Writing A Virgin (Hero)

I didn't enter SYTYCW this year and now I am suffering from a severe case of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out). To distract myself from possibly slipping up and quickly whipping in a last minute entry (I think the deadline is up anyway) I thought I'd do a post on.....

dun dun dunnnn....

THE VIRGIN HERO!

Yes folks, it's true. My current WIP contains a virgin hero. A tattooed, bad boy virgin hero to be exact and no, that is not a contradiction in terms. Now, I know some people will shriek that it's not possible to do a sexy virgin of the male persuasion but those that do so have obviously never read A Royal World Apart by the inimitable Maisey Yates (yes, spoiler, sorry).  It is possible for a man to be a virgin and be sexy. Oh, yes it is. It is all, as they say, in the execution.

However. Writing a female virgin in this day and age is difficult enough, let alone an alpha male in his early thirties. I mean, are there even men like that around who aren't geeks, weirdoes or still living with their mothers? And why would you even want to write about that kind of guy?

Well, for me it came about because my Samhain editor said on Twitter she was looking for more stories that contain virgin heroes. And of course Maisey was listening and told me about it, and naturally - because I ALWAYS want to tackle the hard subjects -  I thought excellent, there's my next Samhain story. Easy.

Not. Because it's fine to think 'I know, I'll write a virgin hero'. It's not fine when the time comes and you actually have to think up a reason for why a tattooed bad boy would be a freaking virgin. I know, I know, I could have made him a priest. Or a sexy geek who's never really been interested in women before because he likes science too. But oh no. I like to do difficult (yes, I am stupid) so I wanted him to be a bad boy. With tattoos. And a dirty mouth. Because the contrast between that and his virginity was just too, too delicious to resist.

But then, naturally, I had to think up a reason for his holding out. A reason that would encompass his bad dude appearance too, because that's a part of his conflict as well. This, gentle readers, was not easy and has resulted in a seriously screwed up individual. It's kind of scary how messed up he is. And yet really interesting at the same time. Role reversal has always been a particular interest of mine and I'm intrigued by how my non-virgin heroine will deal with this guy and what she'll say when his virginity is revealed. Already I'm feeling very protective of him and my heroine (who has loved him for a long time) is getting kind of pushy and I want to tell her to back off and leave him alone. He has issues, man. :-)

Anyway, the point I wanted to make is that his virginity is NOT his conflict. It is a consequence of his conflict. And it is his conflict that is the important bit. Because when you have a consequence like this - and let's face it, it's an unusual one in this era for men - if the conflict doesn't make sense or is not deep enough, then the reasons for his virginity won't be convincing. He'll come across as either being a martyr or a cry-baby or a whiner. None of which you want for your hero (and I'm hoping to God that my poor hero won't be any of these.

So maybe there is a lesson here for SYTYCW. Make your conflict simple. Make your conflict deep. Make it about your character. Once you have those things, the story will follow.

Alrighty so who is intrigued by the thought of a virgin hero? Who is crazy pants like me and wants to write one??  (oh and who entered SYTYCW??)

The Big Seckrit

You know the big secret? The one that our hero hides because he doesn't want anyone else to know? Or the one that the heroine never talks about and is afraid someone will find out? Like, the hero used to steal cars and one time, when he was chased by the cops, he hit someone and then ran away because he was afraid of getting caught. Or the time the heroine stole something from a shop because she was poor and needed to eat, and then kept doing it because of the rush?

They're usually BIG SECRETS. And the characters think they can NEVER TELL anyone about them because then...I don't know, the world would explode or something. You get the idea.

Secrets are cool and neat and can drive conflict really well. And it's tempting to keep them until the very end of the book so you can have the BIG REVEAL, where the character will finally TELL ALL and the reader will go 'ah ha! So that was the problem all along!'.

The problem with secrets is that although they are cool and neat and drive the conflict, they can also hide the conflict as well. The true conflict. Because it's not so much the hero's hit and run that's the issue as why he ran away after he hit someone. Same with the heroine and her shoplifting. Why did she need the rush? It's what they DO in response that's the important bit, not the secret itself.

But so often the secret becomes the whole of the story and the more interesting questions like why did the hero run or why did the heroine keept stealing, get lost under the big reveal. Sometimes it's the secret driving the story, not the characters themselves. Which is easy to do because it's fun to keep it from the reader. And it's fun to keep it from the other characters. Makes creating tension really a piece of cake too because all you have to do is threaten the BIG SECRET and hey presto, instant tension.

It's really easy for the big secret to become a crutch for conflict. If you have your characters going to extraordinary lengths to hide their secrets, if you have to manipulate the plot in order to do the same then you really have to ask yourself why. What would happen if the big secret was discovered halfway in? Would the book end? If so, then either you're not going deep enough into the conflict, or the book itself relies totally on the big secret which can also be not so good.

I guess it depends on what type of book you're writing, but for character driven stories I'm a big fan of getting that big secret out in the open when it's appropriate (not manipulating plot and characters to hide it). Because when the big secret is finally out, then you can start dealing with the real meat of the conflict - why did you run away after you hit that person? What were you scared of? Why did you like the rush of shoplifting? What did it give you that the rest of your life didn't?

