Writers in the Storm

Today Writers in the Storm is  pleased to introduce you to debut author, Ruthie Knox.  She's got tips for writing a romance novel, but really, you can use these in any genre.  Ruthie has generously offered to give a e-copy of her book to one lucky commenter who will be chosen at random.

by Ruthie Knox

While I’m an extremely enthusiastic convert to the romance genre, I spent much of my life reading other genres, including a hefty dose of literary fiction. After I began writing romance, it quickly became clear that I was doing beginnings all wrong. They were readable, but they weren’t working with genre expectations. So with the help of my partner in crime, Serena Bell, I carried out an intensive study of some of the best of the best in romance—including Nora Roberts, Jennifer Crusie, Jill Shalvis, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Vicki Lewis Thompson, and others. Here’s what I learned.

1. Character is everything.
Somewhere along the line, I got it into my head that readers are impatient for the story to get moving. This is silly. The primary thing readers expect from the first few chapters of a romance novel is that they will get to know your characters. If your characters are compelling and sympathetic, readers will tolerate all manner of tedious exposition and backstory dumping. Which isn’t to recommend poor technique—only to point out that characterization is the first, most important purpose of the beginning of a romance.

2. But stuff still has to happen.
It is possible, however, to overdo the getting-to-know-you thing. There’s the slow unfolding of a story, and then there’s the sort of book where the hero and heroine spend three chapters folding laundry and cooking dinner, and nothing happens. That doesn’t work either. The key is to find a place to ease into the action that establishes and telegraphs your plot — What sort of story is this going to be, and what kind of things can the reader expect to see happen? — but leaves you some breathing room to introduce your people before the tale picks up speed. Which leads me to Point the Third...

3. “Start where the story starts” doesn’t necessarily mean “start at the beginning.”
Characters become most interesting when you put them under pressure. If your story begins with a low-pressure meet scene, maybe the meet isn’t the best place to launch into things. Jill Shalvis begins The Heat Is On (a really excellent Harlequin Blaze title) on the morning after Jacob and Bella meet and have a one-night stand, because Bella is a flighty sort, and walking out on Jacob doesn’t put the screws to her. What puts Bella under pressure is finding a dead body outside the bakery where she works and discovering, in consequence, that (a) Jacob is a homicide detective and (b) she’s going to be seeing a lot more of him now. Uh-oh, Bella thinks. This is trouble. You want that uh-oh moment. You want emotion and intensity in scene one. Ideally, you want your characters squirming. Choose the opening scenario accordingly.

4. Beginnings set up the dominoes.
There’s a reason agents and editors who request partials ask for the first three chapters of your book. By the end of chapter 3 of a romance, every key element of the story ought to be in place. The reader should know who your characters are (in a deep sense) and what drives them. She should know what they’re going to fight about and why they belong together. The rest of the book will ideally be a matter of tipping that first domino and enjoying the experience of watching them all fall down.

5. Readers sympathize with actions.
A human being is the sum of her past, her thoughts, and her behavior. So is a character. But readers won’t like your characters on the basis of what they think or what has happened to them. They will only like them on the basis of what they do and what they say. So if your hero is being a complete asshole for three chapters straight, it doesn’t matter why. I can’t love him now, and I probably won’t really warm up to him later. Likewise, if your heroine spends the first three chapters of your book thinking and bathing and writing in a diary rather than talking to the hero and advancing the plot, I will yawn and put the book down. Make them do stuff. Make the stuff they do and say be appealing. This doesn’t mean they have to or should be perfect—only that their actions and words have to reveal their core likability, even if they do so against the characters’ will.

6. Everyone breaks the rules.
Nora Roberts head-hops! Jennifer Crusie rewrites the same scene from two different points of view! Susan Elizabeth Phillips sits her heroine down on the roof of a car and has her Think About the Past for a surprisingly long period of time! But these women write damn fine books, and they earn well-deserved plaudits for them. There are no rules. There are only stories, told better and worse. Tell yours the way you need to, even if that requires some rule-breakage. (But always be prepared to revise.)

7. A well-crafted beginning has hypnotic power.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips taught me this. I read three chapters of Dream a Little Dream, and I didn’t like the hero or the heroine. I didn’t like the set-up. I thought, This book is not at all my sort of contemporary. Too serious, too desperate. Yet I couldn’t put the damn thing down. Man oh man, does Dream a Little Dream ever begin well. It has solid characterization-through-action, useful dialogue, well-timed snippets of backstory and internal monologue, good introductions to secondary characters, excellent pacing, and deft treatment of difficult scenes. It’s a master class in miniature. Even though I didn’t especially like reading it, I couldn’t stop. That’s what an excellent romance novel beginning needs to do. If yours aren’t there yet, it’s time to revise.

