What’s Your Crisis?
Have you ever looked at your relationship and wondered what your dark moment was before you and your lover, partner, or husband finally got it right?
When we sign up to read a romance novel, we don’t expect reality. Majority of us aren’t even looking or something resembling reality when we pick up a novel. Romance novels are meant to do several things when they’re in the hands of the reader. As a reader of romance, I often look for a promising relationship, a good description of chemistry between the love interests in a novel. I want a somewhat realistic progression of events. I want a meaningful situation where the couple meets in an interesting or at lease evocative manner. Even if they bump into one another in the parking lot of Walmart or get into an accident in rush hour and start out hating one another simply because they can’t agree on who caused the accident. Now, there’s an interesting encounter that can really cause some buzz.
Once the couple has met in whatever manner the author has constructed such as in a diner, because one characters was looking for a lawyer, wedding planner, or to perform a service of some kind, or because they ran into one another, I’d like to see a progression of events where they were put together in situations where they can get to know one another and continue to grow into something more than just friends, enemies, or strangers. So, this couple gain intimate knowledge about one another in some manner. Maybe after they get into the car accident, their friends decide to set them up on a blind date and they realize that they’ve already met and don’t like each other, but to keep from hurting their friends’ feelings they decide to tough it out, only they can’t stand each other for the whole dinner or they find out that they have a few things in common, but it’s not enough to pursue this thing that’s not really a thing. But the universe isn’t finished with them yet. Maybe they end up in the same place at the same time. They joke about following each other, or one accuses the other of stalking, which can cause a bit of ongoing drama, tension, and passion. After a while, they get tired of fighting the universe and have especially good sex and decide to pursue that part of things, but no, not a relationship, after all I hate him and he hates me. They end up dating, but not dating. Little by little, these two people have gone from enemies to lovers, from lovers to a couple with intimate knowledge of each other. They have begun to enjoy one another’s company outside the bedroom and anticipate seeing one another even when it’s not a booty call. They’ve evolved into a couple without even noticing. So, now, it’s all great. They’re falling in love. But there’s a secret or something happens and the fragile world of their relationship breaks down. She realizes there was a reason she hated him. He can’t deal with her secrets. They part, and here begins the dark moment, a crisis that tears the two apart. In an outline, this section is considered the climax of a romance novel. just about every romance novel has a dark moment. I don’t remember ever reading a romance that doesn’t have one.
The thing about dark moments is that their rarely complicated. They don’t have to be complicated. A secret can be something as simple as the heroine’s mother was the Vice Principle at the Hero’s high school who verbally abused him, and he finds out when she takes him home to meet Mom, and he overreacts. The heroine can realize that she started out hating him because he always has to be right about everything. He won’t listen. She wasn’t keeping her mother’s identity from him. After all, her mother’s job and name never came up in conversation, and even if it had, who’s to say he would have probed deeper about her mother. It wasn’t a big secret, but he has to be an ass about it, and she was wrong, he’s right, and well, she’s just tired of the crap. It always has to be drama with him, she thinks, and accepts him walking away. Only thing is that the whole time their apart, neither one of them can stop thinking of the other. They’re miserable without each other. His friends tell him he’s more of a grump than usual. Her girlfriends are pushing her to call him and at least see if it’s really done or if he’s over himself. She refuses; he digs in his heels because she’s the one who was keeping secrets, right?
They delve into this dark whole of despair without one another. This is a time in which both characters can grow. She can realize that he wasn’t so much upset about the so-called secret as being confronted by a past he hadn’t dealt with and was caught off guard by being faced with it so abruptly. He realizes she hadn’t meant to keep it a secret and that maybe, just maybe he was wrong this time. well, the truth is that majority of the time he’s wrong, but he doesn’t usually admit it. Maybe, he thinks, this is one of those times he should?
And so, we have two characters who have spent time apart, learned their lessons, and more than likely are going to talk over one another to get their apologies and need to be together out. They probably laugh at the awkwardness of talking over one another, offer each other the chance to talk first, and then they tell one another the truth about their feelings. The “ah ha!” moment comes, and they say their “I love yous,” before the writer sends them off into the sunset, so to speak, to live out their happily ever after.
So, what is your dark moment like? Is it complicated and full of angst? Don’t worry if it is the more convoluted, strange, and complex the more interesting the conflict and resolution will be. However, we have to remember that the simple difficulties that slice deep are just as moving and usually pack a bigger punch. Maybe she has a fear of heights and his gift is thoughtless and leads her straight into her darkest of nightmares. He has no clue, and she walks away before he can find out what he did wrong. Maybe she’s lovely and he thinks she’s out of his league. Her ex comes back into the picture but he can’t believe he’s what she wants when her ex is educated and sophisticated. He walks away before she’s given a chance to tell him that he’s the one for her.
The dark moment doesn’t necessarily have to happen between the couple. It can be that the heroine is kidnapped by the bad guys right when the hero was ready to reveal he loved her, now he has to rescue her in order to tell her. Maybe he’s the one kidnapped and she’s the one to rescue him. Maybe it’s a natural disaster that rips them from one another and they find each other in a shelter and they’re finally able to declare their love. Maybe it’s an illness that breaks them apart and the cure or at least more time brings them back together. There are endless dark moments. What will the crisis for your characters be?
Till next we meet, stay well and keep creating!
CSA
Nell Anthony 