Ask the universe. Your CPs. Your editor. Or ask your husband or partner. Hey, I don’t know what it is you want.

I’ve always been the kind of person who waits in a queue, waits for a gap in the conversation, waits until the time’s right or the planets align. But I’ve had an epiphany… asking can be GOOD.

There’s nothing wrong with using your own mind and figuring stuff out by yourself, but if you can’t continue writing until you know if that scene on page 112 worked or not then you’d best ask. If you have two deadlines and they’re going to clash then asking (early) just makes sense. If you’re plagued by a crazy idea for an immortal knight who is cursed with impotency then asking questions is probably something you really, really want to avoid. (ah,  just go ahead and write it then torture your CPs with it. Lol, that’s what I did.)

Most of the time it’s good to ask questions, though. Not everything. Can I have a 50 book contract over the next ten years, would be a little over the top by my standards, whereas would you like to see the sequel would be a question well asked.

So what do you want to know? And who can you ask? If it’s a reasonable question, and you haven’t already asked it – or if it’s been a while since you checked  - then NOW might be a good time to reconsider your options. If you want fries with whatever you’ve ordered then don’t wait to be asked. Repeat after me, ‘I’ll take one of those, and a side order of fries. To go!’    

Happy asking!

Robyn

What RACHAEL JOHNS fears most is NEVER coming up with a good book premise/idea again!

Last week I told my  publisher I’d like to write about a single mum truckie heroine. I pretty much had this whole FABULOUS book plotted out in my head. Unfortunately she said ”Nah, sorry, we’ve already got a single mum truckie scheduled soon, can you think of something else?’ Yeah, sure, of course was what I said, but inside I was quaking.

So what did I do? A number of things actually:

1. I thought of my favourite category romance tropes and how I could make them work in a longer romance. I came up with Friends to Lovers, Unexpected Pregnancy, Love Triangle and Fake Engagement. I really, really wanted to make a fake engagement work but kept coming up with nothing. I decided using a trope was a stupid idea.
2. I grabbed a whole stack of magazines from our shop – and started flicking through pages. Wineries kept jumping out at me – could be just that I was in desperate need of a drink by this stage – and so I wrote that down. I wrote down a number of other possible rural settings (cos it’s a rural romance I’m plotting) and different characters one might find in a small country town. I ripped out LOADS of pages but one snagged my attention more than others Mrs Australasia. Hmm.
3. Then this morning I went for my run and while I was pounding the gravel, I thought about some old ideas I still have milling around. One was about a heroine who raises money for Dogs for Autistic Kids and…

WALLA – with bits from all these three techniques, a story started to take shape. Next I annoyed my CPs and Sisters with my new idea and got their thoughts. My hero might suggest something VERY terrible and at the moment I’m at the stage where I wonder whether this idea is too dark for a romance. If so, I’ll still use the bare bones I’ve got, but on a different tangent.

Next step is to let this idea simmer for a bit. Read lots in my genre of choice – contemporary romance – and just mull the next wip over for a few weeks. Yet, even as I write this, I’m itching to dive right in and start throwing problems at Faith and Monty!!!

So, I’m curious today… Where do you find your inspiration? Do you have any trusted techniques that always work?

I’ve realized, over the course of the past couple weeks, that I think that a lot. During two different conversations with my editor about two completely different things, I thought that. She made suggestions and I thought…but I can’t do that! And I said as much to her. Her response was something like: If you don’t want to, that’s fine. But how do you know you can’t do it unless you try?

And that was when I realized my reaction was based on feeling like there are things *I* simply can’t do.

Hmmm.

There was a time when I didn’t know how to write a book. I didn’t understand the pacing, or internal conflict, or consistent character, or any of the things I understand now. I had to learn it. Now that I think about it, I believed I COULD learn it. I never thought I couldn’t. I don’t know why now my writing landscape is filled with so much I Can’t Do That.

Right now, this means tackling a theme (TWICE!) that I’ve been extremely uncomfortable with and have avoided. When I really examined my aversion to it, I found it was because I was afraid I couldn’t find a way to make it believable. That it would stretch me too much. Or that I just wouldn’t be able to do it.

I don’t want to write like that. I don’t want to look at things and say I can’t, and walk away without trying. Without stretching. Without growing.

No matter where you’re at in your writing  journey, I think you’ll encounter things that are too hard. Books that seem too much for you to handle. A rejection that’s the one you just can’t climb out from under.

