If any of you were fans of the soap
DAYS OF OUR LIVES back in the late 1980s, you probably remember the
twisty, angst-ridden, sweeping romance and marriage of Steve
"Patch" Johnson, the tortured bad boy from the wrong side of
the tracks, and Kayla Brady, the pretty, sweet daughter of a
fishmonger who ran a low income emergency clinic on the riverfront. It
was a bad boy/good girl romance that transcended the archetype, and
Steve's tragic death not long after the birth of their daughter was
one of the most heartbreaking moments I've ever watched on a soap.
The Steve and Kayla romance sucked me in completely. I bought my first
VCR just to tape their story, and when they returned to the show in
2006 (yes, both of them—did you really think Steve was DEAD dead?),
I discovered that most of their story had been saved as digital video
files, so I got to relive it again. Even twenty years later, the story
stood up beautifully, proving that a well-done romance is timeless.
So what was it about the Steve and Kayla story that kept me riveted
two decades ago and drew me in all over again when I discovered the
clips? Here's what I discovered when I gave the question some thought.
1)
Great romance starts with conflict.
There is nothing more bland than a couple of pretty people with good
attitudes and lots in common falling in love. Yeah, it happens in real
life a lot, and those people probably have great, happy lives. But
it's not compelling to watch.
Humans crave drama. And drama comes from conflict. I'm not sure
I've ever seen a successful fictional romance develop from a more
unlikely pairing than Steve Johnson and Kayla Brady. Steve was rough,
bitter and sarcastic. He was basically a hired thug—and Kayla was
one of his paid projects. First he was hired to scare her away from a
doctor she was working for, which he did by trashing her apartment
while she was out, making threatening phone calls. In fact, the first
time he ever saw her, he was hiding in her closet, watching her
undress. Later Steve took a job following her and spying on her for a
bad guy who wanted information about Kayla's brother.
At first, Kayla came across as a sweet, optimistic goody-two-shoes. A
crusading nurse willing to put herself on the line to help other
people, she wasn't particularly warm to Steve's rough talk and
sexually aggressive posturing. With a cop for a brother, she was in a
position to make a lot of trouble for Steve, and she didn't mind
reminding him of that. Hardly an auspicious beginning. But man, the
set-up promises one heck of a pay-off later.
2)
Great romance works through conflict a step at a time.
Steve and Kayla didn't go from stalker/victim to husband/wife in a
couple of months. Every step along the way played out in a logical and
interesting manner. Internalization gave us glimpses of the shame that
Steve felt for what he was doing to Kayla, and the curiosity and
attraction Kayla felt for the glimpses of the good man inside the thug
who was driving her crazy.
We slowly saw different facets to both of their characters: Steve's
compassion for a couple of abandoned kids living on the streets and
Kayla's strength and determination in the face of dangerous
circumstances began connecting them, shattering preconceived notions
about each other and building a new understanding between them. Slowly
they began sharing truths about themselves with each other.
3)
Great romance is built on character growth.
Every character in every book starts with a worldview. For Steve, it
was that there were actually two worlds. One where normal
people lived, where the justice system worked and everything was happy
and rosy, and one where people like him lived, people who couldn't
trust the system to find justice for them. It was the jungle for
people like him, survival of the fittest, every man for himself.
People in his world stayed far, far away from people in that shiny
happy world where normal people lived.
Kayla, on the other hand, believed that if you trusted the system to
work, it would. You just had to tell the truth, be good, let justice
take its course and everything would work out.
Neither of them managed to hold onto those worldviews after they came
into contact with each other. Kayla saw how the system let people like
Steve and the young street kids he helped fall through the cracks. And
Steve saw that the system could work if there were compassionate and
decent people—like Kayla and eventually her family—who cared
enough to patch up the holes so that people didn't get lost in the
shuffle. Each of them learned something from the other, incorporated
those lessons into their lives, and became better and fuller people
because of it.
For any good romance, you need conflict. You need to work through
those conflicts one step at a time, adequately dealing with the
obstacles that arise. And you need character growth as the pay-off for
the conflict.
I've simplified a very complex romantic story to cull out three
important points, but I think these are points that all of us need to
pay special attention to when we're developing romances for our own
characters.
Copyright © 2010 by Paula
Graves
