Where is the Love?

I recently heard an author say that, when he’s editing, one of the questions he asks himself is ‘Where is the love?’ He does this for each page(!), and if he’s not satisfied with the answer, he makes a note on the page so he knows to return to it. Now this isn’t a romance author – in fact, he’s Paul McVeigh, the author of The Good Son, a book set in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, and winner of the Polari First Book Prize.

Anyway, when McVeigh returns to the page, he then really interrogates it. This isn’t ‘How is character x showing romantic feelings for character y?’ It’s deeper than that, more varied and more nuanced. Yes, in a romance, there may be a ‘declaration of love’ scene, but there’s a wider remit and much, much more depth to McVeigh’s point.

He didn’t expand too much in the short presentation he gave, but I’ve been thinking about his question quite a lot. After all, doesn’t everything come down to love? The possession of it, the desire for it, the absence of it? Love is a huge motivating factor, the lack of it often an explanation for why a person (or character) behaves as they do (you could even call it part of their backstory!). That’s assuming the love relates to another person of course, but the love explored on the page (and in real life) could also be for a cause. A caveat to this is that it may be difficult for a reader to care for the cause that is close to a character’s heart if they don’t also invest in the character’s arc. For example, in The Hunger Games trilogy, Katniss initially volunteers for the Games to protect her younger sister by taking her place (evidence of her love for her sibling), and this makes us invest in her journey. By the end, she’s the figurehead for the revolt against the regime of the Capitol.

If a character cares, then the reader will too.

As McVeigh interrogates each page, I likewise interrogated some of the novels I’ve read to see if his question is always relevant. Surely, I thought, it can’t apply to every work of fiction ever written? Now I didn’t go page by page, but I did think about the big picture of a few books.

Take A Christmas Carol. Scrooge starts out as one of the most miserly, uncharitable, mean-spirited characters in literature. In short, there’s a lack of love for his fellow human beings. By the end, through exposure to his backstory, the consequences of his actions on others and the knowledge that he would die a lonely, unloved man with no one to mourn him, he does a complete one-eighty. It could be argued that it’s the graveside scene that really tips Ebenezer over the edge into redemption, and that it’s actually evidence of the power of self-love. But this is a form of love too, isn’t it? Either way, he then shows his love for his fellow man in abundance, and the reader is left with a satisfied feeling upon closing the book.

It could be argued that the absence of love on the page is as powerful, or more powerful, as an abundance. It poses questions for the reader, it makes them want to read on to discover the impact of its absence, and how it will eventually manifest.

One of the novels I considered is The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas by John Boyne. No spoilers but the ending left me staring into space for several moments as I tried to process what I’d just read. Obviously, the novel demonstrates that the Nazis had no love for Jewish people (among others), but this in itself is compelling reading. ‘How far are people, a regime, so full of hate willing to go for their ‘cause’?’ a reader may ask, propelling them to keep turning the pages. But at its heart, the story is about the friendship that develops between two boys who exist on opposite sides of a fence. And isn’t friendship just another form of love?

Final Thoughts

Does this theory work for your favourite novels? Is love (or its absence) demonstrated on every page (or through the character’s overall arc)?

Does your own work-in-progress demonstrate this theory? If not, could the process be applied to deepen the emotional resonance of your novel?