Good morning! We’re kicking off the week with another keeper post by author Ella Carey.
Writing, for me is instinctive. It’s not something I think about when I do it, it is just something that I do. Writing and storytelling, for whatever reason seems to be part of me, and I it. And yet when I am asked to break this instinctive thing that I do down and talk about writing or teach aspiring writers to write in some way, my mind feels like it could explode with ideas. So much to tell you. So hard to know where to start.
To make matters more complicated, I have the bees’ knees of a collection of books on writing, to the extent that my bookshelves might one day, explode. I am committed to constantly learning, and to improving my craft. As a writer, I also read novels and watch films from the perspective of being a writer. In some ways, I hate that, but in others I love it as well. I am always torn between wanting to analyse a book or a film, while some part of me yearns to go back to that old feeling, of just being swept away.
So, to romantic fiction. I want to go into the nature of this idea of romance, and then attempt to share with you what I see as the tenets of successful romantic fiction, so that your work can be original and fresh, no matter how many obstacles you face when writing, no matter how many rules you want to break…
My books deal with love and the idea of love story, but they don’t fall directly into the romance category. My novels have been categorised vicariously as historical fiction, mystery, women’s fiction with an element of love story (which may or may not turn out well) and literary fiction, as well as literary romance.
But what is this romance? Why are you, as a writer, compelled to write novels about love? Love, after all, is one of life’s most difficult experiences, and it is one of our most difficult tasks. The conflicts that emerge from the pursuit of love and the challenges in resolving them to a satisfying conclusion are one of the most compelling things there are.
However, stories give difficult aspects of life a form, and they also help us to live- we recognise, then shape and experience a novel into something that is useful and worthy for ourselves when we read, or, of course when we watch films. Stories alleviate our sense of the chaos of life.
I would like to acknowledge Robert McKee here, who, in his love story seminars, tells us that our love stories are tremendously important because while love is the most difficult problem we face, it is also the greatest experience we have. McKee asks us to imagine life without love. Can you do that? It is impossible, because without it, in whatever shape or form it is in, life is meaningless.
In a romantic story, readers can actually experience romantic love, but from the safe distance of art. This is what you are trying to achieve.
The history of love is important too. The idea of romance first came into existence in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Troubadours would travel around Europe singing songs of passion and idealised love. Their songs were a reaction against the Christian idea of suffering in this life. This rebellious philosophy came from the Cathars and their idea that we should find meaning and beauty in this world rather than focussing so much on the next.
The notion of romantic love according to the troubadours and their chivalrous paradigm was that love was ideal, ethical and beautiful. Writers took this up in the following centuries: Donne, Shakespeare, Austen, Poe, Emily Dickinson and Pushkin. In the nineteenth century, Romanticism in writing, music and art was almost an intellectual reaction against the Enlightenment, and its idea that rationality was an explanation for life.
The Romantics developed this idea that we should have one true love, and that it is better to follow your heart than your mind. New thoughts spread, that we should marry not for money, but for love, because, particularly for the working classes, experiencing great love could alleviate the terrible things in life. Even the upper classes started to view, in some ways, love as a viable path toward marriage. Overall, in our culture, romance and love became a great motivation for living.
The idea of writing about love and romance seems heady, inspirational, vast. Where do you start? There lies the rub, because publishers of romance novels often want set conventions- sex or no sex, sweet romances, hot love stories, kisses by a certain chapter, certain types of men, even certain names are acceptable or not, the list goes on and on and you must have the ubiquitous holy grail- a happy ending where love triumphs over everything you throw in your characters’ way. You know the drill.
The idea of certain tropes being acceptable in romantic fiction can be a huge obstacle. I think writing romance novels to such set rules must be hard. And equally hard to do well. I don’t have these restrictions, but I have friends who do, and I know that it can seem impossible for the writer to pull everything together, and to feel that somehow, they need to impose such strident limits on a topic that is, after all, endless in its scope.
But isn’t the real problem how to make your romance novels fresh and original, when faced with the fact that it seems every story has been told before?
I love the analogy of creating something, building something that is completely your own. What if you thought of your novel as a house? What if you were to bring your reader into your own beautiful building, moving and transforming them by the way you weave elements of each room together into one shifting, yet in the end, satisfying whole.
Here is something from this room, now from another, until, ultimately, you take them to the destination they want to reach. But not in the way they expect. Keep your reader guessing. Push their limits, push your character’s limits. Play on everyone’s emotions… let’s go inside and take a look.
There are four rooms in your house. One is for character, one for the narrative, one for the writing (and in romance writing, you want to seriously think about what type of prose will fit your subgenre) and one room is for the setting.
But what about coflict? Where does that lie? That’s easy. It’s the foundation. Without conflict holding your story down, cementing it, your characters are never going to move forward if they are pursuing ultimate love. For some writers new to the romantic novel, it can be hard to understand how significant the role of conflict is in a love story. As the lovers push through every barrier, every level of conflict they meet to get to the ultimate ending, they will grow as people. And that is why conflict is integral to writing romance. Without it, your characters will stagnate. They simply will not grow.
So. How do you layer in conflict? Think of how it works, where it is, in every single scene. Draw on your own experiences. What irks you about someone, what would upset you? Write it down. You must have conflict between your potential lovers- things seem to only pull them apart. But just as importantly, your character needs to be battling internal demons at the same time.
