Best of the Archives: The End!

This post by Cara Lynn James first appeared

 in Seekerville on August 25, 2011.

 Comments are closed today so we can catch up 

with our reading and writing!

The End--two of the most satisfying words an author can write. My fourth manuscript for Thomas Nelson is due a week from today and I’m rushing toward the end with less than 1,000 words to go and one more scene to write. Then I can celebrate and breathe easy for a few weeks!

I like to write the ending of a manuscript not just because it signals the culmination of a long project, but also because I actually enjoy the process as opposed to developing middles. By the time I arrive at the last act I know my characters and plot so well it’s easy to write. Relatively. Unlike the beginning, there are only so many ways to conclude a story. And unlike ‘sagging middles,’ the ending is relatively short. It’s the resolution of conflicts that many of us don’t like writing because we like our characters to get along and be happy.

The forces that you’ve developed during the middle of the book will collide at the climax. Something has to give—things can’t keep going the way they were. Peaceful Endings are anti-climactic and disappointing to the reader. Can anyone think of a satisfying resolution that didn’t involve some kind of confrontation between the forces in opposition?

You must use the same characters, tensions, and conflicts etc. that are developing through the story at the conclusion. No fair bringing in the cavalry to bail out your characters!

The ending has to fulfill the promise you made to your reader throughout the story. Did you promise love? Or justice? Or terror? Don’t promise love and then deliver only heart-stopping terror. If it’s romantic suspense, you’ll want the plot to resolve, but you also want the love between the hero and heroine to come together, too.

It’s a good idea to list the forces you’ve set into conflict earlier so you’ll remember to deal with each and every one of them. No loose ends or your reader will feel dissatisfied and cheated!

Most story endings have two parts: the climax and the denouement.

The climax is the clash of the forces at the big, important story event that brings it all together. It often shows how the protagonist has changed. It’s the payoff.

The climax should do four things:

1. It must satisfy the view of life implied in your story.

2. It must deliver emotion—especially important in a romance.

3. It must deliver the appropriate level of emotion.

4. It must be logical to the plot and believable for the characters.

The ending grows out of who the characters are. The climax usually takes at least a chapter, sometimes several chapters.

The denouement comes after the climax. Its function is to wrap up the story. It shows the reader the consequences of the plot and the fate of any characters that are not accounted for in the climax. To be successful it has three characteristics: closure, brevity, and dramatization.

Once you satisfy all these things you can write The End and smile at your accomplishment-- unless you have an Epilogue, but that’s a topic for another post.


Do you have a favorite section to write? Any reason why?

Cara Lynn James currently lives with her family in northwest Florida. She's lived in Vermont, Virginia, California, Texas, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Her historical romances in the Ladies of Summerhill series all take place in Newport, Rhode Island during the Gilded Age. You can find her on Facebook, or Twitter.

How Setting Affects Character

How Setting Affects Character

Often, particular settings evoke certain kinds of characters in the reader’s mind.

What type of character do you imagine living in a desert with tree cacti and armadillos? I’ll bet 100% of you picture a cowboy. He’s probably somewhere in his thirties, good looking though maybe a little scruffy, tall, reserved and polite to women. You might think of John Wayne, or Gary Cooper in High Noon.

I can almost guarantee a gray haired man in a suit carrying a briefcase won’t come to mind when we think of a hot, dry desert somewhere in the American West.

Readers have the same expectations. When we read a book, setting can be a predictor of character. Sometimes publishers give out ‘tip sheets’ so character and setting will ‘fit’ one another.

SETTING PREDESTINES CHARACTER
Setting often forms character in ways you can analyze and use in your stories. The type of topography, industry, incomes and opinions all influence the kind of people who live in a certain area. Even history makes a difference.

The people from Appalachia are a good example. Many of their ancestors emigrated from Northern Ireland and the border between England and Scotland. They led hardscrabble lives in Europe and learned how to survive in harsh lands against political and military forces that were often hostile. In America, many settled in mountainous regions where circumstances were as difficult as they’d been in their original countries. These were strong, hardy people who valued individualism and were skeptical of government in both Europe and America. Their background and history helped them adapt to a new country.

When you begin a story, determine the setting for your character. It’ll help define the kind of character you’ll create.

Readers quickly doubt story people who seem out of tune with their setting.

PROTOTYPES AND STEREOTYPES
Be aware of the type of characters expected in particular genres. For example, Miss Marple fits in with her village setting perfectly.

This is a picture of Lower Slaughter, an English village in the Cotswolds, where my husband’s family originally came from.

Observe real people and then draw up a “setting list” for your character.
If I asked you to describe a typical surgeon you might say he’s gray haired, middle aged and distinguished. You might place him in a large, urban hospital.

