So sorry I haven’t been blogging much this week, but I’m hot and heavy into edits on my second book. I finally finished editing the first part enough to have my first beta reader — Superman!

It’s always nervewracking to have someone beta-read your book for the very first time, but I think it’s especially nervewracking to have your spouse read.

I get more nervous about Superman reading my manuscripts than anyone. I just want him to like them so desperately, and I worry he’s going to think they’re corny or too over-the-top, or raise his eyebrow at the love scenes, or … I don’t know. I just get really nervous.

So I’m working hard this week to give it one last polish as I feed him sections. So far I think he’s on Chapter 7. … And he keeps asking for more, so I think things are good. 

How about you? Do you let your spouse beta-read for you? Does it make you unbearably nervous?

Share on Facebook

One of my most popular posts to this day is the one I did about who should play Jamie Fraser in a movie version of Outlander. …

Yup, indeedy, it seems we’re all obsessed about this possibly-most-romantic-hero-ever.

In fact, the discussion is still going on over there, more than a year later — I just got a comment last weekend, in fact, from a young woman who claims she’s found THE guy to play Jamie. And she’s uploaded a [gulp. ...] verra cool video to prove it. …

C’mon over to Who Would You Cast as Jamie in Outlander and see her video (along with a few others that were uploaded in comments) and see if you want to change your answer? Or add a new one?

Obviously, the Jamie discussion is just going to go on and on until someone makes that movie!

Share on Facebook

Okay, I think I’m ready to have my short story read. 

(Of course, just saying that makes me sort of hyperventilate. … Sheesh. … I never really seem to have the confidence you’d think I’d have after writing all these years.)

Anyway, a few of you have offered, but if you’re still up for it — and can read this weekend – hit me up in comments or send me an e-mail.

This is a short one (seven chapters of less than 2,000 words each), so it should go fast. It’s a historical western, set in 1870 in California, post-Gold Rush, but right ahead of the silver-mining boom towns. These characters are on their way to one of the biggest, baddest boom towns of all: Bodie, California. (Legend has it that one little girl — on the eve of her family’s trip to the legendary town — wrote in her diary, “Good bye, God. I’m going to Bodie. …”)

What I’ll be interested in are how you felt about the characters, their goals, and their resolution. Also need to know if it’s “hot” enough (like fanning-self hot!), since this publisher requests that. …

I worry that the short-story format was too short for me to do what I really wanted to do, so curious about other opinions.

Let me know if you’re up for a read!

Share on Facebook

Hope you all had a happy Memorial Day weekend! We didn’t put our flag up, as we usually do (maybe by Flag Day?), but I did buy some red-white-and-blue flowers, and we say a prayer for the soldiers, and we did pretend summer had already begun with some DELICIOUS grill-out food (thanks, Superman!).

Meanwhile, I’ve just been writing away. Sorry I haven’t been writing here much. I’ve just uh … [*dusting self off*] fallen off the face of the earth, here. … Just writing a lot, every day at lunch and every evening after work.

But the exciting thing is that I finished my short story! Wow! The Queen of Never Finishing Anything finished! It’s a tad long — about 1,500 words over count — so I need to pare it down here and there, but overall I think I really like it. Superman’s reading it for me first. …

I’m holding my breath.

What did you do for Memorial Day weekend?

Share on Facebook

So in my quest to truly be the Queen of Never Finishing Anything, I decided last week to … er … launch into a whole new writing project.

No, Fin and Giselle’s story is not finished. No, I haven’t sent any more queries for Adam and Simone. No, my Orange County blog is not done. …

And YET! I can still, without even batting an eye, start a whole new story with brand new characters and not even look back.

{deep sigh}

(I know — This is probably why I’ll never be published. …)

But here’s what happened: I found out Harlequin was launching a new line called “Historical Undone,” which is a series of tiny little e-books — they’re each only 10,000 to 15,000 words, which is basically a short story. And I thought, wow, how fun! I love reading historical romances, and I love the *concept* of writing them, but they seem daunting to me — all that research, you know? Regency historicals remain the ever-popular favorite, which I know nothing (historically) about. And they’re followed closely in popularity by any other time in English history, followed then by any time in Scottish/Irish history.

