by Helen Jacey
So as you get to know the steps to love, just like the story phases I presented earlier, you’ll be able to use them to build the story you want to tell. The steps to love are completely complementary to the phases. One set doesn’t replace another, and you can pick and choose to suit the needs of your story. In love, we can stand on one step for a very long time. Or we can hop, skip, and jump, in any order we feel like! Love is never a linear process.
Different films and genres reflect some of the steps and not others. It’s usual that romantic comedies start with the first stage of “Rules of Attraction” and end with “Taking the Plunge,” when the couple gets married. But increasingly, heroines’ stories follow what happens after a marriage, divorce, or the dating game when you’ve got children or other complications. The steps are no longer straightforward, because love never is. It is very common for a heroine’s love story to focus on the way love relationships affect a character’s sense of identity. You can also follow the steps to love in nonsexual relationships, which are about two people who have a very close bond.
Step 1: The Void
Step 2: Running Scared
Step 3: Feeling the Fear
Step 4: Killing Illusion
Step 5: Baring the Soul
Step 6: The Plunge
Step 7: Test of Trust
Step 8: The Lost Self
Step 9: Renegotiation
Step 10: Acceptance
Step 1: The Void
Before a new relationship starts, there is usually some kind of void in a heroine’s life. She may be single or unhappily married. She may have no need for a relationship, or she may crave one. She might have created a protective bubble around her, or she might be on a dating frenzy She might have survived the loss of a previous partner or other loved one. She might have stumbled into a professional relationship with the potential lover. If she’s Bridget Jones in Bridget Jones’s Diary, she will feel she is gathering dust on the shelf, another unwanted thirty-something singleton. At the end of The Hours, Virginia Woolf enters the Void of death. The step of Acceptance (see following text) leads her to the conclusion that suicide is the only right thing to do for herself and Leonard, her husband.
Step 2: Running Scared
The heroine meets the potential lover and she…runs scared! This is metaphoric, remember. She’s not necessarily tearing off down the street. Attraction can be conscious or deeply unconscious, depending on where she is at in her life and what she is telling herself. She will normally trust her own intuition as well as her own projections about this potential lover before her, even if she hasn’t consciously realized they could be a lover. He or she might be exactly what she is looking for, or she might reel in horror at their odious traits. She might not feel she is ready and retreat. If she is desperate to love, she might be fearful that her new or potential lover might cause hurt or disappointment. He might not be interested, she might not be good enough, or he might be the same old bad type she is always attracted to. Unconscious feelings of inadequacy can dominate this time, when good and bad fantasies about the other person fill the mind. Defenses are huge and designed to protect both individuals. You can see this in countless romantic comedies in which both characters loath the very aspects that they are not only misreading, but that they will come to accept and heal in each other. This reflects the dynamics of projection in which another person reminds us about the parts of ourselves we don’t like but can’t face up to.
One thing is for sure, whatever information a heroine is telling herself about the other person, the last thing she knows is the truth about her potential lover. This can only be discovered by getting involved. Remember, the potential lover is also going through exactly the same kind of anxieties. Many relationships don’t get to first base because one or the other takes off. A worse-case scenario is that a commitment, for whatever reason, is formed when the character is Running Scared. This could be because of an arranged marriage, or a heroine choosing to marry as a form of escape or because she has no other choice, like Ada in The Piano and Kitty in The Painted Veil. In The Proposal, Andrew is stuck with his boss Margaret because she has trapped him into marrying her.
Step 3: Feeling the Fear
A deeper level of connection is achieved by new information or a revelation about the potential lover coming to light. He might ask her on a date. She might ask him on a date. A heroine might have a one-night stand with the potential lover, and they could talk more openly afterward. There is a shift in perception about the other person, leading to both parties feeling a risk of getting closer is worth taking. The unconscious dynamic behind this stage is that something about the other person reminds the heroine of herself, leading to a glimmer of empathy. The projections are still there, as the heroine is still largely defning the potential lover by her own experiences and assumptions. By opening the door slightly wider, the potential lover is let in. Each partner feels the risk of proceeding is worth taking, even if it doesn’t end up well and help the relationship go forward. In The Proposal, Margaret lies in bed and tells Andrew about her emotional scars from her parents’ death. Andrew now has some understanding why her defenses, which make her a controlling and unlikeable boss, are so massive. He can start to see her in a different light.
Step 4: Killing Illusion
If things do go well, the heroine wants to know everything about the lover. She feels deeply attracted and wants to make sure she’s making the right decisions. She will feel more secure the more she knows. Illusion only gets in the way. Depending on the intentions of the lover, he or she will feel the same. A deeper connection can grow from both lovers letting the mask down. Depending how safe each person feels, the more truth they will reveal. Killing Illusion also involves facing up to self-delusion. In Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason, many of Bridget’s paranoid delusions are shattered as she learns the truth about Mark. The defenses that the heroine has built up around her are exposed as a means of keeping others out. The loved one’s baggage is recognized and accepted and is not seen as a deterrent. Mutual opening up and surprising revelations can take place. Sometimes Killing Illusion does result in Running Scared, by opening up a character can’t handle the truth. This can lead to a deep sense of betrayal in the other person, especially if sex has occurred. Killing Illusion can also take place during a separation. It reflects a deep need to know and to make sense.
