Speaking of love stories

I wrote half a page of…something…the other night. It’s still too early, and I still have too loose a grasp on it, to know exactly what it’ll be. It’s the story I think I mentioned here before, about insomnia, and a group of people who force insomnia on themselves in an attempt to reach enlightenment. I had started the story a few weeks back, but didn’t like the feel of the first few lines, so I spiked it. When I started it again just a few nights back, it was after finding a new narrative voice, and I think it’s a voice that works better. It’s broken, fragmented, like I’m sure his mind would be having not slept in days. If possible, I want to fragment it more and more as the story progresses, so his narrative is all over the place, talking about today, then suddenly two years ago, then suddenly yesterday, and suddenly today again. All over the place. Bordering on psychotic.

But what’s bugging me about the story right now is that I don’t see a really obvious love story angle for it. And having said in the past that all great stories are, ultimately, love stories, I really feel that unless I find that love story hook for this one, it’s never going to be everything that it could be. I do have a notion for a love story element, but it’s messy and dysfunctional, and I’m not sure that I want to go in that direction. Everything else around this character is going to be messy and dysfunctional. If there’s going to be a love story, it should be his one stability.