Yet Another Post About Heroes

Yes, I know, I've probably posted this before but I thought I'd do another one simply because I love a good hero. Always have, always will. I like a good heroine, don't get me wrong, but baby bring on the hero because that's what I read romance for.

Now apparently I do a good hero - according to the editors. And my last (sadly deceased) manuscript had a 'perfect Modern Heat hero', so I guess I must be doing something right with 'em. But it seems that creating a good, Modern Heat alpha male is a problem for a lot of people (let's not go into my difficulties with heroines okay?). Kate Walker did a fabulous blog post about alpha males so I won't go into that either but here's a little bit about how I begin doing mine.

Dr Jax (my husband for those who don't know and no, that's not his actual name) reads all my manuscripts and he often tells me that I manage to get into a guy's head really well - which is pretty much essential in creating a good hero. And that's how I often start. I imagine myself as my hero - how would he feel? How would he think? Guys are not so different, their emotions are the same as ours and essentially they want the same things as we do. They're human right? Okay, at least semi-human. ;-) Their key difference is in the way they express themselves and in some of the actions they take. For example, my heroes are used to taking charge of their own lives. They make decisions and take action, they don't hang back and wait for someone else to do it for them. But they also find it difficult to talk about their emotions because guys generally aren't very good at that kind of thing.

The other thing I find helps me with writing them is very basic - you have to write what you find sexy. If you don't find alpha males at all sexy then creating a convincing alpha male hero is going to be very difficult. If you don't love your hero then no one else will either. I like strong men. I like wounded, flawed men. I like men who take charge. I like intelligent men who have a sense of humour. I like arrogant, witty men. And most especially I like the confident, gorgeous guy who always has a come-back, who thinks he knows everything there is know, and yet who can be brought to his knees by the heroine. Mmmm, yum. Everything that I find sexy in a man goes into my hero. Now, other people may not find him as sexy as I do, but that's okay, everyone's version of sexy is different. But I think if you find writing an alpha male hard, you have to ask yourself why. Is it because you don't actually like alpha males? Or is it because you just can't get into his head?

If it's the latter, close your eyes. You're sitting in a bar. You're not worried about how you look because your looks aren't important to you. You're not worried about your clothes either because clothes are just clothes and they looked fine when you put them on that morning. You're not anxious about what to do if a woman approaches you because you always know what to say. In fact, there are more than a couple giving you the eye right now but you're not interested in them, despite the fact that they're gorgeous. No, because through the crowd you've spotted someone. A woman who is interesting to you in a way you can't quite put your finger on. It's irritating you because you can't figure it out and you hate not being able to figure stuff out. Then again, you do love a challenge, a puzzle, figuring out how things tick. This woman is lovely but it's not her beauty that draws you (beautiful women are a dime a dozen in your world), it's the puzzle she represents that holds your interest. And you want to figure out that puzzle. But she's surrounded by her girlfriends and they've already warded off quite a few approaches this evening. So what do you do?

What would Luke do? :-)

Conference - RWNZ

Warning, this post contains scenes of shameless name dropping...

So, how was the RWNZ Conference? Pretty damn good actually. Romance writers are such a lovely bunch of people - I can't get over how friendly and supportive and just plain old nice they all are. Which makes a conference full of 'em a great place to be.

Anyway, my highlights? Firstly there was a workshop where Melissa Jeglinski of the Knight Agency did a one page critique of people's WIPs. I was pleased to get some nice feedback about mine which kind of set me up for the rest of the conference. :-)

Secondly was a talk from Harlequin editor Mary Therese Hussey about writing for category. She had this to say about what an editor looks for in a first chapter (in general):

Are the opening and closing lines strong?
Do characters make decisions?
Are the conflicts strong and interesting?
Are the characters compelling?
Does the story start in the right place?
Do you want to read on?

Interesting eh? Made me want to hurry back home to check out my first chapters!

She also mentioned the importance of making the conflict clear and understandable and of making sure your story begins where it should. The opening of the story should be at a point of change in a character's life, not before it.

