What's all the shouting about?

As I read the news and watch an admittedly small portion of television, I'm left somewhat dismayed at the level of sensationalism that seems to pervade anything media-related.  And I wonder:  must we shout to be heard above the din?  Must authors write books that "tell all" or let the reader in on some alleged "secrets"?  Whatever happened to shows like Seinfeld, where we could just take a humorous and ironic view of daily life?  What about books?  The top 5 NYT non-fiction titles for this week include one each from Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck, two men who make a living off of inciting dissension.  Will it get to the point where we, as fiction authors, need to insert something controversial just to make a sale?  It used to be that controversy would kill a sale; now I wonder if we're headed down a path where, even in fiction, controversy might be required to MAKE a sale.  I think that would be a very sad day for fiction writers.

Author Meg Mims!

I'd like to welcome author Meg Mims to the blog.  Meg has published a historical romance titled "Double Cross" that is a twist on one of my favorite western movies of all time, "True Grit".  She uses a technique that I really like, character interviews.  So without further ado, let me introduce Lily and Ace!

What do you get when you pair up a wealthy, well-bred heiress – sheltered and educated with an impulsive streak – and a gambling, mercenary Texan cowboy?

Double Crossing is a twist on “True Grit” that takes place on the 1869 Iron Horse – months after the Union and Central Pacific railroad lines joined at Promontory Point. Nineteen-year-old Lily Granville is stunned with her father is murdered and vows to track the killer – her father’s lawyer, who also stole a valuable deed to a gold mine – across the country to California.  After convincing a good friend to escort her, Lily arrives in Omaha and discovers that someone is now tracking her. Could it be the killer? And why? Lily decides to enlist “Ace” Diamond, who agrees to protect her – for a price.

Q for Lily – how did you first meet Ace?

A – He literally crashed his way into my life. I was stunned. He’d been brawling in the street and I felt my Christian duty was to help him when he landed at my feet. But then I caught sight of his Confederate belt buckle with the Texas Lone Star. Guilt overwhelmed me. My father would never have approved of such a man, and I was suspicious of the story he told me about my aunt’s husband. However, I soon realized I had no choice but to hire someone like Ace Diamond, who had far more experience with his fists and weapons than the friend who’d escorted me to Omaha. Ace seemed the most unlikely “angel of mercy” as an answer to prayer! But I suppose beggars can’t be choosers.

Q for Ace – what was your first impression of Lily?

 A – The moment I set eyes on that pretty filly, all golden-haired and sweet, with the most kissable mouth, I was bushwhacked. Couldn’t remember my own name.

Q for Lily – were you surprised that Ace bargained with you over his fee?

A – The nerve of that man! He claimed he wanted to go to California, and then he wouldn’t accept the fair wage I offered. He even demanded an expensive Pullman ticket! And then I found out he’d been bragging about the bonus I promised once we arrived safe in California. Really, Mr. Diamond was presumptuous and forward, given his tendency to—well, I will only say that he’s no gentleman. I shouldn’t have been surprised at all. He was a mercenary, plain and simple, and I was too naïve to see it.

Q for Ace – why did you accept Lily’s offer?

 A – Riding shotgun on a train, and gettin’ paid? Easier than winning a hand of poker.  But don’t you believe that I didn’t earn my fee. And then some.

Q for Lily – before the railroad trip, what was your dream for a happy future?

A – I wanted… well, I hadn’t decided. Charles wanted to marry me and serve as missionaries in China. We both heard the same lecture in Chicago. My father wanted me to marry a decent man, a good provider and give him grandchildren. He did not approve of the idea of me living half a world away. And while I did want adventure and independence, I wanted to be somewhere safe and to enjoy long talks with Father, sketch my pet lizard in the lovely garden or watch the leaves change in fall and the snow fall in winter. Father’s death changed everything. I blamed Emil Todaro for his greed and betrayal. He ruined my life and I wanted to see him hang.

Q for Ace – what about you, same question?

A – A good woman in a nice, cozy bed. Now I’m aiming for that woman to be Lily.

If you haven’t read Double Crossing yet, here’s where you can find it!

AstraeaPress

Amazon

Barnes& Noble

Thankful accomplishments

I want to wish everyone a hearty Happy Thanksgiving!  My kids are home and I'll be heading to California with the youngest to get her car down to L.A. 

In the meantime, I'll have a guest blogger here on Monday.  Meg Mims, author of "Double Crossing", has penned a twist on the classic "True Grit" movie, one of my favorites (the original, with John Wayne).

So tell me, what are you thankful you've accomplished during the past year?  Have you finished a book?  Entered a contest?  It doesn't have to be a big thing, but I think sometimes we forget to pause and pat ourselves on the back for what we've done.  I know it's human nature to focus on the stuff we DIDN'T get done, but put that aside for a few days and give yourself credit.

Me?  I've finally resurrected the bullfighting book and it's getting closer to being sent in again.  And I've been studying writing books and learning the craft ever better. 

