Today, Ollin discusses the vital role of imagery in creating a compelling story. 

What Charlie Chaplin Can Teach You About Writing A Great Love Story 

Charlie Chaplin is widely known as one of the greatest silent film directors and performers of all time. Even though he stopped creating films decades ago, his influence on storytelling can still be felt, even today. 

Chaplin became one of the first filmmakers/performers to achieve international acclaim and worldwide stardom. Chaplin’s success was largely due to the powerful images he was able to create onscreen. 

He was especially a master at creating powerfully moving portraits of love and romance. When you watch one of Chaplin’s silent films, you can’t help but feel your heart stir. You find yourself having a deep emotional attachment to each character—almost instantly. 

Writers can learn a lot from Chaplin. 

By utilizing powerful images (or tableaus) in our writing, we too can create powerful stories that are both unforgettable and universal.

What is A “Tableau”?

A tableau is a striking or powerful image. 

Tableau’s are everywhere in literature. You might recognize them if I were to list some of them for you: a youthful Dorian Gray gazing into a portrait of his aging self; Anna Karenina walking onto the train tracks just as a train approaches; Jean Valjean, the wanted criminal, making a grand escape through France’s ancient and vast sewer system. 

Powerful tableau’s can also be found in popular films: an adorable-looking alien, named E.T., using his powers of levitation to lift a young boy, and his bicycle, into the night sky; Thelma & Louise driving their Ford Thunderbird convertible straight into the Grand Canyon; the enormous, majestic tree in Avatar falling into a cloud of ash and fire. 

As you can see, many of the best stories ever told have been told through a series of tableaus: powerful, moving images that help drive the emotion of the story forward.

A Study of Charlie Chaplin’s Use of Tableaus 

One of Charlie Chaplin’s best films is called The Kid. 

The plot of the movie is fairly simple, but it’s one of the most heart-wrenching love stories you’ll ever see in film. 

In The Kid, Chaplin reprises his famous role as The Tramp:  a poor, working-class American willing to resort to pretty much anything (even stealing) to get by. 

Now, if we cut the movie down into a series of tableaus, we might see what makes Chaplin’s story so emotionally potent for its audience:

Tableau Number #1: The film begins with an image of The Tramp picking up an abandoned baby at the side of the road. 

Tableau Number #2: The Tramp is having breakfast with a small boy (the baby is now grown up) and we see the Tramp counting the number of pancakes on his plate, making sure the number of pancakes on his plate is equal to the amount on the boy’s plate.

Tableau Number #3: The authorities are holding The Tramp back while the boy stands alone on the back of a truck. The boy is reaching out for his adopted father and is sobbing uncontrollably. 

Tableau Number #4: The Tramp, his adopted son, and the adopted son’s biological mother are re-united on the front porch of an extravagant-looking household. The End. 

As you can see, I don’t even need to give you a detailed summary of the movie itself. You can already gather the whole story just by becoming familiar with just a few of the striking tableaus that Chaplin utilized throughout the film. 

My description of these images in succession may have already stirred strong emotions in you without me having to show you the actual film. 

And that, my friends, is the power of using tableaus.

Utilizing Tableaus To Help You Write A Great Love Story 

Now that we’ve studied the way Charlie Chaplin utilized tableaus in his films, we can try using some of the same techniques to help us create powerful images in our own fiction.

Here’s how to do it: 

1. Cut your story down into 3 simple, tableaus, with each tableau representing the beginning, middle, and end of your story. (You can draw out these three tableaus, or you can write them out, whichever you prefer.) 

2. Once you’ve created your 3 tableaus, ask yourself if these images stir any powerful emotions in you. If they don’t, you may need to work on creating more striking images—images that will really stick in your readers mind and make them feel for your characters. 

3. Finally, insert these three, new and improved tableaus back into your story.

 Good luck! 

Hopefully, you’ve learned something new today: that tableaus can help you improve your romance story. Creating powerful images throughout your novel can help drive the emotion of your story home, and can create a tale as universal and unforgettable as a Charlie Chaplin film. 

***

What are some of the most memorable scenes you’ve seen or read? What techniques do you employ to visualize a scene? Share with us!

***

Author Lucy Monroe presents Because Romance is Healthy on Wednesday, May 23rd.

***

Bio: Ollin Morales is a fiction writer, freelance writer, ghostwriter and blogger. His blog, Courage 2 Create, chronicles his journey as he writes his first novel. The blog offers writing advice as well as strategies to deal with life’s tough challenges. His blog was named one of The Top Ten Blogs for Writers by WriteToDone two years in a row (2011, 2012).

Who is a “good” literary agent?

I recently received the following email in our query inbox, “Dear Sara Megibow, thank you so much for sending a response to my query. Even though it was a form rejection letter, it’s still better than nothing. You are a really great literary agent.”

This is a polite and thoughtful email response. Typically, it’s not necessary to respond to our rejection letter however the nice ones are always better than the mean ones. Still, and this pains me to say it, there is an error in this person’s response. OH how I hate to admit this because I’m sure my rating at querytracker will go right through the toilet. Yikes. Here goes…

An agent’s process for responding to slush pile submissions (and the speed at which they do so) is not an accurate way to evaluate whether or not that agent is good at their job. Some agents personalize each and every response. Some agencies (like ours) send out a response to everything with a form rejection. And some agents don’t respond at all unless they are interested in the book. I know some writers compare notes: “X agent responded in 12 days” and “Y agent didn’t respond at all” and “Z agent’s form rejection is polite” but I’m here to tell you that this is not a good way to evaluate your potential business partner.

Of course I like being known as a “good” agent but let’s go over what that really means.

My job as a literary agent is to turn my clients books into money. Period. Publishing is a business and I represent one potential business plan for a writer. I offer representation when I believe there is financial potential in a book. Reading submissions and presenting books to publishing houses represents the vast minority of my time each week. Negotiating and auditing contracts, selling subsidiary rights (audio, foreign, film, etc), auditing royalty statements and organizing production, publicity and promotions are how I spend my time. These are the tasks I perform to make my clients money. Looking at it from this point of view, I can’t very well call up Tiffany Reisz to say, “I couldn’t shop THE SIREN for film this week as I was responding to slush pile submissions.” The biggest misconception about the job of a literary agent is that we serve the pre-published author. Unfortunately, that’s not true – we exist to make money for our current clients. That’s a harsh and ugly thing to admit online, but it’s the truth. Another way to look at it is like this – if I offer you representation you’d want me spending my time on your books, right?

The Catch 22 of this scenario is that in order to make money for our current clients, we have to HAVE clients and the vast majority of those clients come from the slush pile. So, how to respond to query letters remains a relevant discussion. I stand by our decision to respond to every email even though it costs us tens of thousands of dollars each year to do so (and it takes hundreds of thousands of dollars in sales in order to make the 15% agency fee to cover that cost). I WANT to be known as nice and friendly and I believe that pre-published authors deserve a response. So there you have it – even though it’s not a perfect process, our agency continues to respond to every submission. But remember – that’s not what makes me good at my job.

A GOOD agent is one who can make you money, not one who responds quickly to the slush pile.