Setting list:
Surgeons work in big city hospitals.
They work long hours and like their work.
They tend to live in large suburban houses.
They come from well-educated family backgrounds.
Most love their work.
They drive expensive cars.

He sounds too typical to me. He’s stereotypical and possibly/probably a bit boring for a fiction hero.

Obviously, not all surgeons fit this description.

Some are women.
Some work in clinics in rural communities.
She might live in an inner-city apartment and take the subway to work.
If she resides in the country, she might drive a jeeps or other rugged SUV.
She could be young and still paying for her education through scholarships and loans because her family was poor or middle class.

Who interests you the most? Who seems most credible?

If you can, spend some time following a real surgeon around her working environment.

The point is, take a good look at the setting you want to use and grow characters out of it. A woman surgeon in rural New Mexico can be equally as believable as a male surgeon in New York.

Whether you create your character first and your setting second, or vice versa, remember to make them fit together.

CASTING AGAINST SETTING
If you don’t mind taking a risk, create a character and put him in a setting where he won’t automatically fit in. Do you remember Northern Exposure? Dr. Fleishman, a Jewish doctor from New York City, was transplanted to Alaska. He was definitely cast against his setting. This creates surprise and contrast and can lead to conflict. Since he doesn’t fit his setting, he has continual and comedic problems.

Transplanting a character can work, especially in a comedy. But sometimes it doesn’t. Can you imagine transplanting Scarlett O’Hara from the Old South to the North? Do you think this would be a good or a bad idea?

American missionaries in a foreign land is also a good example of casting against setting. They’d encounter all kinds of culture shock.

USING SETTING TO CHANGE A CHARACTER
A writer can consciously change her setting to effect change within a character. The easiest way is to move the story person to a new setting. If you want the character to change, show her noticing the differences between the old and the new setting and make her react to it. The change can be as simple as changing neighborhoods or as great as moving to a foreign country with differences in topography, climate, language, food, music, social and moral values, culture.

At the beginning of Gone with the Wind, Scarlett O’Hara is a beautiful but spoiled southern belle. War changes her. In order to survive and take care of her home and family, she rolls up her sleeves and gets to work. Although it’s hard at first, she accepts her world has changed. She adapts. Eventually she learns she has a head for business. She’s a survivor like Rhett.

Rhett Butler has no problem adjusting to the changes caused by war. He becomes a gunrunner and even thrives and becomes prosperous. No matter what the circumstances (excluding love) he ends up doing well.

Ashley Wilkes wasn’t totally comfortable in the Old South and he certainly didn’t adapt to the new world of Reconstruction. He was brave but he didn’t conquer his situation and use it for the benefit of himself and his family, IMHO. He couldn’t move on with his life like Scarlett and Rhett did.

Think about how you want the character change.

I’ve been watching Indian Summers on Masterpiece. It takes place in 1930s when India was still controlled by the British. You can see how the Brits don’t want to lose their English identity and assimilate into Indian culture. The program shows how both groups of people interact with each other. They love, they rebel and they clash, often because of such differences in culture and power. The setting (an occupied country) and dissimilar peoples create lots of great conflict.

The writer has to decide which kind of change within the present setting will jar the character into changing something in his character. War is a great example of this. Some people rise to the occasion, others fall apart.

To push a story person into changing character, you can change the setting completely or make changes in the present setting. Or you can leave the setting essentially the same but have the character notice differences he never noticed before. Then you show how he changes because of the setting he’s in.

Can you think of any more changes in character that come about because of setting?

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Cara Lynn James joined Myra Johnson and Sandra Leesmith in writing Love Will Find a Way, a collection of three novellas. In Staging a Romance by Cara Lynn, a home stager Jenna Carlyle meets businessman Nate McKenzie who is trying to sell his family camp in Connecticut. They slowly fall in love while attempting to find a solution to their career issues which threaten to keep the apart.

Character Healing

I didn’t know what to title this blog because the five stages of grief sound so depressing. A romance novel is uplifting, at least at the end, and nothing at all like grief. We read a love story for the joy of ‘happily ever after.’ But grief is a part of life and sometimes our characters suffer from it either before the story begins or during the story itself.

If we’re writing women’s fiction or a literary novel, then emotional pain and angst aren’t particularly unusual. But in a love story, the hero or heroine may have lived through a terrible romantic experience in the past. It could be a break up, a death, or a divorce, though divorce isn’t normally found in Christian fiction.

