Writers in the Storm

By Rob Preece

While sitting at an autographing at the Romantic Times Convention several years ago, a woman hurried up to my table. I gave her my best “I’m-safe” smile.

The signing hadn’t gone well so far—could I be on the verge of something good?

“I have to tell you,” she said…
Tell me what? That I’m her favorite author?
“That I never read romances written by men,” she explained. “Men just don’t get romance.”

Fair enough, I guess, although it was information I couldn’t quite use in my daily life. Regardless of her desire that I get a sex change operation, I think she has a point.

Most romance readers are  women, and many romances written by men are melodramatic with tragic endings (Romeo and Juliet, Love Story, Madam Bovary, Bridges of Madison County).

I do think that a good writer, of whatever sex, must be able to create convincing characters of both sexes—characters who are recognizably male or female every time they open their mouths, every time the author dips into their internal dialog. Yet, if you read some romance, you’ll come across male characters who just aren’t convincing. Certainly in romance, we aren’t looking for completely realistic male characters (most readers are women who already have an all-too-realistic male in their lives).

What we strive for is verisimilitude—characters who capture the truth of their sex without coming across as females with male equipment. If you think about authors who’ve reached the top of the romance genre, authors like Nora Roberts and Suzanne Brockmann, I think you’ll find that they write compelling and believable, yet not at all realistic, male characters.

Speaking from the vantage point of a male and a writer, what I think top writers do is to understand not just male stereotypes, but the reasoning underlying them—and why many men find these male traits to be admirable (as well as how they can be annoying). Good authors let the reader see both sides… with an emphasis on the admirable when it comes to heroes, of course.

Please note that men are individuals and don’t all fall into these stereotypes. Even when they don’t, they often see the stereotypes as desirable.

Let’s take some examples:

1. Men think they don’t talk much. In the male ideal, actions speak louder than words. So, when writing a male character, consider their dialogue.

Are they rambling?
Are they filling time?
Are they doing that activity males dread…
Discussing their feelings?

If so, that’s a caution light. Men don’t see this as being unwilling to communicate. Instead, we see talking as a delaying tactic, and as an ambush in the making. Make your male dialogue crisp, and have your male characters doing something while they talk.

2. Men see themselves as fixers.

Give a man a problem without a solution and you have an unhappy man.
Have your heroine ignore your hero’s wonderful solution and you have a frustrated man.

 Men see “fixing things” as admirable because they think problems need to be “solved.” Women find it annoying because when they voice a problem, they just want to be heard. They don’t necessarily want the man to jump in and fix things.

So, how to use this?

Obviously you can’t always give men problems they can solve (who wants to read about weak heroines who need to be saved), but recognize and use this mindset.

Explore their frustration when they can’t solve problems. Understand that many hero archetypes are based on the problem solver (there is a reason so many billionaire tycoons show up in romance… their money lets them solve problems).

To admit to a problem of their own means to admit to being less than a fixer… it’s something that you may want to use as part of a resolution, but certainly not until after the dark moment in your romance.

Word and Language. It isn’t true that guys mostly grunt. But in many cases they use a different vocabulary than do women. (I read recently of the Piraha language in the Amazon in which men, amazingly use one more consonant than women in conversation).

Photo from funaye.blogspot.com

In western culture, at least, men use descriptions more sparingly. When talking of colors (except maybe of their favorite truck), guys tend to see the world in terms of the colors in the small Crayola box.

If you have a guy who mentions about someone’s darling teal frock, you have a character who isn’t really believable. “Darling,” “teal” and “frock” are all words that would be chosen only by females or male fashion designers).

Likewise, men are unlikely to describe an oval-shaped face with sooty eyelashes and an elegant neck. (They’ll see a pretty face with kissable lips).

If you scrub your manuscript, you’ll find you won’t need so many dialogue tags because who’s talking will be clear from the words chosen.