How Dark is Too Dark?

I have several ideas floating around in my head, but the one that keeps coming back is dark, dark, dark.  Post-Civil War, and the heroine would basically be dealing with PTSD, even though it certainly hadn't been identified as a specific condition back then. 

How dark is too dark a book for you?  The Harry Potter series was dark, especially for something aimed at kids and young teens.  How far can you go in the historical romance genre?  Stephen King can get away with pretty much anything, but he's an outstanding writer and writes in the horror genre.  His stuff is SUPPOSED to be dark. 

Meagan Chance writes dark, and a lot of people consider Anne Stuart's stuff to be dark, although I just find it. . . intense, I guess is the best way.  Not overly dark, at least for me. 

What makes a book 'dark' for you, and at what point does it become so dark that you put the book down?  What great books have you read that were dark?  Any great, dark romances? 

The Inside Story

I'm reading a FANTASTIC book on writing.  INSIDE STORY: The Power of the Transformational Arc by Dara Marks is written primarily for screenwriters, but everything in it applies to fiction.  Absolutely fanstastic book that's bringing a lot of good information to me in a way my little pea brain can handle. 

She breaks a story--any story--down into bite-sized pieces, explains each piece, and then demonstrates through famous movies exactly how they can be pieced back together.  Even though there's structure, those of us who break out in hives at the very thought of being 'told' how their book 'should' flow can get through this because the structure, as she explains it, is no more than a general frame on which you can hang anything.  Action/adventure, romance, romp, mystery, thriller. . . so long as whatever you're writing has guts, or an inside story, you can go anywhere with the exterior. 

I'm seeing so many ways this book can apply to my writing and make it better. 

Anyone else read this book?  Have you applied the concepts?  What do you think of it?

What Drives You Nuts?

A lively discussion with some writing friends got me to thinking about what makes us love or hate a book, or drives us nutty about the story.  For me, head-hopping will turn the book into a wall-banger very quickly.  If you can't figure out how to tell the story without constantly jumping from head to head, I don't want to invest the effort into trying to follow the storyline. But for other people, that doesn't bother them. 

Weak characterization is another thing that drives me nuts.  Characters who are TSTL (too stupid to live), or who do things with no motivation whatsoever are another bugaboo for me.  But my critique partners and other writing friends have lists of other things like historical mistakes, occasional flaws in the story logic, and other items that they can't forgive while I can. 

On the other hand, strong storylines and characters with deep motivation and strong goals will bring me in every time. 

So the writer in me wants to know. . . what drives you batty when reading fiction? 

Contests--what's in them for you?

I used to be a contest junkie, but haven't entered any writing contest in years.  Now I'm considering the Golden Heart because, well, because I have a completed manuscript that I'm working on.  I think it would give me another reason to keep forging ahead with these edits.  But I'm wondering if it's worth the effort and cost.  It's a non-traditional book, and I'm not sure how much contests have changed over the past several years.  It used to be that non-traditional books not entered in the Fantasy category rarely did well.  However, the rise of e-publishing and a wider variety of stories could bode well--or not. 

Should I throw my $50 into the fray? What do you look to get out of a contest entry?  Fame?  Glory?  An editor's eye?

Did computers change our content?

Bummed about the fact that Steve Jobs died, but that got me thinking.  The personal computer re-defined the way we write.  No more pen to paper for most of us; instead, we sat before an empty screen and blinking cursor.  But since the computer revolution, it seems to me that fiction has changed.  Books are shorter, as are chapters.  I remember when a 20-page chapter was the norm.  I don't think that's the case any more.  The books I'm reading today have shorter chapters, and most open in media reas, in the middle of the action. 


I'm not saying this is better or worse than the way things used to be; just different.  Or am I imagining things?  I think back to the Brontes and even Pat Conroy and the beautiful, lyrical phrases and descriptions they could weave, and I don't think that style of writing is as prevalent today.  Did the computer have anything to do with it?  Are we losing our ability to live in the moment?  For the moment?  Must everything be rapid-fire, goal-oriented, make-every-second-count?  Just because we can do things faster with a computer, must we?

Wine, Women, and Creativity

Having just returned from a lovely dinner out with most of my critique group, I have to say that a) they're the best group around, and b)we got some awesome brainstorming done.

I do need to finish revising the current book.
I do need to finish writing the next book.

But wow, got some awesome plot ideas for the one after that. Perhaps it was the wine (both at the restaurant and then after we got back to the house) but the ideas were really being generated.

What sparks your creativity?  A walk in the woods or through an art museum? Wine? <g>  A critique session?  Observing humans in their natural environment?

I'm wondering how people can get good results from this when they're sober!

Viewpoint

Viewpoint--how important is it to you?  As a reader, does it bother you if the author "head hops"?  Or do you notice it?  If you're an author, how often do you switch viewpoints?  Not that there's any fast rule, but do you tend to move between vps often?  Stay in one vp for an entire scene?  Entire chapter?  Some authors tend to switch fairly quickly, others less so.