Historicals seem fun to write because there’s such an inherent conflict — always — in the love interest. In contemporaries, which is what I do write, you always have to come up with some crazy conflict for why a young, attractive, unattached man and woman CAN’T be together. (In the modern era, that’s kind of hard to do! Because … uh … they work together? … because they’re on opposing sides of some argument? … because they had some strange past that keeps them from being together now? …)

But in historicals, there are lots of possible conflicts to always choose from — class differences, cultural differences, racial differences, religious differences. … Always interesting. Plus there are all those strange social rules that people love to read — and so many rules to dating. Fun stuff.

Anyway, since I don’t know anything about the Regency period, I began to turn away from this tantalizing new opportunity from Harlequin (despite the allure of short! and e-reads!), but then I realized there IS a period I do know quite a bit about. … And one I read about all the time. … And one that could be fun.

So I started my first western!

{*crickets chirping here*}

I know, I know — no one reads western romances anymore.

But oh well. It seemed like a fun project, and I know the era, and I’m into California history, and I’m having fun with it already, and I’m a finalist in the Queen of Never Finishing Anything contest. So I’m on Chapter 4 of what will probably be 12 chapters. …

Share on Facebook

I think a lot of us have that author who is an “auto buy” for us: We don’t read the reviews; don’t read the book blurb or the jacket copy. We just buy. We know this author will never let us down. …

For me, my most consistent auto-buy is Susan Elizabeth Phillips. I like her romantic comedies better than her “movie star books” (I call them), but either way, she never lets me down. She has a great blend of humor and sweetness in all her books, and the writing is always excellent. Her sentences always manage to surprise me with a great turn of phrase or a fun way of expressing something, and her writing is always creative and well-crafted — never cliche or repetitive.

Not only is she an auto-buy for me, but I always know what book she’s working on next (because I eagerly read her web site!) and always know its release date. I’m totally one of those standing in Borders, buying it the day it comes out. …

Who is your favorite “auto-buy” author?

Share on Facebook

As an aspiring romance writer, I’m one of those who loves to scour authors’ web sites for “how I got started” stories.

I love the tales of “well, I was an accountant for 14 years, and decided to write this story that wouldn’t leave my mind …” or “I was a high school English teacher who had an active imagination …”

These stories always lead me to think about day jobs – the ones the writers had, the ones they might have – and wonder what might be the perfect one.

Is it easier for an author to be the writer in a PR company – where you’re writing all day and 2,000 words is absolutely no problem? Or is it easier to be something that has nothing to do with writing – someone who stares at spreadsheets all day, for instance, and can’t wait to get home to whip up some great dialogue? Is it helpful to work with plenty of people for inspiration – a library, perhaps? Victoria’s Secret? A doctor’s office? Or does it help if you have some off-beat, interesting job – like an archeologist or a member of the Peace Corps? Maybe it’s nicer to work at home in solitude, where you can switch to your novel file at a moment’s notice?

I often think of William Falkner, who I read once worked in a toll booth and would simply write while he waited for the cars to pass. I thought that might be nice for him – all that solitude, all that quiet. I wonder if he wrote The Sound and the Fury there.

What’s the best story you’ve heard about a writer’s day job? What do you think the ideal job would be? (for a romance writer? a mystery writer? a historical writer?)

And would you ever pursue a job just so you could put it in a book?

Share on Facebook

Alright, so we’ve covered two of the crucial things every story needs:

• A protagonist
• A goal

Now we’ll cover the third and final element:

• A conflict

A story without a conflict is not really a story. Otherwise the story would end on page 2, because after you introduced the protagonist and the goal, you would simply say “and he won.”

(Which, obviously, would be very boring and there’d be no point in telling it.)

So you need conflict. It’s what people like to read.

Now perhaps you remember all this from high school (I can completely hear Mrs. Kirby in my head covering all this.) (Hello, Mrs. Kirby! Thank you! You too, Mrs. Zukoski and Mr. Drummond!). But for those of us who were passing notes to our friend Dawn, or who were busy drawing hearts on our PeeChee folders, or who were running in late to 6th period every day, here are the four basic types of conflict:

Man vs. self – This is usually where the protagonist is facing some terrible moral dilemma throughout the book, or facing a terrible flaw of his that’s keeping him from his goal. The first book that leaps to mind for me is Phillip Roth’s Saul Bellow, which was a bit of a long, dull read for me, but there it is. (These “man vs. self” books often are, quite frankly.)

