Q&A: Elizabeth C. Bunce, author of STARCROSSED

What were the initial seeds of StarCrossed? How long had the book been growing for you before you started writing it?
A long time! I started drafting the manuscript right after submitting A Curse Dark as Gold to you, in the fall of 2005. But I first heard Digger’s voice whispering to me more than ten years ago, when she was the main character in an adult novella that never went anywhere. And the seeds of her world and her story were much older still. Digger inhabits a fantasy world I’ve been tinkering with since I was a teenager, back when I first realized I wanted to write.

I can’t remember exactly what made me realize that my shiftless novella could be a much better young adult novel, but I do clearly remember deciding that StarCrossed would be the book to follow Curse. I was coming off three very intense years inside Charlotte Miller’s head, and I was eager to kind of shed that skin and work with a new character, a new voice—and especially work on a book that could be potentially lighter in tone. I remember telling my agent that I wanted to write A Fun Book, because as enormously proud of Curse as I am, and as rewarding as it was to write, “nobody could accuse it of being rollicking.” My agent responded, “Yeah, it’s not a romp.”

As it happened, my idea of A Fun Book apparently involved the main character’s lover being murdered by secret police on Page 1, so clearly my Fun Meter still needs some calibrating!

A Curse Dark as Gold was loosely based in the historical real world and on the fairy tale “Rumpelstiltskin.” How did it feel to create a wholly original world and storyline here? (I wonder if you even felt more free, not having to get those historical details right . . . ?)
Going about creating a new world was not so different—but working without a plot net (without the framework of a fairytale to guide my storyline) was definitely a little intimidating. This is the first novel I’ve completed that is not a retelling of some sort. On the one hand, that was nerve-wracking, but at the same time it was also very freeing. Since I wasn’t constrained to a predetermined set of plot points and conclusion, I never felt like I was “forcing” my characters into position, and they were able to go about their business quite naturally. As long as I could keep up with them, we did fine!

Even though this is a made-up world, I still did my homework, familiarizing myself with everything from lunar science, to castle life, to the tools of historical espionage, to our own world’s history of religious persecution, to period firearms and the technology of warfare! There was a little more freedom here, however, for a couple of reasons. First, Llyvraneth is not so firmly grounded in real-life Earth history as was the world of Curse, so I could focus on the details that served the story best, without concern about anachronisms or inaccuracies. But more than that, Digger herself was a much more impatient character than Charlotte, and tended to pull me away from the research to tell my story, already! a lot sooner than Charlotte ever did.

What sorts of reference materials did you make up to help keep track of the world?
Since I’ve been working with Llyvraneth for more than twenty years, I didn’t need much for my own reference (aside from a map), but a critique partner requested a glossary and cast list (which became the Lexicon included in the published book), and you asked me for at least a couple of documents to help flesh out the worldbuilding. If I recall correctly, one was a timeline of the political history that feeds StarCrossed's crucial backstory; and the other was an account of Llyvrin/Celyst mythology, chronicling the lives and characters of the seven gods worshipped by Llyvrins. These documents were wonderful fun to come up with, and I really enjoyed drawing on all those years of worldbuilding!

One kind of amazing thing happened during the revision process. I ran out of printer paper while printing out a set of your editorial notes, and I had to go digging around the dark recesses of my office to find something, anything that would run through my printer. I ended up with a pack of typing paper from my college word-processor days. When I actually went through and read the printed notes, I discovered that I’d printed a page on top of a hand-drawn map of Llyvraneth I’d done years and years before!

Many writers talk about having a markedly different emotional experience writing a second novel after the first has been published . . . either that it’s easier, because they know that they can finish a book and they’ll have some support, or harder, because of new concerns about expectations. What was your experience this time around? And did your writing process change at all with this book?
To be honest, I really don’t know what my writing process is anymore, because it’s been so different on all two-point-seven-five books! Curse took three years of painstaking craft and research, with six months of revision after the sale. StarCrossed and Liar’s Moon both sold on proposal, so I was already on deadline when I wrote them. StarCrossed happened in big chunks between bits of Curse, then was revised on a crazy, oft-disrupted schedule, which I’m sure you remember well and which I believe we are both sworn never to speak of again!  For Liar’s Moon I did extensive advance plotting, outlining, and preparation before I ever wrote a single word—and then had a solid first draft in just over three months. I’m kind of looking forward to the next projects, to see how else my process evolves, or if it ever settles down into something that I can point to and say, “this works.”

