Last Saturday I was a panelist at Symposium, a very small writing-focused science fiction event held in my neck of the proverbial woods.
The guest of honor was a local writer, Steve Perry, who has had seventy plus novels published in science fiction, fantasy, thriller, including a NYT best selling Star Wars novel, Shadows of Empire, and ten books in Tom Clancy’s Net Force series.
He and I were part of the first panel of the day, “Love and Death—the only two things worth writing about.” We five panelists agreed that love and death were indeed fundamental to fiction, as they are in life. As Steve noted, everyone hopes for the former and will, eventually, face the latter.
The rest of that session tackled the questions posed in the panel’s description, such as what makes for a good plot, and what are the elements you are looking for, etc.
But the panel got me thinking further about the role of love and death in fiction, and how both are central to story telling.
Death.
Whether the world is at stake, or just one life, the risk of death can both shape and propel a story forward.
During the panel I brought up character death, citing our own James Scott Bell’s three kinds of death stakes:
“As I’ve written many times, the best fiction is about a battle with death, which comes in three forms: physical, professional/vocational, or psychological/spiritual.”
I added a fourth, societal. The risks of dying in any of these ways creates huge stakes for the character, and can drive the plot. Physical death is obvious. Psychological death is a loss of identity, sanity
Speaking of the plot, there’s the plot’s own “death stakes,” which could be one and the same with your hero’s death stakes, or could be death on a bigger scale, and which could also be potential psychological death of a community, or even the death of an ideal, such as justice or freedom, etc.
Love.
We tend to think of love as romantic love, but of course that’s only one kind. There’s love for family, as well as your community and your country.
Brotherly/sisterly platonic love can be powerful grist for the story mill. A little while back I joined my wife’s CraftLit group for an online watch of one of my all time-favorite movies, The Great Escape, which is filled with death stakes, both for characters and as part of the plot.
The Great Escape also depicts brotherly love, based on friendship and a bond brought about by the shared circumstances of war and imprisonment. We see several examples in the movie. There is the scrounger, Hedley, played to perfection by James Garner, and the forger, Blythe, equally well portrayed by Donald Pleasence who become friends while working together. Then there’s the two tunnel kings, Danny, played by Charles Bronson, and his friend Willie (John Leyton).
Hedley insists on taking a now sight-impaired Blythe out with him during the escape, increasing his own risk of physical death.
Willie stays with Danny to guide him when Danny is overcome by claustrophobia. The two stick together and find a way to freedom.
Being willing to lay your life down for another, is a sacrifice for love. Being willing to move heaven and earth to save someone, say a kidnapped lover, can be the stuff of thrillers and failure could result in not only physical death for the lover, but also psychological death for the hero.
Another classic movie example of love and death:
Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest sees Cary Grant’s advertising executive thrust into a world of deadly espionage, thanks to being in the wrong place at the wrong time and being mistaken for someone else.
He faces death multiple times in the course of the movie, including memorably at a crossroads when a crop dusting plane turns out to be an assassin’s weapon. He meets and falls for a beautiful young woman, played by Eva Marie Saint, who is not what she seems. In the end, he survives and gets the girl. Love and death drive a suspenseful, relentlessly paced film.
Modern mysteries often have death stakes for the sleuth, who can face not only the prospect of a a physical death, but also psychological and professional, and, especially in a cozy, can deal with societal death.
Moreover, they focus on solving a murder, and these death stakes can be in play for the victim as well as the killer’s motives. The victim may have caused what the villain perceives as death, perhaps the psychological death from the killer’s romantic relationship having been ruptured by jealousy or even betrayal, or professional (vocational) death, again by something the killer perceives as being done to them by the victim. And the killer certainly could be correct.
Modern mysteries can also have a love interest or interests for the sleuth, as in the cases of Stephanie Plum bounty hunter and Hannah Swensen baker and amateur detective. Both deal with long running romantic triangles. Both also regularly deal with potential death stakes for themselves.
So, love and death. Are they indeed the only things worth writing about?
For my part, I’d say they may not be the only things, but they are certainly two of the most important things to write about.
What do you think?
Who are these two at the start of the picture? Ellie is a spoiled brat. Thus, one part of the plot is The Taming of the Shrew. But the brilliant move by Capra/Riskin is that Peter is an egotist who also needs taming. It’s a perfect balance.
Karns plays Oscar Shapeley, an oily (and married) traveling salesman who fancies himself a ladies’ man. On the night bus he starts yakking to Ellie. “Shapeley’s the name and that’s the way I like ’em.” On and on he goes, until Ellie cuts him down with a line.
In the hitchhiking scene, the car that stops is driven by Alan Hale (you may remember him as Little John in The Adventures of Robin Hood). He is loud, jovial, talkative.