Story may dictate this to some extent, but my argument is this is more of a stylistic choice by the author.  However, I want to see a REASON for it.  While I love Nora Roberts' storytelling, I can't read her books because of the vp switches that happen so often I feel like I have mental whiplash.  Yet her storytelling is strong enough that most people don't seem bothered by it. 

Stylistically, books written 75-100 years ago are slower, more deliberate, and tend to be 1st person, which doesn't lend itself to vp switches.  Today's books are much faster paced.  Has the vp switching happened as a result of the demand for "faster" plotlines? 

If you're a vp purist, how much does it bother you when an author head hops?  If you don't particularly care, do you even notice when the vp switches to another character?  Do you think that adds or detracts from the story?

The problem with problems

I'm still storyboarding, and still discovering problems with the book.  Who'd a thunk, eh?

This is the heroine's book, yet I'm finding that the POV is tilted toward the hero.  There are also more sequels than I would like in a book that's supposedly pretty action-oriented (it involves bullfighting, after all).   And the problem with all of these is, well, the day job. 

How does one balance a need to spend hours on the ms to fix all this, when one must work and pay the mortgage?  Add to that the fact that it's finally decided to be nice, weather-wise, here in the Pacific NW, and I'm not motivated in the least to work on this thing. 

So, gentle readers, I need your motivation tips to get my butt inside, out of the garden, and working on the ms.  But only after I eat a few of these green beans. . . .

Storyboarding--the good, bad, and ugly

My next Grand Experiment is to storyboard VALENTINA and see (hopefully) where I can trim this baby.


I'm hoping a storyboard will allow me to see the whole book as more of a 'picture', rather than a linear bunch of typing. I plan to do pink Post-its for the heroine's POV and blue for the hero's.


But I'm a newbie at this, so I'm wondering if anyone out there has any suggestions or hints for using this technique. When I get the whole thing done I'll post a picture of it. If it helps someone, that's great. I'm hoping it'll help me.


Carol

Guest Blogger Brinda Berry!

Please join me in welcoming the delightful as well as informative author Brinda Berry to the blog.  The first five people to leave a comment here will win a romance trading card! There's also a chance to win a copy of the e-book or a chance at an Amazon gift certificate. Take it away, Brinda!

Using Podcasts for Research

In writing my debut novel, The Waiting Booth, I used what some may consider an unorthodox method of research. Instead of using the many online resources or visiting an actual library, I relied on information that I could obtain at my convenience while commuting to my full-time job two hours daily. I listened to podcasts.

If you aren't familiar with the world of podcasts, you are really missing out on a very enjoyable form of information that suits our social natures. The podcast is a digital audio or video file that a user can access by using a web feed or checking it manually for updates to download. I used the iTunes software to manage my podcasts and subscribe to some of my favorites. Episodes are available for me on my laptop, iPad, and iPhone. I have an auxiliary cable that I plug into my car radio to connect the device (iPhone), and I can listen on the go. There are a variety of mobile devices which support the storing of podcasts.
I listened to The Scientific American Podcast, Stuff You Should Know, The Coolest Stuff on the Planet, NPR: Science Friday Podcast and others for inspiration and research while writing The Waiting Booth. I don't have a degree in science and won't pretend to be versed in some of the more scientific topics. The great thing about podcasts is the social format of the information. There are interviews with questions that I might ask. These are experts in the field as well as ordinary people with limited expertise. Conversations occur that break down the issues to the most basic elements. Also, these brief talk shows that usually lasts between thirty minutes to one hour are highly entertaining and frequently humorous.

Even if you aren't researching a topic, you have other great resources in the world of podcasting. There are enlightening author interviews on BTR: Authors on Air, Blog Talk Radio. Other podcasts focus on topics like technology, language instruction, news, humor, and sports. I'm afraid to look at the selection because I keep finding more podcasts to add to my listening queue.

Have I sold you on listening to a podcast yet? It may not be for everyone. I have a long commute daily, so this format fits nicely in my schedule. Instead of a commute, you may exercise with a daily walk while listening to your iPod. Or you could play it from your computer while you are cooking a meal. The possibilities are endless. Writers all lament about the lack of time for writing related tasks. Podcasts are terrific resources for the time-challenged author. I hope you'll try a podcast if you haven't, but I must warn you. They are addictive!

Brinda has her own blog at http://www.brindaberry.com/blog.html . 

Her new book is THE WAITING BOOTH:

A missing boy, government agents, an interdimensional portal...

Mia has one goal for her senior year at Whispering Woods High—find her missing older brother. But when her science project reveals a portal into another dimension, she learns that travelers are moving in and out of her woods in the most alarming way and government agents Regulus and Arizona are policing their immigration. Mia’s drawn to the mysterious, aloof Regulus, but it’s no time for a crush. She needs to find out what they know about her brother, while the agents fight to save the world from viral contamination. But when Regulus reveals that he knows Mia’s secrets, she begins to wonder if there’s more going on than she thought...and if she was wrong to trust him...

