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Writing Romance 101

Writing Outside the Box

The essence of Show, Don’t Tell, when it comes to characters is to put your hero or heroine in a situation where they must react. They will show the reader who they are.

In WHAT YOU WISH FOR by Katherine Center, the protagonist, Samantha Casey, experiences a life altering accident and must make a choice: remain invisible in drab grays and beiges or embrace color and step to the front of her life. Sam puts on a hat covered in tissue paper flowers and wears it to work. It’s the beginning of her renaissance and shows the reader the choice she made.  

Ann B. Ross’ character, Miss Julia, anchors a fun series. Miss Julia often speaks and acts as you’d expect a Southern lady of a certain age to, but she often surprises the reader also. In MISS JULIA SPEAKS HER MIND, she is shocked to learn her staid, pedantic, opinionated, controlling, and newly dead husband has left behind a love child. Instead of denying the boy’s existence or trying to hide him, Miss Julia allows him—and his mother—into her home. This surprising act is the inciting incident to the whole series and comes to define Miss Julia’s very nature: stronger than she ever imagined.

THE NATURE OF FRAGILE THINGS by Susan Meissner features an Irish immigrant, Sophie, who decides to marry a widower in San Francisco in 1905, based on a newspaper ad. The why is revealed throughout the book, but at the beginning the reader is told Sophie was tired of living in a cold New York tenement and wanted a change. She’s a woman who takes charge of her life, evidenced by the cross-country move to marry a stranger.

To make your characters come even more alive in the reader’s mind, craft them into more than a cliché. Give them an unexpected aspect to their personality.

In RIGHT HERE WAITING by Susan May Warren and Michelle Sass Aleckson, the heroine, Jae, is a petite Korean American former-military helicopter pilot. No clichés there. 

In RUNAWAY TIDE, Julie Carobini has two bad guys stalking the heroine. Instead of making them typical muscle-bound men in dark suits, she described them as “creepy … hanging around in their flip flops and board shorts … They look kinda like surfers but never actually, uh, surf.” Brilliant.

Maggie O’Farrell’s INSTRUCTIONS FOR A HEATWAVE features a character, Aoife (pronounced Ee-fah. Sort of), who’s described as a free-spirited, bohemian kind of gal. But she’s hiding a deep secret and the reader is definitely surprised when it’s revealed. No spoilers from me, so you’ll have to read it yourself to see if O’Farrell pulls it off.

It’s okay to start with a clichéd character or archetype but play with them.

Put them in a situation out of their comfort zone and see what happens. If it surprises you, it will surprise your reader. If it surprises your reader, they will keep turning the pages. All the way to the end.

Carrie Padgett lives in Central California, close to Yosemite, but far from Hollywood, the beach, and the Golden Gate Bridge. She believes in faith, families, fun, and happily ever afters. She writes contemporary fiction with romance. She recently signed a contract with Sunrise Publishing to co-write a romance novel with New York Times bestselling author Rachel Hauck that will be published in 2022. Carrie and her husband live in the country with their high-maintenance cat and laid-back dog, within driving distance of their six grandchildren.

You can find her online at:

Categories
Writing Romance 101

conflicting your romance

If your planning your first romance novel, you’re probably thinking about all the great romantic scenes you can write about the love in the relationship. Maybe you’ve already written most of the book, but now as you read back over it, something seems to be missing.

Oh, it’s got a lot of great romance, but is it going to capture and hold your reader’s attention?

Then it dawns on you – there’s not enough conflict. Every story, even a romance that will end with “happily ever after” needs a lot of conflict—things that keep your hero and heroine apart throughout most of the story. That’s what’s going to keep reader’s turning pages and sitting on the edge of their seat waiting for that sweet ending when the hero and heroine finally pledge to love one another until death do they part.

 So, what kinds of conflict can you use to add some suspense to your romance?

First of all, your conflict or series of conflicts needs to be believable. And yes, your story will need more than one conflict. Some of the conflict has to be between the leading man and his love interest because readers don’t want to read a romance where the handsome hero and the sassy heroine realize they are right for each other and everything is awesome once they get rid of the leading lady’s meddling best friend. That’s not really a romance story.