Make your guys use:

shorter sentences
more active verbs
fewer, shorter descriptions, and fewer questions

Guys are visual (when in their point of view, consider downplaying the other senses). Scientific evidence indicates that men are better at focus (which also means they don’t see what isn’t in their focal region). Again, let this be both a strength and weakness… but have the guys see it as a strength.

Guys tend not to be much good at multitasking. We call it focus. Women generally think it means we’re not paying attention (hint: we’re not). This relates to the whole focus issue.

So, we have some basic stereotypes. The trick is to play with them and show change without violating what lies beneath the stereotypes. Remember, for the most part, guys see these characteristics as positives. So, don’t write as if you’re going to fix them; allow your hero and heroine to discover how these attributes work and backfire in developing their relationship.

Obviously Suzanne Brockmann, with her Navy Seals and constant action, has some advantages. Her characters have to be tough, have to be focused, have to keep conversation to a minimum, have to see only the high points and not overstress nuance—it’s what keeps them alive. But if you consider standard romance hero clichés… the cowboy, the pirate, the Scottish laird, the angry Greek shipping tycoon, I think you’ll find that they start with males who follow the typically male characteristics.

When the romance is well written, the heroes don’t really change these fundamental things that make them male. Instead, they gather new insights.

They may learn that they have to:

Bend their approach
Accept that they cannot fix everything
That they have to broaden their focus, but they will do so in the context of their basic instincts

Writing convincing males isn’t especially difficult, but it does require the author to pay attention to her word choices, let awareness of sensory details vary depending on point of view, and keeping in mind that men don’t see their differences as problems to overcome but as strengths to be built on.

Happy writing. I'm looking forward to your questions and comments.

Rob Preece is an author and publisher for BooksForABuck.com. He lives in Long Beach, CA with his author-wife Kara Lennox, a cranky cockatiel, and a desperately needy cat.

Rob writes speculative fiction and paranormal romance under his own name, romantic comedy as Robyn Anders and mystery and romantic suspense as Amy Eastlake. When he's not writing or editing, Rob enjoys martial arts (he's a second degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do), competitive bridge, and long distance cycling. Before becoming a publisher, Rob spent a number of years in the high-tech sector writing the fiction known as product specifications. Rob's works have finaled or won a number of writing contests including a final in RWA's Golden Heart award, and have placed in best-selling and "highest rated" lists.

His most recent publication, NanoCorporate, is a near-future speculative fiction novel set in a world that extrapolates existing political and technological trends. His most recent romance is Medium in the Middle, a paranormal romance. He's currently working on a prequel to NanoCorporate.

By Sharla Rae

Readers choose a book in one of three ways: They like the author, it was recommended or they read the back cover blurb. After people-watching in Barnes & Noble, I’d venture to say most books are chosen by the last method. For people ordering e-books, blurbs are especially important.

That makes blurb writing pretty darn important. There are many ways to tackle the job. If you check the links below, you’ll discover how true that is. In any case, I hope my method helps those of you who are struggling with this.

If you have written a query letter, you already know how to write a back cover blurb. Sort of. A query letter blurb uses your writing style to relay facts about the two main characters, their goals, the conflict and how the problem is solved.

A back cover blurb does the same thing as a query letter with two exceptions.

• It does not reveal the end of the book.
• It ends byposing a question or a hook statement that leaves the reader wanting more. This hook or the gottcha statement as I call it, is the part you’ll have to add to your query blurb.

Blurbs vary in length. Some are one long paragraph, some have up to four paragraphs. Two to three are most common.

All blurbs contain the same basic information.  

• Name of character with her/his goals and motives and the obstacles to those motives.
• Name of conflicting character, be it a real person or mother nature; how the second character figures into the story. If it’s a real person, for instance a romance hero, than his motives and goals are presented in relation to heroine’s. Usually a conflict of interest enters the picture.
• The last section of a blurb presents a wrench thrown into the works and the gottcha lines.