Man vs. nature – These are like the stories I used to snatch up off the dining table when I was about 8 and my mom would get Reader’s Digest in the mail. Man, those first-person stories of protagonists battling the Andes, bears, cold, fatigue, sharks, what have you. … I loved those. They’re still popular with the young-adult set. (My kids and I just watched a marathon of “I Survived!” on television recently, in fact.) I’m also thinking of The Hatchet, where the young boy protagonist goes down in a private plane, and the pilot dies, and he has to fend for himself in the wilderness (with only his hatchet, of course). Kids love this stuff. It’s a safe type of “antagonist” for them. And the goal is always very straight-forward: usually “to live.”

Man vs. society – This really means “man versus society’s conventions,” and these tend to be moralistic stories I can’t think of any good examples of. Oh, maybe Lord of the Flies? One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (perhaps? not sure.)? Or a more modern one: the movie Pleasantville. If you have good examples of “man vs. society’s conventions,” throw ‘em at me in comments.

Man vs. man – Ah, here we go – this is by far the most common. It’s the easiest way to tell a story, and the best way to read one: any reader who wants to flip pages furiously loves a good man vs. man story. And think of all those Sylvester Stalone movies! In fact, even when the theme of the story is something esoteric, like “battling for freedom,” an actual human often stands in for the battle (a warden, for instance, or a nurse named Ratchett. …).

Anyway, literary novels can choose from any of the four basic conflicts, but genre novels (and blockbuster movies) usually stick with the last.

So let’s explore the antagonist

Like the protagonist, the antagonist can sometimes be slippery and hard to pin down, but he or she is the principal character in the story who is keeping the protagonist from the goal.

• Iago is an antagonist.
• Sir Leigh Teabing (from The DaVinci Code) is an antagonist.
• Darth Vader is an antagonist.
• Cruella De Vil is an antagonist.
• Alex Forrest (from Fatal Attraction) is an antagonist.

But those are the obvious ones. Some aren’t so obvious, and some are downright subtle. You can discuss long and hard who the antagonist is in certain books, but if you’re struggling with trying to figure it out, always bring it down to the basic question: Who is the main person keeping the protagonist from the goal?

Other questions that come up about the antagonist (usually among writers):

• Is he always evil?
• Can there be more than one?

The antagonist does not need to be evil. In classic stories with classic “villains,” he usually is, but there are plenty of subtle antagonists, too. A loving father can keep a protagonist from his goal. A future love interest can keep a protag from a goal, too. Sometimes subtly is engaging, and a multifaceted antagonist (one with both good and bad qualities) can be the most memorable of all.

As far as there being more than one, the answer to that is no. There can be “minions” to the antagonist – people who are carrying out his wishes to keep the protag from his goal – but there is usually one mastermind. (Now, I’m sure there’s some exception to that, but I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts it’s a messy, convoluted story.) 

And here’s an interesting question:

• In a romance, can the hero or heroine be the other’s antagonist?

In an online class by Jenny Crusie and Bob Mayer, they answered this and said it’s not wise. Why? Because, in genre fiction, the antagonist never wins. Which means that either your hero or heroine will in some way be a “loser.” And that will probably strip at least some of the romance (and certainly the last triumphant kiss) from your story. (… Just sayin’ …)

So what happens to the antagonist?

Typically, he fails. Typically, the protagonist overcomes him and gets a goal. But not always. In “man vs. self,” it would certainly be a horrible read if we hung in for 300 pages for a protag battling something about himself and then failed. (But I’m sure it’s been done.) And in “man vs. nature,” it would definitely be horrible if we hung in for 30 minutes or 300 pages and find out that he didn’t succeed in battling the elements. (But it’s definitely been done.) And in “man vs. society” and “man vs. man,” we often see the protagonist prevail, but we sometimes see him fail, too.

Again, this leads to great discussion. Because what is the author saying when he has the antagonist win? In “man vs. society,” sometimes society wins, and that always leads to a great discussion.

Genre novels don’t usually play with the ending. They are there to provide you with a great ride, and a feel-good notion that the protagonist will prevail and the antagonist will fail. I think we all need to hear that sometimes.

What about you? Which is your favorite conflict to read? If you are a writer, which is your favorite to write?

Share on Facebook

So earlier we were talking about the basics of critiquing being identifying the protagonist, and identifying the goal.  But both can be a little tricky, so I thought I’d take the discussion to the next level.

What if the protagonist isn’t clear?

Protags can be much trickier than you think. And there are other questions that come up:

• Can there be more than one?
• Is he always the “good guy”?

