From Theresa: This month we’re starting something new here with my column. Every other month, I will be evaluating sample pages sent in by readers. If you want to play along, send the first two or three pages of your novel in, and we’ll add them to the queue. This month, we have the first 250 words of an urban fantasy novel. I think you’ll all agree that this opening is already in great shape. But I think we can make it better.

Chapter 1: Bring Out Your Dead (Urban Fantasy)

They had eight hours before dawn and a lot of dirt to shift. Jane propped her Hush Puppy on the back of the shovel blade and pushed, but nothing happened. She swallowed a curse. Rennie didn’t like it when she cursed.

Rennie balanced the big lantern flashlight on her walker as she illuminated the shovel. The night sky sparkled with stars and a half moon, but it wasn’t enough to dig by. “You have to stand on the blade, honey. You don’t have the get-up-and-go you used to.”

“This ain’t my first grave, Rennie. I know what I’m doing.” She wished they’d handled this weeks ago, but they’d been hoping one of their contacts would come through at the last minute. Someone trustworthy. Someone who could keep a secret. Someone who could dig. They were both way too decrepit for this.

“Used to be me who dug the graves,” Rennie said.

“Now it’s my turn.” Jane climbed up on the shovel blade like a tightrope walker, and the tip sank into the ground several inches. A tug and a yank, and several cups’ worth of dirt popped free. Pale brown and tough as saddle leather. She piled it to the side on the tarp.

Rennie sighed. “I wish I could help.”

“You just stand guard and keep my spirits up.” Jane freed another shovel of tight-packed West Virginia dirt. “Good Lord, this ground is hard. Was he this much of an inconvenience when he was alive?”

“More,” Rennie said. “Especially there at the end.”

Okay, the first thing I want to do is rearrange the pieces in those first few paragraphs to raise the tension level. We start with a plural pronoun, they, which keeps us from knowing the point of view character right away. And then we shift into some details about the premise: it’s night, they have eight hours to dig, and they’re properly equipped. Although there’s a ticking clock, the time limit doesn’t feel pressing. Eight hours to dig a hole is probably long enough. There are some indications that the task might not be easy, so it’s not that the opening paragraphs are flat. They do contain some tension. But it’s not as much tension as it could be.

As I was reading, the first line that really sang to me was this one:

This ain’t my first grave, Rennie.

This is interesting because it’s not an everyday kind of utterance. I want to see what happens when we start with this line and shuffle the other pieces in after it. I want to make sure the pov character is immediately identified, and so for the second sentence, we’ll use that action beat that was already in place in the first paragraph. There’s a nice tension between the assertion that she knows what she’s doing and the fact that she can’t budge the shovel. Then Rennie should respond with her line of dialogue, and we’ll use the existing action beat to tag that dialogue. I think that works, and we haven’t had to change a word. All we’ve done so far is shift the bits around.

“This ain’t my first grave, Rennie. I know what I’m doing.” Jane propped her Hush Puppy on the back of the shovel blade and pushed, but nothing happened. She swallowed a curse. Rennie didn’t like it when she cursed.

“You have to stand on the blade, honey. You don’t have the get-up-and-go you used to.” Rennie balanced the big lantern flashlight on her walker as she illuminated the shovel.

So that’s 69 words, and look at all they accomplish. Using almost all dialogue and action and a brief dip into Jane’s thoughts, we’ve established that they’re digging a grave and having some trouble with it. The tension is a bit higher, and it didn’t take long to get there. I’m not crazy about the use of “as” in the final sentence because I think it’s technically incorrect. I don’t think those two actions (balancing and illuminating) are meant to be simultaneous, but are meant to indicate a causal connection. So I might change that last sentence to:

Rennie balanced the big lantern flashlight on her walker to illuminate the shovel.

Now that the opening has a bit more tension, we can build on that foundation. Now we can set the scene with a few more details to ground and orient the reader. Now the use of the plural pronoun will be less likely to confuse any readers because we know who “they” are. We’ll lead into the premise set-up (technically, exposition) with a bit of description. Notice also that referencing the night sky in the first sentence and the time until dawn in the second sentence acts almost like conceptual touchstones, almost like transitions, between the description and the exposition. This is nice and smooth, and again, all we’re doing it rearranging existing pieces.

The night sky sparkled with stars and a half moon, but it wasn’t enough to dig by. They had eight hours before dawn and a lot of dirt to shift. She wished they’d handled this weeks ago, but they’d been hoping one of their contacts would come through at the last minute. Someone trustworthy. Someone who could keep a secret. Someone who could dig. They were both way too decrepit for this.

“Used to be me who dug the graves,” Rennie said.

“Now it’s my turn.” Jane climbed up on the shovel blade like a tightrope walker, and the tip sank into the ground several inches. A tug and a yank, and several cups’ worth of dirt popped free. Pale brown and tough as saddle leather. She piled it to the side on the tarp.

So far, all we’ve done is shift things around to change the impact on the reader. But now, at this point, we need something more. We’re supposed to be in Jane’s viewpoint, and though the pov is technically correct so far, this is the point where we need to get a little deeper. I want to know what it feels like inside Jane’s body and mind right now. Does she feel a sense of victory that she broke ground? Or does she feel that the several cups of dirt is a trifling amount for the effort? We get description and action, which is great, but we want description and action that will really lock us into her perspective.

This can be accomplished in subtle ways. We don’t need to beat the reader over the head with extensive information about Jane’s experiences here. Think of it instead as signals or clues, things the readers can use to piece together the context. Look at the verbs. Do they carry emotional connotations? Climb up — that’s a good, active verb, but it carries only a very weak connotation of success or achievement. (Think about the ways climb is used — climb to the top of the heap, climb the ladder of succees, etc.) That connotation isn’t supported by the concept of tightrope walkers, so even though it’s a good image, I might be looking for something more evocative there. If we want to emphasize her uncertainty about whether she can break ground, we might use balanced instead of climbed. If we want to indicate her frailty, we might use perched. If we want to signal that the climb is performed with determination and will succeed, we might change the tightrope walker for another image. A simple change like that can add some depth and context in a way that will lead the reader to a new understanding of the text without dragging on and on about it.

I also have the urge to insert some internal reaction between the blade’s entry and the tug/yank. Maybe even a single word — Yes! to indicate a sense of victory or pride — would do it. And then I want another internal reaction after the saddle leather. Again, it doesn’t have to be length, but we do want to indicate something of her emotional state. If she’s feeling determined, she might think something like,

Didn’t matter. She’d be tougher. She had to be.

Or, if we want to signal something about how overwhelmed she was feeling, we might use something like,

It surely would be a long night.

The point is not to belabor a point, but to give the reader a character’s interpretation of the action in small, incremental ways. We might add words, but we don’t want to add a lot of words. Just enough to deepen the character perspective.

When we put it all together, we might end up with something like this:

“This ain’t my first grave, Rennie. I know what I’m doing.” Jane propped her Hush Puppy on the back of the shovel blade and pushed, but nothing happened. She swallowed a curse. Rennie didn’t like it when she cursed.

“You have to stand on the blade, honey. You don’t have the get-up-and-go you used to.” Rennie balanced the big lantern flashlight on her walker to illuminate the shovel.

