Maria Pinto’s story “Love Song of a Femme Fatale on Scholarship” appears in the Winter 2017 issue of Flapperhouse.
When I was a kid, my dad once claimed that if you left your car running while you ran into a store, it would be your fault if someone stole the car. It was an attractive nuisance, he said, a phrase that is usually applied to things that might prove both tempting and dangerous to children, like trampolines and pools. I’ve been skeptical of my dad’s claim for years, but sure enough, a Google search for “attractive nuisance laws” pulled up this stat: According to a study by the National Insurance Crime Bureau, from 2012-2014, 126,603 vehicles were reported stolen with the keys left in the vehicle. Did the people who owned those cars get blamed for their theft? I don’t know. But the principle is a great one for writers to keep in mind. Instead of asking why a character has a particular desire, it’s sometimes better to simply put a desirable thing in front of them.
Maria Pinto does exactly that in the first paragraph of her flash short story, “Love Song of a Femme Fatale on Scholarship.” It was published in the Winter 2017 issue of Flapperhouse, and you can read it online here.
How the Story Works
Here is the story’s first paragraph:
Something about seeing teacher on the bus, under the yellow light, the ridges of his brown corduroys flaccid, the finger upon which she’d always assumed she would find a gold band if she bothered to look, how the finger tapped at his bony knee, something about the way the finger had a gold band-shaped stripe on it, the stripe pale, a little indented, the way the knuckle hairs had a practiced wither there, how the stripe rendered him vulnerable as a midair-poised ass, hot, pink from slapping, something about all these things taken together made her want to push the moment, to fuck him. She did not interrogate why. She was a freshman; there was only the urgent press of do, do, do.
Notice how vague the rationale for the desire is: “Something about seeing teacher on the bus.” The character can’t really explain her attraction to her teacher; she just knows that she can’t take her eyes off of him. Nothing about the scene or the man is even particularly attractive: the yellow light, his flaccid pants, his bony knee and hairy knuckles. And yet the woman begins to fantasize about having sex with him. Why?
The answer is, mostly, because he’s there to fantasize about: “the finger upon which she’d always assumed she would find a gold band” turns out to have “a gold band-shaped stripe on it.” Her teacher was married, but now he isn’t. Which means he’s available. And that is all the woman needs to fire up her fantasies—and also basic human nature, “the urgent press of do, do, do.”
It’s almost identical to a moment in the most recent episode of Veep. A character walks into a hotel hallway, sees a half-eaten room-service sandwich on a tray in the hall, and takes a bite. Why? Because he’s hungry? Maybe. Or maybe he does it because that’s what you do with sandwiches. It’s an attractive nuisance, just like the college instructor with his empty ring finger. Further explanation is not required.
The Writing Exercise
Let’s create an attractive nuisance, using “Love Song of a Femme Fatale on Scholarship” by Maria Pinto as a model:
- Identify the aspect of human nature at work. Pinto uses sexuality—people want and need to have sex—but that’s not the only aspect available to writers. To find them, think about the advertisements we see on television, almost all of which appeal to basic human nature: fast food, big trucks, fast cars, cars that sense danger before you do, smiling families, partners who hold your hand as you walk toward a hand-carved wooden hot tub on a cliff overlooking a beach, pharmaceuticals that make you well again. We don’t want these things for logical reasons; we want them because of something deep and essential to our being. Pinto begins her story with “Something about…” Find that something for your character. It’s a broad exercise, but if you can narrow the essential desire down to, say, safety rather than sex, then you’ve got a start.
- Create the attractive nuisance. Put something in front of your desiring character. The thing doesn’t even need to be particularly great. Fast food is a good example. It’s disgusting and makes me feel sick afterward, but if I’m in riding in a car that goes through a drive-thru, you’d better believe I’m ordering a value meal. The man that Pinto puts in front of her character isn’t desirable, but he’s there, and so she desires him. In fact, the story is more interesting because he isn’t attractive. If we felt sure that an encounter between would go well, we wouldn’t want to know what happens next.
- Reaffirm human nature. If you’ve ever made a regrettable choice in life, someone (perhaps yourself) has asked you, “Why did you do it?” Pinto senses this question looming in the reader’s mind, and so she writes, “She was a freshman; there was only the urgent press of do, do, do.” In short, she’s made human nature a function of age. She’s created an excuse. Plenty of older people have sex with people they probably shouldn’t, too, but that’s not important. The excuse allows the story to move forward. So, give your character an excuse: she’s young, she hasn’t eaten in a few hours and her blood sugar is low, she just had a fight with her friend. The details of the excuse don’t really matter; what’s important is letting the character (and therefore the reader) off the hook.
The goal is to create story and plot by giving a character something that he or she cannot resist.
Good luck.