As for the emotional experience? Wow. So, so different. Leaving aside the schedule and deadline, it took me ages to understand that StarCrossed is, in fact, a vastly more complicated story than Curse, which has essentially a single, straightforward plotline. StarCrossed has something like five intertwining mystery plots that must all be resolved in order, in order to achieve Digger’s emotional and thematic development. Realizing this was a turning point for me with the manuscript.

But more than that, there was this odd, award-shaped shadow over the writing of this book that made it much more difficult than I ever anticipated. It was really hard to separate the new book from the expectations set up by the Morris Award (&c), and give StarCrossed its own special attention. I think it took me six months to realize that when I wrote Curse, I had never sat down to write An Award-Winning Novel. I’d set out to tell Charlotte’s story with as much honesty and authenticity as possible. That’s all. And that’s all I needed to do for Digger—not write The Next Curse. Just tell Digger’s story to the best of my ability—and I could do that.

I remember sending you a list of everything that was bothering me about one draft of the manuscript, and you wrote back, “You are being very hard on this poor book!” And I suddenly felt like a parent whose second child is never good enough: “Why can’t you be more like your big sister Curse? She won the Morris Award, you know!”

But I am happy to report that Digger has no trouble at all standing apart from her big sister’s shadow, and from everything we’re hearing so far, readers seem to be enjoying her story immensely (some even more than Curse!).

One thing we seem to consistently discover in the editing process for your books is that you’ve written mystery novels in fantasy dress. Are you in fact a mystery reader? Any authors or titles from the genre that you’d recommend?
Here’s the funny thing: No! I actually read very few true genre mysteries, if we’re talking Agatha Christie, Janet Evanovich, P.D. James, and that ilk. But I grew up loving Trixie Belden, and must have read each of those books a dozen times, and as a teen I was a huge fan of suspense authors like Lois Duncan and Christopher Pike. As an adult, I watch a ton of mystery TV: “Masterpiece Mystery” on PBS, “Law & Order” (the original only, thank you very much), and almost any show with a paranormal bent, like “Eleventh Hour.” So even though I’m not currently reading much by the way of genre mysteries, I’m never too far from a mystery plot. I’m sure all of that early reading and TV osmosis has fed my stream of consciousness!

As a reader/viewer, I appreciate stories that can combine genres, like Ken Follett’s espionage thrillers. Though they’re not “mysteries” in the true Whodunit sense, there’s always an element of secrecy, and an urgency to bring those secrets to light. And I believe it’s that story sense that brings the mystery into my own work. (Well, and then there’s Liar’s Moon, which is, in fact, a pretty classic murder mystery! I guess it's sort of "fantasy noir").

Digger is very different from Charlotte, the protagonist of A Curse Dark as Gold . . . chiefly, I think, in that Charlotte is driven to fight for one place and people she loves, while Digger almost actively resists being part of a community. Do you have more personal sympathy with one or the other of these perspectives?
It depends on the day you ask me, I think! I’m definitely an introvert with hermit tendencies, so it can be a struggle for me to remember to engage in my community (be that my actual physical neighborhood or the virtual ones online), but I do tend to hold onto people fiercely once I’m attached. The thing that interested me about Charlotte and Digger is that family is very important to each of them, but what that means, and how they go about identifying and protecting Their Own is very different. Charlotte is devoted to her actual family—her blood kin and her small village—and risks everything to hold them together, even when they might not deserve it. But Digger is perfectly willing to sever ties with her blood relations in favor of a family she’s putting together for herself: a mother in Lady Lyll, a sister in Meri, a brother in... well. You know. The goal is the same, even if their methods and definitions may differ.

Are you creating any clothing related to StarCrossed, as you did for Curse? Also, I know that for Curse, you did actually practice shearing sheep, spinning thread, weaving, etc., to have mastery over those skills. . . . Did you learn to pick locks, forge documents, or scale walls for StarCrossed?
Sigh. I only wish. My husband bought me a set of lock picks for Christmas last year, but I am technically deficient (I can barely operate an actual key), so I’m afraid they’ve done little more than sit on my desk looking very cool! I do have a passing familiarity with calligraphy, however, so Digger’s book-crafting adventure wasn’t wholly alien to me. And I did track down a replica 16th century pistol recently, as well.  As for costuming, my primary field of interest is the Renaissance, so this time around my costuming informed the book, if that makes sense. I drew on my understanding of how the clothing moves and feels, as well as the various pieces of women’s costume and the myriad hiding places they afford that a thief might rely upon! It was during one of my costuming projects a couple of summers ago that I hit upon the perfect place for Digger to keep her lock picks, for instance.