As mentioned, if you’ve written a query, you’re way a head of the game. If not, I’m betting you have at least written a synopsis. Even self published authors need them for marketing and reviewers who request them.

Condensing an entire book into a short synopsis for an agent or publisher is hard enough so you might think summarizing a story in a few short paragraphs is worse yet. Wrong.

A blurb is much easier to write.

Let’s pretend you haven’t done a query and must use the synopsis to write the blurb. Generally, the hero and heroine are introduced in two separate paragraphs in a synopsis along with their conflicts and goals.

• Pluck those two paragraphs out of the synopsis and paste them into a new blurb document.
• Now pare down those two paragraphs and rework them using strong action verbs as well as words that evoke emotion. Be sure you have the basic info I listed above. Have fun! Pretend you’re writing an action-packed movie trailer.
• If you choose to use a three-paragraph format, summarize the conflict in the last paragraph with one sentence and pose your gottcha question or statement in a second sentence. [In the case of a romance, this hook may represent the obstacles in the path of the romance]
• In a two-paragraph blurb, the gottcha lines appear at the end of the second paragraph.

One Paragraph:

I’m a huge Dean Koontz fan so I pulled Brother Odd off my bookshelf to look at the blurb. It’s only one long paragraph. That makes sense. There is one main character, Odd Thomas. Yeah, there are sideline characters but Odd Thomas is the star of the show. One paragraph is enough.

Two Paragraphs:

The blurbs on the back cover of my first two books used the two-paragraph format. In Song of the Willow, the first paragraph describes the heroine and the problem that develops when she meets the hero. The second paragraph is about the hero, his undercover assignment and how it conflicts with the fact that he’s falling in love the daughter of his target. The gottcha lines? He knows he must do his duty and risk losing his woman.

From Song of the Willow

THE TOMBOY

Ladies don’t wear men’s pants or herd cattle, nor do they curse or sneak whiskey, but Willie Vaughn does. Growing up in a household of five men, Willie could play baseball, rope a cow and hold her own in a brawl. But she never thought she’d want to seduce a man, not until she met the handsome and dangerous Rider Sinclair.

THE LIEUTENANT

Going undercover to unmask Vaughn’s arms smuggling, Rider was prepared to romance the man’s only daughter. But nobody warned him about the infuriating pixie with the luscious figure and stubborn temper. And Rider certainly didn’t count on falling in love with her. There was no way out of it. He had to separate duty from desire and put her family behind bars. The betrayal meant he’d risk the one thing he cherished most – the fiery hellcat who’d stolen his heart.    

Three Paragraphs:

When the three-paragraph format is used the first two paragraphs contain the basic character info. The third paragraph contains only the hook/gottcha lines – usually not more than two sentences. This format emphasizes the gottcha lines, sort of an extra punch to the gut. With Song of the Willow, the last lines could have been reworded slightly and put into a third paragraph.

Four Paragraphs:

While it’s rare, I’ve seen as many as 4 paragraphs used a blurb. I just started reading The Belly Dancer by DeAnna Cameron. The blurb is 4 long paragraphs. That threw me until I thought about it. The blurb went into more detail about character growth and steps getting there. I realized that this book’s appeal spans several genres, Women’s Fiction, Romance, and Historical Fiction. That’s a marketing tool that can’t be ignored – the blurb needed to reflect the wide reading base.

When all is said and done, two or three paragraph blurbs really are the norm. I believe there’s a reason for that.

Everyone is in a hurry. Readers want quick bare facts [albeit interesting facts] so a fast decision can be made: Buy the book – don’t buy the book.

Blurb Writing Tips

• You probably used some word or phrases in your book that you really like to describe the characters or a situation. Don’t be afraid to recycle them in the blurb. This allows you to demonstrate your writing style as well.
• If you’re really stuck in the mud for selling words, search for ideas in books like Phrases That Sell, by Edward Wertz & Sally Germain and More Words That Sell, by Richard Bayan. Believe it or not these books cover everything from color to youth slang. I was surprised to learn this helpful little secret. Sometimes just thumbing through books like these helps you think of ways to better express your blurb.
• Have fun; get excited. Remember when you were a kid and you saw a really cool movie? You couldn’t wait to share some of the action with friends and gave them a glowing rundown. Do the same with your book. Make readers eager to slap down their cash.

