I've been dealing with writing romance lately. Not the genre but the plot component, the seemingly inescapable phenomenon that crops up when writing fantasy, science-fiction, historical fiction, and just about any other genre, provided you have a few single characters floating around. And I've written about how authors can woefully get a romance wrong before, and … Continue reading The Art of Making a Good Match
Tag: Marriage
I’ve been doing a lot of research on weddings lately (since my current novel has one in it), and I encountered a most interesting phenomenon: dancing down the aisle. When I first heard it I thought, a dance for a recessional? Sounds like fun! The wedding is over, the celebration begins, and what better way … Continue reading Broken Promises and Dancing Down the Aisle
I’ve been thinking about Little Women and Jo March’s romance all weekend, and I think the difference of reader opinion about who she should’ve married--Laurie Laurence or Professor Bhaer--is rooted in our own perspectives on love and marriage. The two men represent very different kinds of relationships, and our response to them is largely determined, … Continue reading Love, But Not As We Know It
In response to my post today about the should-have-been romance between Jo March and Laurie Laurence in Little Women, Christina Wehner wrote a post of her own, explaining why Jo should have married Professor Bhaer, as she does in the book. You can find her post here. I was particularly struck by her observation that … Continue reading Laurie vs. Professor Bhaer: A Literary Debate
Generally, I defend authors as being the most likely candidates to get a storyline right. They should know their characters better than anyone else, and their insights are very valuable—never to be discounted. Sometimes, though, I think an author’s prejudice or personal opinions can skew their understanding of their characters, and one major instance of … Continue reading When the Author Gets It Wrong: Jo March and Laurie Laurence
Good Wives is the sequel to Little Women: Meg, Jo, Beth, & Amy, often published together in the same book. Nowadays, most people don’t realize they are reading two very different books, but there was a year’s gap between the original publication of part one and part two, and it seems the choices Louisa May … Continue reading The Good Wives Recipe to Marrying Off the Wrong Couples
I just finished the second, and final, part of The Portrait of a Lady, and I was puzzled by the ending (serious spoilers ahead, so if you don’t what to know what happens in the novel, don’t read any further). I was expecting something, a decision or a scene, hopefully one that involved the liberation … Continue reading Thoughts on the Ending of The Portrait of a Lady
It’s where love meets desire on the corner of breakup and divorce. An evening out with the wrong person, and all we do is call it cheating, as though someone broke a handful of rules. Like going sixty in a forty zone. Or peeking at cards. The start of torture, unlocking Pandora’s box of doubts. … Continue reading We Call It Cheating
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a reader with free time must be in want of a good book…and thus begins the curious relationship between reader and the written word, much like that of a courting couple. You pick up a book and flip through its pages or read the back cover: the first … Continue reading For Better or Worse: Readers, Books, and the Marriage between Them
Andrea Lundgren 