The night sky sparkled with stars and a half moon, but it wasn’t enough to dig by. They had eight hours before dawn and a lot of dirt to shift. She wished they’d handled this weeks ago, but they’d been hoping one of their contacts would come through at the last minute. Someone trustworthy. Someone who could keep a secret. Someone who could dig. They were both way too decrepit for this.

“Used to be me who dug the graves,” Rennie said.

“Now it’s my turn.” Jane mounted the shovel blade as cautiously as a bullrider in the pen, and the tip sank into the ground several inches. Yes! A tug and a yank, and several cups’ worth of dirt popped free. Pale brown and tough as saddle leather. Well, it was a start. She piled it to the side on the tarp.

Rennie sighed. “I wish I could help.”

“You just stand guard and keep my spirits up.” Jane freed another shovel of tight-packed West Virginia dirt. “Good Lord, this ground is hard. Was he this much of an inconvenience when he was alive?”

“More,” Rennie said. “Especially there at the end.”

We started with 254 words and we ended with 261 words, but I think the new version feels faster and more engaging. The bits I added to the breaking-ground paragraph might not be the right bits. The author might want different emotional cues there, and that’s fine. She should use what she likes, not what I’ve suggested. The point is to provide cues that work in the context and allow the reader to bond with the pov character.

It’s a good opening, yes?

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Theresa, thank you for the great feedback on Jody’s pages! RU CREW, did you learn something from Theresa’s line edits that you can apply to your own opening scene?

Author Ed Gaffney (aka Suzanne Brockmann’s hubby) joins us on Monday to discuss screenwriting vs. novel writing. Be sure to join us!

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Bio:

Theresa Stevens is the Publisher of STAR Guides Publishing, a nonfiction publishing company with the mission to help writers write better books. After earning degrees in creative writing and law, she worked as a literary attorney agent for a boutique firm in Indianapolis where she represented a range of fiction and nonfiction authors. After a nine-year hiatus from the publishing industry to practice law, Theresa worked as chief executive editor for a highly acclaimed small romance press, and her articles on writing and editing have appeared in numerous publications for writers. Visit her blog at http://edittorrent.blogspot.com/ where she and her co-blogger share their knowledge and hardly ever argue about punctuation.

I recently had the opportunity to visit the Art Institute in Chicago, which for me must include a swing through the Impressionist gallery. Some of those paintings are like old childhood friends. There is one gallery in particular with several Monet paintings which has been one of my favorite places on earth since I was a kid.

The display hasn’t changed much even with all the recent renovations to the museum. Along one wall are six of the haystack paintings. Another wall shows three large water lily paintings. Across from the water lilies is a wall with several paintings from the London series. Monet tended to paint the same subjects over and over again, even from the same angles — twenty-five haystack paintings, thirty of the Rouen cathedral, perhaps two hundred and fifty paintings of water lilies in his garden — and yet no two paintings are alike.

This is where the lesson lies for us today. Nobody ever said to Monet, “Geez, talk about formulaic. All these haystacks are like art for farm wives.” Yet we hear all the time that romance is formulaic and even “porn for housewives” because it examines a single subject in different varieties. That criticism is foolish, and Monet proves it.

Art, whether paintings or novels, consists of both form and content. For us, the novel is the form. It is built of language, but not just any kind of language; the novel is written in narrative prose. There is a recognized basic structure for this form (beginning, middle, end — or, if you prefer, initiation, rising action, crisis, denouement). From this basic structure, particular structural forms emerge, such as mythic quest structure and fairy tale structure, with archetypal characters beginning to take shape. From there, we can split our examination of novel form into two loose clusters of elements, story elements (plot, character, theme, setting — the things that survive a book’s translation to film) and narrative elements (action, description, dialogue, interior monologue, and exposition — the way we categorize the actual written words on the page). Even though there has been some literary experimentation with form and content, the novel’s form has held fairly steady since its inception. It’s a form that seems to work.

Content, we might say, is specific to a particular work. It’s what we put inside our form to make our specific work meaningful, or it’s what our work is about. It’s what we use to make an intimate connection to our audience. Form is “heroine,” but content is “Minerva Dobbs.” Form is “romantic conflict,” but content is, “Minerva knows Cal bet ten grand that he could get her into bed within a month, but she needs a date to her sister’s wedding so she strings him along for a few weeks.” There are other ways to define form and content, but for our purposes, form stays true from work to work, but content changes.

Photos courtesty of Wikipedia

What Monet did (and what we as romance novelists do in some ways) is extend the definition of form into areas that might otherwise be deemed content. A painter might ordinarily define his painting as “a painting of a haystack” to distinguish it from a painting of a puppy or a battlefield or a melting clock. The content in that case is what makes it unique. But with a series of paintings of haystacks, the haystack itself is as ubiquitous as the canvas, frame, or paint. It becomes part of the form. The content, then, is not puppy vs. haystack, but autumn haystack vs. winter haystack, or sunset winter haystack vs. sunrise winter haystack vs. noon winter haystack.

And so it is with romance novels. Saying that these books are formulaic because they concern themselves with romance is much like saying Monet’s paintings were formulaic because he repeated his subjects. Yes, our books are about people overcoming obstacles and falling in love. That is the form of the romance. Consistency of form doesn’t make all the works the same. What it does, instead, is free the creative mind to focus on particular aspects of the work. For Monet, it was light, season, and weather, and how those would change the appearance of a familiar object such as a haystack. For us romance writers, it’s character and conflict, what keeps people apart, what binds them as a unit.

The story begins with a heroine. She meets a hero. There’s an attraction, but there’s also something keeping them apart. How will the positive impulse overcome the negative barrier? What must the hero and heroine change in order to make that intimate connection? How do the hero and heroine know when it’s love? How do any of us know when love is real? These questions are resolved by the end of the story, which always ends happily with a committed couple.

This isn’t a formula. This is an established structure, a recognized form, and what matters is how the artist innovates within that established parameter. Innovation comes not in the big picture, but in the small details. We see shades of light within love the same way Monet saw it on the haystacks and ponds and bridges. He recorded the way weather changed the appearance of an object. We record the way the resolution of a trust issue can change the course of a life. This is an important matter, worthy of close scrutiny. That we also have a lot of fun with it says not that it’s frivolous, but that it’s satisfying and rewarding.

So the next time you hear someone scoff at romance for being formulaic, smile brightly and say, “If it was good enough for old Claude Monet, it’s good enough for me.”

Theresa

PS. Monet was also ridiculously proficient, something else he has in common with us romance writers. And people love his paintings, much the way readers snap up our books. There are benefits to innovating within a strong form. =)

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Writers, do you write out the basic structure to your novel? Do you seek out the small changes of light like Monet?

Have A Wonderful Christmas Everyone!!! Happy Holidays!

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Bio: Theresa Stevens is the Publisher of STAR Guides Publishing, a nonfiction publishing company with the mission to help writers write better books. After earning degrees in creative writing and law, she worked as a literary attorney agent for a boutique firm in Indianapolis where she represented a range of fiction and nonfiction authors. After a nine-year hiatus from the publishing industry to practice law, Theresa worked as chief executive editor for a highly acclaimed small romance press, and her articles on writing and editing have appeared in numerous publications for writers. Visit her blog at http://edittorrent.blogspot.com/ where she and her co-blogger share their knowledge and hardly ever argue about punctuation.