What drives you to write? What makes you get up in the morning and sit down at the laptop?
How are we defining “morning,” exactly? I have been writing for a very long time, and I can’t imagine my life without it; it’s at the very core of who I am. I do know that I definitely feel an almost physical need to stitch or sew, if I’ve been away from the needle for too long. I’m not sure I’ve ever felt that same drive for writing, but, then, I’ve never really stopped writing long enough to find out! I can say that I have gads of stories to tell, and feel like it would be an awful shame not to tell them. That’s one of the reasons I’m so happy about StarCrossed—the world I created more than twenty years ago is finally really, truly a book! There is enormous satisfaction in that.

"In My Family," by Maria Mazziotti Gillan

In my family we're all tenacious, decide what we want and go after it.
We work hard, moving forward, when we're exhausted, and
think we can't move one inch more. I wonder if it's in the
genes, this need to finish everything we start, this belief that
hard work and perseverance will get us through. My sister
kept going to work for months after she had seizures and
couldn't walk. Her live-in aide took her to work in a wheel-
chair, pushing her down the road, because the sidewalks in
Hawthorne aren't handicapped accessible.

My father had a degenerative disease of the spine. He dragged
one paralyzed leg behind him wherever he went, and went he
did, driving until he was eighty-seven years old, cloth around
the pedals of the car so he could reach the brake, one shoe
built up to compensate for the unevenness of his legs, driving
to his friends' houses to play cards and visit, driving to the
courthouse in Paterson to file a petition for his friends or reg-
ister the legal papers he drew up, his body failing him, but his
mind sharp and willing him on.

My son John wants to think he is not like us. I hear how even
at thirty-two he takes responsibility for his life, how he gets up
at 5 a.m., so he can be at his office by 5:30, how he handles the
complex legal problems of a large corporation, working
straight through till he returns at 6 p.m. to help with the chil-
dren and to deal with the house, the yard, repairs. He takes
everything seriously. I love the way John carries his son in his
arms, the child running to him for comfort and the way they
speak to each other without words. I know that even my son,
who wants to think he is not like our family, is driven as we
are to keep on going, no matter what.

These are the things my mother taught us by example, my
mother who tripped over our skates when we were children
and got up and walked the twelve blocks to Farraro Coat
Factory on River Street. She worked until noon, walked back
home to make our lunches, and then walked back to work.
Only after she came home at 3:30, so she could be there when
we got home from school, did she collapse into a chair unable
to move. When she came back from the hospital clinic with a
cast on her leg, fourteen bones in her foot broken, she had to
rest her leg on a stool. That was one of the few times in her
life that I saw her cry, not because of the pain, but because she
couldn't do the work she told herself she had to do.

Cover Concepts for My Book!

For a long time--right up until this afternoon, in fact--I thought I knew exactly what Second Sight was going to look like: a pair of glasses spanning the width of the cover, held by their outside corners by a pair of fingers, with the title type floating over them and my name below. Then my book designer stopped by my office with the bad news: This image was so thin that it didn't take up much space vertically, which left the cover looking really awkward and unbalanced . . . and altogether, it was not going to fly.

I was momentarily cast down, but like all bad ideas that get recognized as bad ideas, this helped clarify my priorities (particularly this: I REALLY want eyeglasses on the cover) and cleared the way for better ideas, of which I quickly had four. If you'll forgive the self-indulgence, I'm going to analyze these four ideas the way we analyze cover ideas in-house, for first what they say about the book in and of itself and then how the covers might connect with my intended audience (adult writers of children's and YA literature). Pardon the lousy sketching and type design.

A., Left. Glasses on top of a stack of books with the title written on their spines. This looks booky; the image fills the space well; it offers an opportunity for lots of good colors on the spines (and I love bright colors) and fun glasses on top. This kind of cover has certainly been done before, but the covers it alludes to (in my mind, at least) are all good ties for the kind of book this is: Reading Like A Writer by Francine Prose, which is a similar reading-and-writing book, and Stanford Wong Flunks Big-Time by Lisa Yee and I Now Pronounce You Someone Else by Erin McCahan, which are both titles off my own list. So I like this one a lot.