My chess ms was a book with a character with a big secret. The hero did something bad in his past and he didn't even tell me what it was until the end. So I had to go back and rewrite it so he told it earlier, beacause the bad thing he did was the symptom of a deeper issue he had. A deeper fear. Even now I'm not sure I got it out early enough - but then again, he was a reticent kind of guy and it wouldn't have been something he would have told just anyone. I guess only time will tell with that one.

Anyway, I suppose the real thing to watch for is to make sure that when one of your characters is nursing a secret, you don't have that as the entire conflict (unless you're writing a murder mystery and they're the murderer). Ask yourself why the character is keeping it a secret in the first place? Do they even care what people think of them? What would happen if everyone knew? And if the answer is 'my book would end' then you know you're in trouble. :-)

Do you have a favourite big secret book? When was it revealed? And if you say right at the end and it was still cool then I'm sorry but I'm going to have to kill you. :-)

Dr Jax Helps Out

Was going to do a long and involved post today but since my youngest daughter broke her leg yesterday (jumping off a bunkbed trying to touch a light!), I am at her beck and call instead!

Still, thought I'd mention that I was talking to Dr Jax over the weekend and asked him if he might like to do a Q&A on conflict. We're told we have to be psychologists with our characters and their conflict so I thought conflict issues from the point of view of a bonafide psychiatrist might be kind of helpful. He was amenable so what do the rest of you think? Got any conflict questions you want to ask? A particular issue or how people behave in general? Let me know what you think would be most helpful!

Character Lightbulbs!

Yeah, I'm finding I'm having lots of lightbulb moments with my chess ms. In fact, I'm beginning to think that my chess story is becoming a bit of a watershed ms. I am learning so much with this one. I knew at the beginning of the year that it was proving to be quite a learning experience but it's becoming even more of one now. Maybe it's because I'm taking my time with it and really thinking about it. Or maybe it's because my weaknesses are so much clearer now and I am working to fix them. I'm not sure. What I do know is that this story WILL be much stronger than anything I have written to date and that can be put down to the fact that I know my characters. This time round I have thought about their pasts in great detail and if there's something I don't know about them that I need to know, I can actually tell when that moment is and can stop and think about it.

What do I mean? Well, for example, whenever I am introducing a bit of conflict and find myself writing the same thing over and over again without really capturing what it is I want to get across, it's usually because I don't know what it is I'm trying to say! A specific example may be: 'He reminded her of her parents. Their lies, their judgements, the way they made her feel small'.
This does tell you something about her conflict. She had issues with her parents, they lied and judged her and made her feel small. But there are some questions unanswered: what did he do to make her think of her parents? What lies did her parents tell and did they tell them to her or to each other? What about their judgements? Did they judge her or each other? And what made her feel small? The lies or the judgements or both? And why did that make her feel small?
Obviously you don't answer all those questions immediately, they are revealed as the book goes along, but what you have to do as a writer is know the answers to the questions. And what I think really builds the characters, and what I have NOT been doing, is having an example to illustrate the answer.

So if her parents had lied to her, thinking about a specific lie at a specific time by a specific person, can tell you so much more about a character and their conflict that some vague generalisations. Example: When she was ten, her beloved cat went missing and her mother told her that the animal ran away from home. However that night, when she was supposed to be a asleep, she got up to get a glass of water and spotted her father in the backgarden digging a hole, her cat lying dead on the grass next to it.
Doesn't that tell us so much more about her and her parents and their relationship? And also gives us insight into the motivations of her parents too. It tells us she had a pet she loved. That her mother lied (to protect her maybe?) to her about what happened to it. That her father was in on it. And that by burying it at night when they knew she was alseep, they were trying to hide the cat's death from her. Perhaps this is a terrible moment for the heroine. Perhaps finding out that her parents are not always truthful causes her to subconsciously be suspicious of anything they might say. What is certain is that it gives us more information than 'her reminded her of her parents. Their lies, their judgements....etc'.

It's those little snapshots of pivotal moments in the characters lives that really - for me at least - build up a great picture of who that person is and what in their past might had led them to think the way they do. Of course, what I'm missing from that example and what it is just as important as the situation itself, is how the heroine acts in response to it. Did she not say anything to her parents about her cat or did she confront them?

So what helps you build character? Anyone got any useful examples?

Character Traits vs Conflict

Janet asked me an interesting question about my last blog post and since I'm scraping around trying to find things to blog about, I thought I'd actually give my answer as a post. This comes with the usual caveat that my answer is my thoughts about the subject, thoughts that could be totally erroneous, sadly misguideded or plain old wrong. On the other hand they could be so totally brilliant that you will want to bow before the power of my awesomeness (presents and small tokens of thanks are always appreciated). :-)

Okay, so Janet ask me to give an example of the difference between a character trait and conflict. This was in response to me saying that what I thought was conflict in my heroine, turned about to be a character trait. So what do I mean?