CONTEST RULES: http://www.brindaberry.com/summer-2011-blog-tour.html

The Great Scrivener Experiment

I'm a 'big picture' gal.  I like to be able to see the whole story, the arc, the conflicts and disaster, and see if I've got 27 scenes in the hero's POV and only 3 in the heroine's.  And it's damned difficult to do that in Word.


I'm also a sucker for office products, software, anything that even sniffs politely of technology.  I see advertisements for things like that and I start drooling, which isn't always for the best if it's an online ad.


So now my friend Shannon McKelden makes a post on Facebook about how she just loooooves Scrivener, and it does everything except bake the bread for you. (Okay, I'm interested)  THEN she sweetens the pot by talking about the 'corkboard' view in Scrivener (I'm getting hot flashes) and how you can color-code scenes or POV or whatever (I'm practically fainting at this point)  and then move things around AT WILL to see how they fit together in a new way--or not.  (I'm fumbling for my credit card at this point).


This morning I downloaded the program and copied in my manuscript VALENTINA, the one that was requested from Wild Rose Publishing.  Maybe it was Scrivener, or just looking at the book in a different format, but I suddenly realized that the book opens with a frikking SEQUEL, not a SCENE--in other words, no action.  Of course, that's fiction-writer's death, and I need to fix that.


Meanwhile, I'm trying to figure out how to break the monster manuscript (103,000 words) into the various chapters and scenes and color-code them, and I hope it'll stop raining sometime today so I can get out in the garden.

And--oh, yeah--GO U.S. WOMEN'S SOCCER!!!!

Why Children Are Like Books

My daughter's been home for a week now from L.A., and is heading back tomorrow.  And I got to thinking this week that kids are a bit like the books we write. 

We do all kinds of prep work before they get here, and finishing that d@*& book has gotta be right up there with the birthing process.  It takes a lot of work, a lot of time, and there are a whole bunch of people involved. 

Revision is like raising the kid.  Wondering if you're doing the right thing, if you should say this or that, and when someone gives you advice, wondering if you should take it or stick to your guns and do what **you** think is right, consequences be damned.  In the end you know you missed a few things, but you hope you got it right most of the time.

Then you send your little work of art, be it a child or a book, out into the cold, cruel world.  All you can do at that point is pray that yes, you did get at least some of it right, and that someone, somewhere out there will stop and look and say 'Hey, you didn't completely screw that up.  This is actually pretty good.'

Because with books and kids, you generally don't get a second chance to fix things. 

My daughter, bless her heart, has actually told me (now that she's past the age-18-I-know-everything-in-the-world stage) that some of the stuff I told her has turned out to be TRUE!!  Yes, the landlord wants the rent at the first of the month.  No, you cannot show up late to work on a continuing basis and expect to keep your job.  And your older brother may have seemed like a turd-breath (her term, not mine) when you were younger, but he's actually a pretty cool guy as an adult. 

And that, my friends, is like getting a five-star review.

Discovery of Witches and Maass

My first Kindle book, A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness, is one recommended in a class I took on descriptions of setting in novels, Setting as Character.  Very interesting class, and the instructor, Devon Ellington, recommended this book as one with great descriptions of the setting.  She's right.  The descriptions are brief--they don't slow down the story--and very evocative.  It's also quite obvious that either a lot of research or experience went into this book.  I've never been to Oxford (though I'd give my eye teeth to go) but I think I'd feel at home there via Harkness's descriptions. 

I'm not done with the book yet, so I'm not giving out any spoilers because I can't, though thanks to my handy new Kindle I can probably polish it off today.  Harkness also uses quite a few of Maass's techniques, with several unexpected twists in the novel.  The heroine ( a witch) just went to a yoga class with the vampire/hero.  Never in a hundred years would I have imagined a vampire in a yoga class, but she made it seem, if a bit unusual, highly logical.  Loved that scene, even though I know less than nothing about yoga. 

Anyone else read this book? What are your thoughts?  What techniques of Maass did you see in there? 

The Kindle Plunge

Okay, I did it.  This morning I ordered a new Kindle DX from Amazon.com.  While I still lust after an iPad, the fact that it doesn't handle text as well as a Kindle and that they haven't come out with the e-ink/LCD version that can handle both types of content--and the fact that the rec room remodel will soon be done--forced me to take action.

When the rec room is finally finished, it will not have nearly the bookcase capacity that it did pre-remodel.  All those books have to fit into much less space than they did before.  Hence, the Kindle. 

Of course, for the next few gift-giving occasions, I'll be putting Amazon gift cards on my wish list.  What are your suggestions for content for my new device?  Free books?  Research books?  Anne Stuart has a new book out.  So does Maggie Shayne. 

Make me a list of your favorites and I'll start the hunt!

Too Much of a Good Thing?