Last month, we looked at virtue as a defining characteristic of modern heroines. (Link: http://romanceuniversity.org/2011/10/21/ask-an-editor-with-theresa-stevens-3/ ) This month, we’ll talk about the other half of the couple. What makes a male character a suitable romantic lead? The answer can be summed up in a single word: mateability.

Yeah, okay, so I just made that word up. But it suits our purpose here, so let’s add it to our dictionaries.

Mateability (n): a core characteristic indicating that a man is worthy of the protagonist’s lifelong devotion, usually expressed in physical attributes, demonstrations of sociobiological purpose, absence of availability issues, and ability to change.

Keep in mind that the genre romance, like any story that is told and retold in a seemingly endless proliferation of versions, is compelling because it appeals to readers on a deeply instinctive level. Often these retold stories play with paradoxes. Why do people die? Read a murder mystery novel, and you’ll solve the paradox of death on a micro level by figuring out how and why one character died. But the romance novel examines a primal sociobiological paradox which is uniquely feminine: we need a male to ward off predators so that we can raise our children to adulthood in relative security, but men themselves are/can be predators. So how do you choose a good one? How do you know that this male will direct his warrior’s tendencies outward to the enemy, and not inward toward his family? Romantic heroes display all the traits of a warrior, a predator, a dangerous male, and yet by the end of the book are always converted to a perfect and lovable partner.

With this basic paradox in mind, let’s examine the four ways mateability is expressed.

Physical attributes. The romantic hero should have sex appeal, plain and simple. If you’re not sure about some aspect of sex appeal (e.g., can my hero be short?), think in terms of gender differentiation. How are male bodies different from female bodies? Those differences link to attractiveness. Men have longer clavicles, so broad shoulders are an indicator of sex appeal. Men have thicker bones in their faces, so a craggy jaw is sexy. Larger hands, sturdier wrists, taller bodies, thicker muscles — all the things that put our libidos on high alert are also usually aspects of gender differentiation.

Every now and then, I would find a slush manuscript with a hero who was physically disabled. These sometimes resulted in automatic rejections, and sometimes in great, publishable stories. If the disability interfered with his mateability, then the story had to be rejected even if the character was otherwise compelling and the manuscript was otherwise publishable. The penis has to work! But even with a condition that doesn’t interfere with procreation, these stories are risky. You might find a wheelchair-bound hero interesting as an author, but he’ll only be interesting to readers if that doesn’t interfere with his physical suitability as a mate, both in terms of fathering children and in terms of his ability to protect the heroine and their offspring. Or, to put it another way, if he’s in wheelchair, then also make him a rich ex-marine. Find ways to exaggerate other avenues by which the heroes can create a stable, secure environment.

Sociobiological purpose. The human male has two sociobiological purposes: fathering children and fighting off predators. We see these factors expressed in common romance hero “types” — what some jokingly refer to as millionaires, billionaires, cowboys, and sheiks. Add to that list firefighters, SEALs, CEOs, royalty, and, well, every other common male role in a romance novel. These roles are shorthand ways of communicating that this man is capable of securing the area. Capable. That doesn’t mean he’s willing, at least not at first, though certainly he should be willing by the end. So give him the means, if not the willingness, and toss in a healthy dose of horniness, and you’ve got this aspect of the hero covered. Better still, let him fight off some actual predators. (Ever wonder why the rescue scene usually includes some sexy parts? Now you know. Both are important to mateability.)

Absence of Availability Issues. I like to think of this as the “No Actors or Alcoholics” rule. Yes, in real life, there might be plenty of actors and alcoholics who make exceptionally good spouses. We’re not talking about real life, but about a fantasy world populated by types rather than by people. In this case, the types can be laid out on a Goldilocks-type spectrum with respect to emotional availability. On the outer edges are the too-available and too-unavailable types. In the middle are the ones who are just right. The too-available types — actors, athletes, musicians, etc. — are the ones likely to give to other characters what they should be giving to their mate. The too-unavailable ones — addicts, misers, married men, etc. — will never be able to give enough of themselves to be good and worthy partners. Aim for the middle of this spectrum. Reader perception of the edge characters are that these heroes will never change enough to become truly mateable.

This leads into our next point, which is about the nature of heroic change.

Ability to Change. Heroes do not stay constant over the course of the book. In fact, readers don’t want them to. Part of the joy in these stories lies in watching the hero evolve from a single male to a strong mate. We all like to believe in the transformative power of true love, and in the possibility of redemption, and in the notion that the hero’s worthiness can be made evident through things like action and dialogue. But what kind of change works best? In general, any change that moves the hero closer to the heroine is the kind of change that will work. This can be a literal, physical closeness, as with long-distance lovers who choose to relocate. (This is why the hero moves to her heroine in these stories, by the way. It demonstrates his change from single male to strong mate in a direct, external way.) Or this can be a demonstration of emotional closeness, which can take place in any number of forms: consummation, public declarations of love, and so on. The point is that not all change is created alike. You want change that shows the hero’s mateability.

Each of these four factors is important to the makeup of the romantic hero. Skip one, and you are flirting with the possibility that, even if the book sees publication, readers won’t warm up to the guy. And, given that there is so much flexibility within each of these variable attributes, there’s just no good reason to undermine the romantic hero’s mateability. And why would you want to? The goal, after all, is to create a romantic hero that your readers can love.

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What are your favorite traits in a romantic hero? Are there certain types you love to read about more than others?

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On Monday,  author Kate Walker, talks about keeping the pace in your novel.

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Bio: Theresa Stevens is the Publisher of STAR Guides Publishing, a nonfiction publishing company with the mission to help writers write better books. After earning degrees in creative writing and law, she worked as a literary attorney agent for a boutique firm in Indianapolis where she represented a range of fiction and nonfiction authors. After a nine-year hiatus from the publishing industry to practice law, Theresa worked as chief executive editor for a highly acclaimed small romance press, and her articles on writing and editing have appeared in numerous publications for writers. Visit her blog at http://edittorrent.blogspot.com/ where she and her co-blogger share their knowledge and hardly ever argue about punctuation.

In the beginning of the quest monomyth, an extraordinary (predestined and gifted) character is placed into an ordinary environment for safekeeping. He is unaware of his special qualities or of the fate that lies in store for him. But in a wonder tale/fairy tale, the story begins with an ordinary (pure and virtuous) character in a treacherous or unsettled environment. I like to say that it’s Harry Potter versus Cinderella. Harry Potter has gifts and a destiny, and in the beginning he lives with his muggle family for his own safety. Cinderella’s gifts are purity, obedience, endurance, and a general goodness, and in the beginning, because of family trauma and the absented father, her daily environment is hostile and even treacherous. Harry must leave his ordinary world to fulfill his destiny, but Cinderella must confront the evils in her world without leaving it. These are almost perfect opposites.

And it gives rise to a unique problem in romance: the “too good to be true” heroine. Instead of the old-fashioned Cinderella virtues of purity and obedience, though, she comes with a set of modern virtues. She’s impossibly gorgeous and totally unaware of that fact. She’s successful, solvent, generous, smart, kind to children and animals, ambitious without being blind to life’s pleasures, and an upstanding member of her community. She might be a bit downtrodden, and she might struggle to achieve her goals, but she is the kind of woman that a disappointed mother would hold up as an example: Why can’t you be more like Hannah Heroine? She always looks so put together. She’s never in a foul mood. She never would have failed her history final. No wonder we sometimes react negatively to the virtuous heroine’s nature.

