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Monthly Archives: May 2012

My Buddy

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I am just starting my next book and am in that situation where the plot is rudimentary and still fluid. I can keep or change any of my plot elements or my characters.

This is a gaming hell story, a gaming hell being a private and illegal establishment for the purpose of card-playing and other games of chance such as Hazard, a dice game, and Faro, a game of chance which does use cards. You can read more about gambling in Regency England here.

In writing the first chapter, I realized (through the suggestion of my brilliant writing friends, Darlene Gardner and Lisa Dyson) that I needed more….I needed to give my hero a buddy.

How did we realize this? In my first draft of my first chapter, my hero thought back to an incident in his past, but that passage put the reader in his thoughts for too long and it slowed down the pace. We realized it would be better if he could tell someone about this incident and that’s how the idea of giving him a friend came about.

The friend character serves a useful purpose in Romance for this very reason. The friend gives the hero or heroine someone to talk to, so that information can be given to the reader in an interesting, natural way.

Michael Hauge (Story Mastery) calls the friend a reflection character who is commonly used to support the hero in the achievement of his goal. Hauge would say that the reflection character sees the hero’s “essence,” his true-self, which we want him to achieve by the end of the book, and by so doing, shows the reader the hero’s essence as well.

I also think that the friend character can illuminate the hero’s character by being the total opposite. Think of Bingley in Pride and Prejudice. Darcy is uncomfortable among the people at the Assembly, but Bingley is friendly and eager to enjoy himself. Bingley believes only the good in people and Darcy is wary of others, more certain that their motives are not good ones. Bingley is also easily led, but Darcy is firm in his opinions and decisive in his actions.

For readers, the glimpse of a buddy can be very intriguing. How many of us have emailed authors to ask when the hero’s friend will have his own book? I still get emails asking about the hero’s friends in The Marriage Bargain, my 2005 Diane Perkins book. (You’ll see them someday!!!! I don’t know when…)

Almost all my heroes have had buddies, and most of the buddies went on to have romances of their own, so it will be fun to create this new friend for my new hero. I already have an image of him….actor/model  Raphaello Balzo.

Now aren’t you intrigued????

Do you like your Regency heroes to have buddies? Is there anything that annoys you about the “buddy” character?

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Regency jobs

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I’m recycling a blog post from a year or so ago about my ideal Regency job. I spent last weekend with the lovely ladies of Virginia Romance Writers at their conference, where I spoke on servants, so this is timely. And Amanda, have you opened the vampire bar yet?
The housekeeper came; a respectable-looking elderly woman, much less fine, and more civil, than she had any notion of finding her.
After Amanda’s exotic and glamorous plans to open a vampire bar, I thought I’d like to describe my ideal Regency job as a housekeeper.

Just imagine it. All that power! Solely in charge of the nutmeg and other spices and maybe even the tea, gliding silently around the corridors of the great house and coming upon servant hanky-panky, unless the slight jangling from your chatelaine betrayed your presence. This lovely example is from early eighteenth century Holland (I think. An ebay find which I couldn’t afford) with a St. Christopher motif.

Just the position if you were a gentlewoman widowed and down on her luck, like Mrs. Fairfax in Jane Eyre (and then I’d be Judi Dench too!).

Or even the unmarried and troublesome member of the family who needs to be shuffled off somewhere to learn the folly of her ways and spend some time brewing stuff in the stillroom.

Housekeepers got nice, fat salaries, too, augmented with tips from tourists if they worked in a great house. When Darcy’s housekeeper (the one described in my opening quote) finished showing Elizabeth and her aunt and uncle around, you may be absolutely sure she had her hand held out. It was quite a cottage industry.

What’s your ideal Regency job?

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With my body I thee worship…

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Last Sunday at church the sermon topic was “Sex and Attraction: An Embodied Spirituality.” (I go to a really cool church.) The minister made the point that religion has sometimes, though not always, created this duality of “spirit=divine and therefore good/body=beastly and therefore evil”. A lot of our culture has embraced this duality, along with the implication that what is good must be boring and what is fun must be evil. It ignores the intimate connection between the spiritual and the physical. Love as an abstract concept doesn’t mean much; it needs to be expressed through the physical: smiles, words, loving acts, including sex.
I think most romance authors understand this body-and-soul thing. But I have heard some authors of so-called “sweet” romance imply that their books are about the relationship and that the so-called “hot” books are “only” about sex. I don’t think so. The hottest erotic romances I’ve read are the ones with strong emotions driving the characters. The most moving “sweet” romances I’ve read are those where the author used the power of simple things like a smoldering gaze, the touch of a hand.
An erotic romance I read a few years ago bombed for me. The characters were so generic and the situation so contrived that it felt as silly as Benny Hill. On the other extreme, I’ve read several inspirational romances which were so careful to avoid not only the act of sex, but any hint of sexuality, that it felt unnatural. I don’t need to always read about sex and stories shouldn’t go further than makes sense for the characters and their situation. But if it’s a romance, I want to feel the sexual attraction, even if it’s expressed in subtle ways. If they kiss, let them enjoy it!
The other thing I’ve been ambivalent about is the fade-out, where the h/h start making love and the next thing we know they are smiling at each other over breakfast. I don’t think authors have to make a scene of it every time the hero and heroine make love. But if it’s the first time or at a turning point in their relationship, it feels like I missed something.
Anyway, what do you think? Does the dichotomy of “sweet” vs “hot” ever bother you? How do you feel about fade-outs? Who does “body and soul” best?
Elena
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Sleep On It

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Inspiration comes from so many places.

Mother’s Day is tomorrow, and as usual, what I want for Mother’s Day can be summed up in one word:
Sleep.

Now, I know I can be a bit…obsessed about getting more sleep. I never get enough, and I always want more. But there’s more to it than that: I’ve found that I am able to work things out while I sleep, which means that when I am stuck in terms of writing, I take a bath and then a nap, and usually the answer comes to me while I am unconscious.

My friend described the brain process like a funnel–you’ve got all this stuff jammed up in the top part, then something shakes loose, and it comes pouring down. Being asleep lets stuff shake loose. So you’ve actually assembled the elements before you go to sleep, it’s just that it shakes loose while your mind is free to wander.

I’m working on the second book for my Loveswept releases, which means I am finding myself with the urge to nap–for work purposes, of course!–quite often. Just this morning I had some plot epiphanies, which were pretty cool, and this weekend my Mother’s Day gift will be writing time, so I’ll get a chance to implement them in the book.

When does your best creative time occur? How do you shake things loose?

Megan
PS: I’ll be relaunching my website next week, with a cool new design! Woot!

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