Something needs to keep the hero and heroine apart. A mix of internal and external conflict usually works best. In other words, what’s going on around the hero and heroine is external. The external situations and other characters can be used to cause conflict. The thoughts and feelings of the main male character and main female character is internal and can also be used to cause conflict.

Internal conflicts can come from the character’s fears, a lie he or she believes, something they struggle with such as self-confidence or being able to trust the other.

Internal examples: maybe he was engaged before and the woman left him standing at the altar. Now he’s afraid he’ll be abandoned or rejected again. Maybe she’s overweight and has been told all her life that she’d be pretty if she just lost weight, so she can’t believe he could possibly find her attractive.

External examples: maybe the hero and heroine don’t like each other when they first meet and this comes out in the way they talk to each other or behave toward each other. Maybe she is a waitress in a restaurant and accidentally spills a plate of spaghetti in his lap, getting them off on the wrong foot.

Some things can be used as either external or internal conflicts, such as character flaws.

Just remember, there have to be lots of bumps on the road to “happily ever after” if you want your readers to read your romance novel from cover to cover.

Kelly F. Barr lives in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. She is married and has three sons. She writes historical romance. She has also been a blogger for ten years, and every Friday, you can find her Flash Fiction stories posted for your reading pleasure. She loves her family, including the family dog, books, walks, and chai lattes.

You can find her online at:

Website: kellyfbarr.com

MeWe: KellyBarr8

Categories
Writing Romance 101

The (Character) Arc de Triomphe

Writing teachers often talk about the story arc and character arc, meaning how the story is constructed or how the character grows and changes. As I write this, the Arc de Triomphe in Paris was recently wrapped in fabric, an artistic event envisioned and designed by the late artists, Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Much like wrapping the iconic landmark in layers of fabric and rope, adding layers of character arc and growth will make your stories deeper and more nuanced.

Growth

One facet of growth an author can layer in is the character’s ability to do something at the end of the story they couldn’t do at the beginning. Or they see the truth of something they first believed to be a lie.

In the movie You’ve Got Mail, Kathleen Kelly believes her life only has meaning as long as she keeps her dead mother’s bookshop alive. By the end of the movie, the shop has died, but Kathleen has been able to not just envision a different life for herself but takes steps to build that life. She can do something she couldn’t before, because she’s moved from a lie to the truth.

Character Arcs

Another facet of character arcs that can be particularly effective is an ending that mirrors the beginning.

While You Were Sleeping begins with Lucy talking about her dreams of travel, the stamps she planned to collect in her passport, but how that didn’t happen because of her father’s illness and death. Later, she shares that dream with the hero, Jack, who gives her a snow globe with a scene of Florence, Italy, a foreshadowing of the end. The movie ends with the two of them traveling and Lucy gets that passport stamp for real.

Rachel Hauck’s book To Save a King begins with a prologue in ten-year-old Prince John’s point of view about his love for the fairy tale, The Swan’s Feather. The book ends with grown-up Prince John’s wedding to his real-life love, Gemma, and the convergence of three white swan feathers.

How does an author find the arc to the ending? Or the moment to mirror?

  • Figure out what is the lie your character believes at the beginning and how they will move to truth (like Kathleen Kelly in You’ve Got Mail).
  • Decide if there’s a poignant moment you can mirror at the beginning and end (like Lucy’s empty passport in While You Were Sleeping).
  • Find a prop you can highlight in both the beginning and ending scenes (like the swan feathers in Rachel Hauck’s To Save a King).

Well-layered character arcs leave the reader satisfied and happy and leaving five-star reviews. They may not know why or how, but they know they’ve been taken on a ride of beauty and vision by an artist.

Carrie Padgett lives in Central California, close to Yosemite, but far from Hollywood, the beach, and the Golden Gate Bridge. She believes in faith, families, fun, and happily ever afters. She writes contemporary fiction with romance. She recently signed a contract with Sunrise Publishing to co-write a romance novel with New York Times bestselling author Rachel Hauck that will be published in 2022. Carrie and her husband live in the country with their high-maintenance cat and laid-back dog, within driving distance of their six grandchildren.

You can find her online at: