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owlectomyWriting any relationship - it's often most visible in romance, but I think it's true of any relationship - is about the tension between what you can say and what you can't say.
Because of course it's frustrating when characters mope and whine and pine and angst for eighty pages when that could have been solved by a three-minute conversation - but you don't necessarily want to do away with the moping and pining.
Speaking only for myself, I love unresolved sexual tension, I love pining, I love the slow burn. I love really hoping that these two failboats can just get it together. But I don't want it to feel artificial. I don't want to feel like these two failboats are failing to communicate because the author can't figure out any other way to reach the minimum page count.
This is the tension of all art, right? It's artificial, but often, it works only to the extent that it can allow you to pretend that it's real. When you can recognize it in your own life, that's one of the things that lets you pretend it's real. Not saying what you need to say because of pride or fear or vulnerability or because you don't know how to be the person who could say that kind of thing - that's relatable as hell.
There's also the argument from aesthetics. Which is that if your characters say what they feel, the dialogue lies there flat and limp and dead on the page.
So. Your characters can't actually say what they mean because then they'll be boring and the dialogue will be boring. But they also can't miscommunicate in ways that make readers roll their eyes, in ways that feel too simple or contrived or push the boundaries of just how much these characters can be failboats before readers stop caring whether they ever get their acts together or not.
I think getting it right comes down to characterization. If you can make someone come alive on the page as arrogant, afraid, insecure, vulnerable, then when they communicate badly because of it, it'll feel sympathetic (or at least understandable) rather than contrived. And I think that's hard to do because to do it well often means going into your own shame and regret when you write, and the ways you've made bad choices and miscommunicated. Plot points like "I wasn't cheating on you - I was just hugging my brother!" come from wanting the Big Misunderstanding but not having it based in any actual wrongdoing. That always feels like a cop-out to me, even more than the artificiality of the Big Misunderstanding. I love the way a good romantic story makes an argument for how love can push us to be better, and braver, and force us to confront our baggage - but it can't do that if the obstacles that have been set up in the way of love are paper tigers.
Because of course it's frustrating when characters mope and whine and pine and angst for eighty pages when that could have been solved by a three-minute conversation - but you don't necessarily want to do away with the moping and pining.
Speaking only for myself, I love unresolved sexual tension, I love pining, I love the slow burn. I love really hoping that these two failboats can just get it together. But I don't want it to feel artificial. I don't want to feel like these two failboats are failing to communicate because the author can't figure out any other way to reach the minimum page count.
This is the tension of all art, right? It's artificial, but often, it works only to the extent that it can allow you to pretend that it's real. When you can recognize it in your own life, that's one of the things that lets you pretend it's real. Not saying what you need to say because of pride or fear or vulnerability or because you don't know how to be the person who could say that kind of thing - that's relatable as hell.
There's also the argument from aesthetics. Which is that if your characters say what they feel, the dialogue lies there flat and limp and dead on the page.
So. Your characters can't actually say what they mean because then they'll be boring and the dialogue will be boring. But they also can't miscommunicate in ways that make readers roll their eyes, in ways that feel too simple or contrived or push the boundaries of just how much these characters can be failboats before readers stop caring whether they ever get their acts together or not.
I think getting it right comes down to characterization. If you can make someone come alive on the page as arrogant, afraid, insecure, vulnerable, then when they communicate badly because of it, it'll feel sympathetic (or at least understandable) rather than contrived. And I think that's hard to do because to do it well often means going into your own shame and regret when you write, and the ways you've made bad choices and miscommunicated. Plot points like "I wasn't cheating on you - I was just hugging my brother!" come from wanting the Big Misunderstanding but not having it based in any actual wrongdoing. That always feels like a cop-out to me, even more than the artificiality of the Big Misunderstanding. I love the way a good romantic story makes an argument for how love can push us to be better, and braver, and force us to confront our baggage - but it can't do that if the obstacles that have been set up in the way of love are paper tigers.