In researching agents, here are good ways to evaluate: Does an agent:
- Negotiate competitive contracts, including royalty rates (profit for an author shouldn’t just come from the advance money)
- Audit royalty statements
- Sell subsidiary rights
- Monitor the production process for quality and innovation
- Help organize publicity and promotions
- Communicate the publishing process effectively so all members of the team can be focused on writing and sales as opposed to being focused on errors and misunderstandings
- Work with an author to craft the career the author wants for him/herself

How would you find this out about an agent?
- When an agent offers representation, ASK! (it’s ok – you’re not being nosy. These are important questions)
- Ask to speak with an agent’s other clients to get a feel for some of these behind-the-scenes tasks
- Follow an agent at www.publishersmarketplace.com or on their agency website and watch for subsidiary rights sales or blog posts about these issues
- Meet agents at conferences and ask good business questions
- Follow agents on their blogs and on twitter (I’m on twitter at @SaraMegibow where I try to answer questions) (My boss, Kristin Nelson, blogs at http://pubrants.blogspot.com/ and she’s tackled each of these topics thoroughly over the years)

I hope this information helps! As you are researching agents for your career, remember to focus on the things that agent will do to make you money. Painful as it sounds, responding to the slush pile is not one of those tasks.

Happy writing and thanks again for having me here at Romance University!
-Sara

***

Yes – she went there.  So, what questions or comments do you have about Sara’s post?  What is your experience with agents and the slush pile?  Did it impact whether you would accept an offer of representation? Did it stop you from submitting?

On Friday, the fabulous Theresa Stevens is back!

***

UNRAVELED by New York Times bestselling author Courtney Milan

He has no use for love…

Smite Turner is renowned for his single-minded devotion to his duty as a magistrate. But behind his relentless focus lies not only a determination to do what is right, but the haunting secrets of his past – secrets that he is determined to hide, even if it means keeping everyone else at arm’s length. Until the day an irresistible woman shows up as a witness in his courtroom…

 

But love has other plans for him.

Miranda Darling isn’t in trouble…yet. But she’s close enough that when Turner threatens her with imprisonment if she puts one foot wrong, she knows she should run in the other direction. And yet no matter how forbidding the man seems on the outside, she can’t bring herself to leave. Instead, when he tries to push her away, she pushes right back – straight through his famous self-control, and into the heart of the passion that he has long hidden away…

Bio:

Bio: Sara Megibow, Associate Literary Agent
Nelson Literary Agency, LLC

Sara has worked at the Nelson Literary Agency since 2006. As the Associate Literary Agent, Sara is actively acquiring new clients! The Nelson Literary Agency specializes in representing all genres of romance (except inspirational or category), young adult fiction of all subgenres, science fiction/ fantasy and commercial fiction (including women’s fiction and chick lit). Sara is an avid romance reader and a rabid fan girl of super sexy and intelligent stories.

Nelson Literary Agency is a member of AAR, RWA, SFWA and SCBWI. Please visit our website http://http://www.nelsonagency.com/for submission guidelines, FAQs, resources and sample query letters. Sara’s Publisher’s Marketplace site (www.publishersmarketplace.com/members/SaraMegibow) is a great place to find more about her personal tastes, clients and recent sales. You can also cyber stalk Sara on twitter @SaraMegibowHow an agent chooses what books to read.

She was born Kathleen Erin Hogg in Alexandria, Louisiana, the youngest of eight children. Her father passed away when Kathleen was only twelve. Raised by her mother and older sisters, Woodiwiss remarked once that “every single one of us had minds of our own even then; I was no exception. I suppose that carried over into my creations of heroines who weren’t weak-willed.”

Her revolutionary debut novel, The Flame and the Flower, was rejected by agents and hardcover publishers alike for being too long – and at 600 pages, it put the smaller historicals that were popular to date to shame. Woodiwiss then submitted it to Avon, who purchased the novel in paperback. It sold over 2.3 million copies in its first four years. Way to go!

Published in 1972, The Flame and the Flower was a historical romance, with an alpha hero – and real sex scenes. Not just hints and tremors, ocean waves crashing in the distance or murky feelings, but actual sex scenes. The Flame and the Flower is credited with starting a new romance writing phenomenon, following the hero and heroine into the bedroom. Novels following this breakthrough book by Woodiwiss contained longer plots, very intimate sex scenes and a stronger heroine.

Kathleen Woodiwiss gave her heroines spunk. Have you ever read Shanna? Now there’s a girl with a boatload of spunk! Determined to meet her father’s requirement of marrying, she instead married a prisoner meant for hanging – she’d be married as per her father’s request, but have no husband to burden her down while she searched for true love. =) Of course the prisoner didn’t hang, and guess who her true love turned out to be? Absolutely.

Kathleen’s stories absolutely took me away to another time and place. With The Wolf and the Dove the castles, serfs and wars of Normans versus Saxons came alive. With Ashes in the Wind I discovered the horrors of the Civil War. In So Worthy My Love, we met a feisty heroine, an irritable – yet dashing-hero and got a fine taste of Kathleen’s sense of humor, when two bungling would-be kidnappers take the wrong woman. Kathleen’s mastery at story-telling kept me, and many others I’m sure! Up until the wee hours of the morning, trying to read just one more page.

In my own personal collection, I have at least two of every book, as well as approximately seven different copies of Shanna. Just in case. =)

Kathleen passed away, July 6, 2007, with twelve novels to her credit and over 36 million sold.

Next time RU authors, you write a particularly spunky heroine into your latest romance manuscript, give a nod of thanks to Kathleen Woodiwiss.

***

RU Crew – What book and/or author has made a difference in your writing or reading?

Join us on Wednesday when we chat with agent Sara Megibow about who is a good literary agent?

***

Hi all—it is always a pleasure to return to RU for lively discussions on writing. Thank you, crew, for having me back!

Chaos? Tame It So You Can Write.

I’ve always loved the Friday theme here, because chaos is how I start every manuscript. Literally. Look up chaos in the dictionary and you’ll see one definition states: “the formless matter supposed to have existed before the creation of the universe.”

Now, let’s be honest—when you write a book, don’t you feel a little like the all-knowing Creator? There’s joy in the creation of a story, fleshing-out the characters, unfolding the plot, the revelations of evolving emotion. It’s thrilling and cathartic. But it can be hard to break through from total chaos to the point where that story begins to really take shape.

It’s that shape that makes all the difference. Because a well-structured story speaks to readers. Don’t misunderstand—I’m not going to give you the magical formula for a story structure. I don’t believe there’s just one. Every story is organic, but just like every plant and animal that breathes life, every story will have a structure of its own that defines the shape.

How do you know when you’ve found it? The key evidence of structure is clarity. This means clean writing, well-chosen, powerful words strung together to weave a story that not only engages the reader, but succeeds in making the reader believe that every choice made at every turning point was absolutely the right and natural choice. It’s clear descriptions, clear actions, a voice and style that are natural to the story and engage the reader.

I’m not prescribing an info dump at the beginning of your book. But as each piece of information is revealed, it must be a clear and logical fit with the character’s previous actions. It must have meaning (even if the reader isn’t clear yet what the full meaning is). Highlight useful information to build clarity and cut the extraneous details that muddy the story.

Often, I find, clarity is lacking from my first draft. It comes with the revising and the polishing. That’s because I need to see the whole story before I can decide what elements need to clarified, what points need to be revealed when, what aspects of the characters will speak to the reader. I storyboard my story after the first draft to find all the lumps and bulges and sags in its shape. This is when I structure the story—again, not to any one formula, but to its natural shape. (See my former RU post on Linear vs Non-Linear Storytelling for a bit more on structure.)