Well, we're told that asking the 'why' questions are really important to figuring out conflict. And it's true, you do need to ask those questions. But my problem is that I didn't know when to stop! My heroine - I thought - is an emotional girl so I kept asking myself, "This is her conflict so why is she emotional? Why? Why? Why?". I kept looking for a reason for my heroine to not hide how she felt but there wasn't one that fitted with the idea of her I had in my mind. So there comes a stage where the 'why' comes down to 'well, they were born that way'. And if they were born that way, it becomes a character trait, not the conflict. So one of my heroine's character traits is that she has no problem with telling everyone exactly how she feels.

Where the conflict comes into it is how this character trait makes the character behave in response to certain situtions in their lives. Not hiding how she feels is NOT the conflict, but it does affect how she responds to the conflict. Does that make any sense?

My hero, on the other hand, is emotionless - which of course is a big lie because he's not really. But being emotionless is his response to his conflict. He's actually just like her, feels things very deeply, but unlike her, his experience has taught him that such emotions are dangerous and he won't have a bar of them. So he's shut himself down.

Here's another example. Perhaps you might have a hero who really, really likes cars. He likes the way they look and the mechanics and the speed, he's just right into them. And perhaps there's no reason for it, he's just always been the kid who loves machines. So his liking of cars is NOT his conflict. It's part of his character. But say he had a car as a teenager he lovingly built from the ground up, spent years on it, spent lots of money on it, it was his baby. And say his father decided he spent too much time on his cars when he should be in school and so sold his beloved car without telling him.... This is where his love of cars interacts with what could potentially be some great conflict, because it's not really about how much he loves cars is it? It's about how he views his Dad. How he responds to this would be a character trait. Is he the type of guy to head straight into a confrontation with his father? Or is he more of a restrained, quiet type of guy, who would say nothing but spend every resource he had finding the car and getting it back...(no you can't have this example, I've decided I'm going to use it. Hehe!).

So that's how I view character traits and conflict. Anyone got any more advice cos God knows, I probably need it. :-)

Heroines Do My Head In

Ah crap, nearly another week has gone by. I do have an excuse though. I have been...drum roll....writing!

What you say? Jackie Ashenden actually writing? Unheard of!

Yeah, yeah, I'm being sarcastic. I never really stop writing to it's no surprise. But lately I have been turning off the net to concentrate wholly on what I'm doing. And good thing too because my poor Chessman needs the attention. His issues are turning out to be waaaay bigger than I thought. He's a very closed off guy, very cerebral and, naturally enough, there is a reason he's like this. Yes, that's right, ONE reason. Not fifty million in the way I usually always overcomplicate stuff, just one. And that's where the whole keep it simple, dig deep stuff comes into it. Taking that ONE reason and exploring it, not chucking in a whole lot of other stuff like I did, say, with the heroine...

Women. Honestly, why do I have such problems with women?? Maybe it's because I'm a complicated girl myself, I dunno, but some heroines just give me gip. I think it's due to the fact that I've focussed on one character trait for this particular heroine and turned it into conflict, whereas it just should have stayed as a character trait. Does that make sense. Anyway, thanks to awesome CPs, I think I've ironed out that little kink. Like the hero, I've taken ONE thing she does (not one aspect of who she is) and focussed on that as conflict instead. Which may be a breakthrough for me. Anyway, Comic Book girl now lives! Woohoo!

So, anyone else mistake a character trait for conflict or is it just me??? :-)

The Trouble with Riva

Ahem. You know what I said a couple of days ago about the need to keep conflict simple? Well guess what I did?? *shakes fist at ms*

Sigh. Figured out that I have too many things going on for my heroine. I have two major problems with her and really, I should just have one and go a bit deeper with it. I should have realised a couple of weeks ago when I was writing a major scene for her, where her conflict starts to get resolved, and I could not seem to make it so that the two issues were dealt with at once. I ended up dealing with one and leaving the other for the black moment. But the other one is a biggie and...it's just not going to happen in the word count! So, I need to get rid of it. Of course this brings me to the main point of this post: the trouble with Riva.

It's a feel-good, fun, flirty line. Contemporary, with a 'young' voice. But the problem with feel-good, fun and flirty is that it's very hard then to get conflict that's deep and yet isn't too depressing or dark. Groan. My feeling is that the most emotional storylines come from tough conflict but how you do that and still make it feel-good and fun?? Double groan. And it doesn't help that I like angst but my voice is Riva (my secret love would be Presents/Modern conflict with a Riva voice).

The big thing is that I don't know if my conflict is too dark or not. My poor old bad boy has had a pretty dark, depressing past and I wonder if that's too much. But then, if he's a bad boy, he HAS to have had bad stuff in his past, right? I've tried to keep this out of the present as much as possible but now I'm getting into the later stages of the book, it's feeling pretty angsty. The pay off will be an emotional ending but have I gone too far? Same with my poor old heroine. She's got two problems now - physical scars and guilt. But I have to choose one. Which one? Scars or guilt? And are they too dark? Too real life? The other sub I have in at the moment - the soldier story - again, there's some depressing stuff in both my characters' lives. Not in the present, in the past, but still, it's there. Will that be a problem? Is it worth even writing the rest of that one?

I don't know And the only way to know is when I hear from the ed. But I'm beginning to think that this is another thing that's all in the execution. Some conflicts, no matter what you do with them, will always be too depressing otherwise you risk making light of them. Yet with others, maybe it's possible if you don't dwell too much on the depressing parts. Like if it's death, you don't dwell on the grief and loss, or you make it happen in the distant past so it's not an issue in the present. Fundamentally though, who knows? I'll find out eventually about mine when I hear back. Until then...not sure what to do really.