I always had the impression that the bitterness, sadness, or anger of a great emotional upheaval should take place in the character’s past and not impact the person in the present, at least not to a great degree. The hero or heroine will be influenced by this former relationship, but is now free to love again. The experience might have made her wary of someone hurting her yet again, but it’s given her some wisdom and depth of character. So when the right man comes around she’ll be emotionally ready, even though it won’t happen immediately. While the pain may linger, she’s no longer ‘crippled’ by it. By the end of a romance, ‘love conquers all.’

It’s important that the hero and heroine have some internal obstacles keeping them apart. Sometimes it’s a romance gone terribly wrong. In historicals, it’s often the death of a loved one that’s quite traumatic to the character.

A story needs both internal and external conflicts to make it the best it can be. A conflict relating to a past romance gives it an excellent backstory which helps the reader understand the hero or heroine.

In my opinion, a problem between the main character and a parent or sibling is weaker than a romantic problem experienced in the past. It’ll have a direct lingering effect that will impact the characters in present love story.

But I wonder what would a story be like if either the hero or heroine was still in the middle of recovering from their grief when a new, potential love came into their live. Could one help the other to recover from the pain that keeps him from moving forward into a new, happy life? Or does the main character have to already be past every one of the five stages of grief first? Tell us what you think.

Teddy Roosevelt is an interesting example. A baby girl was born to Teddy and his beloved young wife, Alice Lee Roosevelt. Two days later Alice died from undiagnosed kidney failure which had been masked by her pregnancy. He said, “The light has gone out of my life.” That same day his mother, Mittie, died from typhoid fever in the same house.

Distressed and grieving, Teddy left the baby in the care of his sister for three years! He focused on his work to forget his awful loss. He rarely spoke about Alice and didn’t mention her or his second wife, Edith, in his autobiography.

He married Edith a few years after Alice’s untimely death. They had five children but he worried he’d lose her in childbirth, too. He didn’t. She outlived him.

It’s a fascinating story to me because obviously Teddy recovered enough to remarry, continue on with his life and even become President. The pain never completely left him. But after his initial shock and grief subsided, he married again and accepted the risk of another tragedy. I think he was brave not to wallow forever in his misery. He didn’t wait until he’d fully recovered to marry Edith. If he had, he’d probably have been single for the rest of his life because he never completely overcame his loss of Alice.


Our story people who suffer a big loss also go through the five stages of grief just as real people do. Some go through fewer stagers, some go through more.

DENIAL

Life makes no sense, we feel numb. It’s God’s way of letting in only as much as reality as we can handle at the beginning. We’re shocked and in denial. As we begin to accept the loss, we are starting the healing process. But all our feelings come to the surface.










ANGER

We might feel anger toward the doctors, family, friends, the loved one herself and even God. Underneath the anger is the pain of feeling deserted and abandoned. It may be anger at the situation and not the person.











BARGAINING

Before a loss we may bargain with God to heal our loved one. We may promise God to be a better person or help the poor etc. We want our old life back. Sometimes we think we could’ve done something differently and saved the person we love. We remain in the past as we try to rid ourselves of the pain.











DEPRESSION

This is a normal state after a great loss, not a true mental health issue. Our grief is deep and it feels as if it will last forever. We will be sad, we may withdraw from family and friends, or think life isn’t worth living. But this is just part of the healing process.








ACCEPTANCE

We finally accept what we can’t change. We don’t want to accept our loss, but we don’t have a choice. This is about accepting reality. We learn to live with the new normal even when we don’t like it. We can even feel happiness once in a while. We have to change, grow and evolve. We start to live again, but first we have to give ourselves time to grieve.

I think one of our main story people can be at any stage when he meets someone he’s attracted to. Personally, the Depression Stage or the Acceptance Stage seem plausible to me. The hero needs her to help him work through his loss and his grief and then they can begin their own love relationship. By the end of the story, the hero heals with the help of his new love.

At what stage would you start the story if your heroine is still grieving?

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The End of the Road-How to Keep the Last Act of Your Novel Exciting and Satisfying

Last month I wrote about the Muddle in the Middle, the hardest section for me to write and maybe for some of you, too. I hope you don’t mind but I’m going to repeat the last part of that blog, Training for Battle. Then I’ll go into the Crisis, Black Moment and Act 3, the last act and the End of the Road for your story.

Part 4: Training for Battle

The hero will suffer through a number of tests such as interpersonal challenges, maybe even physical challenges. He’ll encounter obstacles that are difficult to overcome, physically, emotionally or mentally. Again, he’ll look inside himself and learn to adapt to change and conquer the barriers to his goal which he encounters through out the middle of the story.

Follow these principles: Every obstacle the hero faces must make the journey more difficult, causing him to dig deeper. He’ll find a character trait he didn’t have before. He’ll get better at the new skills he’s learning.