What do you write?  How do you make your beginning grab your reader?

Ruthie Knox's Ride with Me, available from Loveswept on February 13, 2012!

In this fun, scorching-hot eBook original romance by Ruthie Knox, a cross-country bike adventure takes a detour into unexplored passion. As readers will discover, Ride with Me is not about the bike!

When Lexie Marshall places an ad for a cycling companion, she hopes to find someone friendly and fun to cross the TransAmerica Trail with. Instead, she gets Tom Geiger — a lean, sexy loner whose bad attitude threatens to spoil the adventure she’s spent years planning.

Roped into the cycling equivalent of a blind date by his sister, Tom doesn’t want to ride with a chatty, go-by-the-map kind of woman, and he certainly doesn’t want to want her. Too bad the sight of Lexie with a bike between her thighs really turns his crank.

Even Tom’s stubborn determination to keep Lexie at a distance can’t stop a kiss from leading to endless nights of hotter-than-hot sex. But when the wild ride ends, where will they go next?
Ruthie Knox figured out how to walk and read at the same time in the second grade, and she hasn’t looked up since. She spent her formative years hiding romance novels in her bedroom closet to avoid the merciless teasing of her brothers and imagining scenarios in which someone who looked remarkably like Daniel Day Lewis recognized her well-hidden sex appeal and rescued her from middle-class Midwestern obscurity. After graduating from Grinnell College with an English and history double major, she earned a Ph.D. in modern British history that she’s put to remarkably little use.

These days, she writes contemporary romance in which witty, down-to-earth characters find each other irresistible in their pajamas, though she freely admits this has yet to happen to her. Perhaps she needs more exciting pajamas. Ruthie abhors an epilogue and insists a decent romance requires at least three good sex scenes.

GIVEAWAY
One lucky WITS commenter will be randomly chosen to win a digital copy of Ride with Me. The winner will pick up the copy through Net Galley. Good luck to all!

by Fae Rowen

Okay, I never wrote about that Middle East trip to Dubai, Egypt, and Jordan.

There were reasons, okay?

Today, I'm prepared to tell you about my four days and three nights in Dubai.  On my own.  Well, with my friend who has long, naturally blonde, hair. The only Arabic phrase I learned was the translation for, "I'm her maid."  I figured if we got kidnapped, that might get me released.  So much for friendship and loyalty.

In a previous blog, I wrote about the preparations for the trip: shots, visas, plane and hotel reservations for the farthest away trip I'd taken up to that time.  I'd planned to blog and send pictures with my newly-purchased iPhone.  That obviously didn't happen, but I did end up with an over $600 phone bill for roaming charges from every cell phone company in the Middle East.

A friend told me that Economy Class on Emirates was like Business Class on any other airline.  Yana is a world traveler who speaks five languages fluently and racks up over a hundred thousand flight miles a year.  We flew non-stop to Dubai on Emirates. Seventeen hours.

She lied.  I'd thought we were in a two-seat side row.  Worse yet, we're in a three-seat row and my friend had the middle seat (she's short and has a skinnier rear) and I had the window.  The aisle seat was occupied by a non-English speaking elderly woman who, we discovered halfway into the flight, went through my friend's stowed bag while we slept or went to the restroom.

How did I discover this?  While my friend was in the restroom, the woman picked up my friend's backpack and started taking things out of it and stuffing them into her pockets.

"Stop!" I said.  She ignored me.  I got everything but the shoelaces back.  My friend and I watched videos on the seatback screen and took turns sleeping and restrooming after that.

I had panicked about taking supplements into Dubai.  Well, we arrived, paid the entrance fee, and were waved through the customs station. No one looked at our bags.  Not even sideways.  Nobody was in line by the time we navigated all the windows we had to go through and corridors we'd mistakenly wandered.

At least we were in Dubai and not in jail.

We arrived at our quaint hotel in the Bur Dubai section of old, traditional Dubai.  The facade looked like something from the Arabian Nights.  Our doorman wore an Aladdin outfit.  I wanted to steal his shoes.

In the mornings we would walk around before the shops were open, deciding what we wanted to go back and see later.  We discovered the clothing and material souk, old-fashioned outdoor stalls and shops, and the Aladdin shoes!  The beautiful embroidered materials with golden patterns were stunning.  I vowed to return with an empty suitcase just for material.  And to take a sewing class.

We paid a penny to ride the abra, a wooden plank with two benches and a lawnmower motor that ferries people across the river.  We took a fancy cruise on the river, too. (They call it a creek.  It's no creek.  I used to be a lifeguard and I wouldn't want to try to swim across Dubai Creek.  It's the main port for that area of the world!)

One day we walked under the river to the gold and spice souks. Dubai is not really a walking city.

