My Regency historical is also a bit of a romantic suspense.  But, as I’ve been going back over  my story and synopsis post pregnancy, (read: after the resuscitation of many of my brain cells) I’ve realized there’s not a lot of suspense in my suspense.

There’s the plot.  They’re trying to trap the “villain.”  To gain enough information about him to put him in jail and avenge an innocent party.  But, that’s the plot, not the suspense.

So, I ruminated.  I picked and pulled at my brain, trying to find a way to keep readers at the edge of their seat.  I want them asking: will they catch the villain at his dastardly deeds or will the slippery fellow get away again?  Worse, will he accomplish his goal before they do?

Ultimately, I found myself asking, “Who cares?”  Not in a this-is-a-boring-storyline kind of way, but in a who-has-the-most-to-lose kind of way.

When I started, the only one who really cared if the villain got caught was my hero.  If the villain is caught, my hero’s brother is avenged and my hero’s reputation is quasi-repaired.  But, that was all I had.

Initially, my heroine sort of just got drug into the conflict.  She was collateral damage, forced to be part of catching the villain due to extenuating circumstances.  But she didn’t care because of her own motivation and I decided it would be more suspenseful if she wanted to catch the bad guy all on her own.   So, I added an external conflict that would be resolved if she got involved, namely, the hero offers to pay her a lot for her help and she needs the money to accomplish a very altruistic goal.

Finally, I decided the villain needed to care.  At the onset, he just didn’t want to be caught for the sake of it.  I mean, who wants to go to jail?  But that’s not an interesting reason because, in fact, no one wants to go to jail.  I wanted something specific to him, something that was compelling.  Something that makes him hell-bent on working at odds to my hero and heroine.  I’m still working on that part.

But I realized that there was a trend here.  I wanted all my characters to have a stake in the outcome of their actions.  And, I wanted that “stake” to be something immediate.  It couldn’t be something without a timeframe.  My hero only has a certain time to catch the villain because once the villain realizes he’s on to him, he’ll disappear and my hero will lose his chance.  My heroine needs to take the “job” my hero has offered because she needs the money—fast.  My villain can’t run and hide even when he’s foiled because of… well, something I haven’t figured out yet.

Their needs have to be immediate and volatile and in complete opposition.   And they have to be completely invested.  No turning back.

My story gets a little life or death.  But I don’t think suspense in every story has to be that dire.  I think as long as the characters have an immediate need that is in opposition to another character, an author creates tension and suspense.

So, I wanted to see how everyone else does this.  How do you create the suspense between your characters, the immediacy of them accomplishing their goals?  Anyone want to offer up their own hero’s or heroine’s motivations for example?

A couple of weeks ago, Renee Lynn Scott offered up Renee Ryan’s layering method in conversation.  (You rock, thank you Renee.)  I don’t think I’ve come across a more beneficial two pages of craft instruction in a long time.  Maybe ever.  This was exactly what I needed and, since reading it, I’ve been pondering how this is going to make my manuscript better.

In my pondering, I’ve realized my characters interact in a place like where Harry Potter goes when he dies in Deathly Hallows. He ends up in a great white space, wearing no clothes.  He’s not uncomfortable, not cold or hot.  He’s just himself in… nowhere.  After he starts noticing this, a bench appears, then another chair, etc.  Towards the end of the scene, as he’s leaving this blank space, he realizes it’s King’s Cross Station.  That’s the sort of setting I give my characters, poor dears.  A great basic, blank space.   Props are included only if I’m forced to add them.

I also realize they don’t move.  Not unless it’s necessary.  So it’s as if they’re nearly paralyzed in Harry’s King’s Cross Station.

Good thing no one’s bought the movie rights to my story.  That’d be a really dull motion picture.

In some ways, this realization has been liberating.  I can see that the lack of movement and setting is probably taking away from my story’s overall appeal.   Now I’ve pinpointed this problem and I can come back and fix it when I’m done with the first draft.

On the down side, I have to figure out how to “do” movement and setting better.  Sigh.

I just picked up Elizabeth Hoyt’s Wicked Intentions.  Already, I’m amazed at how good she is at this.  Great movement, great setting, done in a way that enhances her great Deep POV.  She’s my idol.  I now have to figure out how to do what she does.  (*eye roll*  right, like that’s easy.)

So, any suggestions on how to enhance movement and setting?  Something from Renee Ryan’s layering handout you feel you do well or could improve?  Why, how?  Thoughts about layering in general?

**** This blog dedicated to Hellion.  XOXO.  Oh, wait, no smooches or hugs.  Just blown kisses from afar.  Like five states.