Maybe I'll just give up the present WIPs for my new idea which was inspired - don't laugh please - by the song One Night in Bangkok (oh, okay, you can laugh). Hehe. Can anyone say cheesy? I'm aiming to bring the sexy back to chess!!

So, what do you reckon about conflict that is light and happy, fun, feel-good, and flirty, and yet is deep enough and emotinal enough to last 50k? Any ideas?

PS. If you don't know the song, here it is. Go Murray Head!

First Drafts Suck

Why? Well, here are some reasons my draft sucks:

1. The story is boring.
2. The conflict is confused.
3. The characters are irritating.

As you can tell, I'm at the 'they're never going to want any more of this story so what's the point in writing it' stage. Sigh.

I always get to this point in every story I write and mostly when it's the first draft, which is why I hate first drafts so much. I usually try and get them down as quickly as possible since I much prefer editing. I don't know why I find them so tough. I think it's probably because I'm a pantser by nature and so the plot kind of reveals itself as I go along. Oh, I know the character arcs and the emotional development of the story, but it's the how that happens. The 'what do the characters DO' that gets me. She needs to learn that he isn't like her father so what does he do to show her that? He needs to learn she won't leave like his mother so what does she do? etc, etc.

I know, I know, just sit down a write without the internal editor going blah, blah, blah in the background. And believe me, I do that. But I still get the I can't be bothered with this anymore thing happening.

Anyway, my usual approach to first draft suckage is to start a bright, shiny new idea which, of course, does not help because to get past the first draft stage, you've actually got to finish the first draft!

Grrr.

So far my best option has been to write ahead to a scene I particularly want to write and this is usually the black moment. Because I love writing black moments, doing this can be a really good way of getting things flowing and it's fantastic for figuring out whether your conflict is going to work or not. In fact, skipping forward to writing the black moment for the Hammer Pants ms enabled me to see that my poor old bad boy wasn't all that bad. He kept insisting that he was a b*stard and that he wasn't good enough for the heroine and I kept wondering why that was since he actually didn't have a past that would make him ashamed. Same with the Frenchman. In the story, there's a choice that as an alpha male in control of his life, he probably would have made, except in my story, he doesn't want to even make the choice. And I kind of thought I knew why, but it wasn't till I'd written the black moment that I went 'Ooooh, so THAT'S why!'.

So, anyway, that's my tip for getting past the 'bogged down' stage in first drafts. Anyone else got any ideas? I'd be glad to hear 'em!

How Dorothy Dunnett Ruined Me for Writing Category Romance

**Spoiler Alert! If you plan on reading these books and like surprises then stop reading now. Right now. This instant! **

**I mean it.***

**Well, okay, but don't say I didn't warn you.***

I like subtlety. My very favourite historical romance in all the world - The Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett, that I first read at the tender age of 15 - was chock full of it. I liked the way nothing was ever semaphored in large, friendly letters, merely hinted at. Whispered. I liked the way that sometimes I had to go and re-read parts just to see if what I thought happened, actually did happen. Or that I'd missed something that I should have picked up on. I liked how you had to pay attention to the most seemingly innocuous conversation because it might contain some clue to a character's emotional state or to their past. Or how even the way they were standing was some hint as to their deeper emotions. I liked the way there was ALWAYS a subtext going on and how half the fun was guessing what exactly the subtext was. And I liked the way you hardly ever got the hero's POV because it kept him mysterious.
But most of all, I really liked how my best friend and I used to argue for hours about questions the answers to which were never clearly answered - what really happened to his father? What was it with his mother? Was the boy who died really his son or the son of his enemy? Was he really in love with the woman in book 2? And what exactly was the nature of his relationship with the Turkish prince in book 4?
In fact, those questions and many others, kept a whole web discussion forum going for years and probably still does. But that's beside the point. I loved the subtlety of it and I read and re-read those books over and over again, just to see if could pick up any more bits and pieces of information that I'd missed the first ten times I read it.

I loved that subtlety SO much that I swore, as a writer, I would never hit my readers over the head with conflict (actually, I didn't really know what conflict was back then but you know what I mean), that I'd dole out little bits of information like cheese before mice, leading the reader into the story but perhaps never revealing anything too much till later. If at all. I'd give them little puzzles so they would be fascinated about my characters motivations and perhaps go and re-read bits so they could maybe pick up on something they'd missed. And I'd also keep my hero very mysterious and not give him a lot of POV so no one would know quite what he was doing or why until right at the end. Oh yes and I'd torture him lots too because there's nothing like a tortured hero.

And I bet you can guess how well that worked out when it came to writing category romance.

It didn't.

I blame Dorothy Dunnett and Francis Crawford of Lymond completely for my inability to get to grips with category romance. And I have to repeat to myself daily what worked for six 500 page books published in the 60s will not work for one 50k book published in 2010.

