Get to “I Love You” – Part 1

One of the principles I (sometimes) use in structuring a story is: Get to “I love you.”

Have you ever seen Billy Wilder’s great 1960 love story, The Apartment? The classic ending line (from Shirley MacLaine to Jack Lemmon) as they sit down to a one-on-one game of gin rummy is, “Shut up and deal.” By which she means, “I love you.”

If you and I as writers can start our story with two people (preferably potential lovers) as far apart as possible and bring them, by story’s end, to the place where they can say, “I love you” … we’ve got something.

It doesn’t have to be literally, “I love you.” In fact, it’s better if the line or lines are as different from that as we can make them … as long as our readers or moviegoers understand that the words mean exactly that.

In the movie Fight Club, the narrator/hero without a name (played by Edward Norton) forces Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter) onto a bus leaving New York City. He and she have been clashing, crazy, we-can’t-make-this-work lovers throughout the picture. Now he’s stuffing cash into her hand and compelling her to get out of town to protect her from some bad stuff that’s about to happen.

Marla mounts to the first step of the bus, then turns back to Norton.

MARLA

“Tyler, you’re the worst thing that ever  happened to me.”

Meaning, “I love you.”

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