One of the extras on the 6^th Harry Potter movie is a documentary of the Year in the Life of J.K. Rowling. I haven’t watched it quite as much as the movie, but it’s close. Listening to my idol talk about writing, fame, and her life before is as close as I’m ever going to get in meeting her over a cup of coffee, so I hang on every word.

One of the segments of the piece is her re-visiting the apartment she lived in before she was published, a cheap little flat that is nothing compared to the lovely houses she lives in now. She had a surreal moment of walking around the flat (where someone else was now living) and these renters had her set of Harry Potter on their shelves. She got teary eyed—not about the books—but about how recent it felt for her to have been there, the thought she could still be living there if she hadn’t gotten published.

Obviously a “rags-to-riches” success like Rowling does not happen to every author. Jennifer Crusie had a blog the other day where she mentioned a statistic that about 90% of authors only publish one book. (How interesting God falls into that category, eh?) And Rowling managed to write 7 bestsellers. There are authors who’ve managed to publish 7 books but never rise above the midlist. Still…we all have dreams. Rowling’s dreams were to make a living at being a writer and to be published, which she managed. She no longer has to worry about making enough money for her and her daughter to meet their needs, no longer has to worry about welfare. In 10 years, J.K. Rowling had gone from living on welfare and doing a lot of her writing in a coffeehouse to possibly the most successful children’s author in the 20^th century. (Peter Cottontail might give Harry a run for his money, I’m not sure.)

Articles make her out to be an overnight success, but she started thinking about Harry Potter—got the germ of the idea on a train ride from London—in 1990; and she finished the final book in the series in 2007. 17 years. And of those, the first 7 years she was unpublished. Granted a lot of her writing involved planning out the other 6 books while she was working on the first one. That’s probably a lot of why it took so long to get the first one written, but there was also the fact she was writing with the little bits of time she had available between working, raising a child, and staving off depression. (Who wouldn’t be depressed in those circumstances?) But she did it, no matter how long it took. And she wrote this story, even though stories about boy wizards were not being bought. She wrote the book she was meant to write and she wrote it to the best of her ability. That is why she is my hero, even though success stories like hers are so rare.

Yet 10 years later, she breaks into tears in her old flat because even now, the success doesn’t seem real. She said she keeps the apartment in mind because if everything went away—the money, the success, everything—she could return back to this apartment. It was, she called it, a baseline. Pretty sure that never in a thousand years she imagined the success she has achieved with the Harry Potter books.

I rather like my apartment—it’s my baseline, I think. And never in a million years—a billion even—could I imagine the sort of success Rowling has had. My books will never have a midnight release; my books won’t be turned into movies. My dreams of success are in the Rowling realm of: “being a writer” and “being published”; and I would like to beat the odds of only publishing one book.

In 10 years, what would you have liked to achieve with your writing? What sort of success is beyond your wildest imagination of happening to you?

I re-read a book this week I’ve read several times before–Envy, by Sandra Brown. She’s a particularly favorite author of mine, so re-reading one of her books wasn’t a surprise. It’s often listed as her best, so again, no surprise.

What is a surprise is this is a book in which the author took a oft-used plot device–one that I usually abhor–and turned into a book I not only loved, but devoured for the upteenth time.

It’s the character-as-writer thing. Anybody else bothered by this, or is it just me? You know the book about the quiet, shy, romance writer who has a boring sex life and so then decides to have a one-night stand with the hottie neighbor to expand her repertoire? Or the book about the publishing executive or agent who has a high powered career despite the baby she gave up for adoption way back when.

For some reason, the peek into the publishing world inside my fiction drives me batty. Perhaps because my real life is filled with the publishing biz, I don’t want it invading my fiction. But I think it’s more than that. It’s hard for me to get invested in a character who is a writer, because it reminds me that I’m reading the results of…well…a writer. I can’t forget I’m reading a book. I can’t dive into the story, into the setting, into a new world.

Or maybe characters who are also writers feel so close to Mary-Sue characters that I just get too twitchy to keep reading.

But in this particular book, the heroine is a high-powered editor. Her husband and father are editors, running a NY Publishing house. The hero is a writer. Not only is the hero a writer, but whole sections of his current work-in-progress are within the book. It’s novel-within-a-novel structure.

Any one of these things would normally make me shudder. Maybe I could be talked into reading it once and grudgingly admitting to enjoying it. But to read, and read, and re-read, and dwell on, and think about….to be utterly engrossed by a plot device I hate, is rare.

The structure and the concept are cliche, not doubt about it. A novel being written by the struggling-writer-character actually inserted into the narrative. Yikes. But the emotion, the depth, the characters, the heart…all of it make this a book I can’t forget instead of just a cliche.

