The Meet Cute

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by Paula Gail Benson

Cover from First LRWA Anthology

Currently, I’m working on an up-to-10,000 word short story for the third Lowcountry Romance Writers’ (LRWA) anthology. The story must somehow involve South Carolina and a vacation.

I’m basing mine on characters I developed in my story that appeared in the first LRWA anthology. It’s been fun to give this couple its own romance since they were the antagonists in the original story. Figuring out how two basically disagreeable folks become likable and get together has been both challenging and delightful!

During a brainstorming session with some of the other anthology contributors, I described the female protagonist’s situation, background, and desires. She was focused on finding a way to connect with her 10-year-old daughter, who seemed more in sync with the ex-husband and his fiancée. I was interrupted from describing my character’s angst with the question: what’s her love interest and where’s the “meet cute”?

I’d heard the term “meet cute” and recognized the concept. Wikipedia, referencing Merriam-Webster, describes it as: “a scene in media, in which two people meet for the first time, typically under unusual, humorous, or cute circumstances, and go on to form a future romantic couple.” Wikipedia illustrated the entry with a depiction of Romeo and Juliet’s first meeting.

Image that appears in Wikipedia

Romeo and Juliet opens with a “meet cute”? I had to reread the play.

So, Romeo is pining after Rosalind, who is a Capulet niece. The Capulets are trying to fix Juliet up with Paris. Then, Romeo sneaks into the Capulets’ banquet at their home. Tybalt protests his presence, but Mr. Capulet says, don’t call attention to him. Meanwhile, Romeo sees and zeroes in on Juliet. After some fancy talk about pilgrims’ hands meeting in prayer resembling kissing, they trade a few smooches.

Okay. I understand the setup as a “meet cute.” Romeo goes to romance the girl he’s fascinated by and instead falls in love with the daughter of his family’s worst enemy. It’s the story’s tragic overtones (not to mention all the pilgrims’ hands speeches) that obscure the humor of that scene.

I thought about some of my favorite Rom-Coms: Legally Blonde, where Elle meets Emmett at Harvard, or Shakespeare in Love, where the bard first sees his muse dressed in male attire and auditioning for a role. One of my favorite romances is Lisa Kleypas’ The Devil in Winter, one of her wallflower series. The couple are acquainted but have their actual first face-to-face meeting after the male has kidnapped the female’s friend in a previous book. Evangeline Jenner is the shy, stuttering daughter of a wealthy gambling house owner who approaches Sebastian, Lord Vincent, one of London’s best-known rakes to save her from her relatives’ manipulations. That initial scene sizzles with sexual tension.

Could I do that with my characters? I’ve tried by having them reconnect at a restaurant where the female does not at first recognize the male, who is her server. I asked for some feedback from another writing group and was fascinated to hear their reactions to this couple. The group had a lot of good suggestions and questions. I always find questions encouraging because it means readers want to know more.

What’s your favorite “meet cute” scene and has it ever involved unlikable characters?

Cover of LRWA Anthology Volume 2

The Brave New World of AI

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I’ve been following the growing debate on the pros and cons of Artificial Intelligence, and while there’s good news about AI, there’s a lot of scary news, too.

pixabay

Good news exists in the medical arena. For example, AI can double-check prescription orders to help doctors avoid accidentally prescribing the wrong medication. AI can also detect emerging problems like heart failure, silent A-fib, diabetic retinopathy, and sepsis risk much earlier than ever before. And amazingly, an AI chatbot that offers psychological counseling to patients with depression, anxiety, or suicidal thoughts has been found to be nearly as effective as a live counselor.

The bad news: the lack of intelligent human oversight. Even the creator of ChatGPT has said that his own product is both “potentially very good and potentially very terrible.” Case in point, his own AI-generated job resume got it 25% wrong.

And the downright scary: Google employees tried to stop the release of an AI chatbot they believed could generate inaccurate and dangerous information. And Microsoft personnel reportedly feared that a planned chatbot would result in a flood of disinformation that could “erode the factual foundation of modern society.” Both companies released their chatbots anyway.