There were some other great craft sessions where I got some more insights about a great fault of mine which is thinking up quirky openings and then struggling to find the motivation for the characters to do the things I want them to. It all comes down - naturally! - to having strong and meaningful conflicts. Asking the 'why' questions. All this made much more sense this year than last year, probably because of what I've learned since then via my rejections and advice from other authors.

Anyway - name drop moment - the main highlight was meeting the lovely Natalie Anderson and having a great old chat about writing and law libraries (she was a librarian as well)! It was great meeting one of the authors for the line I'm trying to write for - especially one whose books are my faves. And also to get a bit of reassurance about the difficulties of balancing strong emotional conflict with the fun, flirty Modern Heat vibe. It's not easy and it's nice to know I'm not alone with that! Cheers, Natalie!

So that's conference this year. Next year promises to be even better and I'm even thinking about hopping across the ditch and going to the RWA one in Sydney too.

All in all a great weekend. Hope everyone else had a good one as well!

Having a Whinge

Having a grumpy 'I hate waiting' day today. Also a 'my mansucript sucks and is boring' day. There's lots of emotion in there - I'm actually wondering if there's too much! - but it still feels boring! Maybe I'm too close. Maybe I need to put a car chase in there to liven things up. ;-) But y'know, with Modern Heat, it's all about the internal conflict and that means keeping external stuff to a minimum. My characters don't seem to do much but go from his house, to her house, to a restaurant, to a beach, back to her house... You see what I mean? This does seem to be the case with other Modern Heats I've been reading (and actually some Moderns too!) but when I read mine, it just feels like there should be more happening. I could stick in a mountain climbing scene, since my hero is a climber, but then that adds nothing to the romance and I'd only put it in to indulge myself.

Aaanyway, which is why I'd really, really like to hear back about what they think of it right now. Like everyone else with subs out there, right? :-) Think I need to go out on an NTAI spree...

Failing that, I could work on the five other manuscripts that I've got festering away on my computer, all in various stages of being re-written. In fact, I seem to have been in re-writing mode for the past six months. I've got the initial stages of a new idea but I keep getting distracted by my earlier manuscripts and ideas on how I can make them stronger.

Anyone else re-writing an old manscript? Or do old stories go down the bottom of a drawer never to be heard from again?

Three Cheers for Editing!

No, that's not sarcasm you hear. I'm actually being serious. Yep, I have been dreading editing this hideous story and yet, now that I'm in the middle of it, I'm actually quite enjoying it.

Of course, I've only done the first half. It's the second I should be worried about.

Now, I had a really clear idea of what I wanted with the first half so the first draft of that isn't too bad. But unfortunately I have a feeling that the second half is going to be vile. I already know that the conflict hasn't focussed on the right things, that I've got distracted and let other issues complicate it - namely concentrating on my hero's emotional growth to the detriment of my heroine. Argh! So it's going to be the devil's own job untangling it - plus not letting it get tangled up again! And I am going to have force myself to do a better job of the ending rather than using placeholding phrases such as "And it all worked out in the end. Cue kiss. HEA." Oh yes, and there's the epilogue to go too.

Sigh. And it's already at 49k! Ah well, I'm hoping I can cut screes of 'just's, 'that's, 'suddenly's and other words I seem to use ALL the time. Not to mention all the smiling and grinning my hero seems to do.

What an exciting week for me. :-) Good job I've got the RWNZ Conference to look forward to!

Another One Bites the Dust

Well, it's done. Done and dusted. In a triumph of internal conflict overcoming external, my story has morphed from that of woman whose wedding for visa purposes falls through and she tries to marry a guy off the street (yes, I kid you not), into that of a risk-averse lawyer who falls for a risk loving climber. Weird huh?

