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!!

Plots - Are Your Characters Driving or Are You?

Plots are the work of the devil. Yes, I'm sorry, but they are. They join internal conflict in their very own special circle of hell. At least, in my own personal writing hell. Why is this you say? Well, because in Modern Heat land (and no doubt in Modern/Presents land too), the plot needs to be driven by the characters. But surely every plot is driven by the characters? After all, without any characters, you wouldn't have a plot right?

It's true that of course without any characters you wouldn't have a plot, but it does not mean that every plot is character driven. This is something that I have slowly been coming to learn over the past few months, especially after Michelle pointed out the flaws in my synopses. In fact, it was something I already knew, but just didn't understand until now.

So what's the difference? Well, I'm still learning and naturally enough I am no expert but here's what I see as the difference. In your suspense/mystery/SF/fantasy/paranormal etc the action is usually plot driven. This is when external circumstances force the characters to act. But character driven plots are where the action is driven by decisions and actions the character makes themselves and not due to external circumstances (which is why internal conflict is so important because this affects how they act). Now, feel free to tell me this is a load of old bollocks and I've got it wrong, but that's what I think is the difference.

Anyway, like I said, for Modern Heat, the action/plot must be driven by the hero and heroine. Which means that if you have an overly complicated set up, you end up forcing your h&h to act in response to your plot, and not because of decisions or actions that they make themselves. Which in turn can make them act in a contrived way. Does that make sense?

A prime example of this is my rejected ms - which was rejected partly because of the setup and because I was trying to force my heroine into acting in a way that she wouldn't. My setup was that my heroine had to use an internet dating site to set up a blind date for research she was doing into the internet dating scene. This was not the problem. The problem was that I had made my heroine a socially inept geek for whom blind dates and dating full stop was anaethma. Good in terms of setting up tension, but not so good for a character driven plot. Why not? Well, why would a socially inept geek want this assignment in the first place? And so I had to make her go through with it by setting up a pushy friend, a broken relationship she wanted to get over, a boss that would fire her if she didn't, etc, etc. You see how I complicated everything? Just so I could force my poor heroine to go on her date.

Now making this setup character driven would have been easy if only I had made my heroine make the decision to go through with the date herself. So she takes charge of the action rather than her responding to the actions of the plot. Maybe she took the blind date assignment because she wanted to do something different, maybe she took it because she wanted to change her life. But in order to make her take charge, she would have to have been a different sort heroine, with a different sort of conflict, and that would mean rewriting the whole book - hence the rejection.

Which brings me to the current wip. I have a fake engagement in the middle of it and although this does stem from an action the character takes, I fear I have manipulated things in order to make the character take that action rather than letting things take their natural course. Since this is in the synopsis I have submitted, I'm slightly reluctant to take it out but my instinct is to do so. Should I trust my instinct I wonder? But that's a whole other post so I'll stop there!

What does everyone else think about character driven plots? Does this make sense or am I barking up the wrong tree? Maybe I'm simply barking full stop!