So, no to subtlety. No to little reader puzzles. No to carefully hinted at emotional states. No to mysterious motivations. No to limited hero POV. No to roundabout dialogue where the characters talk about everything but the thing they actually need to talk about. Oh and BIG nos to torturing your hero with opium addiction (seriously!).
Yes to have that conflict in the first chapter. Yes to being absolutely clear as to the motivations of your characters. Yes to the reader knowing more than the characters do NOT the other way around.

Still, I suppose if Dorothy Dunnett had actually written on the first page 'Francis Crawford had always secretly feared he was the secret lovechild of his mother's affair with her husband's father' then I'm sure there would not have been six books to write.*

Anyway, that's my excuse as to why this category romance lark is so damn difficult for me and I'm sticking to it. :-) And you'll be pleased to know that I have actually broken the habit of a lifetime and in the latest couple of WIPS, got out my conflict stick to beat the reader over the head with it. :-)

So, question for the day - have there been any particular book/books that have had an influence on you as a writer?

*Note: okay, so that's kind of a spoiler. Sorry. But it's only part of the conflict not all of it. Or is it? You'll have read it to find out. And you may come to an entirely different conclusion. :-)

The Dance of the Seven Veils

Aren't you guys fabulous? I got some great comments about the whole digging deep deal last post - really set off lots of lightbulbs for me, especially with the WIP I'm going to be subbing next. So big cheers and thanks to you all for commenting!

Anyway, that digging deep post really set me thinking about the problems I'm having with this current WIP. I know these characters so well now that I am forgetting the reader doesn't. Remember the hero burning his toast? And the digging deep we did below the surface? We found out his real fear is that he's inherently unlovable. Now the thing is, he doesn't know that in chapter 1. In fact, in chapter 1, he's fine. His life is great. It takes the whole book for him to realise that he's not fine and it's not until right at the very end that he understands why he isn't.
Make sense?

Well, imagine my burnt toast hero thinking he's not lovable in chapter 1 and that's pretty much sums up my problem with my wip. I'm revealing my characters too early. I don't have much in the way of external conflict - okay ANY external conflict - so I really wanted to get to the heart of their problems, get that conflict down on the page. I had my heroine - who doesn't want a relationship - freaking out in day two of them seeing each other. But come on, really? She's having a nice time with him sure but would she really be feeling worried? Just because you're having a nice time with a guy doesn't mean love, marriage and babies is on the cards. Especially if that's not what you want. Besides, as far as she's concerned she's having a holiday romance, there's no way she'd want anymore so freaking out about enjoying herself the second time she sees him is a bit odd wouldn't you say?

Bascially what I did was dig too deep, too early (made her too self aware if you like). Sure, you need to let the reader know she's enjoying herself, and maybe hint a little that she hasn't had so much fun with a guy for a long time (cos this is special yes?) but save the freaking out for when she really needs it.

Which brings me to my blog title. Without mentioning stripper poles and pasties, I went for the tasteful option and thought about it in terms of veils. You need to reveal your characters conflict slowly. Like the dance of the seven veils, you drop one veil at a time. Mine didn't want to do that, they wanted to drop three. Hey, my heroine went for broke and threw them ALL off, the silly girl! Anyway, slow is what you want so that by the end of the book, all the veils are down and we can see what's at the heart of the problem for these characters.

Other people have other ways of saying this. Kate Walker I think calls it the layers of the onion. I quite like the veil analogy because it's also how the characters reveal themselves to each other as well as the reader. Slowly, as trust grows between them, they allow another veil to drop, letting the other person see a deeper part of them. Not having conversations about how they hated their parents in chapter two after they've only just met (Jackie, take a bow!).

Anyway, that's just my take on it. The speed at which your dance progresses really depends on the story though. Sometimes it'll be fast, sometimes it won't. But what you don't want to is have naked characters half-way through the story because then there won't be enough conflict to get you to the end and you'll be forced to throw in a car chase or something.

So, anyone have problems with their characters throwing off veils willy nilly or is it just me?

Digging Deep - What the $@&! Does That Mean??

It is a question that has mystified the ages - what on earth do they mean by digging deep? Well, giving you a giant hint here: it's got nothing whatsoever to do with mining. Or drain laying. :-)
Now, in my journeying through the murky, disgusting swamp they call conflict, I received some valuable advice from a fellow traveller that really prompted a fantastic lightbulb moment for me about the whole digging deep thing. This may be painfully obvious to some of you but I gotta tell you, it wasn't something I had ever thought of objectively until a couple of months ago.

Right so, digging deep. What does it mean in terms of your characters? It really means examining their emotional reactions and not just the surface emotion. It's all about what's going on underneath the surface. Like an iceberg you may see the tip of it sticking out of the water but there's a giant continent sized lump of ice going on beneath the water that you may not have noticed.
For example, let's say our hero makes our heroine some toast but he burns it. Let's do some digging into his reaction to this. How does he feel about burning the toast? Maybe he's a perfectionist and feels angry that he burned it. Dig a little deeper - why is he a perfectionist? He's a perfectionist because his father was careless, broke things, lost money, didn't seem to care etc. So the hero has decided he's never going to be his Dad and he's going to make sure he does things right. But he's burned the toast which means he's been careless like his Dad, something he's sworn never to be, hence he's angry. Do some more digging - maybe he also feels guilty that by burning the toast he let the heroine down and that is also a part of his anger. Dig some more - why does he feel guilty about letting the heroine down? Perhaps because his father was so careless he let the hero down often and so the hero knows what it feels like to be let down and he doesn't want the heroine to experience that too. Deeper - why does he not want to be careless like his father? How did having a careless father make him feel? Well, it made him feel bad and he doesn't want to feel bad. We can go deeper - why did it make him feel bad? Perhaps he felt bad because he's secretly afraid that his father was careless and let him down because he just didn't care enough about the hero. And if that's true, then how does that make the hero feel about himself? Is the truth, the hero's deepest, most secret fear, really that because his father didn't seem to care about him, he's not worth loving?

