WEP Guest Post, by L G Keltner, Winner of the February Challenge - In Too Deep: The Sting of Cupid’s Arrow .

Welcome to a WEP tradition - the winner's guest post.

L. G. Keltner won the February Challenge -

In Too Deep, with her flash, Contemptible Cupid.

Today she's here to discuss ‘love’ and its influence on plot.

  

In Too Deep: The Sting of Cupid’s Arrow

When I sat down to write my WEP piece, I knew I wanted to focus on love.  After all, it was February.  Valentine’s Day brings with it romance, flowers, and chocolates for a number of lucky people.  For others, it brings a reminder of loneliness or lost loves.  Either way, the presence or absence of love causes lots of feelings. 

Love is a popular subject to write about, whether as the primary plot or a subplot, and it’s not surprising.  As children, we’re born into families, and in ideal circumstances, those families love and nurture us.  As we grow, we make friends we come to love like family, and when we’re old enough, we may choose to begin our difficult and awkward search for a romantic partner.

Part of the desire to write about love stems from wanting to understand it.  What is love anyway?  What should we want from a relationship?  What should we expect?  Why does it happen, and why does it fall apart?  These are tricky questions to answer.

Love is difficult to define, but descriptors for it abound.  Love is patient.  Love will guide and support you through the tough times.  Love is enduring.  It’ll catch you when you fall.  These are lofty promises, but they can be met when we’re surrounded by caring people.  And if a person finds themselves alone in times of trouble, someone with a loving heart may see that pain in their fellow man and lend a helping hand.  This is love at its best.  This is how beautiful love can be.  It can enrich our lives and imbue our daily routines with a sense of meaning and purpose.

Love also has a dark side. 

Like Cupid’s famous arrow, love strikes us without warning, and it’s not within our ability to control.  We may decide whether to start a relationship with someone, but that decision exists apart from the feeling we have.   

Cupid’s arrow doesn’t care whether it’s welcome or not.  The uncontrollable nature of love can be a bloody nuisance, or worse, utterly devastating.  “All’s fair in love and war,” an oft quoted proverb proclaims.  “Love is a battlefield,” says Pat Benatar.  These nuggets of pop wisdom touch on that darkness.  Love can be inconvenient.  It can even be dangerous to fall in love if society deems it to be wrong.  At certain places and times (even today), it’s been frowned upon or outright illegal to be with someone of a different race, a different religion, or the same sex.  The consequences for embracing that love can be devastating.  Nevertheless, people have gone through all kinds of personal hardships and taken grave risks to be with the one they love.

Love can also turn to contempt and bitterness.  The transition from love to hate is treacherous and hard to understand.  Maybe that’s why writers like to poke and prod at that transition so often in their stories.  It’s baffling that such a drastic change in feeling is possible.  This is where my story planted roots and grew. 

Cupid is love’s delivery boy.  He is our attempt to comprehend the incomprehensible.  We give him credit for the happy process of initially falling in love, but I wanted to find a way to blame him for when it falls apart.  Why?  It sounded like fun.  Why should he get credit for all the good and none of the bad?  That hardly seems fair.  

My version of Cupid is not to be trifled with or trusted.  He’s dangerous because love can be dangerous.  When we embrace love, we risk a broken heart.  Is loving someone worth that risk?  We may all come to our own conclusions on that one.  Personally, I say yes, it is worth it.  Just don’t irritate Cupid.  He could use some anger management classes.

Writers everywhere incorporate love into their tales, and that’s wonderful.  We get to find inspiration, joy, and sadness in reading about all the ways love can either triumph or go awry.  We get to explore all the possibilities together.  Do you like to examine the nature of love in the stories you write?  Do you prefer stories where love remains happy, or do you prefer when it takes a dark turn?

L. G. Keltner spends most of her time trying to write while also cleaning up after her crazy but wonderful kids and hanging out with her husband. Her favorite genre of all time is science fiction, and she’s been trying to write novels since the age of six. Needless to say, those earliest attempts weren’t all that good but now she’s the author of Author of A Silent Soliloquy ~ Cosmic Seasoning ~ Self-Help 101 or: How I Learned to Take Over the World Through Tolerating My Family ~ Self-Help 101 or: How To Survive a Bombardment With Minimal Injury ~ Self-Help 101 or: How to Select a Costume to Help You Deal With People ~ "Felix Was Here" from Parallels: Felix Was Here ~ "Treating the Beast" from Circuits & Slippers ~ "Nocturnal Noise" from 2018 Young Explorer's Adventure Guide

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The #WEPFF In Too Deep Challenge Winner Guest Post with L. G. Keltner! @DeniseCCovey & @YolandaRenee https://writeeditpublishnow.blogspot.com/2018/03/wep-guest-post-by-l-g-keltner-winner-of.html

Celebrate with L. G. our 1st place winner #WEPFF In Too Deep challenge #amwriting https://writeeditpublishnow.blogspot.com/2018/03/wep-guest-post-by-l-g-keltner-winner-of.html

#WEPFF February Challenge winner discusses love and plot @DeniseCCovey & @YolandaRenee https://writeeditpublishnow.blogspot.com/2018/03/wep-guest-post-by-l-g-keltner-winner-of.html  #amwriting #flashfiction

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