We’re aware of this virtue problem without ever spending too much time thinking about its true nature and origins. We talk about giving the heroine flaws in order to make the reader like her better. We talk about what she must learn in order to be a good partner to a man. We talk about making her more normal and less perfect, more relatable and less saccharine, more kick-ass and less of a doormat. All of these things are meant to make her “virtuous” in the fairy tale sense while still making her appealing to modern readers.

This emphasis on flaws can damage both the character and the story, though. Remember that the fairy tale heroine must confront whatever is wrong in her existing world. Usually, this comes in the form of something which is prohibited to “good” people in this world: Don’t go into the woods at night! After this prohibition (or “interdiction,” according to some theorists) is violated, the evil in this world will come forward and a battle between protagonist and antagonist will ensue.

In modern genre romance, the prohibition often might be connected to romance itself. The heroine must not appear too eager for love. She must not yearn for a man, and she absolutely must not scheme for ways to get one. Her friends and family might push her to resolve her reluctance and find a partner, but she will have dozens of reasons or excuses for why this is impossible. She was hurt by a past lover, or she’s too busy, or there’s something in the entire process of looking for a man which she finds deeply tawdry and offensive to her moral sense of self.

I sometimes hear romance authors talk about this romantic reluctance as a type of heroic flaw, but this is inaccurate. They’re related to the conflict, and they’re part of the prohibition or problem in the environment which must be overcome in order for the world to be made right and good for this protagonist. In this sense, then, the arrival of the hero – the all-important first meeting – marks the moment at which the prohibition is violated. As soon as she sees him, whether she knows it or not, whether the text acknowledges it directly or not, she’s going to be turning her attention toward “getting” him.  And she’ll ultimately prevail because of her virtues, not because of any character flaws.

There might be other problems in the environment unrelated to the romantic conflicts which create external conflicts. The heroine might find herself battling supernatural creatures or a board of directors, but regardless of their nature, there will be external problems to solve. And just as with the internal conflicts, her heroic virtues will be tested in the process. This is where the dreaded “TSTL” (Too Stupid To Live) heroine might show up. If we value smartness in a modern woman, then stupid behavior in a hostile environment contradicts that value. The TSTL heroine deserves to fail or even, as the name implies, to die. But the good heroine, the truly virtuous heroine, will be smart enough to defeat the source of the external conflict without earning the reader’s scorn. By the end of the book, the reader will be convinced that the heroine really is virtuous enough to deserve the happily ever after ending. That’s sort of the point: the good guys always win in romance, and there’s no better “good guy” than the heroine, and there’s no better reward than a lifetime of bliss with the hero in the good environment she has created.

So how does this help you as an author? I hope, for one thing, it liberates you from the idea that you must manufacture flaws in order for your heroine to be beloved by readers. What you must do instead is find ways to make her warm and real, to make her someone the readers will relate to and cheer for and never scorn for being somehow too pure or too stupid. Yes, she can have flaws, but those flaws must serve as a means of growth in the context of the story, and they cannot make her ineligible for love. Any flaws she might have cannot undermine her heroic nature, yet they can’t be those cutesy fake flaws such as an overwhelming urge to bake cookies when times get tough. They have to be flaws we can forgive as modern readers, such as a tendency to use genuinely bad language when something awful happens. Or a righteous temper in the face of injustice. An inability to trust easily, a feeling that she has to do everything for herself in order for it to be done right, even a tendency to think of relationships as disposable or interchangeable. None of these take her out of heroic territory, because none of them destroy her essentially virtuous nature in the modern sense.

So before you’re tempted to slap a few flaws on top of a too-perfect character, evaluate those flaws in this context. Ask first whether the flaw will undermine the heroine’s virtue and eligibility for love. Ask next whether the flaw will serve the plot in a direct way. Finally, ask whether the problem is not that the character needs flaws, but that she’s coming across as artificial or dated. Your ultimate goal is to make a good woman who is worthy of victory and reward.

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RU Crew, what are the flaws which you as a reader can’t forgive? Can you think of any stories where the heroine’s flaws walked that fine line between too cute and too awful?

Join us on Monday when Kelly L. Stone explains “Role Modeling as a Way to Writing Success.”  And she’s giving away a 15-page critique, any genre, to one lucky commenter!

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Bio: Theresa Stevens is the Publisher of STAR Guides Publishing, a nonfiction publishing company with the mission to help writers write better books. After earning degrees in creative writing and law, she worked as a literary attorney agent for a boutique firm in Indianapolis where she represented a range of fiction and nonfiction authors. After a nine-year hiatus from the publishing industry to practice law, Theresa worked as chief executive editor for a highly acclaimed small romance press, and her articles on writing and editing have appeared in numerous publications for writers. Visit her blog at http://edittorrent.blogspot.com/ where she and her co-blogger share their knowledge and hardly ever argue about punctuation.

The class is yours, Theresa!

Physical intimacy is an important part of romance. In fact, you might say that it’s what distinguishes a romance from a friendship. In romance novels, the degree of physical intimacy ranges from the implied or subverted to the outright celebration of adventurous sex. If you include scenes of physical intimacy in your stories, here are some tips to make sure those scenes work well.

Consider the Internals First

Before you write the sex scene, decide which character will be the point-of-view character. If you’re uncertain which point of view to choose, consider which character will change the most during the scene. This means determining both characters’ emotional states at the start and end of the scene and being able to accurately appraise which change creates the stronger arc. This can require you to consider the totality of the story and how the scene will unfold. For example, changing from frustrated to satisfied might be stronger or weaker than changing from frightened to secure, depending on the depth of each emotion.

Regardless of the emotions involved, take a close look at the change arc. What can you do to sharpen it up? How can the beginning and end emotions be made deeper without veering into melodrama? Will the arc move smoothly through the scene, shifting from one emotion to the next in increments, or will it be a sharp, sudden change? Which type of arc will have more impact in this particular scene? A lot of this is specific to your particular scene and story, but often, if we think carefully in advance about the emotional arc, we can generate a better scene with fewer drafts.

Consider the Setting From an Emotional Position

Now that you’ve identified both the pov character and the dominant emotions at the start and end of the scene, the next step is to consider ways to use the external environment to highlight the internal emotions. Yes, I know, you want to start writing the fun parts, but the fun parts will be even more fun if you re-evaluate the setting first.

Think about your pov character’s opening emotion. What kind of setting would highlight that emotion? Will that setting also tie into the changed emotion at the end of the scene? If the starting emotion is fear of intimacy, and the ending emotion is newfound trust in the partner, then maybe a slightly unsettling environment will tap into that emotion. In other words, if the heroine is in her own cozy living room when the hero makes his move, her fear might not feel as pronounces as if they’re in a car and he stops dead in the middle of a one-lane bridge. Her safety might not be literally compromised on the bridge as it might be, say, on the railing of a high-rise balcony. But the sense of isolation and exposure and strangeness might be enough to show first, that she’s fearful, and second, that it’s safe to trust him after all.

Consider the Use of Props From an Emotional Position

Now that you know how your characters feel and where the scene takes place, the next step is to examine the environment for props that might help dramatize the emotions. Props are things that can be removed from the environment without resulting in a change in environment. Consider everything – clothing, small objects, big items. How might they be used?