Another important factor I find to achieving clarity with my story is focus. My focus. Focus is clarity’s friend and chaos’s worst nightmare. Focus allows us to immerse ourselves in the world of our story.

Ever been snorkeling or scuba diving? Try this analogy. Chaos is being thrown into the water with a mask and some sort of breathing apparatus (snorkel or tank). You have to get your bearings, clean your mask/visor. You have to come to terms with not breathing through your nose. You have to acclimate to water temperature, waves, wind, sun. I swear, it takes me fifteen minutes or more to even dunk my face below the water.

But when I do, I immerse myself in that world. The filtered light, the sounds of bubbles (yes, you can hear bubbles beneath the water) and splashes, the power of my limbs moving me through the water. I lose myself and simply exist while I watch fish and plants, corals and turtles, eels and starfish. I become one with the habitat and cease to think about anything that happens above the water.

Total immersion with your story leads to faster, cleaner drafting and better clarity of the final draft. But in today’s techno-speed, multitasking world, that kind of focus can be hard to achieve. Email and social media beckon us. We may have current releases to promote, blogs to write and read, a web site to update. We have contracts to review, negotiations to consider, readers we want to connect with, reviews we want to celebrate or wish we could ignore. An author’s life requires more than just writing fiction these days.

We want to immerse ourselves, but there’s always something making us bob our head above the water line, break focus, get slapped with a wave and forget how to breathe. Some authors learn to adapt and happily churn out pages in the midst of household chaos. Others, like me, flail about, trying to control the chaos (or ignore it) long enough to get in a few thousand words here and there.

If you’re a fellow flailer—or perhaps a debut author or someone who weeps every time technology changes—I invite you to visit Author E.M.S., a new online community for authors that I’ve started to build with the instrumental assistance and great advice of Kelsey Browning. The web site acts as a resource library filled with tools and tidbits to help answer your business questions so you can get back to writing fiction. Save Time. Reduce Stress. Improve Focus. Watch our intro video.

You may not always conquer chaos, but you can tame it in both your fiction and your life as a writer. Take the time to build structure in your writing day, find the organic shape of your social media interactions and clarify a plan that balances new fiction with necessary promotion.

***

What do you find to be the most chaotic part of your writing life or writing process? Have you experimented with different structures?

On Monday, May 7, C.J. Redwine returns with her monthly column. Join us!

***

Bio:

Amy Atwell worked in professional theater for 15 years before turning from the stage to the page to write fiction. She now gives her imagination free rein in both contemporary and historical stories that combine adventure and romance. When not writing, Amy runs the WritingGIAM online community for goal-oriented writers and has recently launched the Author E.M.S. online resource library. An Ohio native, Amy has lived all across the country and now resides on a barrier island in Florida with her husband and two Russian Blues.

Visit her online at her website, Magical Musings, Facebook, Twitter and/or GoodReads.

Adam Firestone takes questions at the OVRWA workshop

Romance University: At an Ohio Valley RWA workshop in April, you demonstrated how to set up a timeline charting the sequence of events in an action scene (this applies to action scenes in any fiction genre). The key, as I recall, was to determine if the timeline supports the required plot element. I think you called this the Dynamic Entry Sequence. Could you elaborate on that for us?

Adam Firestone: Sure! I think that a bit of explanation as to where this comes from may be useful. I’ve worked in the defense industry for many years as a “systems engineer.” Systems engineering is an interdisciplinary branch of engineering that focuses on the design and management of complex engineering projects over their entire life cycle, from concept to retirement.

I’ve designed systems involving naval mine warfare, amphibious warfare, countermine and demining operations and cruise missiles. All of those systems have a temporal component that is critical in determining system validity, or suitability for use in the intended environment. That is, a system may operate perfectly, but simply take too long a time (or, too short) to do the job it’s meant to do.

Let me give you an example. Let’s say we have an air to ground missile system designed to kill air defense radar. The missile system has to do a number of things to make this happen. For example, it’s got to acquire the target’s emissions, provide an indication that it’s ready for launch, get launched from the attack aircraft, start the motor, ride the target emissions and successfully detonate when it hits the target. The prototype does all of this beautifully, and the engineers throw a wild party to celebrate. Well, as wild a party as engineers ever throw. Wouldn’t want to bend the slide rules too much…

Meanwhile, the program manager, a former Wild Weasel pilot (Wild Weasel pilots flew missions expressly intended to suppress enemy air defenses.) walks in with a very dour look on his face.

“What’s wrong, Burglar?” says one of the engineers. (Former pilots, by the way, always go by their call signs…)

“Exactly,”says Burglar. “For your information, it takes a Greyhound twenty seconds to acquire, two to launch, and one point five to get to the target aircraft. That’s twenty three point five seconds. That means that while your missile is still attached to my wing, thinking about what the *$&#!!@ it wants to do, the bad guys have put a missile right into my air intake, and I’m flying with the angels. Epic FAIL.”

In this case, while the system worked as advertised, it was unsuited for the job because the functional timeline failed to support the operational reality. Similarly, when a writer creates scenes, she may get the detail exquisitely correct, but, due to the cumulative real-world time elapsed for each detail, wind up with a scene that doesn’t ring true, or worse, derails the plotline.

Adam with members of OVRWA

RU: You used the term “Sequence Analysis” to describe this process. “Violent action,” my notes say, “is rapid action, a complex sequence of events.” This process includes decomposing the sequence into Atomic Events, analyzing each event for components and deciding what has to happen first. What sort of components should an author look for?

AF: You do this every day without thinking about it. When you want to make sure there’s food in the fridge, you “Go grocery shopping.” But really, grocery shopping is a collection of a number of atomic events, each of which can have plot impacts. A simple decomposition of the Grocery Shopping process might look like this:

1. Grab list from fridge.
2. Walk to garage.
3. Get into car.
4. Open garage door.
5. Exit garage.
6. Drive to supermarket.
7. Park car.
8. Enter store.
9. Collect products.
10. Checkout.

One or more of these may be broken down into sub-events. We could probably break down “collect products” into another ten (or if you’re a particularly picky shopper, more) sub-events. The important thing for writers to remember is that each sub-event both takes time and is the entry point for a plot element.

In the case of the former, this helps to avoid situations where a character’s back is figuratively turned for fifteen minutes and an hour’s worth of story happens. In the case of the latter, it provides the author a number of potential springboards. For example, the car keys could be dropped when the heroine is getting into her car, and as she unexpectedly bends over to retrieve them, she might spoil the assassin’s sight picture and dodge a bullet.

Becke Martin Davis with a US M-4 Carbine - holding it all wrong, of course!

RU: You cautioned us not to brush off tricky details in an action scene, assuming it will all come together in the end. “They can just…”, you said, isn’t a satisfactory answer, particularly if it breaks the law of physics. My notes include process model, over watch scenario and other mysterious terms. Can you give us an example of a “They can just…” plot twist that ignores natural laws?

AF: It’s a longhand way of pointing to Occam’s Razor. Paraphrased, Occam’s Razor says that the simplest answer to an issue is usually best. For our purposes, this means that authors shouldn’t make characters do inexplicable or extraneous things. For one example, a character (other than in a paranormal story) can’t traverse a three mile distance in five seconds. For another, unless it’s absolutely necessary for the story, a character shouldn’t need to load her pistol at superhuman speed before she uses it.

