Part 2: Things Are Not Fine

By Susan Squires

I had a great time during the holidays. I connected with friends and relatives, and I got pretty much just what I wanted for Christmas. Which started me thinking. That would not be a great situation for a novel. We want life to be nice to us, but we can’t be nice to our characters.

Because I’ve been knee-deep in contest entries recently as judging season rolls around, I wanted to talk just a bit about conflict. You may remember recently that I advised taking time to think about what each character wants out of a scene. It’s also important in constructing both your book and your scene to have the reader clear on why that character can’t have what they want.

Yep! Your main character can’t get what they want most, or even whatever they want out of a particular scene, for most of the book. If the scene looks like they do get what they want, there has to be an unforeseen outcome or some kind of a mistake which puts that character right back in conflict. Maybe they got what they thought they wanted, but the reader knows better. If they don’t get what they want, take that opportunity to make not getting it have an even worse consequence. Let’s look at an example. Sally wants to have John ask her to take a ride in his new car. He does. But they get in an accident and are stranded miles from town. Or he does, but the reader knows that he’s secretly a rat who will take advantage of her, and she shouldn’t be going anywhere alone with him. Make it worse—he’s a serial killer! Or he’s a great guy but he doesn’t ask her and worse yet, he asks her arch-rival Ann, instead. And they run over her bicycle which is her only transportation to school. And they laugh at her! You get the idea.

So the question you are asking yourself in each scene is “Does my character get what she wants?” The answer is either, “ Yes, but……” or, “No, and furthermore….” It’s hardly ever just “yes.” Until the last scene! Okay, I only put in “hardly ever” because I’m not a believer in rules. But I do believe that if the main character gets exactly what she wants without her having reservations or without the reader feeling that it was a big mistake, you are letting the story tension seriously lapse. If you do that at the end of the chapter, the reader may close the book and never pick it up again. You leave the reader feeling, “Nice, but so what?” instead of being on pins and needles to see what happens next.

Now let’s talk a little bit about the beginning of a book (remember, I’ve been reading a lot of contest entries, and they’re always about the beginning.) Here, setting the conflict has to come as early as you can manage it. I’ve seen lots of entries where the first pages set the stage, and things are just fine. Uh, oh. Setting the stage can work, but the character has got to have some problem. Okay, she may not have been transported to another universe where she will have to save earth from certain destruction by aliens yet, but she’s got issues! They can be internal conflicts, relationship problems, character flaws, something…. but “things are just fine” doesn’t capture a reader’s interest. Start things off in the middle of “not fine,” and go from there.

Going back to the example I gave of character motivation, what the hero and heroine want is, ideally, in conflict. I used The Companion as an example in my last blog, where Ian and Beth both want to return to the life they once knew. He can’t because he’s a vampire and a normal life is denied him, and her father died, forcing her to abandon her life as an itinerant archeologist. Okay, that means each has conflict between what they want and what they can have. But when we find he wants to return to England where she has always been wildly unhappy and she wants to return to North Africa where he suffered as a slave and has vowed never to return, their goals are in conflict with each other as well. Of course, we know that they are more the same than different. It’s what draws them together. And we suspect that during the course of the story, what they want will change, but the idea is to start them off with things, “not being fine.”

So, let’s consciously separate ourselves from our characters. I hope the holidays were everything you wanted and expected, and I hope in 2006 you make your characters suffer until the last possible moment!

Part 1: Connections

Writing for Multiple Lines

By Crystal Green

It’s great to be back in OCC territory!

My name is Chris Green (writing as Crystal Green for Harlequin Silhouette), and I’m now an out-of-town member who misses coming to the meetings very much. If you haven’t met me, you might not know that I write Silhouette Special Editions and Bombshells, Harlequin Blazes, plus single title vampire books for Berkley. Yes, just a few different genres and romance sub-genres—and that’s what I’m blogging about today.

Writing for multiple lines.

There are a lot of authors out there who believe that writing in such an unfocused manner is a negative, and I absolutely understand their reasoning. “Branding” (making your name an easily identifiable product) is important to sales, and spreading out your “brand” (or what the audience expects from the author) only serves to hurt you in the long run. I can tell you firsthand that this is a scary situation for me because, oftentimes, a reader doesn’t know what kind of story I’ll be giving them from one month to another. They can’t depend on a definite “comfort read” from me. It makes Crystal Green, as a product, hard to pin down.

But my creative side loves that.

True, writing different types of stories is a business risk, but in my case, sticking to one thing is a quick road to burn out. First, I have eclectic tastes anyway—for instance, I read three books at a time and they’re all from different genres. This is obviously reflected in my writing: I love challenge and variety (Key words, here!). Second, I know that if I created stories for just one line, I wouldn’t be able to write as much as I do now. This past year, I had six original releases (that number isn’t including two reissues). Next year, I’ll have about four, but that’s because these single-title fantasy Berkley Vampire Underground books take much more time (as do Bombshells). In order to keep up this pace, I need constant challenge and variety. Let me explain further: my “home line” (where I made my first sale) is Special Edition; these books are known for their “home-and-hearth/community” qualities and the stories speak to the innocent side of me that loves a good happy ending. Blaze stories, which are “hot and steamy” romances, give me the chance to get a little wild. Bombshells feature more complex plots and they allow me to get a lot darker (I’ve written a vampire book—THE HUNTRESS—as well as a murder mystery that’ll be released in fall, 2006.). And then there are the Berkley Vampire Underground books…. These combine emotion, steaminess, mystery, adventure, and fantasy, so they’re a stew of everything else I write. So, you see, I’m getting plenty of that challenge and variety.

