Emotion - The Heart of the Character

Hmmmm, bad blogger me with the weekly posts. I should be doing more. But well, I tend to slow down when I'm feeling in a low patch and have had another dip in the trail in the past couple of weeks. The journey to publication has gone way downhill, past the swamp and the garbage heap, and it's taking a while to come back up the other side. No particular reason it went downhill, just the waiting angst. And a severe case of whats-the-pointitis.

To take my mind off the incredibly long, winding back road that is my journey to the fabulous city of publication, I have been thinking of a...checklist (for want of a better word) for things that I have to remember whenever I start a new ms. I'm not thinking of a list of boxes here, more a list of things that I commonly forget to think about whenever I sit down to write.

For the past couple of mss, I have been getting way better at character (if I do say so myself). At least the characters are coming together more organically. They're not just a collection of traits I picked out of a hat with conflict tacked on the end, they actually feel like real people to me. Their external conflict is even reflective of their internal conflict and everything!

But there are some things that I forget to consider and one in particular is pretty damn major - a character's emotional life. Why is it important? Well, because romance is all about emotion. And emotion is what motivates a character. Oh, they can tell themselves all kinds of things about why they do what they do, but at the very heart of it, it's emotion that drives them.

Yes, you have your conflict but it's the character's emotional response to that conflict that shapes the story. For example, in Mr Rough, my hero is very, very angry. He's conscious of his anger and he embraces it because it drives his need for justice. And from that I realised that he will not let any other emotion take the place of his anger. It's the only emotion he will allow himself. I was very happy with that because for me if I know that anger is his reigning emotion, then everything he does will be because of it or about protecting it. It makes him consistent in other words. It also gives me a layer to his character and a simple character arc. Because in order to find love, he has to give up his anger and everything that the anger fuels (justice, control etc etc).

The thing I did NOT do however, was consider how my heroine feels about her feelings. And this gets problematic when the hero and heroine meet because of course when they do, suddenly everything becomes about the feelings. So you have to know how your character will react when confronted by an intense attraction. How do they feel about the attraction? Does it make them uncomfortable? Or does it excite them?  When they feel these things, what do they then do?


In the case of my heroine, I didn't really know and it wasn't until a CP mentioned her reactions seemed a little off, that I realised the problem. She was behaving inconsistently because I didn't really know how she would react when she was uncomfortably attracted to someone. And in fact, I didn't really know how she viewed emotion at all. It wasn't until I sat down and figured it out that I realised that at the heart of her was anger as well. Except instead of acknowledging it like the hero, she denies it (because of her conflict). And in fact, emotional control in all things is very important to her. So her reaction to intense attraction is to ignore it, pretend she doesn't feel it, in order to maintain her emotional control. That's her layer. Her identity. The mask she wears. If she wants to find love, she will have to acknowledge her emotions, acknowledge her anger.

So now I know what to do when it comes to the next mss. I need to know the emotional landscape of my characters. How they view their own emotions and how they deal with them. How their conflict has changed this. Sometimes I won't know this immediately. Sometimes you just have to sit down and write until you get a feel for the character. But at least next time it's something I know I'll have to keep in mind so that the characters act consistently.

What do you reckon? Do you think about this kind of stuff before you write? Or are you a get it all down first kind of writer?

The Trouble with Women

So I had problem with alphas in my last post. My new hero, Mr Rough, is being let off the reins and he's loving it, but now I'm wondering all over again about sympatheticness (if that's even a word) as it relates to the heroine. The romance heroine does have a reputation for being a perfect, self-sacrificing, paragon of a woman, brutally manhandled by the hero before making him bow down before her like a unicorn before a virgin (and she's often that too).

Now, I have to say right up and here and now that I hate those heroines. I don't want to read about perfect, self-sacrificing people. I want to read about flawed, imperfect individuals who go on a journey to either overcome those flaws or to learn to accept that they're actually not flaws at all. And yet right now, in my WIP, I have a heroine who wants to take control of her father's money. She wants to control her father's money because he controlled her as a child and she wants payback. For herself. And yet I'm trying to make this motivation less mercenary and cold by including her feelings about protecting her mother in there, purely because I'm wondering if a reader will find her too mercenary. Too unsympathetic. Too selfish. And this annoys me because it's predictable. Always the heroine has to have some unselfish motivation because no one likes a cold-hearted woman. It's always her mother or her brother or sister or her poor widowed auntie.

Why can't she want to have something for herself? Why can't she be as cold and as ruthless as the hero? Especially if she's motivated enough?

We're hard on our heroines I think. They're supposed to be the placeholder for ourselves and so they can't be seen as selfish or anything too extreme or else they risk alienating us.

Me, I'm a forgiving reader. But I hate stupidity in heroines and doormattery and too much self-sacrifice. I also can't stand kick-assedness for the sake of it. But I can handle a heroine being selfish. I can handle a heroine who takes the diamonds the hero wants to give her and also the hot sex because she wants it and she likes it. None of this 'oh no, I can't. It would demean me!' or 'I must take the diamonds to pay for healthcare for my poor sick granny and bear the sex because I said I would' crap.

What about you? What turns you off in a heroine? What can't you forgive? And is liking her instantly really that important?

A Hard Man is Good to Find - Fear of the Alpha

I think you'll all know by now that when it comes to heroes, I'm an alpha girl all the way. I like a hard man. A man who doesn't take any crap from anyone. A take charge, protective man. And most especially a tortured man. Mmmmmm....tortured man....*Homer Simpson donut noise*

Ahem.