Thanks to a Facebook conversation with my friend and critque partner DeeAnna Galbraith, I'm going to ask today's question:  Can you have too much of a good thing? 

We've tossed ideas about conflict around here--external, internal, and various permutations of All Of The Above.  But DeeAnna is reading a book where pretty much everything that can happen does--yet from her description, not a lot of it relates to a conflict between the hero and heroine.  Which, I would argue, should be the crux of any good romance novel.  Oh, sure, people have physical disabilities.  And they lose their job.  Then someone in the family gets sick or dies.  And their car dies. . . You get the idea.  It's a whole huge bunch of bad luck, but to me, that doesn't necessarily equate to conflict.  It's something that could be fixed with an oil change and a good counseling session. 

To me, conflict that's big enough to sustain an entire book doesn't have to be anything with guns blazing or cars dying or even people dying.  It does, however, have to be a conflict that speaks to a fundamental difference between two characters who maybe WANT to like/love each other, but because of that fundamental difference, can't.  At least, not at the beginning of the book.  He thinks people should make their own end-of-life decisions; she thinks that's morally reprehensible.  There's your conflict, and not a bit of shouting or exploding cars is involved.

OR, there has to be something each of them wants that's mutually exclusive.  In VALENTINA, it was the hero desperately needing to make a business deal with the Bad Guy, whom Valentina wanted to kill.   In the end, neither of them got their original goal, but they got something bigger and better. 

So have you read books like this, where the author threw everything but the kitchen sink at the characters?  Did it work?  Pick it apart for us.

Raising the Stakes in the Middle

In Chapter 3 of the book and 7 of the workbook, we're dealing all about the personal stakes for the protagonist.  What are they, and how do you raise them?  How do you get the reader to care about what is happening to your characters, and how do you make it matter more? 

His idea is raising the stakes--BUT--these new plot twists must be organic.  Something that comes seemingly out of nowhere is not going to pull the reader deeper into the story.  It has to come from the story, and from the characters. 

I think the key is tiny little hints layered very early on in the story, so small that they lie unnoticed by the reader until the background of the character, the reason why someting matters to that character, is revealed or partially revealed.  A character's reaction to something as noteworthy as a mother spanking her child in the grocery store parking lot, or as innocuous as passing by a stand at the farmer's market can ultimately reveal something about the character, and that then raises the stakes later on in the book.  The trick, I think, is doing it so that it doesn't seem like deus ex machina or flying aliens or something that doesn't fit.  It needs to be seamless.

Anyone have any good examples of this?  I'm struggling with this as I near the halfway point in my ms, but this may be more a function of editing than first draft creation.  Thoughts?

Back to Maass--Raising the Stakes

In last week's Maass class we were reversing motives; finding different ways to motivate the characters into what they do in the story.  Now we're working on raising the stakes. But as Maass says on page 60 of the book, the reason we care about the character when the stakes get high is that we care about the character, period.
 
And therein lies the rub, eh?

We've all read books where we really connected with the characters, and books where they seemed, well, flat.  Maass has already covered a few techniques that he says will help you connect with your reader through words: open with the character in action, show him/her with heroic qualities, have them demonstrate larger-than-life qualities, etc. 

But on page 61 he says that by clothing your protagonist(s) in a cloak of "high principles and codes of personal conduct" you'll create a character who has value, who is worth saving in the readers' eyes.  A book must have, he says, "high public stakes and deep personal stakes" to have breakout potential.

This, of course, is work that's done well before Word One gets set down.  You have to know and understand your character at a very deep level to know what he or she stands for, what matters to him or her. 

So how do you do that?  I've taken a wonderful class with Alicia Rasley that forced me to go deeper, and it was a great help.  I've used Meyers-Briggs personality tests.  I've interviewed my characters.  I've read about their occupations, their time periods, and a zillion other things.  What do you do to dig deeper, to really understand the heart and soul of your characters so you know what matters to them, and thus what you can put at risk?

e-books vs. print books

Well, for the first time ever, Amazon announced last week that e-books had outsold traditionally-bound books.  Here's one of many articles published on it:

http://www.kippreport.com/2011/05/ebooks-outsell-booky-books-so-what/

And of course, we've got to slam them, right?  What's this 'books of questionable quality' crap?  Like no bound book was ever a wall-banger?  Yes, I understand this is the Wild West of publishing right now, but there are still good books and icky books and books that have a narrow market.  But that's not really different than it's ever been.  Books are still selling largely by word of mouth--which is why some e-authors are selling gajillions and other are selling nil. 

So here we are, apparently, at the Tipping Point. 

I really, really, REALLY want an e-book reader.  But I only want one.  And I don't know what that one is.  I like the e-ink, but I also like a color display.  If and when old copies of Godey's Ladies Book or other such items become available, I'd like the ability to examine the illustrations in color, to see the detail in the drawings and the different colored layers in the clothing or what have you.  Right now I want a Kindle for the ability to read easily, and an iPad for the lovely color display and the ability to read Time Magazine and Scientific American on it and get the full effect. 