Anyway, it's an extremely rough and dirty draft and there was a moment there when I wondered if I could even give them their HEA (my poor hero had a particularly tough time). But they sorted it out and got there in the end. So, my last thing really is wondering whether or not to put in an epilogue. There is a thread in there that if I wrap up within the story, it will affect the pacing. Then again, it should be wrapped up (will he survive his climb or not??) and the logical place is to put it in an epilogue. Decisions, decisions.

May not make all that much difference if they don't want to see the full but hey, I'm gambling that they will. Six weeks and counting, and considering that it's holidays UK way, I'm thinking I'll be waiting a while yet.

Anyway, what to do now??

I Am a Rock. I Am An Island.

It's hard when you have a hero who won't open up - like Lorraine said in her post, how is the heroine supposed figure him out when he won't tell her anything?? I've saddled myself with a particularly difficult customer. My hero is a climber and they are notorious for being the strong, silent type. Not that he's very silent, he's just used to dealing with his difficulties on his own and he doesn't - N. O. spells no - want to talk about the accident that killed his mother on K2 (second tallest mountain in the world). See the mountain shot to the right? Well that's K2 and he's going to climb it, just see if he doesn't.

Anwyay, all this makes it extremely difficult when I have to convey this past to the heroine. Because why would he tell her? What would Luke do? He wouldn't tell her, that's what! So I've had to rely on a third party. I have seen this method used in other stories so I'm hoping it's okay. And it's not that someone else tells her, it's a passing comment made by someone that sets off a whole lot of tension in the hero that the heroine picks up on, which she then confronts him about. He eventually tells her in strictly non-emotional terms just so she'll shut up about it basically and stop asking him questions. I think it works - hope so!

But now I have come to another dilemma. How do you get a heroine who is all about safety to continue seeing a guy who is all about risk? Especially when she knows she's falling for him and that he doesn't want anything but an affair. Argh!!! Think the lust card might have to be played.

Apparently you can get a computer program that will just churn out M&Bs according to that well known 'formula'. If anyone can find said program can they let me know?? I could sure use it right about now. ;-)

Reflections on Heroines

I have been reading Jane's blog and trying to pass on the advice about internal conflict that I was given in my rejection. Which meant I had to read the damn rejection email again. And you know what? I realise that in fact, I hadn't read it properly. Or at least, I only saw parts of it. Thing is, when you get rejected, the only things you see are the words "However" and "Sadly" and "Sorry to disappoint you on this occasion". And then you close the email because it's a rejection and that's it, it's over.
However, I had failed to see these little comments: "in parts this story is absolutely brilliant" and "your hero is a perfect Modern Heat hero". Don't know how I managed to miss those but having seen them now, I am feeling a lot better about my poor rejected ms!

I wasn't going to look at this story just yet because it felt too sad, but I've decided I'm going to make a push to rewrite it sooner. It seems a pity to waste the parts of the story they really liked, not to mention a hero that is 'perfect for Modern Heat'. However, it does mean a heroine overhaul. Which means a plot overhaul. Part of the reason for the rejection was that I was trying to make my heroine, Christie, do things she wouldn't do, inventing all kinds of reasons for her to act in a certain way that would fit the situation I'd given her. She was a geek with no self confidence and no experience of men who has to set up a date via the internet. And then the date turns out be this incredibly handsome, incredibly confident guy who makes her stammer and stutter, and then she has to choose to have a one night stand with this guy... Argh! You see my problem? Anyway, I loved the setup. I wanted it to work. I gave her a boss who would have fired if she didn't set up the date (it was research for a computer magazine), a friend who pushed her into it, and an ex boyfriend who had found someone new as a catalyst. And still it didn't work - it just wasn't something her character would do and ending up being completely unconvincing.

However, that being said, M&B thought she was a lovely heroine. She was unconfident but she had this little streak of stubborness and fire (she accused the hero of cowardice at one point which again was something they really liked because it struck directly at his internal conflict). So how to keep these nice parts of her and yet give her some decent conflict and a set up that works? Interestingly, in the first draft she had a mother that ran her down all the time and the advice I was given by M&B was to think about this angle when redoing her conflict. Unfortunately I went about it in the wrong way, making her mother's opinion define her when in fact an adult woman (so I was told) would no longer let her mother's opinion dictate what she did (let's just forget about the people in real life who DO actually let this happen for the moment shall we?).

