Due to technical difficulties with Amanda’s internet connection, we must reschedule Elaine for another Sunday.
I’m working on a fight between the hero and heroine in the balloonist story. I’m pretty happy with it so far and looking forward to the makeup sex that comes next. 🙂
But I realized while writing this that I don’t often write this sort of scene. IMHO one has to be careful with arguments and fights and use them only where they make sense.
I’m not a fan of stories in which the characters are constantly squaring off, unless there’s a really good reason. I have trouble imagining a happy ending when people can’t work anything out. There’s an idea out there that there are couples who constantly fight and make up and it makes things exciting. But the one couple I know in real life who are like that (and I was told early on that this was “just their way”) are fighting more bitterly as they get older. They are afraid to separate and yet neither is willing to compromise, apologize or forgive. It is not romantic. It is tragic. I want better for my heroes and heroines!
I also like story setups in which the hero and heroine are thrown together and try to get along toward some common goal, while there is some other problem that they have to solve before they can be together. Conflict doesn’t always have to be adversarial.
Anyway, what do you think makes a conflict work well? Do you sometimes enjoy a good fight (fictional, of course)?
Elena
Happy Friday!
It’s currently approaching 60 degrees here in New York City, and that means everyone, myself included, is giddy. GIDDY, I tell you!
I’ve been unable to do much (okay, any) of my own fiction writing because I’ve taken on the job of Community Manager, Romance, for a new site, Heroes and Heartbreakers.
[In thinking about my post today, I guess it could be called Shameless Self-Promotion, only this isn’t about me. It’s not. Really.]
It’s super-cool, and I am having a blast. If you pop by, you’ll see posts from our own Laurel McKee and Carolyn Jewel, with posts from Diane Gaston happening in the future (Janet and Elena will be on-board, too, they just don’t know it yet).
But I have made a vow–and an Excel file with my friend Myretta Robens–to write my own stuff next week, so I’ll be doing that or facing my own and Myretta’s shaming words.
This weekend I’ll be watching a mooseload of Asian films so I can be inspired to return to my Asian heritage demonic hero of my Urban Fantasy. I would say it’s research, but we all know better. Plus, my husband is out of town.
Okay, so enjoy the weather–whatever yours is–and see you next week!
I’m contemplating a change of subgenre and thought I’d share with you my thoughts on what I find (1)attractive (2) unattractive about each period. So here goes.
Romans.
1. Much nudity. Men with big swords.
2. Public unisex toilets, cheek-to-cheek. Think of the meet-cute. “I’m sorry, is that your sponge?”
Dark Ages
1. The stuff of legends e.g., Camelot. Men with big swords.
2. Filth and misery. No public toilets at all, private ones dubious.
Medieval
1. Castles. Men with big swords.
2. Filth and misery. No public toilets at all, private ones dubious. Child marriages.
Elizabethan
1. Silks, lace, velvet, swashbuckling stuff. Men with big swords.
2. Filth and misery. One known (official) public toilet on London Bridge, private ones dubious. Child marriages. Elizabeth I.
Civil War/Restoration
1. Silks, lace, velvet, swashbuckling stuff. Sieges. Men with long hair and big swords.
2. Filth and misery. One known (official) public toilet on London Bridge, private ones dubious. Plague.
Eighteenth Century
1. Silks, lace, velvet, swashbuckling stuff. Men with high heels and smaller swords.
2. Filth and misery, wigs, and you don’t even want to ask about the toilets.
Regency
1. Cotton, linen, wool, elegance, manners, some indoor plumbing. Men with tight pants, swordsticks, vinaigrettes.
2. Filth and misery, repression.
Victorian
1. None that I can think of other than infrastructure and some indoor plumbing.
2. Filth and misery, repression, and everything else.
Edwardian
1. Nice clothes for women. Indoor plumbing. Men with big walking sticks.
2. Filth and misery, repression, World War I looms ahead.
No wonder we writers have to reinvent history.
Your ideas?
Please don’t ask me why I was searching Google Books for references to ninja between 1795 and 1820. Just accept that I was and that I was expecting there to be close to zero results.
But below, is the first of two pages of results.
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Leigh Hunt – 1819 – Free Google eBook – Read
books.google.com – More editions – Add to My Library▼ |
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Holy moly! Forty NINJAS? That’s no lone ninja a long way from home. That’s an invasion! DURING THE REGENCY! How could we not know about this?
(Because they are ninjas, that’s why.)
So, of course I clicked. Who wouldn’t? I mean ninjas in England in 1819 and they’re all acting like, hey, let’s keep picking until we have an attack force of FORTY of these motherf*ckers. Napoleon would be toast if, uh, he weren’t already.
Alas, the reality was disappointing to say the least.
But if among these names is that of a Member who given a vote in the election complained of or who is a Petitioner or ngninst whose return a Petition depending or of a Member who is sixty years of suppose he wishes to be excused such name is set and another is drawn to supply his place until forty be selected When the forty nine are complete the or his Agent names a Member and the
All the rest were foreign language results. Those Romans, Germans and Italian-post-Latin speakers! Always the fake ninjas.
Kind of disappointing. So. Help me out here.
You command the Ninja attack force in London, 1815. What do you do with them? Or, alternatively, provide a snippet of Regency Ninja Lore.
Like, A Regency Ninja is thought to have infiltrated Almack’s, assassinated six debutantes and eleven Regency Bucks in pink waiscoats and vanished after spiking the orgeat with sake.
Or something.
Comment away.
In My Library: