Only the other week I was lamenting that as a mother, you just don’t get ‘sick days.’ You nurse your child better when they are ill, but when you come down with something, you rely on mummy immunity to pull you through and just get on with it.
Next time I’ll keep my mouth shut.
Enter The Flu
Sick days? Try seven of them in a row. It wasn’t a case of ‘I’ll just soldier on’, it was a case of I.just.couldn’t.get.out.of.bed.
And before you suggest all of this pain could have been avoided with a flu injection, I get them every single year, because I can’t afford to get sick. The Flu doesn’t care about that. All The Flu cares about is inhabiting your body and sucking it dry until you are a husk of your former self.
OK. So I’m a writer and that reads a little dramatic, but I was so sick I couldn’t even read! Let me repeat that for you: I couldn’t read. All I could do was lie there aware of how sick and miserable I was.
After a few days in an attempt to do something other than lie witness to my flu ravaged body, I decided it was time to watch a movie. It didn’t require any effort on my part, just my eyes. Great idea, right? It was until I realised that the majority of our collection is blu-ray and the player in our room is DVD. So I had to dig deep. Real deep.
The First Knight and the importance of the kiss
Sean Connery. Richard Gere. Julia Ormond. When the were young! The legend of Camelot, King Arthur and Lancelot.
This movie came out when I was a teenager and I realise now watching it all these years later, how the romance of it impacted on me.
This movie is also a great example of the role of a kiss in a story. As a writer, I’ve always held fast to the theory that a kiss, particuarly the first kiss, between your characters has to be memorable. In fact, it has to be more than memorable. It has to be an embodiment of the emotion, the passion and the tension between a couple.
In the First Knight, this may not technically be their first kiss, but it’s the first time Guinevere asks Lancelot to kiss her and…WOW.
As for the King walking in on them right at the end, well, that’s a great example of conflict in a story, but I’ll save that for another post.
What about you? Do you have a favourite all time kissing scene from a book or movie? And do you agree the first kiss is important?
Belinda Williams 
That is probably the best movie kiss ever. And, although I don’t like rooting for people to cheat on their spouses, this is one movie that makes me want to and even sympathize with the queen. Well done characterization in this movie for sure.
I know, best kiss ever and great tug at the heart strings love story!
I’ve never been a huge Guinevere fan, maybe because my first experience with a telling of Arthur was told from Morgan Le Fay’s perspective, but that was a great scene! If the story is at its heart a romance, than I agree, the first kiss should be written as a culmination of all the romantic tension built up thus far. It is as important (if not more so) as the rest of the plot’s climax. If the story isn’t supposed to be a romance though, I don’t mind as much if it feels rushed or under-detailed. I hope you are feeling better.
Hi Allie. You make a good point about the genre of the novel. I was definitely coming at it from a romance genre perspective! I’m not sure a mystery or thriller would require the same emphasis on a kiss 😉 Feeling a lot better now thanks.