In our one-lane bridge example, what would best tie into the emotional arc, a big van with a bench back seat or a tiny sports car with little room to maneuver? I’ll bet you can make an argument for either, but the point is to figure out which works better for your specific scenario. Should the heroine be in a skirt or trousers? Are there any objects in the car that might help or hinder the sex scene?

We tend to think of props in the erotic romance sense – bindings, blindfolds, toys, and the like – and these are certainly useful props for a particular kind of scene or story. But don’t overlook the surprise value in using an unexpected prop during these scenes. Which would be more memorable, a car scene in which the man ties the woman’s hands with his necktie, or one in which he uses the seat belt for the same purpose? Even if your sex scene will be traditional, you can use props to add layers of emotion. What if they have to race to finish against the oncoming headlights of a big, slow truck?Be inventive. This is a chance to play and flex your creative muscles.

Now, About That Sex

There is one important thing to keep in mind about sex scenes in romance novels: They’re meant to tap into feminine fantasies about good sex. This might seem obvious, but the implications of this core truth are wide-ranging. What are some of the hallmarks of these fantasies? There’s a strong emotional compenent, without question, which we discussed above. Also, the heroine always climaxes, no matter how unlikely or even impossible that might be in real life, unless there’s a compelling plot reason to keep her from finishing. Sometimes, she even crosses that finish line more than once. The focus is on what would feel good – in both the emotional and physical sense – for the woman. But that doesn’t mean the sex will be one-sided because women take pleasure in men’s bodies, too.

So think about your complaints and your girlfriends’ complaints about sex, and then eradicate them from your sex scenes. He finishes too fast? Romance heroes know how to make it last. He falls asleep the second he finishes? Not a chance – our hero likes a good cuddle, though he might revert to focusing on the external plot after sex. He can’t find her g-spot with a flashlight and a map? Come on. This is a hero we’re talking about. Not only does he find it, he teaches it new tricks. He’s not only good at sex in general, but he’s particularly good at it with the heroine because he’s so into her. He pays attention to her responses. He knows how to read her body. He makes her feel gorgeous.

And this is all true no matter what kind of romance novel you’re writing. Even in the sweetest stories, the implication is that he’s eager to get wild with her, and that when that day eventually comes, it will be gloriously fulfilling for her. Yes, for her. Whether implicit or explicit, the sexual content in romances is female-oriented, and that’s something to be cherished. Everywhere else in life, we might have to worry about other people’s needs. But in the pages of a romance novel, the woman gets to be the undisputed star at center stage of a beautiful fantasy. So, writers, have fun with it!

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RU Crew–What are your favorite tips for writing sex scenes? Have you ever read a scene with a really great, unusual prop or setting? 

On Monday, Donnell Bell shares her thoughts on why it’s important to have a good editor.

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Theresa Stevens is the Publisher of STAR Guides Publishing, a nonfiction publishing company with the mission to help writers write better books. After earning degrees in creative writing and law, she worked as a literary attorney agent for a boutique firm in Indianapolis where she represented a range of fiction and nonfiction authors. After a nine-year hiatus from the publishing industry to practice law, Theresa worked as chief executive editor for a highly acclaimed small romance press, and her articles on writing and editing have appeared in numerous publications for writers. Visit her blog at http://edittorrent.blogspot.com/ where she and her co-blogger share their knowledge and hardly ever argue about punctuation.

Flaws From Virtues

In romance writing, we must constantly walk a fine line between creating characters who are heroic and admirable and characters who are too good to be true. Characters who are in conflict but who are not too aggressive, unreasonable, or bad-tempered. Characters who are perfectly suited to each other, but not until the final chapters. This is a difficult balancing act. Tilt the scales too far in one direction, and you might bore the reader. Too far in the other direction, and you might alienate them. 

I hear authors talk about giving their hero and heroine flaws as a way to generate romantic conflict and avoid “too perfect” syndrome. This can be a useful strategy, depending on the flaw. That is, by using this technique, now we have to find a flaw that doesn’t make the hero or heroine unsuitable for a committed romantic relationship. If a man is a violent felon, that’s certainly a flaw, but it’s the kind of flaw that means he’s not good marriage material. So this leaves us playing Goldilocks with lists of character flaws — too icky, too dangerous, too disruptive — until we find one that’s just right. 

This isn’t easy, and it doesn’t always work. But there is another option. By exaggerating an existing virtue until it takes on the dimensions of a flaw, you can create conflict between realistic characters without undermining their heroic natures. 

This technique involves using a little magic word, “too.” Is your heroine independent? This is a good quality. But if she is “too” independent, this can cause problems in her life. Maybe she’s unwilling to ask for help or to take it when it’s offered. Maybe she hides her troubles or becomes overwhelmed with DIY projects. Depending on the specifics of the plot, “too” independent could take on many different dimensions. Almost any virtue can be skewed into flaw territory just by enlarging it and contemplating how too much of a good thing can cause problems. 

Jane Austen uses this technique to great effect in her masterpiece, “Pride and Prejudice.” Darcy’s great heroic virtues are his honesty, his sense of duty, and his protectiveness toward those he loves. All three of these virtues are warped into flaws, or at least into plot complications. For example, Darcy is very protective of his sister Georgianna. This is a good quality in an older brother and in a potential mate. However, because of this protectiveness, he refuses to disclose information about Wickham’s attempt to elope with Georgianna. Taken to an extreme (“too” protective), he continues to protect his sister’s reputation even when doing so will allow a dangerous man to roam tame in good society. This leads to disastrous complications when Wickham runs off with the young and foolish Lydia Bennett. This puts the entire Bennett family in social danger, and Darcy recognizes that it is his own virtue, taken too far, which caused this situation. 

Darcy himself even recognizes that a characteristic can be a virtue when well regulated and a flaw when not. Remember this banter with Elizabeth?

(Darcy) “But it has been the study of my life to avoid those weaknesses which often expose a strong understanding to ridicule.”

“Such as vanity and pride.”

 ”Yes, vanity is a weakness indeed. But pride–where there is a real superiority of mind, pride will be always under good regulation.”

We could go on — Darcy attempt to protect his best friend from a bad match, and hurts Elizabeth’s sister in the process — Darcy is “too” honest during his midpoint marriage proposal — Darcy’s sense of familial duty interferes with his ability to make new friends — really, once you start to examine the book from this angle, you will see, over and over again, that Austen created flaws by exaggerating virtues.

There are several advantages to this technique. First, and perhaps most evident, is that you don’t have to undermine the character’s heroic nature by giving them actual, meaningful flaws. And you don’t have to undermine your own authorial credibility by creating cutesy “flaws” — fake swearing comes to mind as an example — that might be charming but are hardly flaws at all. Finally, and perhaps most meaningfully, the character with the disproportionate virtue can be allowed to cling to this flaw in the belief that he or she is right. This can generate a lot of organic conflict, which is the best kind of conflict, and it can be allowed to become more deeply entrenched without damaging the character. It took a near-tragedy to shake Darcy out of his righteousness, but we forgave him for it, as did Elizabeth, because his errors were born from good qualities.

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So, how can this apply to your work? Does your hero or heroine have a virtue which becomes a flaw? If not, can you see a way to take an existing virtue and blow it out of proportion? How will it affect your plot?

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On Monday,  August 29th, author Kieran Kramer talks about your untapped resource, The Kid in You.