But maybe, just maybe, we’re capable of more than we think. I will say I’ve had some experience in writing books that were too difficult. And one of them was a book I ended up writing three times, but by the end of it, I became a writer who WAS good enough to write the book. It made me raise my personal bar, it made me capable of more.

I need to remember that now. That it’s okay for something to be tough, that it’s okay to have to work and sweat, and be creative. It’s okay to try something and have it not work. But if you never try, if you give up, you’ll never know what all you could have done.

Don’t put limitations on yourself. Grab a sword and face the big beasts. Find out what you’re capable of.

Hope you enjoyed!

Jackie xx

Photo by The Shopping Sherpa

You can tell I’m the sister who writes sweet, my posts have less half-naked men, sorry!

Now I don’t know why I got to thinking about self-publishing again, but I did. Probably because one of the Sassies, who writes fabulous stories that should be snapped up by a publisher pdq, was mentioning it.

I’ve been beating myself up over missing yet another self-imposed deadline, for the Harlequin Romance Fast Track. I feel a strong sense of failure. I didn’t do what I set out to do, which was finish the chapter and the synopsis and sub them. Actually, I finished the synopsis, and I feel it’s a strong one. The problem was, the chapter didn’t fit any more. Too slow. Too introspective. Not enough hero and heroine together. And not enough GMC. The goal, motivation and conflict is there a bit, but not nearly strongly enough. So rather than sub stuff I knew wasn’t ready, I chose to wait.

That sounds good. Except I know there’s another reason. The reason I procrastinated getting it done.

I am safe from getting another rejection in a month’s time. Smiles a twisted smile and shakes head.

What I want of course is impossible. I want a road to publication where I never have to face another rejection. Where everything I write is accepted (minor revisions okay). Where I never get a negative comment or bad review.

Oops. That fantasy bubble just popped. That’s WTF Publishing out then! WTF would accept me immediately, but the reviews (if anyone ever reads the story) could be something else again.

The problem with some self-pubbed writers is they are doing it for the wrong reasons. Not because they’ve written a story that would be accepted if they subbed it, but they want to hold onto complete creative control. Not because they’ve written a good story that just isn’t a good fit with the mainstream publishers. Not because they’ve rewritten and revised to make this the best story they possibly can and it still doesn’t quite hit the publisher’s mark, at a time when being bloody good just isn’t enough, a new writer has to be sensational to break in.

There are some writers with great stories that have been rejected who really ought to self-publish them. I know a couple myself. I know how hard they’ve worked at their craft. I know how well they write. I know how gutted they are when they get another rejection on something they’ve poured so much into, a story that genuinely is worthy of publication. I would pay to read their stories, just like some books from some of the other self-published writers I’ve bought, read, and enjoyed.

I am not one of those writers. There are a lot of writers self-pubbing who aren’t, either.

Whenever I fantasise about self-pubbing, it’s for other reasons. Because I can’t face another rejection. Because I want an easy route. Because I want to be published, dammit, even if it only sells eight copies and I don’t make enough back to pay for my cover photo.

Not good enough reasons. I remember thinking with my last rejected story, while I was waiting for the response, that if it got rejected I would self-publish it. I believed the story was good enough. Then the rejection letter hit. I thought again about my vow to self-publish.

Maybe I should send it to an different publisher before going to self-publishing?  Because I do realise, it’s probably NOT easy to do it right. Eradicating every single error. Formatting it right. Getting a professional looking cover that doesn’t scream “Self-pubbed on the cheap” to potential readers. Maybe I was just wimping out from all that work and the risk of bad reviews, too!

So I looked at the story again.

Ooh boy. The story was very rightly rejected. What was I thinking of when I subbed it in the first place? It’s nowhere near ready. If I self-pubbed this, I’d be lucky to scrape two stars on Amazon.  Maybe two and a half, if I could get friends and family to write some - ahem – creative reviews.

That rejected midlength novella is now getting rewritten two ways. One digging deep and changing the conflict significantly, extended into a 50k category romance (that’s the version I just missed the fast Track deadline for, the one I’m kicking myself in the butt over). That’s actually a whole new story. There’s not much I can transfer over from the old story. It’s a full rewrite, just taking off from the same idea. The other will be a very short 10k novella, doing the opposite. Pulling out what’s good in the mid-length novella, tweaking the internal issues and taking out the clunky and unnecessary external conflict that pads out the word count.

The structure is all wrong. Not only is it devoid of any stated goal and motivation for these characters, it’s far too slow to start, I have too many secondary characters and take too long to get the main characters together and get into the conflict. If it was the start of a single title, it would be okay. Maybe.