Links On Blurb Writing

How to Write a blub by Marylyn Beyerly : This author separates the blurbs by genres. Very interesting.
Tips On Writing An Engaging Blurb: A three paragraph format
5 Tips For Writing A Compelling Book Blurb: at Romance University
How To Write A Blurb: at Penguin Blog

Writers are readers too. We’ve all made grocery store, Walmart and airport book purchases. For now, forget the books you bought because you love the author. Read the blurbs of the books you purchased because the blurb sounded exciting. What is it about those blurbs that convinced you to buy the book? Characters? Setting? Situation? Genre? Let’s talk about it.

Welcome to Last Fridays with Naked Editor Tiffany Lawson Inman on Writers In The Storm!

     Right now my physical self is driving up a Colorado mountain to Margie Lawson’s 5-day Immersion Master Class to be her co-instructor doing some micro and content editing, step-by-step editing fight/action scenes, and not sleep-at-all.  This ain’t no retreat!

I’ll be sneaking away from these amazingly hard working writers to chat with YOU throughout the weekend.  And as always – if you comment – your name is in the hat to win one of my writing courses. Woot!

I come on to a writing blog as an Editor/Writer/Actor and have a strong compulsion to jabber on about these 5 elements of fiction:

• Motivation and reactions
• What your character isn’t showing and should be showing
• Power within and under dialogue
• Choreography showing more than just the moves
• Emotions

     Why those 5? 

Because you could have the BEST internalizations, the BEST twisting plot, the BEST use of voice in your manuscript, but if you don’t have genuine tangible characters . . . your reader won’t be invested in the emotional story.

And they won’t care.

While I edit, I see it over and over again. Publishable plot. Publishable voice. Mediocre characters. There are many reasons a manuscript gets tossed out of an agents pile. This one is a biggy.

How do I know if the way I write my characters is good enough? What does good character writing look like, anyway?

Have you ever emoted with a character you were watching at the movies?  Audience members usually say they were caught up in the moment.  While watching the film, they were physically moved to tears, anger, or happiness.  These are usually the movies that rack up multiple best actor nominations during award season.

I ask you, why?

      Is it the setting? Costumes? Dialogue?

No. No. And, no.

The award winning element in these movies is character and the character’s ability to weld genuine emotion. Hmmm…instead of the Rita or Golden Heart Award where we honor the writer, what if there was an Oscar or Golden Globe Award for the characters in our literature? 

Would your characters win? Would they even be nominated?

      How do you write characters that are Oscar worthy?  It’s not like we can pluck them out of our manuscripts and scoot them off to acting camp. 

*clever grin*

Since you are the writer behind the character, this character has come from you. It is a part of you. No matter if it is a crazy-hopped-up killer or a 13 year old soccer star in the dregs of puppy love – it’s your writer DNA in that character. Right?  Sooo… LET’S TEACH YOU HOW TO ACT!

*crickets chirping…*

I know I know - you all are crouched over your computers in your pjs and are—

Quite comfortable thank-you-very-much! 

Well, I’m here to bulldoze the pj-comfort-zone and tell you that you need to get up. Out of the chair/couch/hammock or whatever and use your body+mind combo to create these red-carpet-characters.

      How?

By learning how to tap into how the character thinks, breathes, cries, walks, talks, runs, smiles, reacts to different stimuli, etc.

      Yes, but…HOW?

By using the tool the actors use.

      What? There is a tool?

I’m not asking you to take a dialect and accent course or strap on any ballet shoes.  I’m asking for writers to open themselves up enough to reach in and use your body+brain in a way that you never have before.