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Bio: Theresa Stevens is the Publisher of STAR Guides Publishing, a nonfiction publishing company with the mission to help writers write better books. After earning degrees in creative writing and law, she worked as a literary attorney agent for a boutique firm in Indianapolis where she represented a range of fiction and nonfiction authors. After a nine-year hiatus from the publishing industry to practice law, Theresa worked as chief executive editor for a highly acclaimed small romance press, and her articles on writing and editing have appeared in numerous publications for writers. Visit her blog at http://edittorrent.blogspot.com/ where she and her co-blogger share their knowledge and hardly ever argue about punctuation.

Some of you will be sending in requested material as a result of the recent conferences. Because you want your submission to be as clean as possible, here are some tips to help you with the final edits. Each item on this list is a common problem in raw work, and it’s something that can get your manuscript rejected. We’ll take these in order of scale, from big picture to small detail.

1. Match the Edges.

Look at the big problem that’s set up in the opening of your book. When is it resolved? If it’s in the last chapter or two, good. If not, your book might have structural problems which will require a fairly extensive rewrite. The general idea is that the opening and ending should match in terms of plot: the major conflict established in the opening should be resolved in the end. (There are exceptions to this rule, such as stories with lead-in conflicts or “false” openings, but those are rare in romance.)

2. Check the Major Characters.

Isolate the scenes in which each of your major characters appears. This is easy to do if you use the cut and paste function in your word processor. Take all the scenes with your hero, and lay them out end to end in a separate file. Then do the same for your heroine. Read these scenes in isolation to evaluate each character’s behavior. Is it consistent? Does it ever lapse into blandness? Is the character’s motivation clear throughout? Are there instances of melodrama?

3. Check the Minor Characters.

Make a list of your minor characters, and for each one, jot down the purpose each serves.  What happens to the plot if you remove that character? If there’s no penalty for removal, then remove the character. If there is a penalty, but it can be resolved by having a different secondary pick up the functions of the cut secondary, then rewrite those scenes accordingly.

4. Measure the Middle.

We already matched the ends of your story to check for one kind of large scale structural problem. Now let’s look at the middle. Make a list of the scenes in the middle of the book. (The middle is everything that happens after the conflict is defined but before the final crisis that leads to the ultimate resolution of the conflict.) Look at the major actions taken in each scene. Can you explain those actions using a “because” statement? If not, it’s time to think about why your characters are taking those actions. If so, check the scene carefully to be sure that this causation is clear on the page. The reader has to be able to understand those reasons.

5. Location, Location, Location.

As long as we’re looking at this list of scenes, make a note for each scene indicating where it’s set. Next, jot down all the ways the setting contributes to the action of the scene. For example, if they’re on a boat, does the rocking motion have an impact on the scene action? If they’re in a restaurant, does the noise level make conversation difficult? Does the scene have symolic relevance of some kind? If the environment isn’t relevant to the scene action, can you think of ways to leverage the setting? Can you think of a different setting that might be more interesting?

6. Scene Openings.

Look at the first five lines of each scene. In that first five lines, do you establish setting, point of view, and some sense of the scene’s purpose? Setting and point of view are essential to ground and orient the reader, but in some cases, we use the openings of scenes to do something a little more omniscient and less personal. Those are special scene openings that require special handling, but for most scenes, you will want to lock down the sense of orientation right away. The scene purpose can be small or large, external or internal, subtle or direct, but it ought to be there in some form. If you get these things out of the way early, then there’s less likelihood for confusion as the scene unfolds.

7. Scene Endings.

Some scenes will end with a sense of things being all buttoned up and neat and tidy. Most scenes will end with a sense of forward movement, though. Even if the scene question is answered, even if the scene problem is solved, the end of the scene should make the reader wonder what’s next. The character might think, “Well, that’s done now,” when thinking about the problem on which the scene focused. But you don’t want the reader to think, “Well, the story’s done now,” and close the book. You don’t have to end on a cliffhanger or make the scenes feel unresolved, but you do have to keep the story moving forward, and sometimes even a subtle reminder of other problems at the end of a tidy scene will keep the reader interested.

8. He Said, She Said.

Scan your pages for quotation marks. Every time a character speaks, do three things. First, check the puntuation and mechanics. Commas, periods, open and close quotes – make sure this is all shipshape. Then make sure the paragraph changes every time the speaker changes, and make sure there aren’t random paragraph changes in the middle of one character’s dialogue. Second, check the tags. Can any of them be converted to beats? Beats (small bits of action attached to dialogue) are stronger than tags (he said, she asked, he exclaimed, and so on). Third, check for whether the identity of the speaker is obvious. If there are three or more characters in a scene, use a tag or beat with every line of dialogue to avoid reader confusion. If there are only two characters in the scene, you don’t have to tag or beat every line of dialogue. You can skip as many as three in a row before reader comprehension might become an issue. And even then, you might be able to skip more, but it’s risky and should be handled carefully.

9. Search and Destroy Mission.

Now we’re getting into the nitty-gritty of sentence mechanics. I recommend using the “find and replace” function in your word processor to change the font color of any overused words or weak words (just, that, so, very, and similar words). Also use the font color change to highlight weak verbs and verbs of being or appearance (was, seemed, looked, and similar). Use it to highlight thought tag words (wondered, thought, pondered, and similar). Finally, use it to change the font color of the letter combination “ing.” This will highlight present participial phrases, though it will also highlight unobjectionable words like finger and sing. You can ignore these safe words, but for everything else you’ve highlighted, revise to eliminate the color changes. Be ruthless. These things weaken your story, and you don’t want to submit a weak story, do you?

10. The Safety Net.

Proofreading is not something to be done quickly or to be taken lightly. I recommend a multi-step process for proofreading, because each step can catch different kinds of errors. First, run the spell-checker. This will clean out all the easy mistakes. Second, read the pages out loud. This will force you to slow down enough so that your eyes won’t skip over any missing words. It will also help you spot clunky rhythms and awkward phrasings. Third, do a separate proofreading pass for punctuation. It can be easy to overlook little details like commas in a regular proofreading pass, so a dedicated punctuation pass will help you catch more mistakes. If you’re worried that you might get sucked into the story again and overlook details during proofreading, then read the paragraphs in reverse order. You can either do all the passes on each paragraph before moving backward to the next, or you can do the entire chapter or manuscript in separate full passes.

These ten steps are time-consuming, to be sure, but then, so is the process of writing a novel. Don’t skimp on the last stages just because you can see the finish line. It’s far better to take a few extra days to make sure everything is clean and tight. Just take it step by step, and before you know it, your manuscript will be ready to dazzle the first reader.

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Do you have any special revision and editing techniques? Share them in the comments!

Thinking of writing erotic romance? Stop by Jennifer Probst’s post Monday to see if you have the right stuff.

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Theresa Stevens is the Publisher of STAR Guides Publishing, a nonfiction publishing company with the mission to help writers write better books. After earning degrees in creative writing and law, she worked as a literary attorney agent for a boutique firm in Indianapolis where she represented a range of fiction and nonfiction authors.

After a nine-year hiatus from the publishing industry to practice law, Theresa worked as chief executive editor for a highly acclaimed small romance press, and her articles on writing and editing have appeared in numerous publications for writers. Visit her blog at http://edittorrent.blogspot.com/ where she and her co-blogger share their knowledge and hardly ever argue about punctuation.