RU: In a recent post on your blog, you noted that handguns aren’t very good at what they’re intended to do—which is not to kill, but to defend. Timing, as you noted, is critical:

Handguns aren’t especially good at providing effective personal protection. Let’s look at an illustrative example:

It gets worse, by the way. The average person can run seventy yards – that’s most of the way across a football field, folks – after being fatally shot with a handgun. Given that, in the above case, Bert may very well die after Alice shoots him, but not before he carves Alice like a Thanksgiving turkey. From the example and the timing (all of which is real, by the way), we can equate “effective personal protection” with “near instant incapacitation.”

Bearing that in mind, what defensive weapon and ammunition would be optimal for our heroes and heroines in a similar situation?

AF: I’m going to assume that you won’t let me arm your heroine with an AT4 antitank rocket or an M4 carbine with an underbarrel M203 grenade launcher , and that we’re limiting things to handguns. It’s important to realize that with handguns, as can be seen from my blog excerpt above, it’s really about multiple hits and shot placement.

It’s an article of faith in defensive handgun training that the threat is engaged with two rapid shots (a “double tap”), assessed to determine if it is still a danger, and either engaged again or attention is shifted to a new threat. Given that I’m a belt and suspenders kind of guy, I’m more a fan of what is called the “Mozambique Drill.”

This tactic, according to legend, derived from an experience by a Rhodesian mercenary during the Mozambican War of Independence. The Rhodesian, armed with a 9mm Parabellum pistol, turned a corner and bumped into a terrorist with an AK-47. The Rhodesian double tapped the terrorist, two rounds to the chest, but the terrorist didn’t go down. Taking deliberate aim, the Rhodesian shot the terrorist in the head. This time he went down and stayed that way. A Mozambique Drill, then, is a quick double tap to the chest followed by a deliberate aimed shot to the head.

It isn’t about being bloodthirsty, it’s about stopping someone who wants to do very, very bad things to you. Useful in plot situations where the bad guy is wearing a vest!

Anyway, the “best” is a combination of the largest and most potent caliber the character can carry that’s consistent with the story – it may be a pistol in some cases and a rifle in others, the most effective defense ammunition available – usually some form of jacketed hollowpoint and effective control of the firearm.

Author Kay Stockham at the OVRWA workshop

RU: In a sequence diagram, time is vertical—I think I’ve grasped that concept. In the workshop, you discussed breaking the diagram components into the technical and operational aspects of the scene. How does an author determine which category an event falls under?

AF: Operational refers to the character’s or the story’s goal. The character might need, to, oh, I don’t know, kill a dragon with a pistol. The technical refers to the means by which the goal or objective is achieved. Continuing the dragon killing example, the technical means would be the pistol itself. The writer should compare the technical means to the operational requirements to see if the two mesh.

For example, a 9mm Parabellum Glock, given the currently popular crypto-biology of dragons, wouldn’t work, and would likely turn off readers who are knowledgeable paranormal fans and gun buffs. A modern incarnation of the Confederate LeMat revolver firing a custom shaped charge shell would fulfill the scene’s technical requirements and resonate well with a wide spectrum of readers. To reiterate, operational equals the “what,” technical is the “how.”

RU: In the example I quoted earlier, you noted that an average man can run 21 feet in about 1.5 seconds. Is it necessary to know this kind of information, as well as details like the time it takes to shoot a gun or the speed of the bullet before we can create an accurate timeline?

AF: The short answer is “yes.” Timelines are as much a product of the “how” as the “what.” If you don’t have a handle on the mechanism by which the scene is effected, then the scene fails. This spans genres and historical periods. For example, a realistic description of transportation by horse requires at least some understanding of the horse’s carrying capacity, average speed, food and rest needs and the effects of terrain. Taking that a step further, you have a system consisting of horse, rider and environment and writing effectively requires familiarity with all three.

RU: Do you have any other tips for choreographing action scenes?

AF: Can I be shamelessly self serving for a moment? The best tip I can give is to retain me as a consultant to help with your novels.

Following that, the answer is to learn as much as you can as often as you can. Knowledge of the “how” makes the vision of the “what” much easier to convey. In the end, writing is about creating and sharing a vision with the reader, and the more you know, the richer, more complete and more plausible that shared vision will be.

RU: Thank you so much for sharing your expertise with us!

***

Do your stories include action scenes? Do you plan them out step by step?

Join us Friday when author Amy Atwell discusses taming chaos in story structure.

***

Bio:

Adam Firestone brings more than 25 years of experience with weapon systems including small arms, artillery, armor, area denial systems and precision guided munitions to Romance University. Additionally, Adam is an accomplished small arms instructor, editor, literary consultant and co-author of a recently published work on the production of rifles in the United States for Allied forces during the First World War.

Adam has been providing general and technical editing services to authors and publishing houses specializing in firearms books since the early 2000s. Additionally, Adam provides literary consulting services to fiction authors including action scene choreography, technical vetting and technical editing. In this line of experience, Adam has had the fortune to work with well known authors including Shannon McKenna and Elizabeth Jennings.

You can read Adam’s full bio here. Check out Adam’s blog, Arma Virumque Cano. He’s also on Facebook

I’d like to thank Romance University and Becke Davis for inviting me to blog today. What author doesn’t love getting a chance to chat with readers!

For those who don’t know me, I’ve been published for going on eight years now. I started out in ePublishing then progressed to traditional New York publishing. I still have my feet in those two venues, but I’ve just recently started releasing my old eBooks via the self-publishing route.

Self-publishing. It’s changing the entire publishing landscape. Authors have more freedom and readers have more choices. However, a quality read is one thing every reader wants in a book. Quality means different things to different people, but one thing’s certain, a competently formatted and edited story makes for a better book. It’s a criterion the reading community reiterates on a consistent basis.

When a reader buys a book, they want to be entertained. When they’re deep into the story, readers get really irritated when they’re continuously stumbling over typos, misused words, or other issues that an eye for detail would have caught. In other words, readers want to enjoy a great story uninterrupted, but finding a good read is like mining for gold. Word-of-mouth continues to be a primary source of readers finding a great story, but another way is an author brand.

One such author brand is Rock*It Reads whose members include Monica Burns, Pamela Clare, Lila DiPasqua, Cheryl Holt, Vanessa Kelly, Kris Kennedy, Margo Maguire, Mia Marlowe, Elisabeth Naughton, Sharon Page and Joan Swan. We are traditionally published authors committed to producing the best quality self-published reads possible. We do that by ensuring our self-published books receive a strong editorial review, go through a solid copyediting process, and are properly formatted for a multitude of popular eReaders.

Branding isn’t a new concept in marketing. It’s about creating a recognizable product. For instance, Ellora’s Cave is known for eErotic romance. Harlequin is another brand readers recognize. When you pick up a HQ Intrigue, Presents, SuperRomance, etc. you know the exact type of read you’re buying. It might be written by an author you don’t know, but as a consumer, you’re thinking, hey I enjoyed the last Intrigue I read, let me try this new one.

While branding isn’t a new idea, an author brand is groundbreaking in the self-publishing industry. Rock*It Reads is the first group of its kind to develop a specific logo for our self-published books. We each publish our individual works, contract with cover artists; copyeditors, content editors and formatters; and we set our own prices. But once we’re ready to release our self-published works, we add the Rock*It Reads logo to the cover and put it up on our website. We are not a publisher. We’re just creating a recognizable brand readers can trust when it comes to a quality read.