The tool is you.

The technique to use the tool is Method Acting.

I can’t think of one Oscar winner, in the 84 years of awards, that hasn’t had Method Acting as part of their training.   Method Acting is the base on which actors build their characters.  Writers build characters too, so why not borrow these techniques from our sister art?

Pre-method acting concentrated on building on to the actor with stress on external skills like dance, dialects, etc – thinking that if the actor looks like a duck and walks like a duck – he must be a duck. The difference in Method Acting: allows the actor to dig deep into the sensory, psychological, and emotional WHY behind the walk and the talk and therefore show the reality of this character, inside and out.

14 Method Blocks are: Relaxation, Sense Memory, Concentration, The Magic If, Objects, Substitution, Animal Exercise, Song and Dance, Private Moment, Speaking Out, Moment-to-Moment, Justification, Affective Memory, and Given Circumstances.

Sadly, you can’t post this list on the side of the computer (like all of my other awesome editing/writing lists) and hope to know what it all means without an acting class or acting for writers class.

      Ok, so how does it work?

There are mental and physical exercises that coincide with each of the 14 Method Blocks to help the actor recreate moments from their own lives, recreating emotions and reactions bringing memories to life within their role.

      But I’ve never been an Olympic athlete in danger of losing her dreams or a sad 46 year old detective still living with his parents.  How will MY memories help me write characters like these?

Memories are padded with emotion.  It’s what solidifies them in our mind. These emotions are found in our everyday moments and our high crisis moments, each creating a memory. The Method teaches how to reach in and grab the emotion to be turned into body language, vocal cues, reactions, motivations, relationship bridges, etc.  I teach writers how to transfer The Method found emotions into each facet of character.

Here is a thumbnail introduction to one of my favorite Method Blocks I teach and I use as an editor:

Justification.  It is reminiscent of the stereotypical director asking, “What’s your motivation?”   Those who know me will giggle here because Justification is VERY closely related to Cause/Effect (also called: Stimulus/Response or Motivation/Reaction.)

How does this relate to writing?

One of the first things I do when I edit, is look at Motivation and Reaction. During the Method acting exercise the actor will be running a scene (acting in a scene) and at every turn, every arm gesture, every vocal inflection, every facial movement -- the director can stop time and ask “why?” The actor must justify his/her choices for that moment.

As an editor, I go a few steps beyond asking, “What is your motivation?” or “WHY?”

Questions for a writer:

• WHY did that happen?
• Why did that happen at that time in the line/scene/chapter/plot?
• Why did the character tell it and not show it?
• Why did the character show it in that way?
• Why did the writer show it in that order?
• Where is the reaction?
• What was the motivation?
• Is that the best representation of your character?
• What does that reaction show about your character?
• Does this make sense? Or was it a mental speed bump?

What I’m really asking for is, Deeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep JUSTIFICATION.

How does this help an actor or writer? It seems tedious.

It is. Going through your manuscript line by line making sure every word makes sense with order AND placement AND motivation AND reaction is very tedious.  And well worth it.  Justification is linked to EVERYTHING that happens in your novel.  Characterization, Storyline, Choreography, Pacing…I could go on, but, I think you get my point.

What if Meryl Streep rushed through every dialogue line without facial reactions? What if her reactions ran together without a clear motivation?  In The Devil Wears Prada, can you imagine if she slouched or cracked her knuckles?!  It wouldn’t make sense, right?! And in any movie she has been in - what if each of her emotional breakdowns was choppy, missing visceral, missing physicality, missing interactions with environment, missing the other character’s reactions—

      WOW. SO MUCH to think about.

This is the gravy for your taters and turkey.  For some, this is what makes the meal!

Get ready - I’m about ready to ruin Christmas…

      Using Justification on your own is maybe 25-30 percent affective.  You need a director…I mean, editor or trained critique partner to see what you can’t see.  You are too close to the writing and have the ability to skip over those important questions and even worse, falsely justify.