When an agent requests a full manuscript—what does that mean exactly? Do they actually give it to an editor? Who says yay or nay or good lord, why can’t this idiot writer figure out that sharks don’t survive on land–plot hole and re-write necessary?
I have three fulls floating around out there with different agents. At first I was excited. Now after reading blogs and columns I am starting to think that is not such a big deal and the “thanks but no thanks” emails are lurking until my computer senses I’m having a really great day.
Sorry if this question was irritatingly redundant and ridiculous.
Sincerely,
Kristen

Hi, Kristen,
No need to apologize for your question. There’s a lot of confusion about the ins and outs of the submissions process. This is partly because submissions vary a little from house to house and from agent to agent, but it’s also partly because some kinds of information are treated as insider knowledge and aren’t widely disseminated.

Let me start by congratulating you for your manuscript requests. Three full manuscripts requested by three reputable agents? That’s a big deal. Numbers vary, but in general, you can expect most established agents to respond favorably to fewer than five percent of queries. “Respond favorably” in this context means simply to ask for more material.

Most places use some form of multi-step submissions process. First, the author queries or pitches. If they’re one of the lucky and talented few, then the response will be a request for more material. The material can take one of two forms, usually: a proposal consisting of a partial manuscript and synopsis, or a request for a full manuscript and synopsis. Of these two options, the proposal request is more common, though it’s by no means universal.

In any case, the wait time for responses can also vary a lot. A general rule of thumb is that agents turn material around much faster than editors, but there are exceptions. Harlequin, for example, is known to respond to most submissions within about three months, which is considered a very rapid editorial response. I know of one editor at another house whose response time for unagented material runs around four to six years. So, if you’re dealing directly with editors, you’re looking at a window of a few months to several years. But for most agencies, a turnaround time of a few days to a few months is more common.

Another difference between agents and editors lies in the likelihood of receiving a rejection notice. A growing number of agencies no longer send out rejection letters or emails due to the overwhelming volume of submissions received. If so, their submissions guidelines will usually state that they don’t send rejections and positive responses are usually sent in X weeks. In other words, although no news used to be considered good news, no news within a certain time can now be considered bad news.

Some publishing houses are following suit and refusing to send rejections, but this is still a fairly rare practice with publishers. Most publishers will tell you in their guidelines exactly what to send and about how long to wait for a response, whether a positive response or a rejection. Some authors who query a lot of places at once will keep spreadsheets to track all these timelines and responses. There’s a great little free online program at myemailreminders.com which will send you an email on the date you request it. Some authors use that as a memory tickler to let them know that the time for one place has passed, and it’s now safe to send it to the next place on their query list.

You also asked what happens after an agent requests a full manuscript. First, they read it. Based on that reading and their industry knowledge, they decide whether they want to shop it to editors at different publishing houses. No reputable agent will shop your manuscript without first securing some form of agency agreement from you. Sometimes this is a simple phone call in which the agent spells out commissions and other details and you formally agree to the agency representation. But usually, even if there is a phone call, the terms are still formalized in a letter or agency contract. That way, there will be no confusion about what they agreed to do and what you agreed to pay.

After you’ve signed with an agent, that agent will shop your manuscript to the editors most likely to be interested in your work. It’s unlikely that you would talk to these editors unless one of them buys the manuscript. But your agent will keep you informed, in varying degrees of detail, about who has the manuscript and what kind of response it’s getting. Some agents don’t tell you this automatically but will provide it if you ask for it. And some will automatically send you copies of relevant correspondence to and from editors.

If you want to check the specific turnaround times and other relevant information for specific agents, a good source is agentquery.com. For information on publishing house submission guidelines, the best source will be the house’s website. Another good source for both agent and editor information is Publisher’s Marketplace, but there is a charge for access to certain parts of their site.

What other questions do you have about the submissions process?

Theresa

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Join us on Monday, June 27 and Wednesday, June 29 for a Q&A with authors from Harlequin and Silhouette.

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Bio: Theresa Stevens is the Publisher of STAR Guides Publishing, a nonfiction publishing company with the mission to help writers write better books. After earning degrees in creative writing and law, she worked as a literary attorney agent for a boutique firm in Indianapolis where she represented a range of fiction and nonfiction authors.

After a nine-year hiatus from the publishing industry to practice law, Theresa worked as chief executive editor for a highly acclaimed small romance press, and her articles on writing and editing have appeared in numerous publications for writers. Visit her blog at http://edittorrent.blogspot.com/ where she and her co-blogger share their knowledge and hardly ever argue about punctuation.

Recently, several friends were discussing the nature of publishing and submissions. (And by “discussing,” I mean “bemoaning.” Which is fine. Plenty to moan about, after all.) In essence, one of the authors had written the proverbial book of the heart – that one special story that called to her, fell from her fingertips effortlessly, teemed with emotion and conflict and a solid plot, and made her more proud than anything she’s written before or since.

Despite the fact that this book strayed far from the conventions of her chosen genre, she loved it. Her critique partner loved it. She showed it to some other writers, and they loved it. She sent it along to her agent, who said he loved it and started shopping it.

And then? Nothing. Not one nibble, not one suggestion of even potential interest if revisions could be made. The editors spoke with one voice: we can’t acquire this because it doesn’t fit the genre. (We’ll ignore, for the purposes of this discussion, whether the agent selected appropriate editors for this project. I suspect she didn’t, but that’s another issue.)

This led to a rousing debate about the nature of the publishing industry, most of which was highly critical of agents and editors and the process in general. How dare they attempt to confine creativity by imposing genre limitations, how dare they fail to appreciate quality over conformity, how dare they fail to recognize that they work in a field of arts and ideas? Where is the soul in this process? When a wonderful book like this can’t get published, the system must be broken, right?

Not necessarily. The thing is, when it’s on the writer’s desk, a manuscript might be all about art and ideas. But when it lands on an agent’s or editor’s desk, it becomes part of the field of commerce. Books are part of the broader retail industry. At bottom, a published book is a product in search of a buyer.  However, the marketing of books is not precisely like the marketing of other products, because many other products must differentiate themselves from their competitors, and books work on the “same but different” principal.

We frequently mention this “same but different” idea without really explaining it, and there’s a lot of confusion out there about what it means. Think of it like this: books are an art form where the form is as important as the art. The form of the novel involves certain things like story elements and narrative elements presented in ways that add up to a readable story with a beginning, middle, and end. Within this basic form, the stories differentiate into genres which can be identified by broad, shared characteristics: romances are about the formation of sexual relationships, mysteries are about solving crimes, fantasies are about quests in alternate worlds, and so on. And within those basic forms, subgenres and sub-subgenres are formed around other, less broad characteristics, such as the light Regency historical romance which is a fairly short book with no sexual content, comic in tone, set in England during the early 19th century.

When we tell you to study the markets, we’re telling you to examine the existing books to determine their broad forms (story conflicts, complexity of plots, etc.), their genre conventions (romances are about, well, romance), and their subgenre characteristics (setting, length, sexual content, etc.). When we say “the same, but different,” this is the “same” part of the requirement.

Also part of that “same” requirement for romance are things like:

• the heroine’s character (likable, strong, motivated, “virtuousness” in the sense of modern understandings of virtue, etc.),
• the hero’s character (strength, power, protectiveness, sex appeal, etc.),
• what makes a suitable plot (get the hero and heroine together early, create barriers to intimacy, etc.)