I've become an iPad rumor whore, dashing from website to website looking to see when they might come up with the magic instrument of my desires.  So far the fairy godmother hasn't landed.  So I wait. 

But back to the subject at hand.  Admittedly, Amazon's customers are already computer-savvy.  They're not afraid to try something new, given the fact that they're shopping online for everything from groceries to platform shoes.  I see this as the tip of the iceburg.  I think there will always be some paper/hardback books printed, but I can see in 10 years that it could very well be a print-on-demand service.  Those who insist on paper will have to order it in advance, have it printed and (::gasp!::) shipped to them. 

Either that, or shop at the Boy Scout Rummage Sale, Goodwill, and the Salvation Army Thrift Store, as those will be the only places left with paper books. 

Am I being too pessimistic?  Was the Rapture really about our books, and we just misunderstood?  Tell me your predictions for the literary world for the next. . . . let's say 5 years.

Loving the (Un)saleable story?

Reading through VALENTINA over the past couple of days, I realize that I'm just as much in love with it now as I was 7 years ago when I finished it.  Yes, my writing has improved and I can tighten and strengthen, but the basic bones of the story are strong.  My hero and heroine both want--no, NEED--something desperately, and are willing to do just about anything to get it.  Their motivations make sense, and falling in love is a complication neither of them needs.  But the story was really not saleable material, at least not to the NY romance-publishing houses.

The story is set in Spain, not England.  It's set in 1880, which is neither a contemporary story nor the Georgian or Regency periods.  When the book opens the heroine is planning on murdering someone--the bad guy, it turns out, but she's still bent on killing him.  And although being disguised as a male isn't all that unusual, being disguised as a male bullfighter and actually getting in the ring to fight bulls most definitely is.  Not sure I've ever read that before, at least not in historical romance.

Completely unsaleable.

Or is it?  I have cautious optimism now that the complete has been requested.  What does it say about this brave new publishing world if it now beats the odds and gets published?  Is it because the market has widened?  Is it because standards have been lowered?  Is it because readers have always wanted more variety and now can have their demands answered? Is it because there's less of a cash outlay demanded from an e-publisher who will only print the paperback version in limited quantity? 

I've seen all sorts of theories bandied about, but I'm not sure anyone really knows the answer right now.  Would I like it to be published by Avon or Dell or St. Martin's?  You betcha.  Is that going to happen?  Probably not, at least not with this book.  I tried most of them (I think) after finishing the story, and they weren't interested in taking a risk on a book like this from an unknown author.   But now that I've emerged from school lo these many years later, I'm looking at a publishing landscape that bears absolutely no resemblance to the one that existed when I returned to school. 

Because over the past seven years the story really hasn't changed much, I have to think the primary reason that someone's looking at it now is because of the tectonic shift in publishing.  True, I spent my time looking at a host of e-publishers and finding one that has published books in non-traditional locations and with non-traditional characters (The Wild Rose Press requested it), but I tried that the first time as well. 

So what do you see ahead in publishing?  Further diversification?  Some consolidation at some point?  If that happens, will we still have the variety of genres and stories that we currently enjoy?  Will authors be able to love (and sell) their 'unsaleable' books?

Wax on, Wax off

Or, how do you polish?

I have 5 days to go through one of my old manuscripts and get it ready for submission.  Very excited that I got a request for the full manuscript, but now panic is setting in.  I polished up the first three chapters when I sumitted the partial, but I wrote this historical novel. . . at least 7 years ago, because that's when I went back to school.  My writing has improved since then.  But I only have a week.

Do you work on the little things, or do you look at the overall story arc?  I'm tempted to do the latter, but what if I find a big hole?  5 days isn't much time to fix it, especially when the bulk of that day is taken up with the day job, and this isn't a week I can take off much in the way of extra time. 

I know there are many people out there smarter than me, so I'm appealing to that collective wisdom.  What's my best choice, given just a few days' time?

Maass--Reversing Motives

Now we're on Page 38 of the Workbook, and Maass says to pick any scene with your protagonist in it, and write down what the character is trying to accomplish, obtain or avoid.  Then write all the reasons WHY the character is trying to do that--as many as you can come up with.  (Do that now)


Circle the very last reason you came up with, and re-write the scene using that very last reason. 

Maass's reasoning is that we often use the first reason (I do--it's most logical, right?) and that makes the scene predictable.  But no one likes reading about predictable people. Or as Maass puts it, "Safe choices make a scene predictable".  So by choosing another reason, you're straying from the 'safe' path and making the book more interesting. 

The thing I particularly like about this method is that you haven't changed your charater's GMC. Okay, you changed the M--motivation--but only for that one scene.  Overall, though, the character is still the same person: you haven't changed the overarching reasoning why this character is on his or her story arc.  You're just changing one little thing beneath that arc to add some zing to the story. 