But the worst thing was- I resolved the essential internal conflict waaaaaaay before I resolved the external relationship block.

So funny to read it again and be half way through and think “This is where the story should end.” So it will!

And the scene that came next, the scene I loved at the time? The scene that absolutely had to be in there? It sucked. I couldn’t even finish reading it, it was so bad. Any reader who’d stuck with the story that far would definitely give up there. I’m not sure that scene is even salvageable. The concept might work, but the execution in this case most definitely did not! That scene doesn’t fit in wither version.

At last, I understand what that phrase “kill your darlings” really means in editing. Nearly all the scenes I liked the most at the time need to go. I’ll be doing huge rewrites on both versions to make them good readable and emotionally moving stories.

But I won’t be self-pubbing them. Once they are rewritten and self-edited as well as I can, I’ll be sending it off to my favourite publishers again.

I hope the writers who do choose self-publishing do well at it, publish wonderful polished stories and get great reviews and fab sales. To do that, they are further along their writing path than I am.

For me, at the stage I’m at with my writing, I need those rejection letters. I still hope soon I’ll sub something that gets a Revise and Resubmit, not another rejection. But if I do get another R, I need to embrace it like the gift it is. An editor’s opinion on why the story isn’t yet ready to publish, the opportunity to take another look at the story I thought was ready to go. Another chance to look hard at the story and see how it can be made stronger, deeper, more focused, a better read.

I want a reader who pays money and invests time in one of my stories to get to the HEA with a satisfied “Ahhhh,” not delete it off their Kindle half-read, wondering why the hell they bothered and swearing never to buy another of my stories again. I want to be on their auto-buy list, not the auto-reject list.

If I self-publish now, they’ll be getting option 2. And somehow I have a feeling having a story rejected by an editor is easier to bear than having it rejected by the readers.

I’m still learning how to write a romance. And I wouldn’t expect anyone to pay for one of my stories now, any more than I’d expect to pay for a piano recital and get to listen to someone practicing their scales.

I better get rewriting! By the time you read this, I’ll be on the plane to Australia, for what’s supposed to be a holiday and  a house hunting trip, but may end up being very focused on my parents and their health issues again. Wish me luck with my mission, and time to write somewhere in there too!

Yes, it’s addition!

But you know what? It’s a better one than tobacco or alcohol and a zillion other potent things. And the best thing about my book addiction, is that I can call it research and feel like I’m still working while totally enjoying myself.

I’m rushing to finish my current book (yes, you’ve all probably heard me moaning about it on Twitter) and so I haven’t got much reading time lately, but when I do read, I really try to make it count. I analyse every book (yes, I can still enjoy them while doing so). Bad books are good to learn from too – what not to do and all – but I really try to take note of the things that caused me to love a book. The books that I wish I’d written, I take serious notes.

One book I recently read, which I really enjoyed was Kristan Higgins – Too Good To Be True. It’s classified as a romance but has a whole wonderful cast of secondary characters, each with their own subplot going on. THIS is something I love in the books I read and hope to emulate in my own writing. While I see the benefit of short romances and the need for them to only focus on the hero and heroine, I really dig these longer books that focus a little wider.

The set-up really grabbed me from this book – heroine’s ex-fiance left her at the alter because he was in love with her sister, so the heroine made up a fake boyfriend so the sister and the ex wouldn’t feel bad about getting together. Talk about a sympathetic character!!!

In some ways this sister was a bit too perfect for me but that was part of the story, in the end, her perfect life wasn’t so perfect after all. The other sister is having marriage issues, which also form a plot line in the story, and then there’s the complex relationship of the heroine’s parents, her gay best friend and her colleagues.

There was SO much in this book, yet at the same time it was actually quite simple. Although the hero was an ex-crim, the backstories of the main characters weren’t hugely complicated, yet we got to know them so immensely, that the book felt longer than it’s 350ish pages. And that was a good thing.

This book was a rich book and it was all down to the characters and how they interacted with each other.

I hope that when people read my books, they feel a little like I did after reading Kristan’s book. I want them to feel they know each and every character very well and like they’ll miss them now they’ve finished reading.

What’s something you’d like to emulate from one of your favourite authors?

I’m writing a series – for the first time – and finding the out of sequence aspect of it extremely challenging. I write sequentially from start to finish and can’t jump ahead no matter what… or so I thought.