In a recent RWR article, Christina Dodd mentioned suggested we not think of them as cliches, but as myths. All cultures have them, stories that speak to the human emotional experience, stories which have remained virtually the same for millennia. Embrace the cliche, she says, after all, they’re stories we’ve loved forever. Just give it heart.

So what do you think? What cliche, or myth, do you hate most? Ever been blown away by how it was handled? Do you agree that cliches are simply passed-down myths, a starting point, rather than something to avoid? What cliches do you absolutely love to read over and over?

We have to have some fun today. I had a great blog all outlined out. Then I got distracted by a little writing this weekend. Then I went back to work on Monday and now I’m suffering from a migraine which makes any sort of creative output I might have next to nil.

So if you’re looking for some wit or insight, you will have to wait until tomorrow.

Jules is my e-mail faerie. And not just any e-mail faerie, she is the mother of all e-mail faeries. This woman dominates my inbox. (Stop smirking.) But it’s never of the written variety of e-mail. She’s high tech. She whips out her handy dandy headset and voice recorder to send me evil messages from e-mail faerie land. I download these little jaunts into Jules’ world onto my phone and spend half my time snorting and the other laughing. She’s a fountain of ideas for blogs (though she refuses to GUEST with me) and a few weeks ago, Jules came up with a new nickname for me through an idea she had for a blog.

Jules is one of those sleepers. She gets all these sweet little results but has the draw of an inner sex kitten. Have you heard her laugh? I swear. She’s got the market on the evil laugh. It’s spectacular. I want once ounce of that evil ability. Right now, I’ve just got the market on ice picking and the Undead Monkey.

Today we are going to find out our sexy level. Then we’re going to hijack our heroine’s and find their sexy level. In a little quiz I’m going to call: Bringing Sexy Back

There is a difference between vamp and sexy. Vamp is all about the “oomphf” factor. Vamp isn’t subtle at all; it’s all about the show. Vamp is in your face, I want you to think I’m sexy and I’m going to get what I want out of you. The difference is sexy is about the little things that brings characters together for the uniqueness that makes a relationship different. Yeah, the vamp is going to dominate your thoughts for the first hour or so, but you’re going to be thinking about the sexy long into the night.

Our heroine’s possess a certain amount of “sexy” to draw the hero into the heroine’s world. We get to pick the traits our hero finds sexy about our heroine. We can make her clumsiness and awkwardness be endearing to him. Bring out the protector and watch him be secretly amused at her inability to walk, talk and chew gum at the same time. We can make our heroine the sex kitten who everyone notices as soon as they walk in the door. She’s standing in the middle of the room, blood red dress draped over her flawless curves. The heroine knows she’s capable of anything she puts her mind to and he finds that extremely sexy.

So today, I want to talk about the traits we put into our characters to make them attract. What traits and characteristics do you find sexy in characters? And I want you to take the quiz and post your results into the comments. And if you have better quizzes (or find it extremely hilarious to see a bunch of writers take quizzes) post the links to the quiz in the comments for us all to try.

I’m sure it’ll come as a real shocker to you pirates if I confess I’m a little OCD. For instance, if I’m leaving my apartment in the morning and if I cooked breakfast on the stove (I rarely do and you’ll see why), I have to check the stove at least three times before I allow myself to leave the house. Three times I’ll check to make sure the light is off, the stove is cold (or growing colder), that I’ve done everything in my power to keep my house from burning down while I am gone. I also double check to make sure the lights are off; the fan is unplugged; and my AC has been turned off for the day. Only then can I go to work with a clear head of concentration, my anxiety tamed.

The rituals performed in order to write are no less important. If anything, they’re more important. One of my favorite scenes from Shakespeare in Love is when Shakespeare sits down to write the daily pages of his new play, he does some complicated little bit of re-arranging of his desk, turns around a few times, pulls up his stool, withdraws his quill from a tomato (since back then you didn’t eat the poisonous things), and then sits down to write. He writes like the wind.

My ritual is no less complicated. I have to have just the right movie playing in the background, either a Harry Potter or Twilight series movie. I have 300+ DVDs at my disposal, more if I bother my friends, but if I put on anything else, I find myself too distracted to write. (The Scarlet Letter is particularly distracting. I don’t care how badly panned it was in 1995; it’s hot. Gary Oldman is hawwwwt.) This is only if I’m in the living room. If I’m at the library, I have to have on my Twilight song set (stored on the computer); and if I’m in bed writing, this works too. In the living room, I’m sprawled on my couch, my pirate lapdesk in my lap, and I’m comfortably clothed in sleepwear. In bed, I’m sprawled much the same way. At the library, I have to wear different clothes, but my position in a chair is interesting. My butt is balanced on the edge, and my feet are at 90 degree angles, pressed into the guard rail in front of me, as if I’m getting my yearly woman’s wellness exam. As if writing my pages was as difficult as giving birth—and maybe it is.