Step 5: Baring the Soul
Because Killing Illusion may have led to a relationship unfolding, an even deeper layer of intimacy is achieved. In stories, it is very common that Baring the Soul happens after a Test of Trust (see following text), when one or other of the partners feels betrayed by the other. To save the relationship, the other has to put herself on the line and finally expose her vulnerability. Ideally, Baring the Soul leads to a true sense of intimacy that balances the relationship and makes both partners equal. It will lead to reciprocal trust and love. However, it’s not impossible for a deeply damaged person to require the other to Bare the Soul first to make them feel safe.
Baring the Soul is about reciprocity. It’s the deepest form of transaction between two people. It’s far more than just sex. The heroine now knows that her lover has the potential to heal her, and vice versa. He or she has all the necessary qualities to make the heroine feel whole. Their love is complementary and healing. The feeling they are made for each other takes over at this stage. Feeling safe, the heroine faces up to her deepest own inadequacies and projections. She feels an overwhelming need for her partner to know everything about her. She declares her deepest feelings and most private secrets and puts herself on the line for love. She tells the lover how she feels about him and what she wants. This can result in passionate lovemaking as a form of communication, when both people physically open up to each other.
Baring the Soul frequently occurs toward the end of numerous romantic comedies, sometimes as the end of an act 2 turning point when one character realizes how much damage she has caused the person she loves by not b
eing truthful. In The Proposal, Margaret confesses not only to her lies but also to her feelings of love and respect for the people around her. It can also form the climax of act 3 in romances and romantic comedies.
Step 6: The Plunge
The couple commit to being together and taking their love seriously. For adults, it is often a marriage proposal. For teenagers, it is about getting serious and being seen as a couple by friends. A new era of love has arrived, and there is no turning back. Feelings of idealization about an unconditional love can rise here. The couple looks forward to a life together. This doesn’t mean that ghosts from the past can’t re-emerge here in the form of old wounds being pressed. The happy ending of many romantic comedies shows the Plunge being taken, for example the end of What Happens in Vegas. In Thelma and Louise, which portrays a nonsexual partnership, the women take a literal Plunge at the end, leading to the Void of Death.
Step 7: Test of Trust
The heroine and her lover’s commitment is treasured or threatened here. A Test of Trust is the making of a spiritual commitment to one another. The Test of Trust can take the form of a wedding or a symbolic union of the new life. Alternatively it can be the betrayal of love, after Baring the Soul or The Plunge. In a tragic love story, the Test of Trust can result in the death or disappearance of the loved one. This can happen when the heroine is all alone. In The English Patient, Catherine lays dying, waiting for her lover to save her but he never comes back. She only has faith in him to make her last hours bearable. A sense of betrayal can also happen here, when an external factor exposes a past secret. In this case, the heroine can have total faith in her lover, or she can feel that only she properly Bared the Soul. My Summer of Love shows the shock the heroine feels when she discovers her best friend is not who she says she is. She has been fantasizing and lying about everything.
Step 8: The Lost Self
The committed relationship requires new compromises that all the stages up until the Plunge cannot fully prepare the couple for. It is as if, after the Test of Trust, the couple give birth to a new collective identity that must be nurtured as well as their own individual selves. If the Test of Trust is failed somehow, the heroine can feel lost and her identity shaken. She has to pick up the pieces of her shattered self and move on. She can eventually re-enter the Void. However, the Lost Self can also symbolize positive feelings in her heroine when she’s lost sight of her true self, but she believes this isn’t important. She’s so in love, nothing else matters. Countless heroines’ love stories focus on the huge change of identity that a relationship can bring about.
In Two Days in Paris, Marion experiences the Lost Self as she introduces her American boyfriend Jack to her French family, old Paris life, and old lovers and friends, and then has to deal with Jack’s new perception of her. Most of the story focuses on the step of the Lost Self, leading to a breakdown in trust between her and Jack. Finally she has to Bare the Soul, leading to The Renegotiation.
Step 9: The Renegotiation
The committed relationship is disrupted or challenged by internal and external factors. The equilibrium is disturbed by major events, such as the birth of children, infertility, and job and financial challenges, that put pressure on the relationship and the nature of the union has to be renegotiated. Large-scale external factors such as war can threaten the love relationship. Internal needs and ambitions threaten the collective identity of the couple. One partner can feel left out or taken for granted. Old insecurities might resurface. Either partner has to go back to the steps of Killing Illusion or Baring the Soul to make the marriage or partnership survive; or it can be time to let the relationship die. For much of Kramer vs. Kramer the warring couple deal with the step of Renegotiation, as they battle over custody of their child. More recently, The Break-Up and Brick Lane are good examples of Renegotiation.