The Rock*It Reads logo is a visual representation of quality. It says the Rock*It Reads authors care deeply about giving readers the best possible reading experience by taking into account the little things that drive readers crazy. While you might not like the story, you’re getting a read that is strong on the basics of self-publishing. These are reads that can go toe to toe with any book a traditional publisher puts out.

One of the really positive outcomes the Rock*It Reads group has seen in its growth is our partnership with Barnes and Noble. We approached Barnes and Noble about the possibility of doing a column promoting the gems of self-publishing romances that might appeal to readers. Barnes and Noble were enthusiastic about our proposal, and as a result the Love Rocks column at BNReview.com was born.

We’re not a review column, and we don’t want to be. We’re not about analyzing books. We’re just a group of readers, who happen to be authors, chatting about self-published romances we’ve found and fell in love with. We want to build a community where we chat with readers about the self-published romances they’ve enjoyed reading. And like those readers, we’ll talk about books we’ve pulled out of cyberspace and fell in love with.

There were a great many puzzle pieces to work through before Rock*It Reads became what readers see now. It took a lot of hard work, but we believe it’s worth it. We also fully expect other groups to form and develop their own brands. We see that as a good thing for readers. Readers’ expectations for a quality read is what drove us to start Rock*It Reads.

As other groups catch onto the idea of author brands, readers can expect to find even more self-published gems they might not have found otherwise. Author brands that are committed to quality make it easier for readers to find books they’ll enjoy without the major pitfalls of books that don’t have a recognizable seal of quality. So check us out at RockItReads.com, I think we have a few of those gems you’ve been looking for in self-published romance.

***

How many of you read e-books? Have you wished for higher quality standards in self-published books?

On Wednesday, weapons expert and literary consultant Adam Firestone answers questions about choreographing direct action scenes.

***

Bio:

Monica Burns with Charles Paz (Mr. Romance 2009) at RT earlier this month.

From the days when she hid her stories from her sisters to her first completed full-length manuscript, she always believed in her dream despite rejections and setbacks. A workaholic wife and mother, Monica believes it’s possible for the good guy to win if they work hard enough.

Monica is a survivor, and it’s a topic she has become well versed in. A survivor of date rape at the age of 19, writing erotic romance has aided her in the life-long process of healing. Her writing has helped her reclaim some of her self-worth, and you can read her story here.

Find Monica at her website, on Facebook and on Twitter. Monica also blogs at Barnes & Noble Review, Love Rocks.

Welcome back, Theresa!

This month we continue our line editing series with an entry that gives us a chance to talk about content editing as well as line editing. Let’s start by reading the full excerpt.

Sienna Edwards loved the feel of power and the roar of the engine right beneath her. She easily moved through the thick Chicago traffic on her beloved Suzuki Hayabusa. She didn’t know of any more powerful feeling in the world than the wind rushing through her long curls and the honks from upset drivers.

Thoughts whirled around inside of her head and as usual were spinning out of control on her birthday. A horrible day to her if she had to be honest about it. Normally everyone got older and that hadn’t been what bothered her, it was the past birthdays, or the lack thereof. Life wasn’t always as peachy as people thought, but she was determined to have fun on this particular birthday, finally being able to spend it with friends that truly cared.

Through the thick fog that settled throughout the city, Sienna could finally make out her destination from a distance. The club Diablo announced itself to the world with glowing red lights and the flashlights that seemed to make it all the way to the sky. Since her and her friends knew the owner, they were frequent visitors. The fact that her kind could also feel completely safe there, only added to its appeal.

With a motorcycle, curbside parking did not take long to find. Before she managed to perch the bike and start walking towards the entrance, Sienna pinned her hair back in a messy bun with a handy chopstick that rested between her breasts.

Glares definitely lingered on her small but endowed figure which had been accented by the tight black leather pants, the knee high stiletto boots, and the tight black V-neck t-shirt that showed the top of her breasts. Men were definitely attracted to her, which she enjoyed, though didn’t let on. After one look from her in their direction and the whole group of guys that stood smoking and waiting to get in, averted their eyes.

“Hey my lady,” the bouncer smiled as she walked up. James, one of her own, knew her since before the bar even opened. The fact that he called her his lady always flustered everyone else. James, being a man easily over six feet tall with muscles that gave Schwarzenegger a run for his money, could definitely be mistaken for a common convict. Tough though he may be on the outside, Sienna knew all too well how a gentle of a soul he could be.  His mate being one to attest to that fact first and foremost. Cutting through the entire line, to a mass of groans and some appreciating whistles, she stood before him.

“Hey James. Not being too mean I hope,” she motioned towards the line before giving him a slight peck on the cheek.

“Nah, you know me. Just wanna build the suspense up a bit,” he smiled wickedly, “but you go on and have fun. Lauren and Sonya area already waiting for you,” he said lastly and turned his attention to the next guy in line causing trouble. No one could get past James especially with his hunter senses.

My first response to this is that it’s inconsistent. Sienna could very well end up being an interesting character, but in this specific moment in time, she’s not as clear as we want her to be. The line editing in cases like this has to start with something more akin to content editing. We have to examine the way the character is coming across on the page, and we have to do what we can to shape her up – but on a sentence and paragraph level rather than on a scene and story level.

Take another look at the first two paragraphs. Look at them separately, and then look at them together.

Paragraph 1:

Sienna Edwards loved the feel of power and the roar of the engine right beneath her. She easily moved through the thick Chicago traffic on her beloved Suzuki Hayabusa. She didn’t know of any more powerful feeling in the world than the wind rushing through her long curls and the honks from upset drivers.

Okay, so (ignoring for the moment the line editing concerns), this is a paragraph about a woman who feels free and powerful on a motorcycle. There’s something uplifting and bold about her in this moment. Because of the repetition in power and powerful, we might decide she’s an ambitious, power-hungry person. Because of the repetitions in loved and beloved, we might also decide she’s a force for good, maybe even big-hearted.

But then we get to paragraph 2:

Thoughts whirled around inside of her head and as usual were spinning out of control on her birthday. A horrible day to her if she had to be honest about it. Normally everyone got older and that hadn’t been what bothered her, it was the past birthdays, or the lack thereof. Life wasn’t always as peachy as people thought, but she was determined to have fun on this particular birthday, finally being able to spend it with friends that truly cared.

This is not the same character from paragraph one, is it? This character is mopey, overwhelmed, maybe a little self-pitying, though she’s trying to overcome it. She has bleak thoughts, which she might be trying to replace with more positive thoughts, but nevertheless, this paragraph is packed with a kind of gloominess. Spinning out of control, horrible day, feeling gypped on past birthdays, life isn’t peachy – these add up to a negativity that seems hard to reconcile with the power-lover from the first paragraph.

So what is the character’s dominant mood in this moment? The reader won’t know because the text hasn’t told her. The character could be exhilirated from the ride, or she could be the determined-to-be-cheerful sad girl from the second paragraph. Because it’s unclear, the reader will have a harder time bonding with the character. So the first step here is to figure out what she’s really thinking and feeling in this moment, and stick with it. The character might be complex enough to feel everything currently on the page, but that kind of complexity is best developed over the whole text.

Next up, paragraphs 3 and 4 – which I won’t repeat here – focuses mainly on the fact of travel to a destination. It’s my standard practice, when an author presents a first scene with travel details, to cut most of this run-up material and start at the moment of arrival. Some editors might let this kind of short leading material to stand, but I usually won’t. The moment of arrival is almost always going to be more interesting than the moments of travel, and the descriptive details can be blended into the actual arrival. So I would cut most of what’s in these two paragraphs, though some of the details might be seeded into the rest of the scene.