I'm trying this using Debbie Macomber's infamous "List of 20": come up with 20 things for whatever you're stuck with.  The first five or so will be safe; predictable.  Around the middle I always get stuck and have alien abductions or some such nonsense.  But listing the aliens or wizards gets me past that hump and then the good stuff usually starts to come out.  My little pea brain has been working on it while I was busy adding zombies or rock stars to the list. 

And while we all like routine to a certain extent, we're all unique and we surprise even ourselves from time to time.  So what do you do to keep your characters interesting?  Have you tried this exercise?  What happened?

. . . . or smaller

In "Adjudting the Volume", Maass says that larger OR smaller reactions than the reader expects can increase tension and make your book better.  He uses an example from The Da Vinci Code, where Langdon and Sophie have just escaped the Louvre where it seems all of Paris had run after them.  As they're racing away in her Mini Cooper, he doesn't yell or scream or whoop for joy.  He says, "That was interesting", which, of course, makes the whole series of events from which they just escaped a little bit larger.


Then he asks you to go through your manuscript and find 24 places to heighten or diminish something your protagonist says, does or thinks.  Wow! 


If you're writing about someone who's naturally quiet, is there a danger of making this person a caricature?  Then again, even 24 instances in a 300-page manuscript isn't that much.  Plus it's a mix of increased reaction and understated reactions.  This shall be very interesting.

Even BIGGER than life

I have to confess: I'm not sure where Maass is going with this.  Page 32 of the Workbook asks me to find TWELVE places the protragonist can break through boundaries and do something s/he wouldn't have done at the beginning of the book.  While this is all great and good for character growth, with too much of itthe character traits you outline at the beginning of the book don't seem so much like traits if the character is just busting through that way of thinking or acting right away. 

For example, if I have a female character who's quiet and shy in her speech, I can't have her shouting too much.  The soft-spoken trait then looks like an affectation rather than a true trait, and the reader is going to see my character differently. 

On Page 35 (still in Chapter 4) Maass says to practice taking a thought, action or piece of dialogue and first make it bigger, then make the same action smaller.  And THEN come up with 24 points in the story (in mine, it would be 24 per character) where you can heighten or diminish something the character does, says or thinks. 

Um. . .. wow.  48 times?  Really?  I'm going to work on this tomorrow, but I'm wondering if this level of intensity might get tiring after a while, or make the characters seem caricatures.

Larger than Life Characters

Now we're on to Chapter 4.  Here, Maass says that one of the things that makes a memorable, larger-than-life protagonist is that they will do what the rest of us would never do.  They say things out loud that we only think.  And of course, they come up with witty repartee in an instant, where we always have the perfect comeback an hour after the discussion. 

Part of the exercises (Page 31 of the Workbook if you're following along) is to outline the things that your character would never, EVER, under any circumstances, say.  What s/he wouldn't do.  And what s/he wouldn't think.  Then, find places in your story for your character to think, say and do those things. 

What type of situations might cause that?   What would be the consequences of the thought or action? 

My thoughts at this point (having not done the exercise yet) are that it would have to be fairly well into the book to write this.  Because a reader isn't going to know it's against the character's traits to think/say/do something until they know the character.  But then I can see the shock value of starting with something big and dramatic, like killing someone, and then revealing how out of character that is.  The repercussions of whatever opened the book would have to be felt throughout it, I'm thinking.

Has anyone done this exercise already?  Thoughts? 

Growing Conflicted

Still working on Maass's chapter on Inner Conflict (Chapter 3), and in looking back at the work I did for Chapter 2 (Multidimensional Characters) I see now that identifying those extra character dimensions is a good chunk of the work toward creating (but not, darn it, solving) internal struggles for the characters.  For example, in the wip, the hero's primary trait is that he's a rescuer.  He sees himself as the person who swoops in and takes care of things for those who can't.  He's a doctor, as well, which plays right into that.  Rescuer types often become EMTs, doctors, etc.

The opposite of that would be to throw someone to the wolves, a very villainous trait and one I don't think that my hero has.  Still, I wrote a scene with him doing something like that just to see what would happen.  Very interesting.

But what would happen if someone came along who he could not save?  Someone with cancer, or (in this instance) a mental illness that was simply beyond the medicine of the times to treat?  How would that challenge him as a person?  As a doctor? 

So let's hear it.  Pick one of your characters and tell me his or her defining quality, as Maass puts it.  What's the one trait someone would use to describe your character, as in "he's honest" or "she's very direct".  Now, what's the opposite of that, and how would you show some growth from one toward the other, even if not all the way there?  Your honest hero might not have to become a pathological liar, but what would test his honesty?  And would there be a time when he could actually tell a lie to achieve some greater goal?

Internal Conflict

So you've created characters who are heroic and likeable.  Maybe still flawed at the opening of the book, but that's okay. They can be flawed but still likeable, so long as their flaw isn't something like being a serial murderer or a pedophile.  The flaw has to be redeemable, something the character can overcome--which brings me to the subject of this week's (I promise to do better about posting regularly) post. 