Third, and this is maybe the most important item for me, when I think of a story idea, it doesn’t always fit into a certain line. I go with what excites me, and that can be just about anything. When I thought of the concept for THE HUNTRESS, I was writing for Special Edition and Blaze. Sure, I was wary about taking on another line, but, daggonit, I really wanted to do this book. Branding was the last thing that would soothe the creative monster in me, so I went for it. And you know what? That decision is redefining my career—it led to my three-book deal with Berkley and is taking me in different directions daily.

Business versus creativity—that’s my biggest struggle right now. But everyone has to deal with it, and you have to come up with your own solutions. What’s the right decision for you? How is each story idea going to affect your career and/or your well-being?

I hope this gives you something to chew on. Happy Holidays and all the best. : )

THE HUNTRESS has been re-released this month as TWICE BITTEN, a vampire story collection that also contains Erica Orloff’s URBAN LEGEND. You’ll find PAST IMPERFECT, Crystal’s next Special Edition, on shelves this month, too. Additionally, stay tuned for a release date for the first Vampire Underground book from Berkley.
To keep current with Chris/Crystal, visit her Web site at www.crystal-green.com, where there’s a great contest going on right now….

Techniques for Punching Up a Sagging Middle

By Jackie Hyman w/a Jacqueline Diamond

I’ve been thinking about sagging middles, probably because of eating too much holiday food. Well, never mind my pathetic waistline. We’re talking about books.

I HATE sagging middles. When I write. And when I read.

What’s a sagging middle? Picture this: You create a dynamite situation, building to a killer climax. In your mind and your synopsis, it’s a can’t-miss storyline.

Now comes the hard part: writing. You blast through fifty, seventy-five, maybe even a hundred-some-odd pages. Suddenly, you stop.

Look at all the rest of the pages you gotta fill before the climax. Scary.

It saddens me when authors let the tension drop at this point, regardless of whether they’re writing suspense or strictly relationship novels. The characters mill around, have way too much sex (unless you’re writing erotica), talk things over repetitively, and worry.

Potentially interesting incidents may occur, but they’re episodic, springing out of nowhere and leading nowhere. Where’s the momentum? By the time that exciting and/or heart-tugging climax comes around, the tedium has claimed half your readers.

The good part is that, in the course of writing 80-plus novels and novellas, I’ve learned steps you can take to strengthen that sagging middle and make it fun.
Here’s what I do:
#1. Reread what I’ve written. Pick up the emotional thread.
#2. Reread my notes and bio sketches. Jot down lists of backstory and traits to include, and points to make.
#3. Look at the proposed climax and figure out what needs to happen to get there.
#4. Examine the proposed character arcs, and make sure they’re strong enough..
#5. Review the main relationship and conflict.

THEN:
I develop a subplot or subplots that interweave all of these issues with the main plot. Ideally, the subplot (s) create an interaction between the external action and the characters’ internal development.

EXAMPLE
In Nine-Month Surprise (February), the second book in my Downhome Doctors miniseries for Harlequin American, the main storyline concerns the heroine getting pregnant by a man she met on an out-of-town trip, a guy who abandoned her while she slept. Then he turns up as her town’s new obstetrician, divorced with 6-year-old twin daughters who enter her first-grade class.

So they’re thrown together. She’s teaching his kids – and she’s pregnant by him! Naturally, I created reasons for his emotional withdrawal and her emotional neediness. When they start to resolve their issues, there’s additional conflict because she’s determined to leave Downhome and take her dream job in Seattle..

BUT I don’t write pages and pages of sex – I need other interesting things to happen! And I preferred for them to involve his position as the town’s obstetrician.

In reviewing my notes, I spotted some interesting secondary characters who were important in their lives. That’s when I got a subplot idea.

The heroine’s fortysomething aunt, a widow with a grown son, gets pregnant too, by a guy who thinks he’s in love with someone else. This infuriates her son, a police lieutenant. Before he can start shooting, the obstetrician gets dragged in as mediator, with the heroine’s help.

One more trick: I make sure that each scene sets up the next scene, so the story never stops dead. Little plot reversals, surprises, bits of suspense keep building to the turning points, which is when we get major reversals and kick the plot into a higher gear.

What I did with Nine-Month Surprise is NOT the kind of stuff that keeps my mystery/intrigue novels pumping. No dead bodies, no threats, no bumps in the night. But in a category romance, subplots should spark enough interest to keep the reader absorbed.

So if your book’s middle is sagging, look for storylines that will deepen and extend the main conflict and expand on the characters. Also, don’t forget to build expectations and then twist the story so the reader gets a pleasant surprise.

The best part is, the writing goes faster when there’s forward momentum. Because I can’t wait to find out what happens, too!