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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/25929
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/25929
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I tend to think of the process of writing a novel as follows: Invent a bunch of characters. Spend time with them until you fall in love. Then torture them to the brink of madness. The redeem or condemn them as you choose.

It seems to me very difficult to read The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe without falling in love with Lucy, LOTR without falling in love with Sam, Brideshead Revisited without falling in love with Sebastian, or The Power and the Glory without falling in love with the whiskey priest. Love seems indispensible from full engagement with these characters and their stories.

But you seem to be talking about something different. You seen to be talking about romantic love, and perhaps more specifically about erotic love. And on that score I am not so sure. Erotic love inherently seeks a consummation that no page can provide. (Mere pronography evokes lust at best.) Clearly one can crush on an actor or actress in a movie or TV show, but can one similarly crush on a character on the page? I'm not convinced. I think our love for characters is closer to friendship than to eros.

EDIT: Since the question has been edited significantly since I wrote the above answer, I will add this. The erotic impulse is founded in the lower brain's assessment of reproductive fitness. Men and women play very different roles in reproduction, and thus they look at very different qualities in making a reproductive assessment. The male assessment is clearly far more visual than the female. But also, the male satisfaction is far more fleeting than the female. The female assessment of reproductive fitness seeks a mate who will protect and provide for the young. Constancy is part of fantasy for the female in a way it is not for the male.

Also, males assess other males, and females assess other females, as potential reproductive rivals. So men and women are naturally repelled by each other's pornography.

This is at the biological level, of course. Our responses are quite different at the social level. But the pornographic and quasi-pornographic is pitched to the biological response. And therein lies the difference between Pride and Prejudice and 50 Shades of Gray.

Original score: 3