Okay, so that's pretty much as deep as it gets: how does the character view themselves? Now obviously this hero doesn't going around thinking he's unlovable. That's what he's afraid of. So he'll do anything and everything to avoid having to test that fear, to make himself feel good about himself. And - in this example - he does that by being a perfectionist. In his mind, if he does everything right, takes care with everything he does, no one will ever have cause to think he's unlovable. Until he burns the toast of course.

Right, so the toast example may be a little silly. I have another example from one of my WIPs. One I just had a brainwave on due to the whole digging deep thing. I have a heroine who is in love with her best friend and has been for years. So far, her black moment has consisted of her realising he will never love her back so she tells him to get lost because it's easier than being rejected. But I'm missing one vital thing that will make this black moment even more emotional. Why does she think he'll reject her? Okay, so he doesn't want a relationship and has made that very clear. But still, what stops her from saying it? Why is rejection so hard? The answer is really very simple. She scared of being rejected because if he rejects her, it'll confirm what's she's always been afraid of facing - that she's not good enough for him. And that's at the heart of her conflict: she's afraid she's not worthy of love.
Now doesn't that pack way more of an emotional punch than simply being scared of rejection?

So, next time you're puzzling out about digging deep, think about your conflict and go right to the heart of the character first. Ask yourself how they view themselves. Not the 'hey, I'm a hugely successful billionaire, there's nothing wrong with me' surface. That's the tip of the iceberg. What's going on beneath that surface? What are they secretly afraid of finding out about themselves? And if they're not scared, then either you haven't gone deep enough or you need to give them some more conflict.

Anyone have any other thoughts on this? I'm still figuring this stuff out so if anyone has anymore lightbulbs, do share!

BTW, sometimes burnt toast is just burnt toast. ;-)

Hi, My Name's Jackie and I am a Writerholic

Just got back from an Easter break and am feeling very writing deprived. Apparently it's good to have a rest but I tell you five days without writing anything feels like torture to me. Luckily I wasn't in the middle of a wip otherwise it would have been hell. Still, the one good thing about being away is that there was lots of opportunity for thinking time.

I'm currently writing a synopsis for a competition entry and it's giving me gyp. Of course, synopses are the devil's own work and this was annoying me in particular because it's a rewritten version of my Feel the Heat story. Now rewriting previously rejected stories is HORRIBLE. Especially when they only have a passing acquaintance with conflict. Actually, scrub that, this story wouldn't have known conflict if it leapt up and bit said story on the backside. Hence the complete rewrite. In fact, nothing remains of the original apart from the character names, the hero's profession and that there is a protest involved. The rest of it has been totally done-over. Sounds good right? Well, it would be if I could get the conflict sorted. For nearly a year and a half I've been trying to get the conflict on this story okay. Yep, that's right, a year and a half. You'd think it would be easy. Nope. Problem has been not knowing what the hey I'm doing. I mean, here's the thing, you've got to make each character the worst possible person for their counterpart, and yet the best. They each have to learn something from the other which means they both have to lack something that the other has. But they both have to have qualities that the other admires and yet also something that keeps them apart.

Think I've mentioned jigsaw puzzles haven't I?

Groan. Anyway, think the last part of the puzzle slotted in over the weekend. Bout bloody time. Now, the reason it's taken me so long is that I never really had a good enough idea about what I was doing with conflict until now. Of course, the editor could disagree with that but at least it's more right than it's ever been (famous last words!). And the answer - as it was in the beginning - is in the characters. Their lives up until this point, the kind of people they are, what they admire, what they dislike, what they're secretly afraid of, and what they're currently doing in order to mask this secret fear. I think I've done it and then I realise that I've neglected to ask myself what my heroine's relationship with her mother was, or how she viewed her father or her siblings or whatever.

I have to say, the friends we went on holiday with were rather puzzled by my conversations with Dr Jax. "You know Kate? What's she afraid of?" I would ask him as we were walking along the beach. Or, "Remember Kate? I need her to do something that teaches him this thing but I don't know what she does," as we were in the middle of a card game. Or "I think I'm getting rid of the baby. It doesn't add anything," as we were watching one of the kids having a tantrum. ;-)

Yes, even on holiday I do not have a holiday from writing. One of my friends asked me how many hours I put into this 'job' and I couldn't put a number on it. Suffice to say that if I was actually paid for every hour that I put into it, then I'd be rich!