One option might be to start with the moment she parks the motorcycle – that way, you still get the motorcyle into the text – and go from there. Establish her dominant mood in the first paragraph, and don’t dilute it with material that doesn’t support that mood. For the purposes of demonstration, I’m going to choose “determined to have fun” as her dominant mood in the revised excerpt below.

You can use the conversation with James to bring out the fact of her birthday, and some of the other details can be salted in along the way, too. But you don’t need to explain a lot at this point. Your goal is to hook the reader and build a quick bond, and a little bit of mystery will help with that.

Just for an example, I’m going to take a swing at this. But this is for demonstration only. I’ll use your words as much as possible, but I’m going to trim and tighten quite a bit so that the focus is on the action and interaction.

Sienna Edwards perched her beloved bike, a Suzuki Hayabusa, next to the curb and walked toward the club entrance. The club Diablo announced itself to the world with glowing red lights and the flashlights that seemed to make it all the way to the Chicago sky. Sure, she came here all the time, but tonight was different. It had to be. With a determined little sigh, Sienna pinned her hair back in a messy bun with a handy chopstick that rested between her breasts.

The group of guys that smoked and waited in line lingered on her small but endowed figure which had been accented by the tight black leather pants, the knee high stiletto boots, and the tight black V-neck t-shirt that showed the top of her breasts. Men were definitely attracted to her, which she enjoyed, though didn’t let on. Not even tonight, not even when her one and only goal was pleasure. She cut through the entire line to a mass of groans and some appreciating whistles, until she stood before the heavily muscled bouncer.

“Hey, my lady.” James, one of her own shapeshifting kind, had known her since before the bar even opened.

“Hey James. Not being too mean, I hope.” She motioned towards the line before giving him a slight peck on the cheek.

“Nah, you know me. Just wanna build the suspense up a bit.” He smiled wickedly. “But you go on and have fun. Lauren and Sonya area already waiting for you. They tell me it’s your birthday.”

“Yes, and for a change, I thought I’d have a fun birthday. You could say I’m determined.”

“Uh-oh. And we all know, what my lady wants, my lady shall have.”

See, now the premise has been established. It’s her birthday. She is approaching it as a task to be accomplished: Have fun on my birthday, for a change. We don’t know why she has this attitude, but at this point, any explanation would slow down the pacing of the narrative. So skip the explanation. Establish the facts, and get the scene moving. Use James to throw in some details, and get to the interior of the bar more quickly. You can keep the sexual interest from the men in line because that accomplishes two purposes: it gives us a little bit of character description, and it establishes the fact of her sexual power. We lost a small sense of her love of power when we cut the paragraph about riding the motorcycle, so this reinserts it in a different way.

The revised opening has a clearer emotional content and a faster pace. I think it works better, don’t you?

***

RU Crew, do you have any questions for Theresa regarding her suggestions? 

On Monday, Jessica Scott tells us how an Army company commander became a romance writer. 

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.

Take it away, Louisa!

The first comment I usually get when someone reads my book, One Month to Become a Mum, is ‘I love the humor.’ Truthfully, I didn’t start out to write a book that made people smile, but it seems my voice has a lightness to it. Life is no fun without laughs, it’s just too darned hard to be serious all the time. And a funny feisty heroine, laughing at herself against the odds is endearing to the reader. Humor can add power and poignancy to a scene, and can give the reader welcome relief from a dark moment.

I’m not talking slapstick, forced jokes or fake jollity that drags the reader out of the story.  I’m talking upbeat banter, rhythm and context. As Jenny Crusie, queen of romantic comedy, says in her Comedy Workshop ( in How to Write Funny edited by John B Kachuba) humor has to come from voice and character; ‘Humor tells more about character than anything else except action…the comedy or tragedy of any premise depends on the characters stuck in it.’

Ms Crusie is not only extremely talented and writes amazingly funny stories, but she’s also very clever- she writes long books, she has complex plots and time to set everything out. I, however, write category romance, and am limited to fifty thousand words to give my reader an emotional rollercoaster. I have to be short and snappy and set out my characters quickly. Humor is a great way to do this – one quick laugh and we’re all digging for a hapless heroine.

My editor, however, doesn’t just want light, she wants intensely emotional and sizzlingly sensual too. Stretching the reader from laughing along with the heroine to rooting for her to overcome deep internal conflict is hard. I try to counterbalance the two- although sometimes my editor has to rein me in!  There’s a fine line between feisty and brutal withering sarcasm (apparently). But to make things easier I use themes or motifs, something light, that starts out as a little joke or a quirk that I can build an emotional arc into. Light turning into dark – the joke becoming serious and more meaningful. Immediately the reader can latch on to an idea/thought/theme and recognize it as important later. That way she is hooked into the character’s expectations or experiences on a kind of subconscious level- it’s like leaving little clues she can pick up. As a reader I enjoy finding these clues, it makes me feel clever!

I’ll give an example from my debut, One Month to Become a Mum:

Chapter Two: (Set up: Jessie is a doctor dealing with a pregnant patient. Jessie has lost a baby and is now infertile but remembering her own pregnancy):  It was the small details that had surprised her the most; how, in the pregnancy books, fetal development was measured in terms of fruit. The size of a strawberry, then a lime, then a grapefruit. She used to joke about how she was going to give birth to a fruit salad.

[Okay, so it’s not exactly a belly laugh, but there’s humor there in a sad memory. The fruit theme runs through the book and gets progressively more serious and poignant. NB: it works better if it’s sprinkled lightly, the reader wants a connection, not a hammer blow.]

Chapter Eight:  Stacey put down her plate and ran a hand over her stomach. It was the first time Jessie had seen her do anything maternal towards her unborn child.

With a start she found herself mirroring the action. And then realized it was something she’d been doing a lot recently. Sheesh, why were all these deeply submerged emotions brimming to the surface again? She needed to control herself.

‘I’ll manage.’ Stacey patted her belly. ‘I read through those leaflets you gave me. Termination isn’t an option, this thing…is the size of a lime, can you imagine? It’s real. I can’t get rid of it.’

A lime. Of course. The citrus came first. Jessie smiled. ‘I totally understand.’ More than you can ever know.

And then the doozy:  It was so hard to explain, how much she wanted him, but how much it would be better for them both if she left.

‘I just watched the joy and pride in Colin’s face as he stroked Stacey’s stomach. And I want you to have that. You didn’t see Chloe’s belly swell, feel the flutter of kicks against your palm, experience your baby growing from a strawberry, to a lime, to a grapefruit and you deserve to have that. And as many siblings for Lucy as you want.’

‘I don’t care about any of that. I want you.’

‘And I want you, Luke, but I can’t ask you to give that all up. And one day, when you think you’ve dealt with not having it, you’ll want it so badly you’ll resent me.’ Her voice had cracked but she was holding it together. No tears. Yet. Good. ‘And I can’t risk loving you then losing you. I’ve lost too much already. I don’t think I could recover from that.’

So the fruit salad started as a quip, but became a metaphor for what she’d lost.

Writing funny or with a light touch doesn’t come naturally to everyone, it doesn’t always come naturally to me, but when I write/edit a scene I always examine how I can heighten emotion – and often that means humor as well as heart wrenching. We are entertaining after all – emotional rollercoaster means ups as well as downs. Is there a motif I can bring in to create a connection with the reader? Is there an ‘in’ joke  I can create between the characters that I can explore and exploit further? Is there another layer I can add?