Essentially though, that’s what I’m currently doing. I’ve written one and a quarter manuscripts then skipped nine or so chapters and picked up the story again. My ducks are all over the place. And I keep darting sideways looks at them, thinking I should probably stop what I’m doing and round them up.

But what I’m discovering is that they’re not wandering far. Continuing to run around after them like a lunatic seems kind of pointless if they’re going to sort themselves out, more or less, without my input. It’s a novel concept – no pun intended – to ignore them and keep writing.

Maybe there’s meant to be a certain amount of chaos, an edge of danger, an element of uncontrollability? Feel free to jump in here and set me straight if there’s not!! Because I’m beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, stopping constantly to make sure my ducks are all lined up is actually (*gasp) counterproductive.

What about you? Are your ducks all lined up? 

Robyn

I’ve done posts about sex before, and by that, I of course mean sex in books. But I felt like it was time for another one. I’ve always been a big believer in using sex in romances (bear in mind, I am somewhat…liberating erotica/erotic romance from this discussion as sex in that sub genre will often serve a different purpose) to advance the story. To either build the relationship or, in some cases, compromise it.

But especially over the course of my last…ten books or so (that sounds so weird!) I’ve been thinking about sex in terms of character. WHY is this scene integral to THESE people and why could I NEVER EVER cut and paste it into another book, change the names, and a have a scene that worked just as well there as it did in another MS.

Ideally, a love scene should: Advance the story, raise the stakes, change the relationship, reflect the characters involved (and their emotional state!).

This is why these scenes are becoming more and more important to me. If I do it right, a love scene a depth of emotion to the book that would not be there otherwise, and that is what I’m always striving for.

I’ll be the first to admit, I have joked that these scenes are ‘free word count’ and to a certain extent, it can still be that way, but one of the reasons is that I can’t STOP writing the scene until it’s finished. It’s too emotionally intense. At least, it is when I’m doing it right! (When I’m bored, we have a problem that goes beyond my hero’s foreplay skills)

I have a book coming out in the UK soon called One Night in Paradise. This is a friends to lovers story and I think their sexual relationship follows a really different trajectory as a result. It’s one that’s very unique to them, anyway!

Their first scene is much…sweeter, I think than first times often are in my books, but they have an emotional connection already, even though it’s one that is related to friendship and not romantic love. (At least not on the hero’s end!) This scene is in the heroine’s point of view, and it was important to me that it capture the enormity of being with this man who has always been out of her reach, him seeing her for the first time, finally kissing her and touching her. It was important to me that the reader was on that journey with her.

The after effect of the scene is that their relationship has just changed HUGELY. They’ve crossed a line, and the hero is immediately determined that it WILL NOT happen again.

It’s the second scene that carries the desperation. They’ve said they won’t do again, and yet they both want it. But both of them have broken defenses and they don’t have the strength to fight it anymore. And this physical exhaustion due to fighting their desire, and them letting go of the fight is what leads to a very emotionally honest moment from the hero after and, IMO, the sex has to be there to show just what it does to him and why he is willing to tell her about something he’s never talked about before.

The third scene isn’t fully consummated, and that’s also indicative of character, the fact that they were really planning to NOT do it again, and the fact that my hero is big on contraception and had nothing with him. There is cupcake frosting involved, which is only natural as cupcakes are a big part of the heroine’s life. This is the scene that built on the one before it, and caused my hero to realize how much he cared for the heroine, on how many levels, not as just a friend, not simply as a lover, but in every way.

The fourth scene, was all about the hero trying to put the heroine into a place he could handle. His lover, and nothing more. To compartmentalize his feelings so that she wasn’t SO IMPORTANT to him. And that means in this scene he tries to detach from her, while giving in to what he craves from her. Which, of course, he can’t. But he doesn’t want to look at her, and he doesn’t want to be so conscious of who she is. He doesn’t want it to matter. It’s his rock bottom moment in a lot of ways, fighting this battle against his need for this woman, and his need for love when he’s so afraid of it.

Again, the scene is reflective of the hero, his emotional state, the way HE would behave when under that kind of emotional strain, and the way the revelation of his feelings has him behaving afterward. It’s actually a painful scene, at least, it was for me to write.

To me, none of these scenes could come out of the book. They are an intense, physical expression of the internal, they force strong internal emotion, they drag internal emotion into the open and force the h and H to deal with it, force them to reveal it. And, I hope, they are a reflection of the people involved.

This comes into play even when the characters think about how the other looks, tastes, feels, smells. My fashion designer heroine thought in specific colors and textures, my coffee magnate hero is more in touch with taste, my virgin hero is assaulted by…all of it and every detail, every new feeling is important.