I'd thought I'd bring back some nice gold jewelry, but everything was very expensive.  Later I learned Dubai Nationals don't shop in Dubai.  They go to London, Paris, New York or Los Angeles to shop.  Only tourists shop in the amazing indoor mall-cities of Dubai.

We spent a wonderful afternoon and evening with Sally, one of Jenny Hansen's British friends who lives and works in Dubai.  She showed us the expensive hotels and the "Gold Coast" of Dubai.  The man-made Palm Islands and Earth Islands are amazing when seen from the observation deck bar of a nearby hotel.

Which brings me to liquor.  Dubai is officially a "dry" country.  However, most restaurants and hotels do serve drinks to tourists.  If you stay at a hotel for foreigners, you can stay on a special floor that has a "lounge" that has an open bar with as much free liquor as you can drink for two hours every night.  Convenient, because then you can stumble to your room with no problem.  If you're drunk going home from another hotel, you'll need the names of the lawyers the State Department supplies.  End public service announcement.

For such a tiny country, Dubai has lots of salt water reclamation plants.  In fact, Dubai uses more water per capita than any country in the world.  The gardens throughout the city and on the sides of the road are amazing.  They have more grassy lawns than my SoCal street.

Without oil, Dubai's rulers  have made it the shopping and vacation destination of the Middle East.  As such, there are things to remember.  Like, if it's Tuesday, women can't go to the beach.  And if it's Thursday night, the young people are at the mall to see and be seen.  It really was fun to watch the groups of young women and men circle each other without making verbal or physical contact.

We had been cautioned to dress very conservatively.  No uncovered shoulders, no shorts, and certainly no midriffs. (Like I show that these days!) Well, there weren't a lot of tourists from the U.S., but the European tourists apparently didn't get the dress code memo.  The shawl I carried in my bag everyday, "just in case" we ended up someplace that even our conservative Western attire was too casual, never got pulled out.  And I could have bought a much prettier one there.

Now, I've traveled all over the world for, uh, more than three decades.  And I've never felt like a second-class citizen anywhere.  I got to have that new experience in Dubai.

We'd been warned never to walk outside the hotel alone.  A Navy Captain told me that  a Western woman alone on the street translated into prostitute.  So my friend and I walked as if we were attached at the hip.

The first morning we were window shopping and walking.  A group of four suited businessmen approached us. As the Navy Captain instructed, we lowered our eyes and didn't smile and kept walking.  They took up the whole sidewalk.  We had to jump in the street because they got faster and were like four linebackers as they approached us.  We must have been invisible.  Dodging traffic outside of a crosswalk in a downtown setting is not my strong suit.

At an upscale market-restaurant in the world's biggest shopping mall we were the only ones in line to order and, you guessed it.  Two men came in and stepped between us and the counter (without touching us) and ordered.  They never looked at us or acknowledged our presence.  Neither did the girls behind the counter.  Invisible again.  We ate somewhere else.

So much for chivalry. That whole men-can't-touch-a-woman rule can be difficult sometimes.  Like when we were trying to get out of the abra.  The "boat" didn't pull all the way up to the dock and men just starting jumping off and others jumped on.  We weren't willing to jump three feet across the water from a moving boat to a crowded dock.  And no man would give us a hand, literally, to help.

Finally, the boat owner yelled, a lot, and bumped the boat against the dock.  Six men in the boat grabbed the cleats and motioned us out while the other men on the dock moved far away.  If someone had been filming, it would have gone viral on You Tube.

As a wanna-be princess, being in a country that has no chivalrous background gave me a lot of "fuel" for the fire in my current main character.  I'd never felt like a second-class citizen and now that I can personally relate to that down-trodden anger, my character can resonate from her core in her struggle to build the life she wants.

I guess I'm going to have to throw this one to the "Write What You Know" crowd, because I couldn't have touched her boiling hotpot of emotion without these experiences.  Laura, Jenny, and Sharla commented on the first chapter draft that "She's so angry" and "Why does she have such a temper?"  Until I "got" the why, I couldn't motivate her temper at the level necessary to ensure the reader didn't think of her as a spoiled brat.

Oh, the steri-pen worked great!  We had all the purified water we could drink.

Egypt--Alexandria, the Giza Plain, the Nile River Cruise, and the private jet (oh, yeh, rock star, baby!) next time.

Have you traveled to Dubai? Did you have different experiences? Share them with us!

A Big Writers in the Storm Welcome for Our Guest Blogger today, Tiffany Lawson Inman (also known as NakedEditor). 

Mark your calendars because Tiffany will be sharing her knowledge with us the last Friday of every month, starting TODAY!  Yeah!

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            Writers are always told to show, show, show!

            SHOW emotion.

            SHOW visceral reactions.

            SHOW emotive body language.

But we aren’t always taught when or how much. This is almost MORE important than the showing itself.