By the end I hope I’ve tapped into every part of my reader’s psyche, given them an emotionally satisfying read- and tickled their funny bone!

***

RU Crew, what about you? Do you enjoy reading stories with humor? Do you enjoy writing them?

Thank you to Louisa for being with us today.

RU Crew, join us on Friday when Theresa Stevens returns for another installment of our line editing series.

BIO: A lifelong reader of most genres, Louisa discovered romance novels later than most, but immediately fell in love with the intensity of emotion, the high drama and the family focus of Medical Romance.

With a Bachelors Degree in Communication and a nursing qualification under her belt, writing Medical Romance seemed a natural progression, and the perfect combination of her two interests. And making things up is a great way to spend the day!

An English ex-pat, Louisa now lives north of Auckland, New Zealand, with her husband, two teenage sons and two male cats. Writing romance is her opportunity to covertly inject a hefty dose of pink into her heavily testosterone-dominated household. When she’s not writing or researching Louisa loves to spend time with her family and friends, enjoys traveling, and adores great food. She’s also hopelessly addicted to zumba.

Hi, everyone. It’s a very great pleasure to be talking to you here at the Romance University today.

When Robin invited me to write an article, I really had to scratch my head for a topic. It’s not that I’m not brimming over with thoughts, but I was aware that RU is a forum where authors – very erudite and successful ones – offer insights to readers and writers into the process of writing romance, and although over the past couple of years I’ve thought more about technique and method than I ever did when I was only writing for myself, I do remain a very seat-of-the-pants sort of author. Not so much in terms of plot – selling books on proposal means you do have to come up with one and stick with it – but when it comes to the daily business of making places and people come alive on the page.

Eventually I gave up and asked Robin what she thought a good topic would be. She was kind enough to say that my work engages readers emotionally whilst avoiding melodrama, and that my books offer fresh, original characters, settings and storylines. (Thank you, Robin.) She suggested I share with you some ideas about how I provide that emotional connection and come up with those protags, places and plots. That idea appealed to me a lot because, although the process to me is very organic, obviously there is some conscious thought going on! “I just do it” is not a helpful answer, and not a true one either – ultimately I want and need to create a saleable book for the romance market, and that immediately provides me with a set of guidelines, a target audience and a plot dynamic.

What I’d like to say first of all is – what an amazing amount of room for manoeuvre there is within those romance guidelines! When I started the first book I intended to try and publish, I did wonder if my M/M heroes had to be just that – leanly muscled semi-divinities who strode about solving their problems and everyone else’s, falling into bed together to an accompaniment of orchestral music and fireworks after just the right amount of angst. I’m a bit ashamed of myself over those fears now. Over the course of eight books, my publishers have accepted, and readers taken to their hearts, an enormous range of seriously flawed and struggling men, including a middle-aged Edinburgh copper with a drink problem, an army doctor racked with PTSD, an illegal immigrant and, in Scrap Metal, a Glasgow runaway who may or may not have committed a terrible crime. I haven’t felt trammelled in any way when creating these guys, and the happy-ever-after requirement hasn’t felt restrictive either. No-one wanted an HEA for McBride, Tom, Sasha and Cameron more than I did. I’m pretty optimistic about the chances of love, redemption and happiness in life, and for me it’s been a matter of harnessing redemptive potential within my protags to carry the story through to a satisfactory and realistic conclusion. I don’t deploy miracles. The road to love can be a tough and dirty one, and maybe it should be. There’s hard work and a big effort of self-realisation involved, and often a leap in the dark. One form of believable magic I do enjoy is placing someone there to catch.

With regard to forging emotional connections between my men and my readers – for me that’s the easy part. No matter how bad a day I’m having, how uninspired I’m feeling, I still have my basic qualification to do that, which is that I’m human. (Some days it takes a coffee or two, but still.) That means I can write a believable rescue pilot or a doctor. I haven’t been either of those things but I know how it feels to fail to help or save someone, or to succeed in doing something good for someone, and I bet you do too. Obviously I research the technical stuff, but the basic connection I need is right there.

I know that the enormous majority of my readers will share the same base palette of emotions and reactions, and the very ordinariness of those feelings is what makes them so precious. We most of us know what it’s like to be lonely, heart-thumping scared, teetering like an idiot on the brink of falling crazy in love. I’m not reaching far for these driving forces in my prose. Melodrama isn’t necessary. The ordinary forces in our lives are enough to sling us down into the mud or upward into heaven. So for me it’s a matter of getting inside my own skin, remembering how it felt for me, then getting inside of Tom’s skin, or Cam’s or Flynn’s, and showing – not telling – how it feels for them. (That’s an important distinction. You can inform your readers till the cows come home how awful or how ecstatic a character is feeling, but you bull’s-eye the target when you make the guy get up and do whatever it is these emotions are compelling him to do.)

I’m glad my characters come across as fresh. I’m glad the storylines do too, because I’m sure that my tales of love, loss and redemption have been told in their essence a billion times before, and that’s no bad thing. I don’t believe there are many “original” stories, not when it comes to romance and the motivations of the human heart. But if as an author you can truly get inside a protag’s head, wrap yourself up in his hide, whatever story he tells is going to come across as fresh because although we share common feelings, our individual way of experiencing those feelings is unique. Perhaps that’s the writer’s gift – to make a string of different protagonists out of her sole self, to get inside different skins.

Having said all that, I do absolutely cheat with settings. Man, settings are a gift! The world is full of the most fantastic backdrops against which to tell a story. A tower on a Cornish cliff! Great stuff. An ancient Roman wall, or a priory besieged by Vikings, or Edinburgh in winter – bring ’em on. Even if I’m struggling to give a protagonist an individual voice, I can take him and his lover and set the pair of them loose in one of these environments, and they’ll start to react for me as no-one has ever reacted before. Or, okay, never mind the exotics – give me a lonely teenager’s attic room, or just a street in my own home town where I’ve walked a million times before. Now I’m sitting up there as Laurie in A Midwinter Prince, wondering how the hell I’m ever going to escape my wealthy, stifling background. Or I’m Matthew in Life After Joe, and the boring street has just become riveting to me because I’ve got a skinful of nightclub drugs and I’m running down it for my life with a gang of murderous thugs in pursuit. I am, by the way, a woman in her mid-forties, of very staid daily habits, and I’ve never had much to do with drugs, thugs or (unfortunately) wealth. It just isn’t necessary. I just need to feel the basic emotion, and switch skins. That’s what I’d say to anyone struggling for a fresh scene, story, character – just feel. How would it be for you? See the environment. Smell it. Plonk down on a wooden bench on the promenade and promptly get a splinter in your bum. Detail, detail, visceral physical detail. You wouldn’t be in this writing game if you weren’t already empathetic, imaginative and simply dying to tell your story. I’m pretty sure that for most of us, the tools for that fresh magic, that original way of serving up even the oldest of tales, are right there at hand.

I’ve really enjoyed this. If you’d like to comment and/or discuss with me any of the things I’ve been talking about, or indeed anything else, I’ll be around to answer all today. Anyone who leaves a comment has a chance of winning a nice little prize – I’ll random-pick three of you, and you can each choose either a copy of my latest release, Scrap Metal, or two ebooks from my backlist, details on my website. Thanks to Robin, and the Romance University, for the opportunity of blogging here today!

