Romance Author Hotspot

Today our guest of honor is Shannon Donnelly!  Please welcome her to the party and enjoy her guest blog below!

I’ve also been judging in some contests lately and, boy do folks need to figure out their character arcs and plot lines. This is often best done before you write the whole book (otherwise you end up tearing up vast sections and with major rewrites). And this is one place where a synopsis (even a very basic short one) can help you because it highlights every flaw in your story—all the weaknesses come out. This is why I think editors really ask for these things.

Ah…I already hear the moans. Not a synopsis! But I’m a “pantser” I can only write if I don’t know where I’m going.

Those, to me, are excuses for not doing the groundwork. If you sketch out the road ahead, there are still places to go wandering (I write a lot of the book by flying into the mist, as Jo Beverley puts it). But if you don’t have any idea of your character’s arcs, or the main plot line, you’re likely to end up with a book that has major flaws (possibly ones that will sink the story).

So what are the 3 big flaws that I’m seeing on a regular basis?

   1) The big one is that there is no main plot line or main character arc. In other words, stuff happens and the story rambles.

This usually can be traced back to the main character (the protagonist) not having a strong, clear goal that’s well motivated. This goal can be as simple as survive a night in a haunted house in order to win a million dollars (motivated by the need for that money to save mom, who is about to lose the family farm). But there are a couple of important things to keep in mind:

A) The main character’s goal must matter to that character—there has to be something personal at stake. (If the character’s life won’t change, why should the character care, and therefore why should the reader care?)

B) There have to be consequences for failure—big ones that would shatter than character.

Once this is in place, the character has been set on a path. Now you’ve started a main character arc that’s also going to give you a main plot line. The stuff that happens now tries to push the character off that path (this is your plot). Worse and worse stuff happens until the character gets faced with a crisis—and this crisis had better be one that pits the character against wants and needs, so that the character has to make very tough choices. This is where the character gets stripped down to their core—to what makes that person tick. (And if you don’t know this, you need to get to know your characters better.)

Stuff still happens, but it’s all related to the character’s struggles to get what that person wants.

Now we complicate things by adding in what a character needs.

If you’ve put your character into a haunted house for a night, what your character may need is sanity and a sane world and that haunted house may strip both away from her.

Give your character internal conflict (as in does she stay for the money—external want—or leave to be safe—internal need.

Now you can add in an antagonist with a conflicting goal. This is going to complicate the main plot line and make it stronger.

The antagonist needs to be well developed, too—what does she want and need? (What’s your ghost’s goal in driving everyone out?) This is where you do not want to cop out and go for the cliché. In other words, don’t just go for “She’s insane” or “She’s angry because she was jilted.” Those are weak motivations.

Orson Scott Card in his book on Characters & Viewpoint notes that when you’re digging for your character’s motivations, the first three or four things that pop into mind will always be clichés. They’ve been used to death. So keep digging for better motivations. This is vital for any antagonist—write this person as if this character is the hero (we’re all heroes in our own stories).

   2) The other biggie I see is in what’s supposed to be a romance, the romance is put in like an afterthought. The action overshadows the romance, so the story doesn’t seem as if it’s really about two people struggling to build a relationship. This one is tough.

In a romance, the romance is the main plot line.

This means you have to have thought about both your hero and your heroine. What does each person want from a relationship? What does each one need? This can be different from the action plot line. It could be your heroine needs to save the world from a plague of vampires—that’s the action sub-plot in a paranormal romance.

The plot (the action that’s happening) needs to put the heroine and hero in conflict—but these two also need a reason to stay together. They have to compliment as well as conflict.

Does the heroine need a steady guy? (And what’s her reason for that—did she grow up in an unstable home?) If she needs stable, you want to either pair her up with Mr. Seems-Like-A-Bad-Risk, or with Mr. Stable-But-Boring. And then you add in what she wants. Could be your vampire fighting heroine needs a partner to watch her back—and she gets Mr. Unstable. Or could be she needs a vampire to come over to her side—so she’s got to seduce one into helping her. The trick here is to keep looking for what adds more conflict and more complexity. Pair up the compulsive clean freak with the slob (The Odd Couple is really a great romance disguised by the fact that it has two guys). Layer in reasons for your romantic pair to be attracted to each other—and layer in plenty of personality issues to drive them apart. Make the relationship the focus of the plot.

   3) The third big thing is that characters motivations need to be clear—they must make it onto the page. This is one where I often feel, as I’m reading, as if the writer knows this stuff, but it hasn’t gotten to the page.

There is the story in your head.

There is the story on the page.

There is the story in the reader’s head.

Ideally, all these match. If one is off, the story flops. This is where you want to ask: “Did I put in WHY my character acts this way or feels this way?”

In a synopsis, you simply tell the reader, “He hates cats because he was once locked in a closet with ten of them.” You want to make sure the reader understands WHY your character acts as she does.

The other part of this is to make sure your reader understands the setup for the story.

Get a friend you trust to tell the truth to read this and make sure you are not fudging things. It’s too easy to think, “This is good enough.” You need outside eyes here and someone who’ll say, “This doesn’t make sense” or “I don’t believe this.” That is something to fix with stronger motivations. (You can have a character act out of character or do amazing things only if this is sufficiently motivated—if you have cake-making mom suddenly pull out a sword and behead someone there’s got to be something in her background that would explain why she can do this, or she’s doing this because her child is threatened and she’s got adrenaline making her into super-mom.)

Too often I’m reading something and all I think is “why?”

Why did that happen? Why does she feel that way? Why is she falling in love?

Again, this is where a friend who will write “why” all over a short synopsis or outline can help. Answer every why—or leave the reason for the question coming up out of the synopsis.

Even if you hate to outline, or write a synopsis, if you cover these big three structural issues, you’ll have a much stronger book.

I’ve also been judging in some contests lately and, boy do folks need to figure out their character arcs and plot lines. This is often best done before you write the whole book (otherwise you end up tearing up vast sections and with major rewrites). And this is one place where a synopsis (even a very basic short one) can help you because it highlights every flaw in your story—all the weaknesses come out. This is why I think editors really ask for these things.

Ah…I already hear the moans. Not a synopsis! But I’m a “pantser” I can only write if I don’t know where I’m going.

BIO

Shannon Donnelly’s writing has won numerous awards, including a RITAnomination for Best Regency, the Grand Prize in the “Minute Maid Sensational Romance Writer” contest, judged by Nora Roberts, RWA’s Golden Heart, and others. Her writing has repeatedly earned 4½ Star Top Pick reviews from Romantic Times magazine, as well as praise from Booklist and other reviewers, who note: “simply superb”…”wonderfully uplifting”….and “beautifully written.”

Her latest Regency Historical Romance, Paths of Desire, can be found as an ebooks on Kindle, Nook and at Smashwords, along with her Regency romances, and her free novella, Cats Cradle. She has had novellas published in several anthologies, has had young adult horror stories published, and is the author of several computer games.

Shannon is a regular speaker at writing conferences, and will be speaking at the 2012 RWA  National conference in Anaheim. She gives online workshops and is the author of Story Telling; Story Showing, an ebook that compliments her popular online class Show and Tell: An Interactive Workshop.

She lives in New Mexico with two horses, two donkeys, two dogs, and the one love of her life. Shannon can be found online at:

Website:   www.sd-writer.com

Facebook:   www.facebook.com/sdwriter

Twitter:   www.twitter/sdwriter

Thanks for stopping in! Shannon is giving away a free ebook copy of “Paths of Desire” to one lucky randomly selected commenter!