Category: Writing

Posts in which we talk about the writing craft and process

Love moderately?

Updated on March 7, 2013 by Elena Greene

This is the advice Friar Lawrence gives Romeo and Juliet: “Therefore love moderately; long love doth so.” It sounds kind of stingy, as if you have to dole out your love a little at a time or you’ll run out.

I guess his point really is that Romeo and Juliet’s level of drama is leading them into trouble. When writing romance, we want to tap into that sort of intensity. But just as the idea of reforming a rake is dangerously close to the unrealistic fantasies some women have of fixing an abusive lover, the idea of not being able to live without someone comes close to unhealthy obsession.

These tropes are edgy; maybe that’s why they’re so powerful.

So on one hand we have powerful emotion combined with the immature prefrontal cortex development of teenagers. It’s great for tragedy, but not for the happy ending we want in a romance novel.

On the other hand, there are mature characters who could live without each other, if need be. Is there a loss of emotional intensity?

I don’t really think so. I think we can still feel the love, even while admiring the strength of characters who move on despite their heartache.

But sometimes there is a powerful need that makes it all work. Laura Kinsale creates characters so scarred that my fellow Kinsale fans and I joke they would need years of therapy in real life. It’s not weakness to need help healing from major trauma. So it’s intense and satisfying that the hero or heroine can help the other.

But to keep it from edging into codependency, I want to know that at some point, near the end of the story or at some point beyond, the wounded one will be strong, too. I want to know he or she would eventually live a happy life even if the other were killed in a carriage accident.

Although romance writers don’t do that at the end of the story, however much they might be tempted in the often-frustrating middle.

What do you think?

Elena
www.elenagreene.com
www.Facebook.com/ElenaGreene

Posted in Reading, Writing | Tagged tortured heroes, tortured heroines | 5 Replies

Alpha-Bad-Tizing

Updated on March 4, 2013 by megan

He was at least a decade older than me, smoked cigarettes, refused to be photographed, barely got out of high school, dealt some illegal substances, and drove a ’57 Rambler. Oh, and he looked like Willem Dafoe.

So what did I do?

Reader, I dated him.

I love bad boys.

I am, quite possibly, the goodest girl you will ever meet. Besides my sometimes outlandish fashion choices, I always got enough sleep, stayed out of trouble, did my homework, read everything on the suggested reading list, felt guilty when I discovered I’d been given the wrong change. But I am irresistibly attracted to men who seem to walk on the edge of danger, which is how I like my romance heroes, too.

Anne Stuart writes the best bad heroes. Liz Carlyle also has a penchant for less-than-perfect men, and of course anybody who’s written a vampire hero usually walks on the dark side.

The funny thing is, I can’t write them. My heroes seem to be pretty nice, sometimes almost boring, and it drives me insane. Why can’t I create what I love so much? I’ve tried to make them meaner, but it’s very hard.

I’ve just finished the first draft of a new book, and this month’s revisions process will include toughening up my hero, Reeve.

So–do you like bad boys in fiction? Which are your favorite? What are the best ways to show he’s a bad boy without making him kick a puppy or something? And have you ever dated one in real life? Did he live up to your fantasies? Come on, share!

Megan
www.meganframpton.com

Posted in Reading, Writing | Tagged bad boys, Heroes | 7 Replies

Love me, love my book?

Updated on March 4, 2013 by Janet Mullany

I can’t imagine why anyone reads books by the well-known adulterer Charles Dickens or that spiteful gossip Jane Austen (no wonder Cassandra burned most of the letters).

Yet I frequently hear, particularly from other romance writers, “Oh, I don’t like Author X. I’m not reading her books.” And it always puzzles me. Sure, not buying an author’s book will deprive her of the few pennies of royalties she might earn through your purchasee. Of course, that begs the question of whether it would be morally responsible to borrow said book from the library, read it illicitly in a couple of expensive java visits at your local Borders, or pay a quarter for a copy at the thriftstore. A further ethical question might be raised if you enjoyed the book—oh horrors—what then? Does it mean you, the reader, are tarred with the same brush, or, rather like earnest clerics researching pornography, corrupted without even knowing it? Chances are you might flip it closed with the satisfaction that Author X is indeed confirmed as a Bad Person—”I knew it when the heroine’s kitten drowned and that sweet lisping child fell into the midden”—and feel your point is proved.