Internal conflict.  Growth of the character, WITHIN the character.  This chapter of the Maass book deals with the internal conflict, something I love but I always seem to give my characters a Mt. Everest to climb.  But I want them to work for their happiness.  So how do you identify what that internal conflict is, make it large enough to be a rewarding read, but manageable enough that the character has a realistic chance of growing and changing enough to overcome it?  How do you keep everything in balance? 

Breakout Novel--Heroes

I'm working my way through Donald Maass's 'Breakout Novel', and the beginning section is on heroes and heroines.  I'm just going to call them heroes or protagonists, because we all know that women can be and are heroic, as well.

One of the things Maass says is that we identify with a protagonist not because we like them, but because we see in that character ourselves as we would like to be.  That in the outset of the book we should see at least some 'small show of gumption, a glimmer of humor, a dab of ironic self-regard' or some other heroic trait, even if the character is in the middle of wallowing in self-pity or doing something un-heroic at the story's outset. 

Another thing he asks is that we take out our favorite three works of fiction, the three we would most re-read now or have read the most.  Laura Kinsale's 'Flowers from the Storm' and the Lord of the Rings trilogy are definitely on there.  I'm trying to think of another.  LaVyrle's 'Morning Glory' would probably be the other, though I doubt I have a copy of it any more. 

The rich characterization is what brings me back to those books.  Though LOTR has an intense, intricate plot, it also has well-drawn characters.  The two romances have very intense internal conflicts and plots, but they're not 'we're gonna die' intensity in the external plot at all.  So internal plot and characterization.  And actually, LOTR has quite an involved internal journey for Frodo and everyone else.  The external plot points tend to overshadow it, though.

So what are YOUR three favorite works of fiction, and why?

Conflict--why is it so hard??

Spent this past weekend with the Olympia RWA Chapter at Manresa Castle in Port Townsend with some of the most fabulous people on the planet.  Had a wonderful time, and took up the current MFH (manuscript from hell) to work on.  Writing it has just turned into such a struggle.  And I discovered with their help that the reason is. . . . there's no conflict.  The hero and heroine both wanted, basically, the same thing. 

This makes for a very short book.

In my head, they had opposite goals, but once people with a clearer vision looked at my plot (or lack thereof), they said, "Hey! There's no conflict here, and no place for your characters to grow."

On the flip side, I think I helped a couple of people with the same problem with their manuscripts. 

So why is it so easy to see these ginormous plot holes in other peoples' books and not in our own?  Is it because we're too close to the characters?  Is it because we don't spend enough time before sitting down to write to get this figured out?  Or do we not go deep enough?  I mean, this is something like book #7.  I should have this figured out by now.  And I **thought** they were at odds.  But they're really not. 

I have a whole notebook full of 'deep insights' into this book that clearly meant squat.  I'm going to start fresh because I still like the characters, but I was heading them in the completely wrong direction. 

So today's question is, How do you ensure you have enough conflict?  How do you recognize when there's not enough?  And where do you draw the line between revising what you've got, and throwing it out and starting all over? 

Adrianne Lee told me that you need Goal, and Opposition to that goal.  And that both of those should either be heroic, or someone doing something unheroic, but for a very good reason, a heroic reason.  Part of my problem was that my heroine wanted freedom and/or self-determination, which is heroic, but the OPPOSITE of that, which would have to be the hero's goal, would be to deny her her freedom.  Bad juju there, at least for a hero.  One of the many reasons the book wasn't working. 

In my bullfighter book, the heroine wants to kill the story's villain.  Now, murder is generally not considered heroic, BUT she's going to avenge the murder of her family by the villain years earlier.  And of course, the villain does die in the end, but not at her hand, so she's still left being heroine-like.  Heroic.  Whatever. 

Thoughts?  How do we test our conflicts to ensure they'll be sustainable for an entire book?

What Jane Austen Saw

Research ain't everything.  It certainly helps, and I've read books with outstanding research, so-so research, and no research.  While researching an article I'm writing, just today I came across "The Boston Tea Party was a defining moment in America's Civil War".  Now, maybe it's just me, but I thought the Tea Party (NOT the current one) and the Civil War were in different centuries.  That right there is what you call a "Research Fail".

We've all heard "write what you know".  But how is that possible if you're writing a historical novel, or a futuristic?  How about a novel that involves some scuba diving if you're deathly afraid of the water? 

Jane Austen, however, did write what she knew, and we're certainly the richer for it.  She was a keen observer of the world around her, and could hone her words to a razor's edge--the better to cut you with, if you were her quarry. 

So this week I pose some questions:

• Do you "research" or "observe"?
• Do you get what you need before, during or after the story is written? 
• With the focus in most women's fiction being on the characters, rather than the explosions, murders or other selected mayhem of general fiction, is perfect research a necessity?
• And what do agents and editors think about this?  Will they take on a manuscript with great characters, but holes in the research? 

Let's talk