Have you ever read a book where the characters are too quick to tears? Or they are too quick moving from decision to decision. Was it believable? More importantly, did it keep you interested?  Readers need to marvel at the character’s ability to stay strong. And readers need reasons to root for their character. Who is going to root for the crying-at-every-challenge character in the corner?

Nobody!

Can you imagine if Scarlet cried buckets after every obstacle thrown in her way in Gone With The Wind?  In Hunger Games, what if Katniss made the decision to save her sister and then proceeded to cry when anyone mentions her home, family, or sisters.  If we wrote our characters like this, readers wouldn’t have characters to root for.  Let alone, a plot worth its dramatic weight in publication gold.

It’s a thin line to walk when thinking about your characters. So many of life’s elements test our strength and push vulnerabilities.

• Frustration
• Love
• Loss
• Guilt
• Hate
• Death
• Happiness
• Panic
• Jealousy
• Fear
• Embarrassment
• AND THE LIST COULD GO ON!

These are the very tools we use to create drama.  And yet if we let them rule, our go-to reaction is usually to cry.  So, when is the right moment to let the flood gates open?

When your character has done everything BUT cry.  Of course it is different with each character, plot, and genre – especially YA,  yadda yadda.  I am saying for you to let us see the struggles, up hills, smacks in the face, and bombs.  And let us watch your character flounder a bit before the first tear rolls down that cheek.

In the theatre, actors are told that the more a character fights the tears back, the further in your audience will be drawn. Actors are told that if they allow their characters to burst into tears during a dramatic scene the audience won’t be crying or emoting as much as when they get to watch the character battle the obstacle and finally be broken by it.  My director would say he didn’t want to see me cry, he wanted to see me try not to cry, it was more interesting.

And, turns out, he was right (of course he was right, he’s being nominated for Tony’s!)

Theatre and literature are very similar. 

Actors, writers, directors are pushing characters to the breaking point, page after page. Scene after scene. We can’t afford for them to be boohooing when they rip their trousers at the school dance, or at the sight of their dead brother when a killer is on the loose.

Can we?

No – we need them to act! What we don’t need is to see every single thought or feeling that goes through their head.

How much emotion should we show? Depends on where you are in the characters' struggles. Depends on where you are in the plot. One variable that is always the same: your readers want to have an experience.  So let the reader put the puzzle pieces together. Show your characters emotions through their actions, reactions, body language, and vocal cues. No spoon feeding allowed.  You can show sorrow without putting a whole heart on the table.

I’m a big list person when it comes to plotting, editing, characterizations, setting, etc.  Usually these lists start out with questions and end up with fleshed out details to plunk into your drafts.   It’s no different with emotional timing.

First. List your all of your characters obstacles from big to small. Or list them like the Thai place labels their curry  *wink wink*

• Lost keys = timid
• Lost job = mild to medium
• Lost love and betrayal = medium to hot (depending on the extent of betrayal and who it was with)
• Loss of loved one = medium to hot (depends on how death occurred)
• Lost security: kidnapping, torture, battle between good and evil = hot to sweaty forehead hot
• Loss of humanity: bombs, apocalypse, war = sweaty forehead hot to loss of sensation in tongue hot

Second. Look at your plot line.  Place the obstacle on the plot line. Now start asking yourself questions.  You might get an answer that makes you challenge where the obstacle is in the plot, or what it is.

• How strong or how vulnerable is your character after each obstacle?
• Where in the plot is it feasible that your character would have a breaking point?
• Do you think it will deepen characterization and intrigue if your character is shown to become stronger after one of those obstacles?
• Do you need to teach your character a lesson early in the plot so that they are better prepared to handle the obstacle towards the end?
• Does what you are showing from the character strengthening the reader’s connection with that character?  Does the event invite sympathy? Or does it throw up a wall?
• Are your characters reactions consistent with their character and each situation? (keep in mind with YA, this is a whole different ball of wax…)

I bet some of you are rethinking those tears in your third chapter, am I right?  Well, my intention was not for you to rewrite your WIP, but if these questions prod you to create a more realistic emotional timeline that gets you closer to publication, then I have succeeded!

Tell us a few of your life or character obstacles and how you chose to show the emotions to your readers.  Did some of the reactions catch you off guard? Or, just say hi!

Comment below and your name will be in the hat to win a free spot in one of my online classes offered through Lawson Writer’s Academy.

77 Secrets To Writing YA Fiction That Sells!  OR  From Madness To Method

Thank you so much for popping over to WITS today!  It’s an honor to be here.  In fact, I’m going to be honored to be here the last Friday of Every Month on WITS!  So, come back!  MUCH more to learn!

About Tiffany:

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.

For more writing/editing  tips n’ tricks: http://tiffanylawsoninmanisnakededitor.com/