Each time the hero improves his skills, he becomes more of the person he wants to be, and he has a glimmer of hope for the future. So give him a glimpse of something he longs for. Let him kiss the girl. (Now I know where to add a kiss!) Things are looking good for the hero!

When the hero and heroine feel empowered and on their way to victory, you’ll pull the rug out from under them.

Since they’ve grown and matured and developed important skills, they’ll be prepared to face the problems that lay ahead. Very soon they’ll smash right into the Crisis, the worst situation of the story and of course, the most difficult to overcome.


Crisis/All is Lost: It has the whiff of death, of terrible defeat. The hero might want to run away and not face the end of his old way of thinking. He might feel he can’t possibly defeat the obstacle blocking him from the attainment of his goal. He loses hope. But fortunately, this is a false defeat. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know that, yet.

Ask yourself: what event strips the character of hope?

Black Moment: This is the darkest, lowest point because the main character has lost everything. It could be physical or emotional loss or both.

Create the Black Moment Event.

It’s based on the heroine’s greatest fear. The lie she thinks about herself holds her back throughout the story and feels totally real to her. But the Epiphany forces her to learn that what she believes is a lie. Only the truth that sets her free. Now she can break down the barriers preventing her from moving forward. She can attain her goal, and in a romance, the love of the man she cherishes.

What can the heroine do at the end that she couldn’t do at the beginning?

Overcoming her greatest fear enables her to grow into the new, stronger person that the reader wants to see. She’s able to run the race and know she can win.

How do we create the Black Moment?

The Black Moment Event comes from going back into the hero’s backstory to find a Dark Moment in his past that has shaped him. From it we pull out the Greatest Fear and the Lie he believes, but shouldn’t. The Greatest Fear is the EVENT you will recreate in some form, and the LIE is what you will make your character believe is true as inescapable as an EFFECT of the Black Moment.

The result of this is the truth setting your hero free, to escape her flaw, and then a Character Change/Hurrah finale where she does something at the end that she wouldn’t do at the beginning.

Examine her Greatest Fear to find her acute pressure point. Bring back the greatest fear by recreating the pain of a terrible past event that she’s never truly forgotten or overcome. Pain from the event in her past is still with her in the present and reaches into her future. It can be regret, abandonment, anger etc. This new event produces the same emotions, the same conclusion, the same LIE she believes. Slowly push your heroine to confront this fear right from the beginning of the story.

The Black Moment should be strong enough to bring her to her knees and re-evaluate everything she believes in. This will lead her to a healing Epiphany. She must look back and see what she did wrong. Only then will she come to some truth that will open a new door to a new future.

You start the hero on a journey and she has to want something, but be unable to attain it. During the journey, the external plot points affect the internal character journey so that the hero begins to want to change, and even opportunities to change. When she reaches the Black Moment, she realizes her need to change, and her Epiphany causes this to happen. For us to believe she’s changed, she has to be tested. This is the Final Battle.

ACT 3: In Act 3 the protagonists muster the courage to overcome their inner obstacles and remove the emotional armor that has kept them apart throughout the story.

Final Battle

In the Final Battle, she accomplishes what she couldn’t even imagine doing at the beginning. She’s tempted to give up since this is such an enormous obstacle to overcome. But the Epiphany has changed her because she’s learned to vanquish the lie and believe in the truth. She can finally press on to the Triumphant Ending.

You wage a Final Battle to show change has really taken place. It’s not just a mental assertion; it’s now a part of her entire character. You wage this internal struggle by using external elements.

To sum up the ending: The heroine faces the last, but most difficult challenge. What she couldn’t do previously, she can do now. She confronts the lie (or her inner flaws which have kept her from change). She falters, then embraces the truth/epiphany, and she forges ahead in victory.

Here are the steps to follow:

Step One: Storm the Castle. What is the final thing the heroine needs to do to prove she has changed? (Just saying she’s changed for the better isn’t enough.) She’ll have to prove it in a tangible way. It’s an internal transformation which she shows through her actions in the external plot.

Step Two: She’s human after all, so she’ll falter, or be attacked by the Lie. Ask: How can her fears or flaws, her dark moment from her backstory rise up to make her doubt herself? This shows that change is hard, even though she’s experienced a moment of enlightenment called the Epiphany. Letting go of past beliefs which have proven false are still difficult to give up.

Step Three: Grasp the truth and hold on! She’ll be reminded of her epiphany that has recently made her see the truth and this gives her strength to continue on.

Step Four: Carpe diem! Victory! How does she complete her journey by showing she has confronted the lie, and chosen truth. How can she win?

Climax: 

External Relationship Arc: How does fear threaten the potential of the relationship one last time?

Internal Relationship Arc: How do the characters prove they don’t want to continue without the other anymore?


