“Everyone is dead and we dance like a knife fight.”
-Matt Breen.
So there’s this guy. He’s young, cocky, intelligent, and brash. He’s spent a lifetime learning how to play with people. He knows how to read them and control them. He hates the person that he is sometimes. He hates that he can figure out everyone but himself. It infuriates him that he can break open the mind of a stranger when he can barely scratch at the surface of his own subconscious. He’s self-destructive; he can’t seem to help himself sometimes. He’s a man with an overactive imagination and a tongue laced with acid who just wants to watch his own world burn. He’s an unstoppable force.
Then there’s this girl. She’s beautiful. She’s intelligent, funny, artistic, compassionate, driven, and did I mention that she’s beautiful? She comes into the life of the man mentioned above and shatters his preconceptions that he can survive as an island. She breaks through the intricate web of lies he creates to shield himself from the world and sees his soul laid bare. There’s just something about her; this magnetism that draws him in. No matter how hard he tries to fight it he can’t help but feel himself being drawn towards her. She’s perfect in his eyes. Her idiosyncrasies leave him speechless, and her smile sends him weak at the knees. But there are just two little problems. The first? The first is that she’s an immovable object. All the bullshit he spins to others just doesn’t work with her. She’s looked into his eyes and seen his soul and she knows him better than he knows himself.
The second problem? She’s just as self-destructive as he is.
Welcome to the world of romance according to Chris Nicholas. Instead of boy meets girl and falls in love and lives happier ever after, I’ve found myself writing about what happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object. What happens when a man who keeps everyone at a distance meets a girl who does the same damn thing and he suddenly finds himself trying to overcome the same mental barriers he uses to thwart the advances of others is a concept that intrigues the hell out of me. And it’s one that leaves me scratching my head as I pen my way through page after page of my script.
So let’s delve a litter deeper… I’m thinking out loud right now, and there’s no real point to this post other than some general mind mapping. If you’re after something a little more clear and concise, this will be your last chance to opt out.
No? You’re still with me? Alright, let’s continue.
This guy, his name is Miles, meets this girl: Ava. She’s everything he could ever want, and he knows that if she gave him a chance he could be the same to her. But she’s distant and aloof. There’s chemistry between them, anyone can see that. And when they are together there is electricity in the air that is almost tangible. They just click. But she keeps him at bay, just like he has done to so many people before. It drives him wild, he pushes and he pushes, and soon the unstoppable force collides with the immovable object at full speed. But while he hopes and prays that the collision will bring about a climatic shift where two worlds become one, it shatters him instead. The unstoppable force loses out and the immovable object barely registers the impact; she’s too busy destroying herself to even realise what might have been.
And so the knife fighting begins. It’s not vicious though, and that’s the worst part. The duo dances their way through a courting process that is beautifully destructive; their moments of intimacy and honesty leaving behind small cuts on their souls. He wants her soul, her mind, and her heart. She wants to shut him out for fear of getting hurt. The idea of letting someone understand her leaves Ava with a sense of dread so severe she wants to run away from everything. Just as Miles wants to burn his world when things go wrong, she wants to abandon hers.
So they dance and they dance. He knows her better than she knows herself. He can see when she’s denying herself the opportunity to be happy. But she also understands his lust for self-destruction better than he could ever hope to comprehend. She’s destroyed herself more than anyone could ever know and can see what he is thinking before he’s even aware of it himself. They are two identical souls fighting against one another for that common ground. He wants to pull her close. She sees the threat and wants to push him away.
Sounds confusing right? And just a little macabre too I guess. But I love the concept. I love the struggle, and I love the idea of two people who are so similar yet so different at the same time. My characters are based off of Aristotle’s idea of friendship. The philosopher said that a friend is a single soul dwelling within two bodies, and that’s exactly what I want to create with my love story. I want to create something beautiful, but something destructive. One wants to love, one is afraid to be loved. And in the end, when all the knife fighting is over, only one of them will walk away.
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The Renegade Press 
This sounds somewhat like my previous relationship. Sigh.