My solution is this: her mother will contribute to her conflict but won't define her character. Her mother wanted a pretty princess and instead got a tall, lanky tomboy who hated dresses. After a childhood trying to be what her mother wanted, Christie decided that she'd never be that person (see? this is her choosing not to be defined by it), and so followed her interests in computers, becoming a hotshot female game developer. This involves her being around guys all the time since that's the industry, but she will see herself as one of them, ie neglecting the fact that she is female. Now her real conflict is that she doesn't realise how much her mother's disappointment in her as a girl has affected her own sense of self worth. No matter that she's successful in her work, she's constantly compared to her older brother who is married with kids and her mother is always telling her she'll be on the shelf because no one will be interested in such an unfeminine woman. But my heroine doesn't want to accept that - she's been accepted in her job the way she is after all. However, her job isn't the same as romance and what she begins to discover is a fear that her mother is right, she will not be loved for who she is but who she's expected to be.

This is not to say that this will work. I actually have no idea yet and probably need to develop this a bit more. But I think, if I can pull it off, it will be a much better conflict than the two scenarios I previously tried to use. And better, I won't be constrained by fitting the conflict around an already written set up. In fact, I'm giving them a whole new setup that won't be complicated by things forcing the heroine into meeting the hero.
Weelll, now that I think about it, there may be a teeny, tiny complication but we'll see how we go. ;-)

Husbands Are Useful or What Would Luke Do?

I knew there was a reason for husbands. I mean apart from changing fuses, cleaning drains, getting rid of spiders and entertaining children. Yes, mine has yet again proven his worth when it comes to sorting out my complicated plot dilemma.

I was telling him about my great new idea that involved a pretend relationship instead of the fake engagement (see previous post) and he was silent for a little minute. And then he said 'that sounds quite complicated' . So I explained that they had to have a reason for continuing their relationship after their one-nighter - which was the whole point of the fake engagement thing, as well as enforcing an intimacy that would deepen the tension. All very good reasons I thought.
But you know what he said? He told me that it sounded very much like I was inventing reasons to make my characters do what I told them. No, he had not read my previous blog post. No, I had not applied my own very good advice to myself. Doh.

So I whined, 'But they need a reason to see each other again.'
And husband says, 'Really? So hot sex isn't enough of a reason?'
'But...but...' I protested weakly.
'Come on,' says husband. 'Ask yourself - what would Luke do? Would he really need a reason other than that to see her again?'
Of course he wouldn't. He's an alpha male. If he wanted to keep seeing her then, by crickey, he'd just jolly well go ahead and do it! And would Anna say no? No, of course not! Would you say no to another hot weekend with a fabulously hot guy?

Okay, so after having pointed out my blatant manipulation of my characters, dear hubby then suggested a way that I could still deepen the tension and enforce the intimacy that wasn't so complicated and contrived. I've got a party in the plot that was supposed to put the fake engagement to the test and hubby suggested making this weekend party occur somewhere away so that my hero and heroine (she'll ask him to the party and he'll say yes) will be together where the chance to get away is minimal. So now I have them in enforced intimacy (to deepen the tension), no fake engagements, no pretend relationships. And the action stems directly from choices they both make. Of course once they get to the party, that's where the fun starts conflict-wise. It was just the getting them there that was the hassle!

This is not to say it all won't turn to custard again. But at least my niggles about contriving my plot have been put to rest. And it may all for nought anyway if I don't get asked for the full. But what this has taught me is that I am STILL a class A manipulator of characters to suit my own evil ends and this needs to stop right now. Think I shall have to print out a little sign that says 'What would Luke do?' and stick it to my monitor just to remind me.

Anyway, here's to hubby, upholder of characters rights, saviour of plots, and stern keeper-in-liner of wayward romance authors!!