Final Image / Resolution: Show how the characters are now fully themselves, in love, and perfect for each other. Show how much change has occurred. A wedding scene is a great example of how two characters at odds at the beginning finally come together in harmony.

There’s a beautiful sunset at the end of the road.

Happily Ever After: We picture our couple, who have emerged from all kinds of trials and tribulations, as people deserving and capable of living happily ever after. There’s nothing like a satisfying ending that’s truly a new beginning!

This information came from Susan May Warren’s book Conversations with a Writing Coach. I highly recommend it!

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Spring into Love

The Muddle in the Middle

Cara Lynn James

When I start a new novel, I know what the story is about and I have a good idea about how it will end. For me, the first three chapters are the fastest to write because I’m enthusiastic about my characters and my plot. Everything seems fresh and doable. Even though the ending might be a little foggy at first, I’m always confident things will clear up somewhere before the Black Moment in Act 3. I never worry about the ending. By the time I finish the middle section, I know my characters well enough to understand what should happen to them.

My major problem has always been the middle, what needs to happen there and how do I keep it from sagging? It’s a really long way from Act 1 to Act 3 and you just can’t expand the beginning and the end enough to have them meet in the middle. No, you have to write Act 2 and keep the reader hooked so she doesn’t put the book down or throw it in the corner. This can be a difficult section to write. It’s long and often feels endless, with about the same number of words as the beginning and the ending combined.

I know where I’m going but I often don’t have a clue about how to get there. Where should I put the first kiss? Does it really matter where it goes? At what point should the hero and heroine grow close enough to confide their deepest feelings to each other? I’ve read plenty of books on plotting and I should know how to answer all the questions I have. Yet somehow the muddled middle seems vague and always a huge challenge to conquer before I arrive at Act 3.

The hero and heroine are also confused and lost at this point. Their lives are changing and they have many things to learn about themselves and each other as they move forward.   

In Act 2, the heroine has challenges and choices she has to make which are determined by her values and goals. These will have both consequences and obstacles. The road through the middle is never straight or smooth, but that’s what makes it interesting and keeps us reading. Disappointments and Y’s in the road (and how the characters deal with them) cause us to turn the pages as fast as we can and sometimes ‘force’ us to stay up half the night reading.

I recently discovered Conversations with a Writing Coach by Susan May Warren. It really helped me take the muddle out of the middle. She divided all the elements needed in this section into four easy parts.

Act 2

Part 1: The Attempt and Failure of the Goal

The character’s GMC — goal, motivation and conflict — is worked into the beginning of the story in Act 1.

But in the second act the hero discovers attaining his goal isn’t as quick and easy as he expected it would be. He fails to reach his goal at least once and that failure makes everything worse. He’s now worried about the possibility he might not reach his goal. He’ll get discouraged and wonder if he really wants to go on this journey after all. If he doesn’t have the gumption to continue, his story ends prematurely.

So the writer ensures his hero has fortitude and determination, qualities we expect to see in a hero.

Part 2: Cost and Consideration and Rewards

In this part of the story, the character changes. Right after she fails her first attempt to reach her goal, she realizes she’ll have to regroup, and take a good look at her weaknesses and realize the truth. If she wants to reach her goal, she’ll have to change. If her goal is worth fighting for, it’s going to cost something she doesn’t want to give up.

Give her time to reflect on what character change will cost her. Have it be extremely important to her, even brutal, something that is a true sacrifice.

Remember, if the goal and the sacrifice aren’t very important to the heroine, they won’t be to the reader either.

Now that she has made a first attempt and failed, and you’ve given her a glimpse of what it will cost to succeed, she has to see past the Costs to the Rewards. She must believe she can achieve her goal and it will be worth it despite the difficulties getting there.

This is a wonderful spot for the heroine to put her trust in the Lord and ask him for guidance and strength. She realizes reaching her goal might very well be too difficult, or even impossible, to attain all on her own.

Seeing the costs and rewards will make her look inside herself, to ask why the reward is worth fighting for. She’ll question the strength of her motivation. If it’s not strong enough, then the story will come to an abrupt and unsatisfying end. The heroine has to believe her attempt and cost is worth the struggle. A heroine doesn’t give up at the first challenge or roadblock she encounters.

Part 3: The Man in the Mirror

Just how much is the heroine willing to pay to reach her goal or dream? When she tries to balance the cost against the reward, the heroine will discover the crux of her hero’s journey and her true desire.

She has to decide if her goal is her own or if it’s someone else’s goal for her. Maybe she’s a ‘go along to get along’ kind of woman. Her well-meaning but misguided mother may be setting the agenda. Or the heroine might not want to cross a manipulative acquaintance who might be vengeful.