Identifying the protagonist can be tricky because it can seem like there are lots of “important” people in the book. (And in romance novels, there are always two, right? The hero and a heroine?) Some argue that  there can only be one protagonist, but ensemble pieces will invariably come up in the conversation (The Big Chill, for instance) and shoot that theory out of the water. But generally, yes, there is usually only one protagonist. In romances, it’s generally accepted that the hero or the heroine is considered the protagonist, and the other is usually a “helper.” The protagonist is generally the one who is seeking the biggest goal, and has the most to lose if he doesn’t change. And no, he doesn’t necessarily have to be “good.” He simply has to have a goal and chase it through the book.

• Rambo is a protagonist.
• Madame Bovary is a protagonist.
• Harry Potter is a protagonist.
• Dexter is a protagonist.
• Tom Ripley is a protagonist.

But sometimes it gets really tricky. The Great Gatsby is an example of things getting tricky because the book is told from the point of view of Nick, who is Gatsby’s neighbor. It would be easy to think that Nick is the protagonist. He is telling the entire story, and he ends up embroiled in all of Gatsby’s schemes. And he grows a lot in the book. But Gatsby is still the main character in both stories:  the book itself and the story we are hearing from Nick. Gatsby is the one seeking the main goal (Daisy). Nick tells us this story, and seeks his own goal in a way (the truth about Gatsby), and grows the most (Gatsby doesn’t), but I still ascertain that Gatsby is the protag. (This one is fun to argue, though, especially in light of the fact that Fitzgerald didn’t really want to put Gatsby’s name in the original title, so have at it amongst yourselves. …)

So when you begin your critique, mull over in your head for awhile who the protagonist is – it can be fun to think about, and much more challenging than you might suppose. It’s also fun to analyze why an author chose that person as the protagonist. For instance, why did Truman Capote choose the killer as the protagonist of In Cold Blood instead of, say, a cop?

More on goals

Goals, too, can be tricky and hard to pin down, which makes discussing them fun.

• Can there be more than one goal?
• Can the goal change?
• Is it something “hard” like a chalice, or is it something esoteric, like “fame”?

The answers are yes, yes, and yes — there can be more than one goal (often several characters have them, and they are often opposing, which makes the story exciting). The protagonist can have more than one goal also (although this can get messy and isn’t usually as great as a book where the goal is clear and defined). And yes, the goal can change for the protagonist. It often does, in fact. And yes, the goal can be “hard” and it can also be esoteric: in fact, having one of each is great.

Great example of goals

A great example of a good use of goals is in the recent movie Up in the Air. (I assume these goals are in the book, too, but I haven’t read it, so I’ll just discuss the movie.) (Spoilers-galore here.)

• Protagonist: Ryan Bingham (George Clooney character)
• External goal: a frequent-flier “gold card”
• Internal goal that he acknowledges: Independence, living light and free

By the end of the story, Ryan has gotten his original goal (the gold card) but he realizes it’s not what he really wanted. By the time the movie ends, he realizes he really wanted companionship, and he switches goals at the very end. He doesn’t get that second goal, however, which gives the movie a sad ending.

The reason the movie did such a great job with the goals is that it features an external goal (something literal that the characters are chasing) as well as an internal goal. In Up in the Air, for instance, the gold card clearly represents independence and “flying free,” which Ryan pursues for the first half of the movie. Later in the movie, he is also asked to haul around this giant posterboard of his sister and her fiancé to take pictures of them in front of various national landmarks. This symbol clearly represents companionship and marriage, and the posterboard takes quite a beating throughout the movie as it doesn’t “fit in Ryan’s life” (or his suitcase). It even gets blown into a harbor as he argues with another character about how much he wants to avoid commitment.

Anyway, these “hard” items that represent esoteric goals are called “McGuffins” (a term popularized by Alfred Hitchcock in the late ’30s), and they’re very popular for straightforward storytelling. People grasp them whether they want to or not – you follow the “chalice” while the protagonist chases it through the movie, but really you’re watching an internal goal (wealth, family, history, whatever) get chased.

All of which makes critiquing more fun. You can discuss who the protagonist is, what he or she is chasing, why the protagonist didn’t get the goal, or why he did. What is the author saying if he doesn’t get the goal? That the goal is unimportant? Impossible to have? Not worth chasing? Possible only for certain people?

Hmmmm … that’s where the fun of book discussions begins. …

Next, check out the third segment: The Antagonist and the Conflict.

Share on Facebook

Interesting discussion the other day on how we all critique. It really made me think about how I approach a story and when I think a book is “good” or if it leaves me feeling flat. Do you ever read a book and just feel “flat”? And maybe your friend just LOVED it, so you wonder what you missed, or didn’t get?

