Because it's Sunday and I have one thousand other things I should be doing, like vacuuming my dogs and completing an opening-the-Turbo-Tax-box ritual, I am instead opening up livejournal and photoshop so that I can babble about love and chemistry in fiction. This is all angie_frazier 's fault, as she said nice things about the chemistry between Luke and Dee in LAMENT and asked if I'd wax poetic on if it was something that happened naturally or if it was something that authors worked to develop. As I've been told by a bunch of people that I'd managed to pull off chemistry/ love in LAMENT, I thought I'd open up a discussion on what works and what doesn't work, smooch-wise, in fiction.

So.

Here are my thoughts. First of all, I think that people writing love stories have a great head start on other genres, because readers want characters to fall in love. If you introduce one character and then introduce another single character of the sort of the same age, I guarantee you that 9 out of 10 readers will be hoping they go all squishy towards each other in the immediate future. We sort of have part of our work done for us already, and all we have to do is maintain that hope in some sort of memorable chemistry.

I have very distinct ideas of what doesn't constitute memorable chemistry, and the biggest part of it can pretty much be summed up by this photo of Tom Cruise and Renee Zellweiger in the movie where Tom says, famously, "You complete me."

Yeah.

Call me cynical, but that sort of melodramatic speech -- usually accompanied by soaring strings -- sounds good on the screen and looks great on the page, but doesn't really equal emotional resonance to me. Part of this, I'm sure, is from a deep and life long aversion to corny pick-up lines and guys telling me that my eyes were beautiful while I was wearing sunglasses. To me, pretty words can be a part of chemistry in a book, I guess, but when it starts to get too over the top, I disconnect. It's entertaining at that point, but it's not real.

Another thing that's somehow part of chemistry and love but don't doesn't do it on its own is common interests. Don't get me wrong, common interests are really important. It makes me break out in a rash when I'm reading and I'm told the characters are in love . . . but they never talk about anything other than being in love or killing the bad guy. I'd sort of like to think that if you pulled the characters out of their Mortal Peril and put them in a Starbucks, they'd have more to do than stir sugar packets into their coffees and swallow awkwardly. I want to believe that my characters can be friends, too, when they're not picturing each other naked. I think this is a huge part of making a love story poignant and lasting-feeling.

But, clearly, being just friends and having common interests and spending all your time together isn't enough, or else the Harry Potter series would be heading in a very different direction.

Obviously, there's got to be some physical attraction in there too. The two lovers have to be drawn to each other, and usually it's looks that do it first. This is sort of a dicey issue in fiction, I think, because some writers take short-cuts and just make their hero this gorgeous hottie perfect in every way, delectable to all members of the opposite sex and probably to most members of the same-sex if said members were being honest about it. I mean, yeah, that works, because who's not going to be attracted to someone hotter than the sun?

But universal beauty makes me nervous in the same way that the Tom Cruise "You complete me" hyperbole does. Because in real life, we aren't all attracted to the same types. And real life, there's a lot of love going on between people who are not perfect 10s. To me, it's a more interesting story if our characters are madly attracted to each other, but for quirky, unique reasons. It doesn't matter if the love interest is irresistible to every woman in the world. All that matters is that your main character finds him irresistible. We all see beauty in the people we love that no one else can see, right? Did you ever notice that the people you fall in love with get cuter the more in love with them you get?

So another big part of creating chemistry for me is not perfect beauty, but pushing your characters' beauty buttons. Give me lust, sure -- all Scorpios such as myself highly approve of lust -- but give me characters that I can imagine in my head. Crooked noses, weird hair, funny eyebrows . . . tell me about it and make my love them like the main character does. (I still remember J. K. Rowling calling Hermoine's hair "bushy".)

But still, that's not all of chemistry and love, because otherwise, everyone hot would be in love with everyone else hot, which they aren't.

And this brings me to what I think, in my opinion, is the biggest part of romantic chemistry, on the page, in movies, and in real life: gesture. It's the stuff that is unspoken that shows love, and that's what makes it so hard to effectively convey chemistry on the page. I'm thinking of my husband walking by me in the kitchen on his way out of the room and dragging his finger across the small of my back where my shirt's pulled up. He doesn't even think about it -- it's just a casual gesture that says more than any "I complete you" stuff does.

Same thing for characters -- the little gestures speak volumes. I'm thinking about a scene in The Village where the characters are facing the threat of Icky Monsters coming into their village. Ivy, a blind girl, is standing on her door and reaching out into the darkness, hoping and expecting that the boy she loves will be the one who comes up to her, instead of one of the said Icky Monsters. Well, Lucian, who has not to this point put his love to her in any sort of concrete way, appears and grabs her hand. And it's an absolutely swoon-worthy scene which says love way better than if he'd said he loved her.

There's a part, too, that I love in THE TIME TRAVELER'S WIFE, where Henry puts the end of a few strands of Clare's hair in his mouth. It doesn't sound like much, but in context, it's just . . . familiar and fond and subtle.

There are things sexier than a kiss, and words more romantic than "I love you." I feel like I started to figure that out when I was writing LAMENT, and like by the time I got to SHIVER, I knew how to get the effect I wanted. And it was by not saying anything about love. It was by painting around the edges, and when you stood back, you saw that the picture you were making was romance.

How about you guys? What turns you on and off about love in books and movie? What fictional character best rings your bells and why?