Within that form, that set of “same” attributes, we also look for differentiation. This is also where the “art” half of “art form” comes in. But the differentiation shouldn’t break the form; it should only experiment within it.

Why is this? Because genre novels, as a form of folk art, evolve incrementally, by degrees, over extended periods of time. Every now and then an explosive change might be made, but even then, it will probably be a change to one piece of the form rather than the form as a whole. This is why we can have vampire heroes: because someone, somewhere, decided to take the sex appeal of the vampire character and merge it with the sex appeal of a romantic hero in a way that suited the other requirements of the romance genre. This was a dramatic concept that led to the formation of a subgenre, but it doesn’t shatter the romance form. It innovates within the form.

This is the mistake my friend made. She created a book that doesn’t satisfy the basic requirements of the genre, and she tried to sell it as an innovation within the genre. But not all innovations are the same. If you do something that undermines the basic suitability of the characters as romantic partners, your story might still contain elements of romance, but it will no longer be a romance. If your hero is a wife-beating bigamist, if your heroine insults children and kicks dogs, if they don’t meet until the final chapters, you have innovated your book right out of the genre.

And guess what? You can’t get around this by proclaiming that your book is literary. Litfic has its own set of conventions within which it innovates, and it’s far from a dumping ground for books that fail to fit other genres. For example, there might be less emphasis on plot, but there’s always more on language and style. Recent trends in litfic have focused on playing with point of view, narrative conventions, and structure, in particular, so if your book doesn’t accomplish that, it’s unlikely to succeed in that crowded and highly competitive market.

Understand your form. Study recent publications to understand where innovations are taking place – in character archetype? In setting? – and think about how you might innovate in those same aspects without damaging the form. This is much, much harder than it sounds, and it takes a true artist to accomplish it.

Theresa

Want some tips on how to craft “the same, but different” proposals that are appealing to agents and editors? One commenter will win a spot in Theresa’s Power Proposals workshop taking place on the STARGuides workshop loop June 1-14, 2011.

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RU Crew, what about “same but different doesn’t make sense to you? Have you ever written something you knew wouldn’t sell? Don’t forget: one commenter will win a spot in Theresa’s Power Proposals workshop taking place on the STARGuides workshop loop June 1-14, 2011.

Join us next week for a fabulous week-long workshop with Toni McGee Causey. Not to be missed!

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Bio: Theresa Stevens is the Publisher of STAR Guides Publishing, a nonfiction publishing company with the mission to help writers write better books. After earning degrees in creative writing and law, she worked as a literary attorney agent for a boutique firm in Indianapolis where she represented a range of fiction and nonfiction authors. After a nine-year hiatus from the publishing industry to practice law, Theresa worked as chief executive editor for a highly acclaimed small romance press, and her articles on writing and editing have appeared in numerous publications for writers. Visit her blog at http://edittorrent.blogspot.com/ where she and her co-blogger share their knowledge and hardly ever argue about punctuation.

Usually in this column, I answer questions mailed in to the “Ask an Editor” mailbag. Sometimes, though, we do an FAQ post about commonly asked questions. This time, the FAQ is a question you’re more likely to hear rather than ask. “What’s your process?”

I’m leading a workshop now that brought this question to mind in an unusual way. In the context of discussing narrative elements and how to identify and manipulate them, we discovered that some of us draft in present tense or first person, even knowing the finished manuscript will be in third person literary past. It was a fun moment in class — the confession, the “me too” sharing, the giggled relief to know that this is something others do, too. And it made me realize that we talk a lot about character and story and sentences and conflicts and markets and branding and queries, but we almost never talk about the physical process of pulling a book together.

And yet this is the part that non-writers are often most curious about. They know what a book is, but they don’t know what it’s like to write one. How do we find the time? Do we use a pen and paper, or do we type? Where do we sit? Do we prefer silence or music, solitude or public cafes, long working sessions or quick bursts of productivity?

These questions are deceptive in a way, because though they might seem focused on trivial work habits, they are all linked by a common factor. They all can be used to train the creative subconscious into coughing up the goods. This is the part of our mind that handles idea generation, intuitive problem-solving, daydreaming, and similar mental processes. And some believe that just as we can use rote repetition to remember multiplication tables, we can use repetitive habit to train the creative subconscious into generating good story material.

There are a number of ways this training might be accomplished. Perhaps you use the clock as an external cue, stopping all other activity at 9 p.m. every night without fail and writing for 30 minutes, no distractions. Or perhaps you use a page goal or word goal, writing every day until 2,000 new words are on the page, never quitting until that number has been reached. Maybe you start each new writing session by turning on a particular song, lighting a candle, shutting off the internet, or doing some other action to signal to your deeper mind, “It’s your time to shine!” Any or all of these techniques might be workable methods.

It’s also possible that the drafts themselves will incorporate cues to this part of the mind. “Hey, deep mind, it’s time for a new character, so let’s switch to present tense for a bit until you’ve really got a good handle on who this newbie is.” Or maybe you keep multiple word processing files open at once, one for the actual draft, one for stray ideas that pop up when you’re drafting. Maybe your drafts are littered with asterisks and side notes — “This guy needs a better name” or “What kind of car should she drive?” — to soothe your perfectionistic editor while your deeper mind is in charge. These are all very natural things we do in the drafting process, and yet, sometimes these are the very things we’re least likely to discuss.

Maybe that’s because we know that process is somewhat idiosyncratic. Danielle Steele is known for locking herself in her office for a block of days without interruption to generate a first draft all in one long rush. Does that mean this will work for you? Maybe, maybe not. You might be a writer who needs a pause between writing sessions to recharge the battery, or else you risk creative exhaustion.

Or maybe it will work on one project, but not on the next. This is the part of process most likely to turn our foreheads read with blood. “But I wrote my last book while listening to Mozart’s cantata Davide Penitente. Now if I play it, I get this slightly disgusted feeling and spend the afternoon staring out the window. Must be writers block.”

Or might be a need to change the process. Sometimes a particular trigger can become so deeply associated with a particular project that it won’t work for other projects. It’s not writers block. It’s your deeper mind’s way of telling you that the cantata project is finished, and it’s time for something new.

So when you read your favorite author’s Write or Die totals, day after day, in a twitter post, what you’re really reading is a snapshot of her process. She’s trained her mind to generate productive outcome at that pace, consistently, and she’s using a particular tool to help her with that. In fact, whenever another writer talks process, that’s the take-away for the rest of us: here is a training technique that worked, and it might work for you, too.

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What process tricks have you discovered to help you generate words? Do you use them for both drafting and revising? Have you ever tried any tricks that really, really didn’t work for you?

Stop by Monday when debut Young Adult author Inara Scott joins us!

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Bio: Theresa Stevens is the Publisher of STAR Guides Publishing, a nonfiction publishing company with the mission to help writers write better books. After earning degrees in creative writing and law, she worked as a literary attorney agent for a boutique firm in Indianapolis where she represented a range of fiction and nonfiction authors. After a nine-year hiatus from the publishing industry to practice law, Theresa worked as chief executive editor for a highly acclaimed small romance press, and her articles on writing and editing have appeared in numerous publications for writers. Visit her blog at http://edittorrent.blogspot.com/ where she and her co-blogger share their knowledge and hardly ever argue about punctuation.