Anyway, now I have my conflict sorted, I can write my synopsis and send away my competition entry. Woohoo. In the meantime I am reading Mira Lynn Kelly's debut Modern Heat and loving it. Gosh those Modern Heat gals are good eh? Tough acts to follow. WTG and congrats on yor release Mira!

Wherefore Art Thou Tension?

I have just realised why I've been unhappy with the last third of my wip and why the black moment feels like it comes out of the blue - there is no tension. My characters are having a lovely time now they've fallen into bed but where is the 'OMG it's all going to end in tears I just know it!' feeling? Where is the dark cloud that is rapidly lowering on the horizon? Gone, that's what.
Michelle Styles' comment on my last post about kitchens was incredibly prescient as it turns out because yes, I have lost the tension. With every scene the tension should wind tighter not release like a tightrope snapping under a heavy weight!

The good thing is that I know why my tension has snapped. It's because I've lost focus of the essential conflict - again! I got sidetracked by the reasons they were falling for each other and though that's important, it's not as important as the all reasons they shouldn't! And not just the 'I must not fall in love' but the 'why I must not fall in love'.
Not to mention the fact that I haven't dug as deeply into my conflict as I need to. My hero has been bringing up his much younger sister for the last ten years and though she's now at university, he is still finding it difficult to let her go. Why? What's he afraid of? And what does this mean for my heroine? And speaking of her, she is still trying to escape her over-protective parents. Why? What's she really afraid of and what does this mean for the hero?

So, have hauled the sorry mess back into line again by putting their essential conflict back into their scenes together. Building up that tension so that when the black moment arrives, it'll be so dark that they will be absolutely unable to see their way out of it.

I just hope to God I can! :-)

The Rebound Submission

Yes, that's exactly what my rejected sub was. I had the rejection on the revised full and then, so desperate to submit again was I, that I quickly fiddled with a new story and sent it away without thinking it through properly. Or rather, I over-thought it. I was trying so hard to get it right that in the end I got nothing right, even the stuff I normally do well.

So it's back to the drawing board. Somehow I've now managed to overboard with internal conflict and have to bring it back to the middle ground. Hard? You betcha. But I have been slowly learning even more. Especially about the dangers of too much sex in Modern Heat! Is that even possible? Oh yeah! I tried to do a one night stand story but even as I was writing it, I found myself inventing ways to get my heroine to go through with it. And that should have been my first indication that all was not right in the world of my characters. Again I was trying to make my heroine do something she actually wouldn't by adding all this stuff to make her to do it! Argh! In the end it wasn't convincing and to add insult to injury, the driving force behind the one night stand was only sexual tension. There was not enough conflict! Apparently the sex arises from the emotional conflict, NOT the other way round!

So many things to keep in mind. But this time I am going to make sure I get it right. I am not going to panic-sub. I am going to spend time really thinking through my new synopsis. And hey, I'm already doing better with that on the sex front - so busy working out the emotional conflict between my h&h, that I forgot to put in a love scene!

Light and Flirty Modern Heat: Yeah, Right.

I'm worried about my sub. So what else is new right? Well after reading the transcript of the editor chat on eHarlequin, I've got several worries:

Firstly, I'm worrying that my sub is too angsty for Modern Heat. The problem is that I love deep, emotional internal conflict. And I love a strong, tortured hero. However, I also like humour which makes an uncomfortable mix between Presents/Modern style internal conflict with the Modern Heat flirty/sexy hero. With MH, you can't have your hero standing around brooding endlessly. There has to be some humour/flirtiness there, which makes it hard if you have a deep internal conflict for him. I think my hero isn't too broody (which makes him sound like a chicken!) but towards the end, he's pretty conflicted. Will this be a sub-killer?

Secondly I'm worrying about the whole 'fresh twist on an old theme' thing. The fact is, my setup isn't particularly fresh or original. They meet in a nightclub - how original is that? I like to think I spiced things up with the presentation of it a little but maybe I didn't. The whole fake engagement thing I had going on there was supposed to make it a little bit different to the marriage of convenience thing but I've now taken it out, I haven't even got that. Is my sub too boring?

Thirdly, I'm not sure I pushed the boundaries enough. I wanted to get this one right and in doing so, I'm worried I may have played it too safe. The transcript seemed to imply new and innovative is the way to go, but really, how far can you go as an aspiring author? What, exactly, can you get away with? Perhaps, as Kate Walker says, it's all in the execution. In the sub that was rejected, my hero and heroine didn't physically meet until page 6 or so but they did have a sexy online conversation. This was not mentioned as a problem in the feedback I received so maybe you can get away with a certain amount of rule breaking.

Lots of worries, huh? Anyone else worried about their sub? Perhaps I need to put up the scarecrow again...

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. ;-)

Conflict Sorted

Back from the joys of Rotorua. Was lovely actually - the highlight being the spa in the motel (sadly heated by gas and not by hot volcanic rocks) and a night time visit to a wildlife park where we saw a kiwi. You'd think, being an NZ'er, I would have seen tonnes and tonnes of kiwis just running around wild right? Not so. I have seen them of course but only in zoos. They are nocturnal and keep away from humans so to see one in their natural habitat without any glass or bars was kind of cool.