Basically, you are sending them off into an interior and exterior war zone, often with an inadequate, if any, sort of sword. And little understanding of the internal demons that face them sometimes deep inside. Their demons will only be revealed as the story evolves. You need to make it seem as if the character will not conquer them- you need to make it oh, so hard.
They will do everything they can to risk being vulnerable, to stop themselves from breaking through their interior wall, that part of themselves that they have to let go of if they are to move forward in their lives. Internal conflict is about what is stopping them- what are they using to protect themselves from being vulnerable and falling in love? It’s about throwing to the wind the protective devices and the excuses your characters use not to live an authentic life.
I want to repeat deliberately that your characters will not understand some of their internal conflicts. Some of them are buried far too deep. So, explore them. Find about your characters’ pasts.
But, backstory? It lurks in the attic. Once you are writing your story, you don’t want to go in there too often or hang around. It’s dusty up there! It’s the past. Just throw in a few titbits now and then. The attic is important, but go up there with care. In some ways, it shouldn’t exist. But the problem is, all that clutter in there is holding your character back. A few crumbs of backstory, a few hints at the opening then, and one big reveal as you move toward the dark point? A wicked twist that throws the whole potential outcome for your lovers on its head?
Your character needs to be in conflict with the larger world too. What else is going on in your character’s life? Problems at work, families who won’t let go, people who manipulate, social problems, friends who hate one of your lovers- the possibilities are endless but may be limited or directed by the rules of your subgenre. How do these external conflicts stop your character from finding the love that will transform them? How do these external conflicts form a bridge with interior conflict and how can you develop and dramatically worsen the conflict between your characters to hold the outcome back? Can you weave this into a succinct whole? How will you build these conflicts up as the story progresses?
All conflict needs to be almost impossible to overcome. Almost. Give your protagonist a tiny chance so the reader keeps going. But only a tiny one…
In terms of the writing, of the language and the words that you use, I heard an editor recently liken editing your finished first draft to pulling away the scaffolding surrounding a building. Writers put scaffolding up all the time. In broad terms, and I don’t have time to go into specifics here, delete all the extraneous words to get to the beauty of your prose, to the raw building underneath. This, I think is the art, or the foundation of good editing, and if I could give you one truth about crafting words into a form that works, this is it.
As for character, the one thing I would say is that you need to feel a strong emotional connection to your protagonist. When I’m writing, I want the character to be tugging at my heart. I want the visceral response while I work. I want to feel her story. That’s it. If it’s not there, then don’t write the thing. Start again. Character creation goes back to being instinctive, for me this is where the whole story starts. You want your reader to feel such a connection to your character that they become immersed in his or her world. They want what she wants. They almost become the protagonist. They own the story. If you don’t feel that connection to your character, your readers won’t either. That connection with character, for me is fundamental in anything I write.
With regards to my third room, in which the story lurks, you can let that unfold as you please- go with it as you write, or as we all know, you can plan it out scene by scene, digging into the heart of it before you write, in a way that is ultimately creative, before you type the first sentence or two. But when crafting your story, above all, when you write a romance novel, as well as conflict, think about the stakes. What happens to your characters if your love story does not work out? Ultimately, do your characters return to the place they were in the beginning of your book, to that place which would be unendurable, where they will be stuck in a mire and usually in some form of pain. If this journey and this need to move forward, to find love, is in your characters, it becomes the lifeblood of your story, but the conflict is there like a rock that seems impossible to shift, and you need to ensure that it would be untenable for your characters to return to the emotional landscape in which they roamed at the beginning set up of your book.
As for the setting. I try to have as vast a knowledge of the places I write about in my books as I can. For THE THINGS WE DON’T SAY, I flew to London and Sussex from Australia. For a week. Before I went, I read everything I could about the background to the novel, and when I was in the UK, I lived and breathed my characters’ world for seven days, I walked where they walked, I found real houses that inspired their houses, I saw how and when the birds flew in the sky above the places where the story played out. In being where my characters were, I could feel and sense what they felt. I was in the place where their experiences happened. When I wasn’t absorbing, I was in cafes. I wrote journals in my character’s voices. I sat in those cafes and wrote my characters’ reactions to the places which I had sought out for them. If you can’t do that, if you cannot travel to your locations- read, read about the places your characters inhabit and get into their heads.
In order to render your story, your characters and your setting as real and vivid and startling as they can possibly be, everything in the world you create needs to be as complex, elusive, and beautiful as the stars are, all at once. But use filters, only put in what is relevant into the story. And you must decide how your love story, that most difficult and wonderful of experiences, is going, ultimately, to end.
The Things We Don’t Say
A beguiling painting holds the secrets of a woman’s past and calls into question everything she thought she knew about the man she loved…
Nearly sixty years ago, renowned London artist Patrick Adams painted his most famous work: a portrait of his beloved Emma Temple, a fellow bohemian with whom he shared his life. Years after Patrick’s death, ninety-year-old Emma still has the painting hanging over her bed at their country home as a testament to their love.
To Emma’s granddaughter, Laura, the portrait is also a symbol of so much to come. The masterpiece is serving as collateral to pay Laura’s tuition at a prestigious music school. Then the impossible happens when an appraiser claims the painting is a fraud. For Laura, the accusation jeopardizes her future. For Emma, it casts doubt on everything she believed about her relationship with Patrick. Laura is determined to prove that Patrick did indeed paint the portrait. Both her grandmother’s and Patrick’s legacies are worth fighting for.
As the stories of two women entwine, it’s time for Emma to summon up the past—even at the risk of revealing its unspoken secrets.