Joining the Party, Or How I Wrote My Romance Novel: Part I

Writing a novel is like building a mountain as you climb it.

The base of “Like Red on a Rose” began after realizing it wasn’t the right time to make my film, “Shadows of Love”. It’s a bizarre film, about a corpse photographer and a lonely heiress whose love is as meaningful as it is complex. To be a nobody director who wanted a stack of cash to make something with no less than four dance sequences and ended with the bloodiest way to say “I love you” was hard at any time. To be that when money people were afraid of ‘90s-indie originality? I didn’t give up on it, but a quote taped to my wall said it all: “When it’s obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goals, adjust the action steps.” So I did.

With my adjustment was a longstanding need to write a novel. I tried many times over the years. Most died in the planning stage; the survivors died in the middle of the first chapter. Connecting the two happened quickly, then it was a matter of finding the right story to tell. I originally wanted Abrienda and Cullidina to share half a novel, then realized they worked best knowing only what was revealed in the eventual film. So the other half of the novel became the whole novel, about Abrienda’s boss, Rudella, and her practically-wife, Piri. They’re the only other characters in the film, and they’d only become better knowing more about them.

Despite how it seemed, building up Rudella and Piri had nothing to do with the extended universe fad, and everything to do with not letting “Shadows of Love” die. People were too concerned with shoehorning a massive cast into a piece of taffy that couldn’t be stretched far enough to sustain them, for no other reason than the Marvelous Competition and the money it raked in. And the arrogance of calling it a “universe”… The universe was bigger than anyone could imagine; people think their, at best, thousand or so characters could command something with more stars in it than grains of sand on all our beaches.

Anywho, finding the story for Rudella and Piri was also brisk. However, I didn’t want to tell a typical tale of them finding each other. Most romances had a will they/won’t they tension, and ended when they got together. I found that a boring and lazy way to storytell. Ask anyone and they’d tell you the most interesting part of a relationship is keeping it. They’d also tell you that they rarely see that in entertainment. Which was why I decided to tell the tale of Rudella and Piri before and after they got together.

The before came because I didn’t want to spend a novel writing about overcoming relationship problems, and because I liked the idea of seeing where the ladies came from, which made it easier to figure out what their baggage was. Baggage being important because I didn’t want whatever their problems became to be generic. I mean, I didn’t want to go out of my way to keep their problems from being generic, but I wanted to give them every opportunity to be unique. I also wanted to give them a happy ending since misery was my nature and it’d be a nice challenge. I wasn’t going to make it easy on them, though. They were going to earn every kiss and fuck.

I lived and died by notecards and corkboard. Some people could write without knowing where they ended up, but I needed a map. With that said, having a map didn’t mean following the same road as everyone else. People who’d read and watched what I’ve created would be surprised at how meticulously plotted they were despite how… improvisational they seemed. I knew from the start that I wanted to alternate twixt Rudella and Piri’s past, then they’d share chapters when they’re together. I knew how it’d end, too, though it was originally a Bowie lyric. Also, its title was “Such Great Heights”, which was a holdover from “Shadows of Love”. I changed film titles because “In the Heights” came out while I wrote, and I felt I needed the distance. “Shadows of Love” came from the first needledrop idea I had for an important scene, Four Tops’ “Standing in the Shadows of Love”. I ditched the ‘drop, but kept the title. As for “Like Red on a Rose”, that’s how well Rudella and Piri were together.

To Be Continued…