First Meetings
The first time my brother met Husband, he was impressed.
They were at college together - it was the morning after a heavy lads' night out before. Brother knocked on the door of a friend's room to see if they wanted to go for breakfast, and found the room full of strange bodies.
It is said (although this may be apocryphal) that one small lad was sleeping in the wardrobe. On offering an open invitation to breakfast, Brother was met by a chorus of groans and curses. But one fully-dressed, curled-up form by the door uncoiled itself, got to his feet, tugged his t-shirt straight and said, "yeah, alright."
Brother says he's always admired Husband's ability to go from somnolent, passed-out-in-your-clothes to instantly ready for action, whatever the circumstances.
Only I know that what Husband is truly instantly ready for... is breakfast.
The way to a man's heart is through is black pudding.
The first time Husband met me, I was hiding behind a plant.
A carnivirous plant, Sarencenia Flava, to be precise.
I was, at the time, helping Brother to move out of his college room. This entailed shifting the usual paraphenalia of stereo, books, tapes, duvet and, in Brother's case, half a hundred weight of bricks (long story) and several large carnivorous plants.
In his defence, he was studying horticulture, and vegetable instruments of death and destruction were his passion. The particular specimen I was holding at the time was about three foot high and a good one and a half feet wide.
Husband maintains that he has a lasting impression of a voice, two hands, and a pair of legs below the knee.
Since I couldn't actually see him at the time, I don't actually count this as my first meeting with him.
My first meeting involves Bon Jovi.
How do your characters meet? Have you a cute meet? A dramatic one? A real-life one?
In five MS and pre-MSs, I have:
The Hero watching the heroine kill three men on CCTV
The heroine crashing her car through a hedgebank to avoid hitting the Hero
The heroine slamming the door on the Hero's foot
The Hero abducting the heroine from a moving train, and
The Hero fishing the heroine out of the Mediterranean. (sp?)
Hmmmm. I think I incline towards the dramatic, no?
posted by Anna Louise Lucia @ 10:24 pm
11 comments
11 Comments:
I've got:
Hero meets heroine while he's down a hole and doesn't realise he broke her heart ten years before
Heroine meets hero when he's on a Harley Davidson being auctioned to the highest bidder
Heroine meets hero when his chicken goes on the rampage
Heroine meets hero in National Gallery and has sex with him fifteen minutes later
I think I incline to the bizarre rather than the dramatic.
For some reason I seem to kill central male characters off before my stories start (though one was a father and as the mother didn't really come into the story except as a concept I'm not really sure I can count that). It's interesting I hadn't thought about how my central characters met each other... I'll get back to you on that one ;)
Great post, Anna!
In one short story that I'm currently shopping, the main characters are a man and a dog, and the dog just started to follow him like he was his already.
Cyn
Hmm
Heroine meets hero when she is looking for litter and he thinks she has tried to set up the meeting, having flirted with him with her eyes.
Heroine meets hero when she is pretending to be someone else, and her life depends on not being recognised and inadverently saves his life.
Heroine meets hero when she is searching for something and is in a place where she promised she wouldn't be. He's not supposed to be there either...
I suspect I like to play with things not being as they seem.
Wow, isn't it interesting that we're seeing trends? Julie's quirky and intense, Michelle's deception and reality...
Cyndi's dog???
ggg That sounds like a great story, Cyndi. Because of course all animals actually take US home... rather than us choosing them.
Come back and let us know what you've got, NotQuite.
Anna, funny how you mentioned how animals take us home. This is exactly what happens in the end, symbolically (sp?) and literally.
My man is specifically a gunman. He has issues. I love that "damn dog" as he calls it.
Hugs, C
Well, since most of the WIPs I'm working on are romantic suspense, mine are all "suspenseful."
Heroine meets hero by shooting him by mistake.
Hero meets heroine after having entered her hotel room on accident.
Hero and heroine have already met in past and when they meet again, she punches his lights out (my favorite, BTW).
Let's see...
Heroine meets hero when he crashes out of his own grave.
Heroine meets her when they're both escaping from a party -- he's drunk.
Heroine meets hero when he's the bodyguard of the man to whom she's engaged. Story begins however, once the engagement is broken -- she literally crawls up his body to seduce him.
Heroine encounters hero when he's a wolf, but meets him when he's mayor.
Heroine meets hero when he breaks into her home to find secret documents.
I don't think I have a theme. I'm just all over the place.
Hmmm...
Hero meets heroine at a wedding... later in the day she pukes on his feet.
Hero meets heroine as he is escaping from prison and the whole citadel they are in is being invaded.
Not sure what that says about me.
Sela, I'd say your theme is conflict - you're doing a great job of opening with an immediate problem for your characters to overcome. :-D
I dunno Biddy - there's a bit of that starting-with-conflict thing going on there, but also some humour and action!
Kaitlin's right - definitely suspense! Lots of immediate impact.
Ah, Cyn, now I really need to read that story! And you're right - they take us home, and they ARE home.
Ok, it's not romance but historical fiction:
Ciaran meets Julia at a formal dinner.
Alamir meets Cloelia in the villa of her father whom he just killed. He takes her out before he sets fire to the place.
Kjartan meets Estrild at his bedside when he wakes up after being in a traumatic fever for several days (cliché, I know, but sometimes it works).
Alastair and Ragnhild find themselves fighting side by side when Nidaros is attacked.
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