So she has to look deep inside herself to understand what she really and truly wants or needs and not let herself by swayed by others who don’t have her best interests at heart. She knows her own mind and heart, they don’t.

This is where true change begins to take place. It’s all about the person she wants to be. When a character looks inward and asks, “Who am I? Am I willing to change to get what I desire?” then we begin to see true change.

After the heroine takes a good look at herself and what she wants, she will try to reach her goal again. This takes a lot of courage. But now you’ll let her succeed in her quest, just enough to give her a taste of victory. She feels like she’s accomplished something and this gives her confidence to continue on her journey. This happens in about the middle of the second act.
Part 4: Training for Battle

The hero will suffer through a number of tests such as interpersonal challenges, maybe even physical challenges. He’ll encounter obstacles that are difficult to overcome, physically, emotionally or mentally. Again, he’ll look inside himself and learn to adapt to change and conquer the barriers to his goal which he encounters through out the middle of the story.

Follow these principles: Every obstacle the hero faces must make the journey more difficult, causing him to dig deeper. He’ll find a character trait he didn’t have before. He’ll get better at the new skills he’s learning.

Each time the hero improves his skills, he becomes more of the person he wants to be, and he has a glimmer of hope. So give him a glimpse of something he longs for. Let him kiss the girl. (Now I know where to add a kiss!)

When the hero and heroine feel empowered and on their way to victory, you’ll pull the rug out from under them.

And that brings them into Act 3, the final act. But since they’ve grown and matured and developed important skills, they’ll be prepared to face the problems that lay ahead. 

Let's talk about your Speedbo project. How's your middle coming along? 




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In The Beginning....

We all know that love is the main ingredient in every great romance. In these stories love overcomes every seemingly impossible obstacle and in the end finally triumphs. We cheer when our hero and heroine eventually come together and live happily ever after, just as we expect they will. Love conquers all is at the heart of romantic novels and anything less won’t satisfy readers. Who can blame them?

But the way to HEA is a long, crooked path strewn with both external and internal obstacles that keep the hero and heroine apart until they resolve their differences at the end. The readers (and writer) suffer right along with the characters as the couple struggles to realize they’re really made for each other. However, if the hero and heroine resolve their differences too soon, they won’t have time to work through the obstacles that stand in their way of real love — and the reader will feel disappointed and cheated that it all happened much too fast.

As we get to know the characters inside and out, we learn to relate to them and empathize with the difficulties that keep them from the mate God has chosen for them. Heroes and heroines have raw wounds deep inside that prevent them from falling in love too easily or too quickly. Sometimes the internal conflicts are even stronger than the external ones. A wonderful story needs plenty of both kinds of conflict. A word of warning: we shouldn’t throw in every single obstacle we can think of. Save some for other stories!

Love draws the hero and heroine together but obstacles drive them apart.

In my novella, The Innkeeper’s Promise, which is part of With this Kiss, the historical collection, a young innkeeper tries to convince her absentee co-owner to keep their failing hotel open and operating despite his determination to make a quick sale. (external conflict) They’re fighting their attraction for each other until they learn that placing their own desires and ambition ahead of their loved one’s wants and needs will cause unhappiness for both of them. (internal conflict). The conflicts blend together in the story.

At the beginning of any romance the hero and heroine should meet in an interesting, and hopefully unique way, often on the first few pages or at least during the first chapter. They feel a pull toward each other. Sometimes they’re attracted by good looks, or they’re impressed by a kind or heroic action that heightens their emotions toward the other person.

Sometimes they’ve met before and have strong, unresolved feelings about something that happened between them in the past. Their feelings might be positive or negative. Sometimes people instantly dislike each other even though they’re strangers. I think the opposite can be true, too.

But there should be a spark of some sort when they meet because we definitely don’t want the hero and heroine to find each other forgettable. They need to stay on each other’s mind even when they’re not together. They’re relationship is the real reason for the story. It took me a long time to figure that out!

After the couple meets, the romance really begins. Then they’re drawn together through attraction and later love, and then they’re wrenched apart because of obstacles in their path. These barriers cause them to stumble and fall.

I’ve noticed in a lot of romance stories the couple is at odds with each other soon after they meet. They start arguing about an issue that’s important to them. The conflict should never center around a trivial matter because the reader won’t feel compelled to continue. Who wants to read about two people disagreeing over which brand of coffee to buy? (Okay, a married couple might bicker over coffee, but not a man and a woman on the brink of a promising love relationship.)

Their sparring should concern something worth fighting about. The environmentalist verses the developer or the vintner verses a crusader for prohibition have strong, differing opinions that they won’t change — at least not until the end after a lot of soul searching and compromising. Start the hero and heroine on two different sides of an issue and find a unique hook that will keep them apart despite their attraction to each other. A strong external conflict will keep the reader turning the pages.

