Writing longing: how to keep two people almost together

What longing is made of

Longing needs two things held against each other: a want that is clear to the reader, and a reason the want cannot simply be acted on. Take away either and you have something else. Want without an obstacle is a romance that ends in chapter two. An obstacle without want is two people in separate rooms.

The third ingredient is attention. A character who longs for someone notices them constantly and pretends not to. That pretending is where the writing lives, in what the narration catches and then quickly looks away from. It is the quiet engine under most good erotica, as the notes on how to write erotica argue at more length.

Distance you can measure

Abstract distance is weak. "They were worlds apart" gives the reader nothing to feel. Measurable distance is strong: the width of a desk, two seats along a pew, a ferry crossing that takes forty minutes, a letter that takes eleven days to arrive.

Give the distance a number or a shape, then change it a little in every scene. A chair moved six inches closer is an event. So is a letter that arrives three days early, which means it was sent in a hurry. Readers track these changes with remarkable care, often without knowing they are doing it.

Obstacles that belong to the characters

Outside obstacles (a marriage, a border, a feud between families) start the engine. The best longing runs on obstacles inside the characters. Pride. A promise made to someone who has died. The private conviction that they do not deserve to be happy.

In Persuasion, what first separated Anne Elliot from Frederick Wentworth was advice: a trusted family friend talked her out of the engagement. What keeps them apart once he returns, years later, is his wounded pride and her habit of making herself small. Austen moves the barrier inside them, and that is why the reunion takes a whole novel rather than a chapter.

The almost

The near miss is the signature move of longing. A hand reaches out and is withdrawn. A confession begins and is interrupted by a knock. One of them nearly says the other's name in a way that would give everything away.

Use it sparingly. Each near miss should cost something and show the reader something new, or it becomes a trick they see coming. A good rule is that every almost should leave the two characters in a different position from the one before: more aware, more afraid, or more certain that the other person feels it too.

A small example. She says, "There is something I should have told you in the spring." He says, "Then tell me now." The kettle begins to whistle in the next room, and she goes to it, and when she comes back she talks about the weather. Nothing has been said. Both of them know exactly what was nearly said.

Objects that carry the feeling

Longing attaches itself to things. A borrowed book that is never returned. A scarf left on a hook for a whole year because taking it down would mean deciding something.

An object gives the character something to hold when they cannot hold the person, and it gives you a way to show feeling without stating it. Pick one object early, let it pass between them or sit untouched, and bring it back at the moment of greatest pressure.

Kazuo Ishiguro builds The Remains of the Day partly around one such object. Stevens, the butler, sets out on a long drive to Cornwall because of a letter from Miss Kenton, the former housekeeper, and he reads far more into it than he will admit to himself.

Rituals and repetition

A ritual is a scene that repeats with small differences, and longing thrives on it. The same café every Thursday. The same seat on the same early train. The same question at the end of every phone call. The same walk home that goes one street further each time.

Repetition lets the reader measure change. When the ritual breaks, because one of them does not come on Thursday or the question goes unasked, the absence lands harder than any event could. Build the ritual across three or four short scenes before you break it, so the reader has learned to expect it.

Time as pressure

Longing sharpens when time is limited. A contract that ends in six weeks. A wedding on Saturday at which one of them is the bride. A deadline turns waiting into a choice, and every day that passes without a word becomes a day lost.

Time can also work across years. The Age of Innocence ends more than two decades after its central love affair, with Newland Archer outside a Paris apartment, deciding not to go up. The longing has outlived the chance to act on it, and the reader feels every one of those years at once.

Writing the scene tonight

1. Name the want in one sentence and the obstacle in another.
2. Measure the distance between them in this scene, in inches, minutes or miles.
3. Choose one object that can pass between them or be left behind.
4. Write one near miss, and decide what it changes.
5. End the scene with the distance a little smaller, or a little larger, than when it began.

Longing is also the engine of a slow burn romance, where it has to last for a whole book. If you would like to see a premise with a built-in distance play out first, the erotica generator asks what keeps your two characters apart before it writes anything.

Questions