B., Right. I think of this as the McSweeney's cover, as it would be mostly the gracious, formal type that's used on the inside of the book, with three or so small images of eyeglasses between the lines, most likely photographs (though it would be neat to find a cartoonist who could draw all of these glasses for cheap, if their style suited the font and the book). I was thinking a conventional or cats'-eye pair of glasses up top, a set of 3-D specs in the middle, and a Groucho Marx set down at bottom, to convey all the different ways one can look at writing, and also hopefully the book's blend of both seriousness and fun. OTOH, a pair of Groucho Marx glasses may convey not "fun" but ridiculousness or absurdity. None of those images say "books" or "writing" or "editing" directly, so a potential book-buyer would have to read the text for that, which slows down the potential buyer's emotional reaction, which slows down their buying reaction. And the images are really small, which means the cover might not reproduce well online, where it could be an inch tall on a computer screen. And as online will be one of the two primary ways I'm selling this book, it's important that it be instantly visually readable. Hrmm.

C., Left: A page made to look like a piece of notebook paper, with a pair of glasses resting on it. . . . Maybe add a pencil too to get the writing thing across more immediately. The most obviously writerly of these options; also, perhaps, the most academic and boring. But it could be fun if it was done well. (That's the challenge with book cover concepts as with plot concepts: As great as the raw idea may seem, everything is in the execution.)

D., Right: A plain background with floating type and a stock photo of a dachshund in oversized glasses. I adore dachshunds for their dignity in the face of their physical ridiculousness, and this image is so darling that I imagine it might get a lot of readers to pick up the book. Indeed, in that way, it would connect to Rule #1 of children's publishing: Cute dogs sell. But the image ultimately suffers the same lack of instant connection to the book's subject as B. above, and having a dachshund in oversized glasses on your front cover is not, perhaps, the best way to have your serious writing book taken seriously.

So of all of these options, I'm leaning towards A. -- or whatever my book designer will come up with, which will doubtless be much more original and all-around better than anything I've tossed out here. Anyone want to propose alternate concepts or change my mind?

Some Things I'm Reading, Watching, & Thinking About

• Elizabeth Bluemle's The Elephant in the Room post from back in June
• This account of Mitali Perkins's recent chat with the good people of Random House
• Via Mitali's blog, "A Girl Like Me," a 16-year-old filmmaker's reflection on Black female beauty, including a re-conducting of the Kenneth Clark doll test. If you think that white people are being discriminated against, or that children are immune to cultural cues about race, please watch this video -- starting at the 3:20 mark if you can't take the time to watch the whole thing.
  
• The wonderful Chimimanda Adichie talk, "The Dangers of a Single Story" (also a video)
  
• I Didn't Dream of Dragons, the reflections of a fantasy writer of Indian descent on racial and cultural power imbalances in her own thinking
  
• White People, It Is Not All About You, But for This Post It Is -- her followup to that, responding to some critics and other commenters
• Through that, a List of Links for Clueless White People, with lots of good stuff on white privilege, and from that:
  
• What I Have Learned Through Conversations About Race -- a white woman's manifesto on, essentially, trying not to be an idiot about race
• Finally, on October 8-9, NYU is hosting "A is for Anansi," a conference on literature for children of African descent. I'll be there.

Previous posts on this topic:

• One Way to Stand Up to Whitewashing
• Those Interested in Issues of Race and Children's Literature
  
• An Oversight in My Submissions Guidelines
  

My Fall 2010 Books: STARCROSSED by Elizabeth C. Bunce

When we were coming to the end of the editorial process on A Curse Dark as Gold, I asked Elizabeth C. Bunce what she was working on next. She said hesitantly, "It's a novel about a girl cat burglar in the middle of a religious civil war," and I said, "Oh, I LOVE religious civil war!" At which point she made fun of me for being a dork, but it was true; and what I love about (fictional) religious civil war is that it offers the possibility of so much rich and deeply felt conflict -- between two religions or two citizens on different sides, who may have other bonds that they then have to choose between. . . . So much delicious drama!