Conflict sounds like the great way to start a story and it often is.

But what if your story doesn’t lend itself to an immediate clash of goals or personalities?

In some romances the couple fall in love right at the start without major barriers to drive them apart. They have fun, discover they share similar values, backgrounds, interests etc. They’re on the fast track toward love and marriage because so many things bring them together.

Many of the couples I’ve known who have had a successful relationship that ended in marriage didn’t face major problems beforehand. They fell head over heels in love and basked in the glow of their romance. The old saying love is blind means just that: the two lovebirds don’t see each other clearly. They gloss over each other’s faults and recognize only virtues.

However, romance without problems to overcome won’t make for a great story. It’ll be downright boring. In a book the hero and heroine can’t be speeding along or the story will end too soon.

At some point they need barriers to slow them down, both external and internal. Their love must be tested and through these difficult situations they’ll grow and develop as characters and learn to deal with the problems that prevent from getting together.

But at what point does this happen? That depends on the story. The writer has to decide when to throw obstacles in the way of the romance.

Personally, I think trouble should erupt or at least be strongly hinted at by the middle of the book. Some writers say smooth sailing can continue nearly to the end. To keep the story interesting the reader must see hints of trouble looming ahead. Those hints need to create enough tension about the future to keep the reader turning pages.

In You’ve Got Mail the hero and heroine fall for each other online without knowing they’re opponents in real life. There’s still tension since they don’t know the entire truth about each other but the viewers do. The audience anticipates fireworks in the future and that keeps them glued to the screen.

Where do you think obstacles should start to disrupt the romance? In the beginning or a little later? Any reason for one preference over the other?

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Dressing Your Characters

Do clothes make the man? Mark Twain thought so. It’s only a saying, but there’s some truth to it. An expensive ‘little black dress’ could give you a boost of confidence, while an pair of old jeans might give you a comfortable, relaxed feeling. Formal wear makes us stand up straighter and mind our manners. Military uniforms do the same thing.

My mother always told me not to judge people by the clothes they wear, but most of us do judge, at least to some extent. One reason is because clothing clues us in about personality. Clothing may say something good, or something bad in other people’s minds. Clothing broadcasts a lot about a character, so we should use it when and where we can.

Sometimes we’ll finish writing our manuscript and realize we didn’t ‘dress our characters’ very well. They’re not exactly naked on the page – readers can fill in the wardrobe – but we, as authors, are missing a great opportunity to show the reader our character’s personality in subtle, and not-so-subtle ways. So, we need to dress them like little girls dress paper dolls, and show style preferences that reflect who they are.

Instead of saying a teenage girl is flashy, we can put her in a multi-colored, attention-grabbing dress. Have her striding into the scene swinging a sunny yellow purse, and wearing a turquoise straw hat with pink silk flowers. Let her wobble forward in green spike heels. Paint a picture that characterizes the girl’s personality by showing, not telling. What does this clothing selection tell you about the character? Judging from the picture I painted of the girl, which pair of shoes would she like best?

There’s a good chance she’s not a shy, introverted girl! But don’t take her eye-catching appearance at face value because she might be trying hard to be someone she’s really not. More later.

Are your character’s clothes sloppy or neat? Casual or formal? Do your people like what they’re forced to wear, like work uniforms or suits for the office or courtroom? Or maybe they don’t care what they wear. Think about why they do or don’t. It could tell the reader a lot.

A Question: If the heroine wears shorts and a tee shirt to a worship service, would you as the reader make any assumptions about her? You might, but depending upon the circumstances, you could be all wrong.

If she’s at a worship service in the middle of a field on a hot summer’s day, you’d probably think her clothes were totally appropriate. Most everyone would be dressed informally so she wouldn’t stand out as different from everyone else. In that case, her clothes aren’t making much of a statement – except that she’s conforming to the group much like everyone else. Obviously, she likes to fit in. (However, short shorts and a halter-top might attract attention, some of it negative.)

If her clothes were a little more extreme than shorts and a tee shirt, some people might approve of her courage or flare, but others might think she was looking for attention or showing off.

But if she were a guest at a fancy wedding held in a cathedral, you’d wonder why she showed up in shorts. Most people would gape at her. The reader would wonder why she wore something so out of place. What was she thinking or wasn’t she thinking at all? We might search for an explanation for her odd behavior. Didn’t she have anything else to wear? Is she trying to attract attention? Is she just strange?

The unusual or unexpected clothing choice grabs the reader’s interest, and if she doesn’t know the reason behind it, she’ll keep reading until she finds out what’s going on.