Love scenes are not tab A into slot B, at least, they shouldn’t be. They’re a new opportunity to layer in character, emotion, and to reveal all sorts of fabulous details about your h and H.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments!

Maisey

Then I came home and tweeted about it. And people started showing me the covers. And then someone showed me the version that was on Glee last week. Performed by my current FAVORITE peek, Matt Bomer. This video is an epic stew of man angst (mangst, if you will) combined with a song that has enough angst to keep one of my Presents afloat for 50K words and I cannot get enough of it.

So, for context, here’s the original version:

And here is the amazing Matt Bomer MAN ANGST eye candy version:

Photo by Wrote
 

A bit of a cheaty blog post today! Many of the words aren’t mine, but stolen.

Several of the Sisters are struggling with writing synopses right now. So we had a discussion – what should go in, what should stay out, what’s it all about anyway?

Very timely for me as I’m entering the Harlequin Romance Fast-Track, with a total rewrite of a novella I wrote last year, beefing it up into a longer story. The novella is 22,000 words, but it doesn’t work at that length at all. It needs to be simplified right down into a 10K novella, or I need to go deeper into the potential issues and make it 50K.

So, for now, I’m going for the 50K version for the Fast Track. Sometime, I also want to do the shorter version. Not much of a risk of self-plagiarism (which only matter if I sell both of them!). Digging into the conflict to lengthen the story has completely changed their issues, so the characters in each version will be different anyway. I actually won’t use much of the original story. It was a jumping off point to get me going, but it’s morphed into a whole new story.

Anyway, I need a first chapter and synopsis, pdq. I thought I had a handle on the chapter, but didn’t have a clue about the synopsis as I have no idea “what happens”. I thought I knew whaT my character’s conflicts and issues were, and that was it.

Well, that seemed like a good place to start.

Except I was wrong about that. I actually knew nothing at all. Only the characters’ names and what they did for a living and a bit of their history. I even had that wrong!

I got stuck about halfway through in my first chapter. It was fine, right up to the point where they met. In other words, not very far in at all!

The characters’ reactions to each other just weren’t ringing true for me. I didn’t know why, but it felt forced. I was making them do what I wanted, but they were puppets, stiff and unnatural. Now I’m pretty sure old lovers meeting again after a long separation would act stiff and unnatural, but you know what I mean.

Things weren’t flowing. It just didn’t feel right.

I really thought I knew what these guys history was and how they would react to each other when they saw each other again. Yet it wasn’t working. So I decided to start the synopsis instead. Maybe if I knew what was supposed to be going on between them, I’d know how to fix this chapter. Maybe I’d even stop procrastinating.

I should know by now, when I procrastinate, when I have to force myself to write, I’ve gone wrong somewhere. So looking at the synopsis made sense.But I had no idea how to approach the synopsis. I really do write the worst synopses in the world.

I know you think you do, but I’m willing to bet you don’t. Mine will be worse, for sure!

Jackie gave some good advice-
I would think about the emotional arc of the characters, not so much what happens. Their developing feelings, why they feel they can’t be together,then how those feelings change.

That felt so right.

I don’t need to know “what happens” in the conventional sense. I need to show how they feel at the beginning. What’s drawing them together. What’s keeping them apart. What triggers change in each of them until they finally have grown emotionally enough to reach their HEA.

I started writing the synopsis. Not the way normally do, a list of what happens. I started with the heroine, and what her feelings were about the hero at the start. I added why she has to see the hero again, waht forces them together. Then I wrote the hero’s feelings.

Sounds good.

Except it wasn’t! I had it all wrong. And that was why my chapter was stuck at 2000 words.

Suddenly, on the commute yesterday, I started writing a whole lot of what-ifs in my synopsis. What if their past hadn’t happened the way I thought it had at all? What if she wasn’t angry with him for betraying her? What if she’d chosen to go, thinking she was protecting him? What if the issues between them were very very different to what I thought? I wrote some ideas, but worried I was overcomplicating, adding more to the mix instead of digging deeper.

Then in my morning pages today, things really got interesting.

A what-if for myself. What if instead of over complicating, what I’m doing is brainstorming? Throwing lots of ideas into the pot so I can choose which ones work and fit these characters?