Step 10: Acceptance
The Renegotiation either results in a new form of union, which is tolerance and acceptance of the other’s needs within the relationship, or of the couple finding a way of dealing with external factors so they don’t damage the relationship. There is a sense of acceptance that feels durable, of the relationship having been made stronger by surviving the challenge. Alternatively, the relationship will die, and both partners will re-enter the Void or experience the Lost Self depending on how much the breakup affects them emotionally. In a long-term relationship, Acceptance can permeate the relationship on every level. Your heroine knows exactly how her partner ticks, and the compromise doesn’t bother her. They have been through ups and down, trials and tribulations. Her partner is truly her other half.
The Steps to Love in Close-Up
Let’s look at how the steps to love play out in Sex and the City: The Movie. This is an interesting example because the story charts the ongoing dynamics of intimacy after the supposed “happy ending” of the TV series, which in the case of Carrie and Big, happens in Paris at the end of Season 6 (as I’m sure fans of the series will remember all too well).
Sex and the City: The Movie
Carrie and Big prepare for their wedding day. Carrie is happy, feeling she is with Mr. Right. She’s aware he’s never written her a love letter, however. John (Big) is Running Scared of the wedding but hides it until it is too late. Carrie is preparing for the Plunge, planning her dream wedding, and getting sucked into the glitz and glamour of being in the public eye. When John finally asks for reassurance, needing to Kill the Illusion, Carrie can’t get to her phone and doesn’t get his messages. When the big day comes, John can’t face the wedding. Jilted at the altar, or so she thinks, Carrie’s Test of Trust is failed by John. Carrie (on the Retreat phase in which she lasts until the end of Act 2) experiences the Lost Self. She eventually realizes she has to Kill the Illusion, racking her brains to find out what she did wrong.
During this time, Carrie heals the Lost Self, by employing Louise, a personal assistant who is also experiencing the steps of love. Finally, Miranda confesses to Carrie that she warned John against marriage on the eve of the wedding. This new information instigates Carrie to Feel the Fear, and opens all the emails John sent her after the wedding. They are all love letters, in which he is Baring the Soul. Meeting at their abandoned apartment, Carrie and Big experience the Renegotiation, where now it is Carrie’s turn to Bare the Soul. Acceptance of a new truthful relationship follows, based on truer communication and a better understanding of each other’s needs, enabling them to Take the Plunge.
As for Miranda, her marriage has led her to the Lost Self. She is miserable, burnt out, and has gone off sex. She faces a Test of Love when Steve confesses he slept with someone else. Now, the Lost Self takes a turn for the worse. Becoming defiant, she enters the Void. Eventually, she and Steve end up at a counseling session. Miranda and Steve are both Running Scared at the thought of reuniting, but the counselling helps them Feel the Fear, leading to a Renegotiation. Their marriage now reaches the step of Acceptance.
Samantha also experiences the Lost Self for completely different reasons than Miranda. Her life in L.A. revolves around Jared, her young partner. She’s not enjoying L.A., has put on loads of weight, and wants her old self back in Manhattan with her friends. Valentine’s Night serves as a good Test of Love when she lies naked, covered in sushi. Jared is late, but it’s the tipping point for Samantha. Renegotiation leads them to ending the relationship, which has a sense of Acceptance, with both remembering the good times with each other.
EXERCISE: YOUR HEROINE’S UNION QUESTIONNAIRE
First, brainstorm all the layers of union in your heroine’s story. As with the layers of Conflict, if you are unsure, don’t worry. This exercise is designed to trigger new insights. Then, from your heroine’s point of view, complete Your Heroine’s Union Questionnaire. Finally, if you are writing a heroine’s story in which an intimate relationship is explored, outline your story, identifying which steps to love function in your story.
YOUR HEROINE’S UNION QUESTIONNAIRE
1. What makes you
happy? How do you show it?
2. Are you in love?
3. Describe all the emotional aspects of your relationship that bring you joy.
4. Do you have a good sex life? What fulfils you sexually?
5. What’s the best thing about your family?
6. Who are your best friends? Why do you love them?
7. Would you describe your local community as a happy one? Why?
8. Do you have children? What’s the best bit about parenting for you?
9. Who or what do you love most in the world?
10. What is your happiest memory?
GENRES FOR
HEROINES’ STORIES
Chapter 8
Finding the right genre for your heroine is a key to making her story memorable. This might seem something of a contradiction because if genre is anything, it’s all about what makes a film able to be recognizable and categorized. You might also be thinking it is a bit late in the book to be having this discussion. Shouldn’t we know the genre at the beginning of the process?
I don’t think so. Sometimes we can get stuck to a preference for a particular genre because it is one we watch a great deal, we like, we are told is commercial, and will give our stories a better chance of getting made, or it is simply the one we know best. These might not actually serve your character and your story best. As you develop your heroine’s character try to remain open to the fact that the genre might change. As most of your early stages will see you making huge transformations in character, plot, structure, and story, there’s no reason why genre should be so preciously guarded.
When people ask you what you are working on, it’s convenient to say “a love story” or “a psychological thriller.” On the upside this helps it take form in your own mind, but the downside is that you might become overattached to a certain outcome. Sometimes, changing the genre can be the right solution to problems that have been ongoing and seemingly impossible to crack. Change can be better than a rest!