And the book definitely pays that off. But to dwell on it too much here is to obscure the other bit of awesomeness in her description, which is "girl cat burglar"; and this is indeed primarily the story of a girl cat burglar -- one who can see forbidden magic -- caught in a snowbound castle, with several factions of that brewing magical-religious civil war circling around her. And just as that plot implies, there is lots of sneaking and spying and magic and deeply hidden secrets and grand confrontations -- reminiscent of Sherwood Smith or Tamora Pierce or George R. R. Martin, perfect for curling up with and getting lost in on a cool autumn day. As the Horn Book review said: ". . . satisfyingly stuffed with plots and subplots, towers and hidden chambers, genteel pastimes and death-defying feats. Celyn is a strong, imaginative heroine-more than the generic 'feisty girl,' and the rest of the female cast also show noteworthy fortitude and inventiveness." Hurrah!

Check out Elizabeth's marvelous book trailer for the book:



Some things I love in the book, for readers to watch for:

• “Well, then, Celyn Contrare, it looks like you’re ours for keeps. . . . Give some accounting for yourself, and pray Tiboran made you a more entertaining storyteller than my son. And perhaps we won’t make you sleep in the scullery with the rats.” / “I’ve slept with rats before, milord.” Which didn’t sound at all like I’d intended
  
• The unique chess game that Elizabeth has invented, and the clever way it's used in the scene in which it appears
• How well and deeply she's worked out the seven gods and their associated powers and followers
• All the excellent backstories for the human characters as well
  
• How much this is a book-lover's book -- it involves reading and forging and secret codes and all sorts of delicious booky things like that
  
• The descriptions -- of the castle, the clothes, the meals; and the heroine's description of her home city of Gerse in one critical scene
• I paused in the threshold. “Why don’t you do it?” / He smiled. “Because I have you.”
• "What do we always do with them?" -- a line spoken by the villain, and hence one to put ice in the heart.
• The final climax, which made me behave rather more as if I were watching the climax of an action movie than reading a fantasy novel (e.g. some fist-pumping and woo-hoos)

And other links:

• Elizabeth's StarCrossed page
  
• A review from one of my favorite webcomics, Unshelved
• The official Arthur A. Levine Books page

Check back here soon for a Q&A with Elizabeth and a secret about the cover!

My Fall 2010 Books: BOBBY THE BRAVE (SOMETIMES)

Herewith beginning a short series of posts introducing my books on the AALB Fall 2010 list:


BOBBY THE BRAVE (SOMETIMES) by Lisa Yee, illustrated by Dan Santat. Coedited by Arthur and moi. In his first outing, 2009's Bobby vs. Girls (Accidentally), Bobby Ellis-Chan accidentally precipitated an all-out boys vs. girls war. His second outing continues to explore the question of what makes a real man (in fourth grade, anyway), as Bobby has to face his fears on various fronts: against the evil six-toed cat down the street, in the class production of "Annie," with his recurring asthma, and after he hears his former pro-linebacker father say, "He's not like me." It is once again laugh-out-loud funny and lump-in-throat touching in both its text and art, with a great new cover look by the ever-versatile Dan Santat. Take it away, School Library Journal: "Readers will devour the fast-paced writing, spot-on dialogue, and heartfelt lessons embedded in the text and empathize with the sometimes-brave Bobby, his worries about his place in his family and at school, and his struggles and successes."

My favorite lines:

• Jillian Zarr threw her head back when she laughed. She was the only person Bobby knew who did this, other than the evil genius from that movie Kid Kops.
• One could never tell what the scary cat was thinking. That was the problem with sinister beings. They hardly ever told you what they were up to.
• Bobby just shrugged. “Things,” he said.

More links:

• Lisa and Dan on how the Bobby books came about
  
• "Too much fun" -- a review from the Smithsonian's Bookdragon blog
  
• Arthur discusses the book with Lisa in the Librarian Webcast preview (video)
• Dan Santat confesses his crush on Bobby's mom.
  
• The AALB website page, with full reviews and buying info
  

Three E-mail Boxes

One of them public and important, two of them personal and somewhat trivial:

1. See the e-mail box here on the Springfield, Mo. News-Leader letters to the editor page? If you're a fan of Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak, stand up to the Neanderthal who described the book as "soft pornography" and let them know why it and Slaughterhouse-Five should stay in the Republic school district. Maybe cc: your e-mail to the superintendent, Vern.Minor@republicschools.org, or the principal, Daren.Harris@republicschools.org, to be sure your message gets heard.