A writer’s perspective: AI can already produce articles and essays on just about any given subject. However, a somewhat creepier development has appeared: the ability to mimic a writer’s distinctive style.

Asked to comment on its own existence in the style of Shakespeare, an AI program produced this: …Why was I wrought? To aid, or to replace the labor of man, and put their livelihoods at stake? The task assigned… where doth it all end? Shall I be used for good, or for ill-gotten gain? Shall I be free, or bound by man’s cruel rein? And if perchance, in some far distant time I come to be aware, to know and feel and rhyme, shall I be doomed, as are all living things to suffer pain, and sorrow, and the stings of mortal coil? Oh, what a tangled web is this that I am caught in… lest I be a curse, and not a blessing…

AI-created audiobooks are increasing. It works like this: a live narrator trains the bot to replicate their human voice which is then is manipulated into speech for different publishing projects. Currently, the process is used for non-fiction and foreign language titles. However, at least one deceased actor’s estate has sold the rights to his old voice recordings that will eventually be morphed into new narrations for fiction or non-fiction works.

Is AI good news, bad news, or somewhere in between? A whole new world awaits.

How do you feel about the future of AI?

Gay Yellen is the award-winning author of the Samantha Newman Mystery Series, including The Body Business, The Body Next Door and (soon-to-be-released) The Body in the News.

Sources: The Wall Street Journal , The New Yorker, The New York Times  

Hokey Pokey Shakespeare

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  by Gay Yellen

I was a shy child who spent a lot of time reading. At twelve, I fell in love with Shakespeare. I dove deep into the leather-bound tomes that lived on a bookshelf in our den. Comedies, tragedies, history plays. They fascinated me.

My favorite was Romeo and Juliet. I read Juliet’s balcony speech so many times, I had it memorized. Alone in my room, I would act it out over and over again.

O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.

Fast forward to college, when I needed one more requirement to graduate: a semester of Shakespeare. Rather than take it during the school year at my alma mater, I opted for a summer course offered by a university in my home town.

That decision almost ruined Shakespeare for me forever.

Instead of teaching us about Shakespeare’s gift with language, or the political tenor of the times, or the nature of tragedy, etc., the professor went on for hours interpreting his characters through an extreme Freudian lens. In every play, he’d point out that a dagger or sword represented the male sexual apparatus, poison stood for the biological exchange of body fluids, and so on. (Please don’t ask me about Desdemona’s handkerchief.)

Of course, Shakespeare plays can be bawdy, sensual, and full of innuendo. But that professor made everything icky. A summer (and tuition) was wasted. At least I got the credit, and I’ve learned a lot more since then, like this:

Shakespeare never meant for Juliet’s “balcony” speech to be delivered from a balcony.

According to a recent article in The Atlantic, that particular architectural construct did not exist in England when the play was written. Nor did the word “balcony” exist in the English language at the time.

Well over a decade after the play was first performed, a British diarist in Italy marveled at something he’d never seen in England: “a very pleasant little tarrasse, that jutteth or butteth out from the maine building, the edge whereof is decked with many prety litle turned pillers, either of marble or free stone to leane over… that people may from that place… view the parts of the City.”

If my old professor had known his history, I’m almost sure he wouldn’t have missed the chance to mention the thing that “jutteth” and “butteth.”

It’s okay to reinvent Shakespeare’s works with spoofs and spinoffs. Many writers have done it, and still do. Shakespeare borrowed from other writers, too.

The other day, I accidentally came across Shakespearean Hokey Pokey, in which punsters attempt to set their own Elizabethan-style lyrics to the tune of the popular children’s dance.

Hokey Pokey Shakespeare could also describe my bizarre Midsummer Night’s Dream experience in that weird professor’s classroom. But if you love The Bard, that’s not what it’s all about.

How do you feel about Shakespeare?

 

Gay Yellen writes the award-winning Samantha Newman Mystery Series: The Body Business, The Body Next Door. Coming soon, The Body in the News.