And now I’m going to give you a knit hat under the tree, instead of an Xbox…

      The Method Blocks are most effective when used with one another. Justification alone is like riding a really well tuned bike without handlebars . . . or . . . a seat!

Ouch! How do I learn to use the rest of the Method Blocks?

Your next step as a writer, if you haven’t done so already, is to take an acting class. Not all of them get into Method Acting in the more advanced classes, but it couldn’t hurt to step in and give it a shot.

      Tiffany?!?!  Remember we are all in our pjs, have kids to chauffeur AND a job to go to AND need time to write! No TIME for acting class in my busy schedule, I’ll tell you-

      And we are kind of shy…an acting class with actor people? Actors are like extroverts on elephant doses of speed!

Oh. Right.

I’ll try not to take offense to that last comment.  DON’T BE AFRAID OF THE ACTORS. You are there to learn just the same as they are.

Ideas to take the edge off an acting class as a writer:

• Research the class ahead of time – If they mention teachings from Constantin Stanislavski, Sanford Meisner, Lee Strasberg, Stella Adler, or of course – Method Acting  - that’s a good thing!
• Talk to the instructor – ask questions.
• Make sure the class is NOT Improv (for on-your-feet-flash characters) or Scene Study (for serious actors)
• Take a friend and use a buddy system!
• Before you go to the class, thumb through your manuscript and jot down what you are struggling with in terms of showing a genuine tangible character. A list of questions for yourself .

Specific questions like:

-how can I show her love for her father in this scene without making it melodramatic?

-during the fight between brothers, how can I show the ghosts of a true brotherhood.

-before we meet the hero we need to see that he is the type of man the heroine should fall in love with, how can I show this without showing the hero?

Or general questions like:

-how to show fear in a strong character

-how to show strength without being obvious

-how to show elements of depression without throwing a red flag

-how to show a protective mother without being stereotypical

The MAIN question should be:

-How do I write truthfully in these imaginary circumstances?

I’m going to repeat that.

Write truthfully in imaginary circumstances.  Something I heard, almost daily, in theatre school. And something actors are constantly telling themselves when approaching a character role: Act truthfully in imaginary circumstances.  It’s a simple sentence to take to heart and it’s easy to stick to your computer monitor, along with the grocery list and the reminder for your auntie’s birthday. *wink wink!*

      Thank you all for joining me today. I hope this slight introduction to Method Acting helps open your writing brain to embrace acting and all that it can do for you.  It really is the most dramatic of these two artistic mediums. I think our written characters deserve to walk down the red carpet just as much as Meryl Streep.  And if not to wear a fancy dress, then to sell books! 

Comment below and tell us what published characters would win the 2013 Character Oscars…if there were such a thing.( I’m pretty sure Katniss would be up for an award!)    Or just say “hi!”  

            p.s. If you comment, your name will be in the hat to win a free spot in one of Tiffany’s online courses offered through Lawson Writer’s Academy.

Courses Tiffany is teaching this year: In April - From MADNESS to Method: Out-of-your-chair acting techniques to invigorate your writing and make your characters Oscar worthy!    In May - 77 Secrets To Writing YA Fiction That Sells! TBA, Triple Threat Behind Staging A Sceneto be offered again in late-summer.  These courses will be taught at least twice a year. You won’t miss out!

Want to work with me in person?  Sign up for my Action Scene ALL DAY WORKSHOP  at: http://www.thinkbannedthoughts.com/Tipi-Tales.html mid-May

Tiffany Lawson Inman (NakedEditor) claimed a higher education at Columbia College Chicago. Here, she learned to use body and mind together for action scenes, character emotion, and dramatic story development. She teaches for Lawson Writer’s Academy and presents hands-on-action workshops. As a freelance editor, she provides story analysis and editing services.

You can find Tiffany at http://tiffanylawsoninmanisnakededitor.com/ or follow on twitter @NakedEditor