Part of the trouble is there’s just too much information on romance authors. And it’s our own fault. We’re all over the place, chatting away on blogs and websites, and thinning the line between promotion of our books and promotion of ourselves, just being just so darned nice all the time. And if that niceness slips into real opinions and passions, it may raise some hackles. I’m not excusing bad author behavior or authors who are rude to people in public (I think most of us have had experience with those), but it seems you can get away with a lot more as a dead literary lion (most of whom were not Boy Scouts in real life) than as a live genre writer.

Is good writing good writing—whatever?

Janet

Posted in Reading, Writing | Tagged authors | 7 Replies

Soul Searching

Updated on March 1, 2013 by megan

I like my art over the top. My favorite movies, actors, books, music, paintings and couture all share the common element of being pushed further than it might seem possible. Recently I found something I thought epitomized what pushed something in my opinion from “good” to “special.”

Nick Cave is most famous for being a musician, but he is also a writer, most recently penning the script for The Proposition starring Guy Pearce. I bought a book of his writings recently–song lyrics as well as fragments of short stories and an essay or two–and found something he wrote about the German band
Einsturzende Neubauten:

“They are simply a ‘great’ band–and I use the word in the classical sense. To me, the essence of their greatness does not lie in their unorthodox attitude toward making music–rather it is based on a fundamentally orthodox premise. What makes Einsturzende Neubauten great in my eyes is the same thing that makes Johnny Cash–or the Velvet Underground, John Lee Hooker, Suicide, Elvis, Dylan, Leadbelly, The Stooges–great. They are all innovators but what sets Hank Williams apart from the bulk of his contemporaries is the same thing that sets Einsturzende Neubauten apart from the huge, faceless morass that modern New Wave music has become. Through their own hard work, by steadfast lack of compromise, through the pain of true self-expression, through a genuine love of their medium, they have attained a sound which is first authentic, and which is utterly their own. But not for the sole purpose of being different. They are a group which has developed its own special language for one reason–to give voice to their souls.”

My goal, when I write, is to give voice to my soul, even though that might sound pretentious coming from someone who writes fairly light romance; the means here, the motivation, is more important than the end. I might never feel as if I have truly developed my own ‘special language,’ as Cave says; but I can strive for that goal. No matter what genre an author writes in, in what style, I think the reader can tell when a soul has been given voice. Your favorite soul vocalists are no doubt different than mine (and I’m not talking Aretha). But what they share is an authentic sound.

What do you think makes a great artist?

Thanks–

Megan
www.meganframpton.com

Posted in Music, Writing | Tagged art, voice | 5 Replies

Have we created our own cult?

Updated on March 1, 2013 by Janet Mullany

There were four-and-twenty virgins come down from Inverness

And when the night was ended there were four-and-twenty less…

trad. rude song

As long as the plots keep arriving from outer space,

I’ll go on with my virgins.

Barbara Cartland

This topic started off as a conversation with my buddy Pam Rosenthal as part of our meanderings on our workshop at the 2006 Beau Monde Conference. (Yes, the workshop is called Pam and Janet Evening. It’s on writing erotic historicals.)

Virgins.

A dime a dozen in romance-land.

Why?

Granted, they were around. Virginity was by implication an important part of the business deal that upper-class marriage was even in the Regency period–the groom wanted to be sure that his heirs would truly be his, and not the in-laws’ third footman’s. Yet we still have extraordinary plot twists to ensure that the heroine is untouched when the Big Bang occurs–virgin widows, husbands who had to rush off to take part in Waterloo (sorry, honey, not before the big game), couples who didn’t want to marry and so therefore didn’t want to…you know. Or the hero turns out to be her first and last, with diversions in between (guilty as charged). And not just in historicals, where the concept of a virgin heroine is justified, but all through the genre.

Consider also the typical defloration/consummation, where after some minor carnage, the heroine gets to Nirvana with very little effort (and snorts of disbelief from me)…and despite the bloodbath, they keep doing it. Or, we’re told, if she has had previous partners, there (1) weren’t many, and (2) it wasn’t that good, so therefore she holds blank slate status.

Yes, I know these are huge overstatements and I can come up with exceptions too, but why do these conventions exist? Is it the only way we can show that this is IT, the Real Thing, the Big Banana?

Despite the boom in erotic romance and erotica, why are we still so wary of a true depiction of female sexuality?

Thoughts, anyone?

Posted in Reading, Writing | Tagged heroines, sex, sex in Regencies, virgin heroines | 5 Replies