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Category: Reading

Posts in which we talk about reading habits and preferences

How To Love A Villain

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urlI’m a great fan of Downton Abbey and have faithfully watched each season. In fact, at this year’s Washington Romance Writers Retreat in April, I’m going to do a workshop on what Downton Abbey can teach us about writing Historical Romance. You’ll be hearing more on that later.

This week’s episode featured more on one of my favorite characters, Thomas, finely acted by Rob James-Collier.  (Don’t worry, though. I won’t give any spoilers in case you haven’t seen it yet)

imgresIn season one, Thomas was a scheming footman who would manipulate anyone to put himself in a good light. He’d get the dirt on the other servants and use the information against them, if he thought it would serve his own ends. He had it in for Mr. Bates from the beginning, never missing an opportunity to make Bates look bad. He even put the moves on one of the handsome houseguests, the foreign royal who seduced Mary and dropped dead in her bed.

In other words, Thomas was a villain. Along with O’Brien, Lady Grantham’s ladies maid, Thomas was the character we were supposed to hate, the quintessential bad guy.

In season two, though, something changed. Thomas went from being a character I loved to hate to someone more complicated. By the end of the season he was one of my favorite characters and still is.

If you want to make a villain sympathetic, this is how to do it.

Motivate him

In season two it became clearer that Thomas was a lonely man who wanted better for himself and who really had nobody who cared about him and no opportunities to aspire to more than service in an country house. I suddenly understood why he connived and clawed his way in life. When he is duped in his profiteering scheme and he loses everything, he has to go back into service. By this time you know what a difficult thing that is for him.

Make him vulnerable

In season two we saw a different side of Thomas from the smart-talking conniver. He went to war and was terribly traumatized by battle, so much so he lifted his hand out of the trenches and waits for it to be shot. That fear and desperation touched my heart.

Show his pain

Also in season two Thomas fell in love with an injured soldier who he tried to nurse back to health. His kindness and sympathy towards this man was unexpected, but showed that he, too, could have feelings for another person. When the soldier killed himself, Thomas was shattered. In season three he also breaks down into tears when Sybil dies, telling Anna, “There are few people in my life who’ve been kind to me. She was one of them.”

Now I know what makes Thomas who he is and I can see beyond his scheming facade. That is the trick to making a good villain. Show who he is, why he is the way he is, and show something of his humanity. If you do it right, you can even make the villain a character I can love.

Do you have a favorite villain? Why is he or she a favorite?

Are you watching Downton Abbey?

I’ll be selecting Anne Gracie’s winner at midnight tonight, so there’s still time to leave a comment for a chance to win a copy of The Autumn Bride.

 

 

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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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Everything* I Know I Learned From Romance Novels

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Some non-genre readers scoff at us fanat–that is, engaged readers of genre fiction. Romance, for example, they deride as being fluff, female porn, and the ever-loathed term “bodice ripper.”
But I have learned a lot–A LOT– from romance novels. For example:

One Saturday, the spouse and I were listening to NPR, and they had one of their quiz shows (no, I don’t remember the title. If I did, I would have said!). They were playing Dictionary, where someone finds an obscure word and the contestants have to make up definitions, and the real definition is included, and the other side has to vote on which definition is the right one.
The word was “delope.” I knew, of course, that it meant to shoot your pistol into the air during a duel because I . . . drumroll please . . . read historical romances.

I was up on the whole War of the Roses controversy because I devoured Anya Seton‘s Katherine. I also knew the prose Wat Tyler chanted during the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt because of the same book (“When Adam delved and Eva span/Who was then the gentleman?).

I’ve always used the phrase “mutton dressed as lamb” to indicate an older woman wearing garments better suited for a younger one, and now my Swank Husband (and his NY-editorial friends) all use the term too. I routinely ask my husband “Do I look muttony?” before going out.

“Hard-pressed” refers to the forced conscription of men into the navy during wartime.

I know all of Henry VIII’s wives in order: Katherine, Anne, Jane, Anne, Catherine, Katherine (that is from memory, I think I got all the ‘Katherine’s done properly) because of reading historical romance.

).While watching Master And Commander: The Far Side of the World, I leaned over and told my husband Admiral Lord Nelson had lost an arm, too, so Capt. Aubrey’s next revelation to the young injured cabin-boy made me look extra-cool (or geeky. You decide

I know all about how important it was to be seated above the salt at a banquet table. I am a big fan of salt, btw.

I know there’s more, but I think I’ve blathered enough–what facts have you learned from reading romance?

Megan
www.meganframpton.com
*Well, not everything, but a lot of things.

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What did you read when you were a kid?