Ideas started popping. The characters’ pasts and their core conflicts shifted. The story started to be about something quite different. Yes, the theme is still finding home, and knowing we deserve the highest love, but the way these characters get there is very very different. The external conflict seems lighter, less anger, less bickering. But the internal stuff goes waaaaay deeper. The emotional wounds these characters need to heal are painful and verey very central to who they think they are.

Then I logged onto a fabulous discussion, all about synopsis writing. It wasn’t about my synopsis, it was about Abbi’s. But wow, it got me thinking some more about the essential nature of the core emotional conflict in romance. I’ve edited out some of the comments that were highlights for me.

Abbi- Question: would the worst woman for my hero be the one who sees beyond the facade or the one who will make him stay when he doesn’t plan on it, or both?

Jackie- One thing I would ask is why does the hero feel he can’t be himself? And who is he underneath?  So yes, re the internal conflict, the worst woman for him would be one who sees beyond the façade. But then you have to think about what that façade is hiding and why it would be so very awful for him if someone saw who he really was.  

Robyn- I’m playing with the same concept but in a different way. My H thought he’d had his facade accepted for a long time,
and yet his partner always knew it was a front. Stripping it away completely will be necessary if he wants to wants to get her back.

Abbi- I always thought the worst person he/she could meet was the one who per se made them fall in love or made them stay because of love. That’s just a cover to protect their inner conflict isn’t it?

Robyn-  I think it depends on who your character is and what they want. If they don’t want to go then someone making them stay won’t be a worry. And if they want to fall in love then the issue might be more who they’re falling in love with rather than the act of falling.

I’ve got my hero thinking he’ll never love anyone again then realising he cares for the heroine more than he thought, but only after she has gone. As it goes on he understands that he’s in love with her, always has been… but getting her to fall for him after years of lies is going to turn him inside out. Mine’s rarely textbook conflict so I probably give unusual answers to
conflict questions.

LOL, Robyn, no, just fabulous thought provoking ones!

Jackie- I think you also have to  think about why being in love is bad. I know for one of my heroes, his deep conflict was that he didn’t want to love because being in love meant a loss of control. And losing control meant he was just like his father.  

Robyn- I think I do everyone wanting to be in love, but the cost being higher than they ever imagined it would be.

Jackie- Yeah, I think not wanting to be in love does work well for a strong alpha. The high cost of love is very sexy too may I add.

Maisey- I think it’s…not necessarily about the other being the worst for them, but they’re the one that will force change.

In Robyn’s case, her hero found the woman who forces him to confront his fear of loving, really.

Robyn- I like that. I always struggle with that worst person idea, but someone who forces change I can relate to.

Maisey- I figure that’s what really forces the black moment. One person is ready to lay their issues down and change, the other hits a wall and can’t break through it yet. But the romance is that journey to change and…healing.

Maisey again- I feel like there’s often three layers to conflict and character. What they show the world they’re doing, what they think they’re doing and why they think they’re doing it, and the real reason they’re doing it.

I love all this. It’s why being part of a writing group all doing romance is so good.It keeps me focused. It reminds me what romance is all about and why we love it so much.

It’s all about emotional change. It’s about people becoming the best they can be, the most real and true to themselves and authentic they can be. It’s all about the character being challenged by the one person who sees through their front, to relate at the level of who they really are. About the character having to grow and change, become more of who they are and less of who they pretend to be. About the deepest healing and the deepest love being hard, but possible.

Romance affirms what we want to believe is true.

For my story,  things shifted a lot in the last two days of playing with what-ifs. Yet I can see I need to take it another level deeper again it I’m to get to the core of what romance can be. What I have is still too superficial. I need to go even deeper, to the whys, to the level of essence. To Maisey’s third layer. I’ve got it for the heroine, but not yet for the hero.

And more questions to ask my characters. Do they want to be in love? Is falling in love the worst thing that could
happen to them, no matter who it’s with? Do they want to be in love, but this person is the worst person for them? Do they not want to be in love at all, and especially with this person? Or like Robyn’s characters, do they want to be in love but the price is far higher than they ever expected to pay?

The answers will tell me a lot.

I also need to really think about the questions of the character’s facade and their inner reality. Michael Hauge is great for this. I made a chart last year based on his concept of identity to essence and the lectures he gave at RWA last year. I wasn’t lucky enough to go, but recordings of all the talks are for sale. It’s the conference you have when you can’t afford to fly to the States and pay the conference fees- but without the fun and the alcohol and the crazy shoes.

Anyway, I need to do the chart for my characters and see what comes out.

Then, I’ll know enough to write my synopsis. And maybe I’ll even be able to finish the chapter!