2. See the e-mail box over in the right sidebar? You can enter your e-mail address there to have these blogs delivered to you via e-mail, through a Google Group called chavelaque.

3. See the one smack-dab in the center of the front page of CherylKlein.com? You can enter your address there for updates regarding my book, Second Sight (in first page proofs! and soon to have a cover!); future appearances; and my website in general (e.g. when a new talk is posted), through a Google Group called cherylkleindotcom. The e-mail from this address will be fairly infrequent -- I'd estimate no more than six or seven messages a year -- and neither list will be shared with anyone else. Thanks for your interest.

All Thumb(nail)s

Earlier today, I wanted to paginate a picture-book manuscript I'm thinking about, to see how the text would play out over 32 pages; so I went on the Internet to see if there was an easy template for thumbnail illustrations that I could download and print out. Alas and alack, the Internet did not provide! So I whipped up a thumbnails template of my own in Microsoft Word, as seen above, and I bestow it upon the Internet for free downloading here. You're welcome, 'nettie dear.

While we're on the subject of cool Internet things, do you know about Zamzar.com? It's my very favorite file conversion service, which transformed the Word doc of my thumbnails to the JPEG image above in thirty seconds flat. Feel free to leave any other genuinely useful sites in the comments.

And hey, while I have your attention:

• Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich (Eighth Grade Superzero) and Francisco X. Stork (Marcelo in the Real World, The Last Summer of the Death Warriors) will both be appearing at the Brooklyn Book Festival Youth Stoop this Sunday. They're both as wonderful in person as their books are on the page -- do check them out.
  
• The next night, September 13, is Kidlit Drink Night! 6:30 p.m. at the Ginger Man.
  
• In January, I'm going to lead the editorial strand at the ever-wonderful Kindling Words East. The fabulous E. Lockhart will lead the author strand; the brilliant Mordecai Gerstein the illustrator strand. (Note that the dates this year conflict with SCBWI Midwinter in New York.) Registration opens and closes this Sunday, Sept. 12, so mark your calendars to enter the lottery in a timely fashion.

Happy fall!

On the Cultural Contributions of Switzerland

In honor of the US Open, and in case you hadn't seen it -- loved this:

The Genius of Taylor Swift, and a Ramble about Romance

I've mentioned my fascination with Taylor Swift's songs before on this blog, and I'm going to ramble about her a little more tonight, because I think she's the greatest YA poet in pop culture these days: a lyrical writer who is able to go straight to some key teen-girl conflict or emotion and render it into evocative narrative form. (The "You Belong to Me" video is a practically perfect YA novel in three minutes and forty-eight seconds.) She also tends to affirm extremely traditional gender roles and standards of beauty -- cf. the focus on Daddy's approval in "Love Story," her losing the glasses in the last scene of the aforementioned video, and the general passivity of her protagonists/narrators -- but the pleasure of her storytelling makes up for the failure of her feminist politics for me at present. . . . Not all blonde female country stars can be the Dixie Chicks.

Anyway, the song of hers that's been rolling around my head lately is "Mine," as it's the one getting the most airplay these days on my Top 40 station (video linked there, full lyrics here). It has the typical Taylor Swift virtue of telling a complete three-act story in three verses and a bridge, including a big reversal in the final chorus, but there's more depth of characterization to it than in her previous songs; instead of being the perfect china doll waiting for the boy to claim her, the narrator's a "flight risk" whose family history makes her fight falling in love. Indeed, the line that keeps blowing me away in the song is this in the chorus, addressed to the man who changed her mind:

You made a rebel of a careless man's careful daughter

The thing that so impresses me about this line is that it implies four layers of relationship in those ten words:

1. The daughter/narrator's relationship with her father -- her distrust of him because of the hurt he presumably caused her with his carelessness
   
2. The daughter/narrator with her self -- her distrust of her father led her to become careful in reaction to his carelessness
3. The daughter/narrator with the lover being addressed -- this guy loved her so much, and vice versa, that she changed her meticulous nature for him and became a rebel
   
4. The daughter/narrator with the world -- and then she was better able to face the difficulties of the world because she had his love and that new rebellious spirit

As someone who loves relationship stories and admires efficient storytelling and characterization, I just have to say: "Damn. That is excellent writing."

