Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
Path: gmd.de!Germany.EU.net!mcsun!uunet!ddsw1!chinet!jorn
From: jorn@chinet.chi.il.us (Jorn Barger)
Subject: Romance necessities, deduced?
Message-ID: <C4Bx55.2tL@chinet.chi.il.us>
Organization: Chinet - Public Access UNIX
Date: Tue, 23 Mar 1993 06:39:03 GMT
Lines: 79

Okay... I'm zeroing in on the assumptions that:

1)  the target audience is female, so the MeActor is too.

2)  the first scene is in a pickup place-- party or bar or loveboat or 
whatever

3)  before you enter the first scene, you choose how you want to be 
dressed

THEREFORE:

the characters in the bar (say) have to know how to react to each outfit 
you might choose

most of the guys who hit on you will be jerks (stands to reason ;^)

if you say the wrong thing it may start a fight?

there will be at least one guy you've got to *try* to catch

you may not realize at first that the nicest guy is the funnylooking shy 
fellow!

you may have to outcompete another woman, who maybe got there first

one way to recognize jerks is that they 'drive' too fast (pole-position 
euphemism)

if you miss the clues, though, they'll love you and leave you

ways to escape 'speeders': slap face, throw drink, yell help, yell 
police, kick genitalia  ;^)


(if the 'moral' is that nice guys ought to finish first... how do you 
keep the ending from being an anticlimax?  i fear this is a metaphysical 
unknowable... but maybe a nice cuddly poem at the end?)

        'A Light Left On'
    In the evening we came back
    Into our yellow room,
    For a moment taken aback
    To find a light left on,
    Falling on silent flowers,
    Table, book, empty chair
    While we had gone elsewhere,
    Had been away for hours.

    When we came home together
    We found the inside weather.
    All of our love unended
    The quiet light demanded,
    And we gave, in a look
    At yellow walls and open book.
    The deepest world we share
    And do not talk about
    But have to have, was there,
    And by that light found out.
        May Sarton (Amer. b.1912) [MLP]

    Under the summer roses,
    When the flagrant crimson
    Lurks in the dusk
    Of the wild red leaves,
    Love, with little hands,
    Comes and touches you
    With a thousand memories,
    And asks you
    Beautiful unanswerable questions.
        Carl Sandburg (Amer. 1878-1967)
        "Under the Harvest Moon"

    Grow old along with me
    Two branches on a tree..
    God bless our love
    God bless our love.
        John Lennon