Clothing choices say a lot about our story people. It says one thing about the heroine if she looks completely comfortable in a bikini in church (yes, I know that’s absurd), and another thing if she looks embarrassed and tries to hide. From her behavior we can make an assumption about what she’s like. Her personality shines through even though she’s not saying a word.

Readers can learn a lot about your characters by WHAT they wear and HOW they wear it.

Clothes reveal personality.

Of course if we’ve never seen this character before we have to remember she might be trying to fool people! Maybe she’s in disguise. It’s always a possibility. We might want to dig a little deeper.

It’s also important to know how the character takes care of her clothes. Does she throw her things in a heap in a corner of her bedroom, or hang them up carefully? Are her clothes clean, or are they dirty and wrinkled? Even if they’re worn and faded, are they neat and laundered? A fashionista who spent a fortune on her wardrobe would probably take good care of it, but if money wasn’t an issue, she might be careless and figure everything can be easily replaced. Her attitude about life comes through loud and clear.

Where do you find fashion ideas?
Catalogs and magazines are great for fashion ideas for writers of contemporary books. Since I write historicals I can’t find what I need in the clothing advertisements that come in my mailbox every day. Exploring the nearest department store won’t help me.

So I search the internet, read tons of articles on early twentieth century fashion and look at images. I also have old Sears and Montgomery Ward catalogs I got from Amazon, and paper doll books. Check out the library or a bookstore. Pictures are everywhere.

How do you decide what your characters will wear? Do you give it much thought?

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The End of the Race

We’re coming to the end of March and the end of the Speedbo race. Some of us have almost reached our goal, some of us are lagging far behind, often due to circumstances beyond our control. Life interfered with our plans. But that’s often the case. Distractions are something we have to deal with as best we can.

As soon as you’ve finished with your manuscript you can let it rest for a while. Take a two or three week break from your thousands of words per day. You’ve earned it! It’s hard to get perspective on what needs to be fixed if your brain is still in a creative mode. Before you start your second draft you’ll need to see the whole picture, not just pieces of it. Time away from the manuscript will help with the process. Take a walk, read a book. Better yet, take a vacation!

I’ve noticed a lot of writers fall into one of two distinctive categories – those who love everything they write and those who hate everything they write. Neither group sees their work objectively. Of course it’s probably impossible to view our story as others see it. But to make our novel the best it can be we have to try to be as objective as possible.

Just don’t let your brilliant words blind you to poor story structure. On the other hand, don’t allow a great story to blind you to sloppy or amateurish writing. Everything can be fixed by revising. According to James Scott Bell, “Good writing is rewriting with know-how.”

Don’t be discouraged if you find lots of plot holes, shallow characters, and terrible writing after reading your first draft. First drafts are supposed to be messy. Remember that.

Are you ready to start reviewing your SpeedBo creation?

Print out your manuscript instead of reading it on the computer. You’ll want to feel like a reader reading it for the first time. Read it with ‘fresh eyes.’ At this point you need to get the overall impression of the book without getting down in the weeds. Jot down a few notes if you want, but don’t make changes in the manuscript yet.

Some writers use outside readers to read their drafts. You can ask what they think about the overall plot, what they like or dislike about the characters, if and when they got bored, if they have any suggestions. Personally, I don’t let my friends look at my story until it’s in half way decent shape, but that’s up to you.

Analyze. Start to take notes after the first read-through. Bell suggests we ask these questions:

Does the story make sense?

Is the plot compelling?

Does the story flow or is it disjointed?

Are the lead characters memorable?

Are the stakes high enough?

Will the reader ‘worry enough’ over the plot and characters to want to keep reading?

When you finish answering the questions you can start to fix the problems. But first I do something else. I start a start with a chapter-by-chapter outline. Do I hear a few groans? This is to help you, not to submit to an editor. Pat yourself on the back if you’ve already scribbled some sort of outline as you were writing your SpeedBo manuscript. In the long run it’s less work if you jot down a few lines as you go along.

If you want you can use a spreadsheet to keep track of the plot. It’s fine to keep it simple. Include the chapter number, setting, characters, summary and outcome. Another way would be to list the goal, motivation, and conflict. I also take more notes about what I think needs fixing.

If an outline seems too tedious then try writing a 2,000 to 3,000 word summary. Dare I say write it like a synopsis? But it’s only for you so don’t worry about including all the parts an editor would like to see. This should help you find dropped plot threads and unnecessary sub-plots or characters etc.

From here you might find you’re ready to start on your revisions. Have fun and remember to enjoy the process!

What did you learn about your writing during SpeedBo? Did anything surprise you?

I’ll be giving away an assortment of Love Inspired romances so if you’d like to win please leave your e-mail address with your comments.

Happy Easter!