I'm plotting a romance novel and I'm trying to think of something disastrous happening between my two leads. I've already had a bratty ex accosted them. What do?
How about ... ah, I've got a few ideas:
They're both hardcore authoritarian Stalinists, but met each other at the most groovy, laid-back libertarian rural commune you can possibly imagine. Like, apocalyptically libertarian: ALL drugs are free and legal as the Market intended, and I do mean ALL. Both leads loathe and despise this, so both independently sneaked their ways in, with fiendishly cunning disguises as right-wing libertarians, but intending to undermine and obliterate all this loathsome bourgeois friggin' filth from within.
Both thus met whilst high as fucking kites. They fell in love, they fucked, they fell in love more deeply, they fucked again, then got plastered still further on both Adderall and mescaline to maintain their funky-wunky groovy/liberty facades. But they're still fearfully aware, and individually aware, that they're interlopers! Neither dare drop their Randian facade, even to their beloved! They're both terrified of being FOUND OUT by the other, FOUND OUT by the wider commune, and feel they simply must take all the drugs in the universe, constantly, unrelentingly, or their blitzed neighbours will start asking: who are these uptight squares? Are they the Filth or something?
Both are also terrified of endless drug tsunamis dissolving their espionage focus, and their social masks, and their beloved counterpart discovering their stalwart Stalinist hardcore ideals, and losing the man and/or woman of their dreams.
They can't stay hammered! They can't not stay hammered! Both are internally panicking. Both are desperate to destroy their hated libertarian commune, yet Be With their beloved.
How? Easy peasy. Each should simultaneously take the other hostage. Makes sense when you're sozzled. And all true Stalinists are armed to the teeth with Kalashnikovs. Right? Right?
The story's third act begins when both leads interrupt a particularly screechy group rendition of "Ron Paul Makes Me Foggy In My Soggy" and, independently and simultaneously, both brandish AK-74s and scream to the commune their genuine Stalinist loyalties, and they'll blow out the brains out of this other corrupt bourgeois scumbag unless the entire gathering hands over to them its remaining three tons of cocaine.
Bah 😛 Needs a ton of polishing. But there's a pair of decent-ish character arcs in there somewhere.
Original: https://mikeyclarke.co.nz/blog/2021/12/could-be-wo...