***

Whew!  What is your organic process to touch your readers, create memorable characters, and fresh settings?  As a reader – what touches you and makes a book one you can’t put down?

Emmie Dark, debut Harlequin Superomance author is here on Monday. Don’t miss it!

***

Scrap Metal
On a rainy Scottish island, Nichol is struggling to save his grandfather’s farm. Lonely and nearing the end of his rope, he almost shoots the intruder who breaks into his barn one stormy night. But Cameron, on the run from a Glasgow gang, quickly charms his way through Nichol’s defences and into his heart. Even Nichol’s curmudgeonly old grandfather takes to Cam, whose hard work and good head for figures help set the business back on its feet.

Nichol is grieving for lost family and the academic life he’s had to leave behind him in Edinburgh. As a cold Arran springtime melts into summer, Cam’s presence restores all his love of the island and his joy in life. He’s falling in love – with a young man whose heart is full of secrets and who stays resolutely silent about his past.

When tragedy strikes the farm, Cam’s secret is finally revealed. Now Nichol has to face the truth. He’s given his heart to a stranger, and it’s time to pay the price. Is their bond strong enough for love to survive – no matter what Cam has done?

Bio:

Bio: Harper Fox is a UK-based author of M/M romance fiction. She’s had eight novels published in the last two years and is living in a scary abyss between her day job and full-time writing. Find out more about Harper’s books, inspiration and ongoing projects at www.harperfox.net

Listen Up: Romance Audio Books increase Author Profits!

If your romance novel isn’t sold in audio book format, you’re missing out on a great way to increase your earnings! With the advent of digital audio books and the proliferation of mp3-playing devices, more and more customers are discovering the joys of listening to their favorite novels while they drive, cook, clean, exercise and more.

My name is Jennifer Feddersen, and I opened AudioLark Audio Books in the fall of 2010. Since then, we’ve produced and published over 175 romance audio books in a variety of genres including contemporary, historical, paranormal and many others. Today Cindy Procter-King, the author of Where She Belongs, and RE Chambliss, the narrator who brought Cindy’s novel to life, will help me tell you what to expect when your novel is transformed into an audio book. I’ll also talk about what you can expect with regards to contracts, royalties and audio book earnings.

One of my favorite parts about publishing audio books is combing through submissions to pick out our next lineup. Currently AudioLark accepts submissions year round, but we have two “reading periods” during the spring and fall. Our next reading period starts May 1st. Submissions received before May 1 will be replied to by June 1, 2012. The books we take on at this time will release in January – June, 2013.

Here’s Cindy Procter-King’s take on what it’s like for an author to work with AudioLark:

As an author, I’ve always been interested in getting my books into audio. The problem is, most traditional publishing contracts ask for the audio rights, and then your hands are tied. Whether the publisher pursues audio versions of their print titles is up to them, not the author.

Fortunately, the publisher of my first two books, Amber Quill Press, did not take audio rights. Neither does Five Star/Cengage, the library-edition hardcover publisher that published my 2007 Golden Heart finalist, Where She Belongs, in December 2011.

When AudioLark opened, I jumped at the chance to submit my first two books, which had already been in ebook and print for a few years. Publishing the audio versions gave them new life—and new sales! Head Over Heels, the first audio book I published with AudioLark, became an Audible ChickLit bestseller last summer, and I can still find it in the ChickLit bestsellers for Audible from time to time.

Once AudioLark contracts your book, you submit a pronunciation guide (Word doc or email) for the narrator. AudioLark chooses the narrator or provides a couple of examples of narrators for the author to choose from, depending on the needs of the book. I step out of the process until the narrator is finished reading the book, at which point AudioLark provides me with MP3 proofing files. Because I’m now proofing the book (listening for errors), I listen to the audio files on my computer using headphones and with the PDF of the book on my computer screen so my eyes can read along. When I notice an error that I want corrected or that the narrator has left a production note in the narration, I mark it down much in the way you would with a print publisher and send the list to AudioLark. The corrections are done, and then comes the great fun—waiting for and then experiencing release day!

I’ve had a very positive experience with AudioLark and look forward to working with them on more books. I would thoroughly recommend working to get your titles into audio. It’s another sales venue. People who might never buy your print or ebook might choose to buy the audio version, and what writer doesn’t want more sales?

Cindy Procter-King

My other favorite part of publishing audio books is working with narrators to create the final product. There is nothing as wonderful as listening to a voice actress whose voice and acting style truly complements a novel.

Here’s RE Chambliss talking about her experience in narrating audio books for AudioLark:

When I narrate a book for Audiolark I read the book three times. The first read-through helps me assess what kind of story it is and what kind of people the main characters are. I also look up any words I’m don’t know how to pronounce. I mark up my print-out of the book with all of the pronunciations as well as notes to myself about accents and character traits.

The second time I read the book is during the recording process. I record at home in a little recording studio in my closet. As I read, I try to immerse myself in the story. This is my absolute favorite part of the process. I love trying to bring a story to life with my voice. Whenever I flub a line, I tell the audio editor, “I’m going to do that again,” and then rerecord. The editor will clip the bad take out, leaving the good one.

Then I read the book a third time as I proof my audio. I sit with the print-out in front of me and listen to the whole book while I check it against the text. Any mistakes that I didn’t notice during the recording process, I mark down on my print-out so that I can re-record them correctly. After I’ve re-recorded all the mistakes, I splice the correct versions into the audio files of each chapter and send them to the editor.

The audio editor and the author both check the recording and let me know about anything that needs to be redone. I rerecord those lines and send them to the editor who splices them into the final audio files.

I feel so privileged to narrate audio books for Audiolark and hope that both the authors and the listeners enjoy the final product!

RE Chambliss

Now let’s talk about financial details. What can you expect from audio book earnings? Like traditional book earnings, actual numbers run the gamut. Some audio books sell a fraction of their ebook or print numbers. Other audio books out-sell their print sales. We’ve found that our best-selling genres are contemporary romance, chick lit, and romantic suspense. Audible, the number 1 retail outlet for audio books (owned by Amazon and partnered with iTunes), is advertising hard to increase the general public’s awareness of audio books. This is a great time to get your books into listeners’ hands.

AudioLark now works with Audible under a sliding-scale contract. The more sales a title generates, the bigger royalty percentage we earn, topping out at 90% of net revenues. We charge authors NO fees or upfront costs to publish their audio books, and we now pay authors 50% of the royalties we receive.

Are you interested in getting your romance novel into audio? AudioLark wants to hear from you! Contact Jennifer@audiolark.com or visit our submission guidelines at www.audiolark.com for more information!

***

Do you have books that are in audio format? Do you listen to books in audio format as a rule or is it the exception? 

M/M romamce author, Harper Fox, answers a couple of my most pressing questions about her technique for emotion, characters and settings.

***

Jennifer is giving away a copy of WHERE SHE BELONGS to one lucky commenter!

Bio:

Owner and Acquisitions Editor of AudioLark Audio Books, Jennifer Feddersen has produced and published more than 175 audio books since 2010. Specializing in romance audio books, she is also interested in many other genres, including contemporary fiction, mystery, suspense and young adult. When not coaxing authors and voice actresses to meet their deadlines, she’s happiest when bringing order to the chaos that is an unedited voice recording. She splits her time between northern British Coulumbia and the Adirondacks. www.audiolark.com