(Yeah, me too. …)

Lauran left a similar comment the other day when we were discussing how we critique  about how, even when reading a book for book club, she sometimes finds it difficult to express what specifically she likes and dislikes. (I hear ya, sister.)

But here’s the deal: It probably comes down to the most basic of reactions to the most basic beginnings of critiquing. It probably has to do with your reaction to the goal.

What’s that?

The most basic plot of any story is that there is a protagonist. And, as the book opens, he has a goal. Every novel, every movie, every short story, is simply watching the protagonist try to get his goal. …

And that’s where your critique begins, whether you want it to or not.

There are really four basic ways this goal-quest can play out:

• Protagonist gets the goal. (Happy ending)
• Protagonist does not get the goal but gets something better. (Happy ending)
• Protagonist does not get the goal. (Sad ending)
• Protagonist gets the goal but realizes it’s not what he wanted. (Sad ending)

Literary novels can select from any of the four.

In a literary novel, the protagonist doesn’t always get his goal. Or sometimes he gets it, but it’s not what he wanted. Or he gets it, but it’s not what he should have wanted. (This storyline is especially popular among the literary set.)

Examples of that last twist would be, say, Of Mice and Men – (Lots of spoilers here, but you probably haven’t thought about reading Of Mice and Men since junior year of high school, so I think I’m safe. … If you’re reading it now, you can skip this part.) The protagonist, George, wants independence and control of his destiny as a migrant field worker during the Great Depression. His mentally disabled friend, Lennie, however, is keeping him from that goal, and George says a few times that he wishes he could travel without Lennie. He gets this goal by the end of the book, when he must shoot Lennie in the back of the head before a lynch mob can find him. But, as he does so, George recognizes the loneliness that becomes a big theme of the book. The goal is not what he really wanted.

Similarly, Madame Bovary makes the goal ultimately undesirable — (More spoilers in case Madame is on your nightstand. …) The protagonist, Emma Bovary, really just wants romance. That’s her goal. In her provincial French town, she pines for it throughout the book. However, she is married to Charles Bovary, a very kind man but not Cassonova, who needs to spend his time making a life, not thinking about romance. Emma lets herself be swept away, then, by a rakish man in a nearby city and has an affair, then she ends up in debt to quiet the affair, and – by the end of the book – she’s completely ruined. So she kills herself. Ironically, the romance she so desired comes after her death, when her husband sets up a shrine to her and loves her entirely. She got her romance, but only after her death.

(Ah, that’s nice and cheery, eh? Sorry. …)

Anyway, genre novels, on the other hand, don’t play around too much with the goal.

Genre novels (and yeah, I know that “literary” is a genre, but, for my purposes here: romance, mysteries, suspense, horror, etc.) have an agreement with their fans that the protagonist will always get the goal. You don’t have to open an Agatha Christie and wonder if Miss Marple is going to solve her case. You don’t read a Stephen King thinking the protagonist is going to die by the end of the book. And romance novels follow the same rules: There is always a hero and a heroine (either can be the protagonist) who has a goal at the beginning (a secret chalice, a long-lost sister, a new career, a solution to a crime) and he/she will always get it (or something better), although that pesky little problem of falling in love will get in the way. (Some people think that, in romance novels, romance is the goal, but this is not true. There’s another goal, and the romance actually gets in the way of it. This is very tricky to write, incidentally.)

Figuring out who the protagonist is and what the goal is is a great place to start your critique.

If something feels “off” to you, it might be an issue of the protagonist and his or her goals. If you’re critiquing or beta-reading for someone, it might be because the author didn’t make the goal clear, or didn’t have the appropriate ending for his or her audience.

If you’re critiquing a published book, it might be that you simply didn’t like or agree with his goal (I felt this way about The Bridges of Madison County, in which the goal, like Madame Bovary, was romance, but it came at the cost of a marriage, which irritated me to no end); it might be because you thought you had a “contract” for a certain ending and it wasn’t delivered (you expected a happy ending and didn’t get it); or it might be because the goal didn’t seem plausible or was something that seemed silly and frivolous to you (getting a job, getting a great pair of shoes).

So what about you? Do you tend to like goals that fall into certain categories above? Do you recall feeling “flat” about a certain book? Did it have to do with the goal?

Next, check out those really difficult-to-decipher protagonists and their sometimes-slippery goals.

Share on Facebook