Squawk Radio

Saturday, September 17, 2005

Eloisa answers the question, "Where do Your Ideas Come From Anyway?"

Sometimes you can't find a decent idea to save your soul. I've been searching for months for the key idea that would drive the plot of a book I'm dreaming up. My heroine and her husband are estranged. He's a rake and she wants nothing to do with rakes...at least until the Biggest Baddest Rake of Them All knocks at her door. That's all very well -- but what's my hook?

I realized it a few days ago, teaching a class on Shakespeare's Tempest. In Shakespeare's play, Ferdinand arrives on the island where Miranda grew up and first thing you know, they're sitting down before a chess board. To make sense of this, you have to know how sexy chess was in history. Back in the Middle Ages, a chess game was the one permissionable reason for which a woman could ask a man into her bedchamber. Chess was the game of nobility...hours of leisure were spent at the board.

For those of you who don't remember, The Tempest is an archtypal romance. Miranda falls in love the moment she sees Ferdinand: "I might call him a thing divine," she says, "for nothing natural I ever saw so noble." Poor thing. Her first man, after all. The scene when they play chess is one of Shakespeare's greatest flirtation scenes. The first thing Miranda notices is that Ferdinand is doing a little cheating: "Sweet lord, you play me false." (That's men for you: brave and new until they they steal your pawn -- or worse!).

So now I'm thinking that my heroine is very very good at chess. So is her husband, except they haven't played together since they had a terrible fight over his mistress, a few years ago. But a certain rakish gentleman challenges her to a match...and the wager? I leave that to your imagination (grin). And then her husband finds out and begins a chess match of his own...

CHECKMATE.

What's the best flirtation scene you can think of from a book or a movie? Ten points if you can think of a flirtation scene that includes a game!
Eloisa James, 2:00 PM
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