So anyway with all this alpha-love going on around Ashenden House, it annoys the crap out of me that in my latest WIP I keep softening up my hero. I kept doing it with the skeikh and I did it in the ms before that too. In fact I keep softening them up so much that they may as well be blouses instead of alpha heroes. And not in the billowy, loose, cool pirate shirt way. More in a frilly, girly way. May as well have put a pussy-bow on them and called them Fanny.

I know why I'm doing it of course. In my head I'm thinking frantically 'he MUST be sympathetic!'. And 'there MUST be some soft moments right NOW!'. And 'he MUST be likeable!'. Argh. So I keep making him gentler, making him likeable and sympathetic and....well....soft. Which for an alpha Presents hero isn't really all that good. Because people don't read them because they like soft men. They like them because of their powerful, alpha hot men. Who aren't soft in ANY way.

Sigh. My real problem is the fact that in the last couple of WIPs my heroines have been strong. Very, very strong and ballsy. And that's a problem because you have to have a hero who is even stronger and ballsier than she is. He must win their encounters - at least at the beginning. Which kind of scares me a little because I'm worried about all the things like not being sympathetic, not being likeable, hearing the word 'alp-hole' in my head. Opening up that alpha box all the way is scary.

However, what I need to remember is this: his motivation is EVERYTHING. No, he may not be likeable. No, he may not be sympathetic. What he needs to be is understandable. He has to have good reasons for doing what he does and if he's properly motivated he can get away with a lot. I know I'll forgive a hero a lot if I can understand why he acts the way he does.

The second thing I have to remember is that at the heart of the alpha is a good man. Whether he thinks he is or not, underneath everything, he's the protector, the carer, the defender. Yes, he can act like an a-hole sometimes when he believes he's right. Yes, he might sometimes be a little scary when he's threatened. Yes, he'll fight like crazy not to be vunlnerable. But fundamentally he's a good person.

Which brings me to my current WIP. I need to get over my fear of letting my hero be who he is, which is one hell of an angry SOB. So angry in fact that my MOC story is turning into a revenge tale because he was NOT happy with just a MOC. He wanted more.

So I can't go softening him up because it's not in his character (soft guys don't really pursue revenge so single-mindedly). Plus the fact that his heroine won't take any crap, especially from him. In fact the past couple of days I've been rewriting a particular chapter because I realised I'd pulled back on him. So I rewrote it and just let him have his head and honestly, writing it was like watching a car-crash. You just can't look away. I kept writing and thinking, 'what did she say to him? Oh my god, this is going to be bad'. And then I wrote more and it's like 'Oh no, he did not just do that!' It was actually kind of awesome. Because it finally felt like he was being who he was. :-)

Right, so, my lesson for all those afraid of the alpha, is basically don't hold back on him. Give him the proper motivation (and not just because his mummy didn't wuv him). And trust him to be a good man. He may not be intially sympathetic or likeable, but as long as the reader can understand him, then they'll forgive him a lot. Oh and if he's a really bad boy, nothing like a good grovel at the end. :-)

Anyone else have trouble with their alphas? Or are you a beta girl?

Lucky 7

The lovely Rach has tagged me for the Lucky 7 Meme and since I've been away for Easter, this is slightly late but...well....better late than never, right?

The deal is this:
Go to page 77 of your current MS/WIP
■Go to line 7
■Copy down the next 7 lines–sentences or paragraphs–and post them as they’re written. No cheating.
■Tag 7 authors
■Let them know

Now in my current WIP, I don't have a page 77 since I haven't written that far. So I'm going with Mr Sheikypants. I guess this is more than 7 lines/paragraphs whatever but I do like to end on a high note. :-)

He did have a point. Anyway, what was the big deal? "My mother is lovely. She was a PA before they adopted me and—"

"You are adopted?"

Lily frowned at the interruption. "Yes. Is that a problem?"

Blue eyes flickered. "No."

"But it bothers you?"

"No. I am…surprised."

"About what?"

He ignored that. "Tell me more about your parents."

Lily stared at him, hearing the edge of demand running through his voice. He didn't look at her but tension had crept into the set of his shoulders, his knuckles white where they gripped the steering wheel. A seething, shivering tension that abruptly made her feel like she was in the car alone with a very powerful, very dangerous animal.

I need to tag people but since I'm late with this and no doubt everyone has already been tagged, I'll do a blanket 'if you haven't done this before, considering yourself tagged' thingy!

Hope everyone had a nice Easter!

Treadmill Blues

I wish this was a post about running on an actual treadmill and burning actual calories and getting awesomely fit. But it's not. It's about running on an analogous treadmill, where no calories are burned and nothing actually happens, you just keep running and running and not going anywhere.

Yep, you guessed it, this is a moan post. To be fair I haven't done one for a while so, y'know, I'm feeling entitled.

Possibly this could also be post-sub blues, or beginning blues, or the waiting blues. Or the NTAI blues. Or the dammit-I-will-never-be-a-rockstar blues. Or the kind of blues you have when you know that the chance of chocolate occuring in the next couple of hours is zero to nil.

But no. It's the kind of blues you have where you've subbed everything everywhere. You're keeping ahead of the rejections by soldiering on with the next story. You've done everything you possibly can to keep the momentum going. But you're still stuck in the same place as you were two months ago. Three months ago. Six months ago. A year ago.

Still nowhere in other words.

I'm sure it'll pass. At least, sometime something will happen and then I'll either be going up or down. I hope it's up, though realistically, given my track record, it's more likely to be down. But until something does, I'm stuck on the treadmill, running and running and going nowhere.

I guess at least my Pinterest boards give me something pretty look at while I'm here.

Anyone else got the treadmill blues? Or is it more the realisation that you'll never be a rockstar blues? :-)