Anyway, one of the other highlights was figuring out my hero's internal conflict! Yay! Admittedly it was really my husband's idea, so full credit to him. He's a psychiatrist you see and this can be very useful when it comes to figuring out conflict and motivations. In the end it wasn't that hard though - again, I have been over-complicating it (me? over complicate? Never!) and adding too much other stuff. I think I have a tendency to do this as I'm peeling away the layers of his character - I'm giving the wretched man too many layers in other words! Either that or the focus isn't as sharp as it should be. Whatever the case, his dead mother is the key. Now all I have to do is avoid any pesky Oedipus complexes... :-)

So, my mission this week is to continue editing the WIP and then, once I've pulled all the strands together, finish it. Which will then let me start writing my bright, new, shiny idea. Luckily with the new idea, all conflicts have been sorted and are ready to fly.

As to the partial - four weeks tomorrow. Not that I'm counting or anything. :-)

What's everyone else up to?

Going to Roto-Vegas

We're off for a couple of days down to Rotorua, the home of boiling mud, hot pools and the smell of rotting eggs. The husband has a conference there and after days of trying and failing to get my hero's conflict sorted, I'm hoping that a break will give me some ideas too.

Rotorua is the 'land of passion' as you can see by this April Fool's day ad that was run through various papers this year, so perhaps the smell will give me some inspiration! I am going to be taking my little laptop with me anyway and hope to have some time to give the wip a re-read, perhaps try to figure out just what I'm doing. I've got three strands of conflict that I could conceivably use but at the moment don't know which one to pursue. And all three is going to be way too complicated to resolve in 50k words. I'm hoping it will become clear in the fullness of time but boy, the man is being ridiculously opaque.

Oh, and why Roto-Vegas? Well, it's a bit of a NZ in-joke. We call it Roto-Vegas because Rotorua is NZ's answer to Las Vegas. Don't know why really because I don't think there are any casinos/burlesque shows/huge neon signs/deserts/Elvis impersonators in Rotorua. But it does have lots and lots of motels/hotels and tourist type stuff to do, not to mention being quite expensive. Ah well, at the moment, being winter here, I'll just settle for a nice hot spa to sit in with a glass of cold bubbly by my side, and perhaps my current hero in tight swim shorts to feed me grapes...but don't tell the husband that. ;-)

Black Moments

Ah, the black moment. The best part of a romance. At least, it's one of my favourites. I do love writing them. If I haven't made at least one of my characters cry and/or reach for the medicinal scotch then I feel I haven't done a very good job. In fact both crying and reaching for the scotch are both good outcomes for me. I like also to have them be mean to each other. In fact, being mean to each other is great to write. No physical violence obviously (unless it's the medicinal scotch against a wall) but there does tend to be lots of cutting remarks, hateful sarcasm and downright lashing out.

Being hurtful has to be well motivated though, which is why the black moment is so great. Because all that emotion has to be got out somehow and when you're scared and angry and confused, that's what you do. It's also where you say the things you'd never say normally. That's when my characters confront each other with the big questions, the ones they've been dancing around the whole book. And the big questions don't have easy answers because this is internal conflict here and it's not easy to resolve (otherwise there wouldn't be a book, right?).

I think it's in writing the black moment that I love writing romance the most. All the emotion in it is so powerful. Those gutwrenching, painful scenes are also great because if you've written them well and your reader is thinking 'how on earth are these two going to work it out?' , it makes the resolution that much more wonderful.

Actually, sometimes in the first draft, I don't know how they'll work it out. I have a general idea but it's not until I'm in the thick of it that'll I realise what they need to do in order to be together. In fact, sometimes it's not until that black moment that I understand that what I think the conflict is, is actually something deeper. My current WIP I know is going to be along those lines. There's going to be something in that black moment for both my characters that I haven't figured out yet. Obviously they're both afraid (because fear is at the root of it) and I generally know why but I have a feeling there's going to be more to it than what I initially thought. Better get on to it, hadn't I?!

So, what's your favourite scene to write?

The Hook - Vital Plot Element or Unnecessary Complication?

Okay, you'll all be pleased to know that I'm done with the crows (until I hear from the eds I guess but NTAI!). My poor climber has been left to languish at a crucial moment so I should probably get back to him and give him his HEA. However, my sticking point is my plot. I have a fake engagement hook in the middle of it and though it stems from actions the characters themselves take, I'm wondering if it's a tad unbelievable. It's purpose is mainly to force the h&h together and maybe to deepen his conflict a bit but I'm still doubtful about it. Do they really need something to force them together? Can't they just be together because they're having a hot affair? I'm at 44k already and the black moment isn't coming for a wee while yet, so maybe my fake engagement is just an unnecessary complication...

The other thing I'm having doubts about is my timeline. Maybe it's just me, but does anyone else think that two weeks is an awfully short time to fall in love? Or is it just the nature of the genre and two weeks is fine and I'm being overly picky?
I don't know. Until I get over these stumbling blocks, I'm not sure I can finish the WIP. Might just wait until I hear back about whether the story is a goer or not.

Anyway, in the meantime, I have gone back to rewriting my Feel the Heat entry. It's so much better now I've got the conflict sorted! Since the editorial assistant asked me about it, I think I might submit that one next should the other one not succeed.

Ah conflict, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways....