but I know what I’m trying to achieve.

The Heroine Conflict Arc: heroine feels insecure about ex, convinces herself she’s irrational/ex makes trouble about chair/heroine makes ultimatum/she regrets making him choose and wonders if she’s mature enough to handle complexities /willing to let it stay

Again, I don’t know how much of the Arc you are able to follow, but there are 5 basic scenes that show development of a conflict.

The Hero’s Son Plot-Conflict Arc: Son drops out of school/has crazy plans/she gives perspective/he comes to greater understanding

It may seem obvious, but to me the idea of taking each threat on its own and listing the scenes of the arc and then having them all listed so I can put them back together is a whole new way of seeing it and I think I’ll find it useful in the future.

The only thing I have left to figure out is what the hero’s conflict is.  Is it enough that there are all these threads (trouble with his son, trouble with the heroine’s conflict) or do I need to make his conflict more explicit?