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Time to clear the literary palate…I was brought up in England, so I read some peculiarly English things–for instance, much Enid Blyton, the bane of teachers and parents for her awful and clunky prose, overuse of exclamation points (!!) and general idiocy, but beloved by many generations of English kids. I was a big admirer of the Famous Five series, starring Julian (older brother), Dick (fairly useless younger brother), Anne (their sister, a girly girl), their cousin George and her dog Timmy. George, aka Georgina, really really wanted to be a boy and I think she was destined to have some problems later on in life. The Five, in a fantasy world of endless school holidays, spent their time tracking down Evil Foreigners/Criminals who were doing Dastardly Deeds (usually involving the kidnapping of a geeky sort of scientist for his Big Secrets). Fab stuff. At a tender age I did some math and figured out, that counting three school holidays a year, the Famous Five were well into their 30s (and Timmy must have been a doddering canine geriatric), but they hadn’t aged a bit. Just as well, for George’s sake.


That’s the low end of the pile. How about the good stuff? One outstanding book is A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley, one of the best time-travel stories I’ve ever read. It’s about a young girl who, when visiting her family in the country, goes back in time to become involved in the Babbington plot to overthrow Elizabeth I and put Mary Queen of Scots on the throne. It is a wonderfully dreamy and evocative book with a great use of language and historical detail, and the time travel details are absolutely convincing.


Another writer whose stuff I occasionally dip into now is Rosemary Sutcliffe, who wrote historical novels, concentrating mainly on the Roman-British occupation, and the period after the departure of the Roman legions from Britain. She’s another writer who created a vivid and believable world–you know she’s making stuff up but it feels absolutely right.


I could, but won’t, write a whole blog entry on Edith Nesbit, socialist, feminist, author, whose most famous book in the US is The Railway Children. I was fascinated by the adventures of children in the late Victorian period–even in the books that feature fantasy and magic, it was the ordinary fabric of everyday life that I found the most interesting. The Railway Children was made into a movie starring Jennie Agutter as its heroine Bobbie (another girl who wanted to be a boy but not as adamantly as George), and she starred as the children’s mother in a more recent version made by the BBC. A wonderful, major tearjerker.


And then there’s Rudyard Kipling. Yes, I know he was a racist, sexist misogynous product of his times, but boy, could that gent write. I feel an immediate kinship with anyone who knows what I’m talking about when I mutter the great, grey greasy Limpopo River or I am the Cat who walks by himself and all places are alike to me–both quotes from the Just-So Stories. Check out the lovely art-deco style illustrations by Kipling himself–here, the Elephant’s child is discovering what the crocodile has for dinner.

So, what did you read when you were a kid?

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Regency Heroines’ Quiz

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This week, we’ve been wowed by the Research Nerds (Cara and Elena), Amanda’s cooking larks, and Janet’s quest for inspiration. Today I woke up with a vicious, pre-flu headache, which necessitates my bringing the tone down a bit for today’s post. Discussion follows the quiz:

Bluestocking
Oh dear, you are Bookish, aren’t you? You are a highly intelligent and witty bluestocking, whose beauty is hidden behind spectacles. Your dress sense is eccentric and a little unfashionable, and you consider yourself plain. You have very little use for men, who find your knowledge of Shakespeare, interest in politics and forthright speech formidable. You are undoubtedly well-off. The only reason for your presence in a novel of this kind (which, I might add, you would not dream of reading, although you have occasionally enjoyed the works of Miss Austen), is your mother, who is absolutely determined that you will make a good marriage. Rather than defying her directly, you are quietly subversive, dancing with anyone who asks you, but making no attempt to hide your intellectual interests. The only person who can get past your facade is the man who is witty enough to spar with you, and be amused at your blatant attempts to scare your suitors away. While you will, no doubt, subject him to a gruelling cross-examination to find out whether his respect for your intelligence is real or mere flattery, you may be sure that he is your match, and that you, he AND your mother will all live happily ever after,

The Regency Romance Quiz: What kind of Romance Heroine are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

Okay, so probably a lot of romance readers would get the same result. Most of us are, by definition, bookish. But is that the kind of heroine you like to read about? For me, the answer is a resounding ‘yes.’ I love the intellectual, forthright, opinionated heroines who aren’t afraid of saying what they know. I don’t mind reading about feisty women, but they also have to be intelligent, not just spirited. Amanda Quick’s heroines are usually this type of bookish miss, and I love them. Loretta Chase’s heroines are often a good deal smarter than the hero (or at least it seems that way). Many traditional Regencies feature governesses, companions, scholars’ and vicars’ daughters, and I like reading their transformation as they develop a passion for love as well as for books.

So–which personality types do you most like your heroines to have? Do you consider yourself a “highly intelligent and witty Bluestocking?” And which heroines best demonstrate the qualities you like the most?

Thanks for sharing!

Megan
http://www.meganframpton.com

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