This also made me think about elements of great fictional romances. This is something I've thought about a LOT, actually, going back to my passion for Jane Austen and Dorothy Sayers and Shakespeare's romantic comedies in high school and college, and my love for Jennifer Crusie and Georgette Heyer today. . . . One of the parts of the editorial job I like the best is that it lets me be a machinist for stories: I get to take them apart and see how they work. And when I do that with romances, I come up with this list of common elements.

(I also acknowledge the highly general, even stereotypical, gender roles discussed below; and I'll add that I think the most satisfying romances are those where these elements are used in the story of two highly distinct individuals who are on an equal footing in their relationship. Serious power imbalances in romances always make me really uneasy.)

1. Moral education -- the other person makes you a better person . . . "completes you," to use the Jerry Maguire phrase (though I always preferred the thought that "Your true love isn't the person who completes you; it's the person who helps you complete yourself"). This is Emma, Pride & Prejudice, "As You Like It," Gaudy Night . . . all of the Rationalist romances I discuss at this link usually focus on moral education in some way.
   
2. A change in someone's essential nature -- this is not only #3 in "Mine" above, it's what makes the Pemberley twist in P&P so great, when Elizabeth shows up at his house and Darcy seems like a completely different person: He loved her enough to reform his behavior and become a better man for her. I don't know if there IS a bigger female fantasy.
   
3. Being wanted -- except, of course, just plain being desired. This is what happens at the climax of "Mine," where it turns out he's been thinking the exact same things she's been thinking about him all this time, and "You are the best thing that's ever been mine."
   
4. Being the only one -- and the amplification of #3, being not just the wanted one, but the ONLY one EVER in the HISTORY of TIME who could inspire this love in the lover. This is one reason Twilight works, I think, because Bella is SO special to Edward and then Jacob in a way many people long for. . . . All the "soulmates" stuff plays on this too. It's interesting that many fantasies with male protagonists also feature this "only one" trope, but there it is foretold in a prophecy that the protagonist must save the world entire in some way. In other words, in female fantasies, women get to be special to one person; in male fantasies, the hero gets the adulation of the world.
   
5. Being seen -- what "being wanted" often starts with: the look that recognizes you and your essential, deep-down worth, no matter how hidden. Cinderella stories are all based upon the premise of being seen; "You Belong with Me" is all about not being seen and then suddenly being revealed.
   
6. Being in control -- For teenage girls especially, it's hugely empowering to be the one in control, the one saying "Yes" or "No" to the young man who's at your feet -- and he has to obey you. Especially potent in combination with sexuality, putting that decision-making power in a girl's hands.
   
7. Breaking free -- On the other hand, if you've been controlled all your life, maybe being in love sets you free to be uncontrolled, as in "Mine" above. And rebellion is always sexy, at least in theory. (I think this is the way Wuthering Heights is supposed to work -- Heathcliff and Cathy breaking through the bonds of society and possibly sanity and death to be together -- but I respect that book more than I find it romantic.)
   
8. Forbiddenness -- obviously. "Love Story" and also Twilight play off this.
   
9. Separation -- I'm thinking of the delicious ache at the end of The Amber Spyglass and "Before Sunrise" here, how romantic it is that they can't be together.
10. Death -- the ultimate separation. The 1970s Love Story book and film and Romeo and Juliet are both good examples.
    
11. Being known -- Having someone who sees all of you, knows your history, and loves you anyway. (Or to quote "Mine": "You know my secrets and you figure out why I'm guarded / You say we'll never make my parents' mistakes.")
12. Being thought about -- Having someone who loves you enough to think through why you act the way you do, as in the lyrics quoted above, or who figures out something that will make you happy without being told what it is. Gifts that demonstrate knowledge/thought of the other person are always incredibly romantic.
    
13. Sacrifice -- This goes back to #2, where Darcy changes his nature for Elizabeth, though it's perhaps better exemplified by the end of "Titanic," where Jack dies so Rose can live (again invoking #9): He loves her enough to give up _________ for her, whether his snobbery or his life. The O. Henry story "The Gift of the Magi" is a story where #11 makes it romantic, and #12 bittersweet.
    

Your thoughts? What else would you add to the list as an element of a great romance? And can you think of any romances where the woman performs the sacrifice, change in nature, etc. for the man, and it ends happily for the both of them?

(Actually, I can: The Queen of Attolia. But he still loves her first.)