Be my valentine

It's a day of reckoning, so make sure you have the right stage for your heartfelt declarations of love, Lindsay Andrews reports.

Time, place and circumstance, as every well-known love story shows, are the three essentials when it comes to winning hearts and favors. While they are often incongruous when presented for dramatic effect on page or screen, when it comes to scripting the happenstance of a real-world romantic encounter so that it ends with at least the possibility of a happy ending, it may be wise to err on the side of caution. So go with the already tested and proven.

Especially on February 14, Valentine's Day, when expectations and anticipation tend toward an established mise en scène featuring cards, candles, chocolates and roses, preferably in the kind of setting that suggests you have placed high value on the occasion.

And if you set the scene right, then all you have to worry about is delivering your own part of the dialogue with suitable panache. Stage it wrong, however, and the scene can be all too easily be ruined, with the payoff being a lasting goodbye rather than a heart that is smitten. That is not a scene you want to keep replaying in your head when there is little likelihood of a second take.