Some rituals involve moving items on one’s desk over and over until you’re satisfied with how they look and you can proceed. Some rituals require dead silence, an empty house, or at least a room of one’s own (and a lock on the door.) If I write by longhand, I must do so with a blue ink pen. I hate writing in black. You know the saying: Write in black, they’ll think you’re a hack; write in blue, your stories are always true.

If it has been a while since you’ve written, the rituals get more and more twitchy. Any writing you do gets more and more twitchy. You stop talking about writing because you don’t want to have to answer: I haven’t written anything since the Founding Fathers won the war, and I’m afraid I’m never going to write again. Hell, even J.K. Rowling was twitchy. She wouldn’t talk about her stories at all while she was writing them. She didn’t want to jinx them by talking too much.

One can see the wisdom of this, I guess. If you’re too busy talking, you’re not writing. And also if you’re talking-talking-talking, you run the risks of 1) someone writing your story while you’re still talking about it; 2) diluting your story with too many helpful suggestions from those you’re talking to; and 3) killing the desire to actually finish writing it because you’ve solved the mystery of your story by talking.

It doesn’t really matter what ritual you do. What matters is getting the words on the page—and if rearranging post-its on your desk helps, great. If you need to kill a chicken, I’m not judging. Whatever tames the anxiety and sets the fear at bay.

So this week you don’t have to talk about how many pages you’ve written or not written. I respect your superstitious asses not to ask—but I will ask if you have any rituals you have to perform before you can start writing. Or do you know any famous author’s rituals that are particularly fascinating?

P.S. Book I’m reading right now that’s awesome: Syrie James’ Dracula, My Love, which is based off the secret journals of Mina Harker. It’s like Twilight for adults who loved the movie Dracula. I loved the movie Dracula—it was a Gary Oldman weekend for me, between Dracula and The Scarlet Letter.

Harry Potter is always teaching me something new, no matter how often I read the books or watch the movies. Just like some fans who can find real life advice in Trekkie or Twilight life, I find mine in the wizarding world. I don’t think this is very unusual. Writing has always been a form of magic for me.

Harry and I have some similarities. He was 11 when he discovered he was a wizard; and I was 11 when I discovered I was a writer—it was something I was good at, looked forward to, realized I could make a living at. There was magic, I discovered, in the written word.

Today, though, it was Ron who taught me something. As I was working on my manuscript (not like the wind, but at least open), I had Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone playing on the TV in front of me. It was just at the scene where Ron plays the life-size wizarding chess, as the three of them are trying to intercept Snape to keep him from getting the Sorcerer’s Stone. Ron realizes he must sacrifice himself to win the game; and Harry protests.

Then Ron says this little gem: “It’s you who has to go on, not me, not Hermione. You.”

You may now be thinking, I really wish Hellie would lay down the crack pipe and blog like a normal person. What does a children’s movie have to do with anything, let alone that line?

Only for me, it means: In the goals of your life you truly want to succeed at, you are the person who must accomplish them. Your friends are there to help support you, but they can’t do the work for you. If you want to be a truly great writer, then you’re going to have to write. You’re going to have face the Voldemorts of your manuscript and battle through them—only you can conquer them. Your friends are there to cheer, defend, boost, and encourage you through thick and thin—their presence is invaluable to you as a writer; however, you are the only person who is actually going to be able to finish your novel.

Facing Voldemort by yourself is a bitch of a thing; and there are some surprises, like you discover the trouble you were expecting (Snape) is actually someone else (Quirrell). You might even discover something most surprising of all: the person you thought most against you (Snape) was for you all along. In the end, always you discover, it was your magic that pulled off the impossible—it was your magic that finished the book.

Okay, so how is everyone’s writing going? Any particular challenges anyone wants to talk about? As friends, we’re all here to encourage and cheer you into facing your particular Voldemort. How many people are excited like me that the RWA conference is over and the blogs will be busy and active again so we can get our HOA running properly? I can’t wait to read Terri and 2^nd’s blogs this week where they talk about the conference (or at least I hope they’ll be talking about it!)

(Not the other “C” word, which coinwinkadinkaly (or maybe not so much) is the first letter of my first name.)

***

By no means am I an expert on writerly conferences. I’ve been to one several years ago (Spring Fling, Chicago, 2008) and found it to be one of the best writing experiences I’ve ever had. The kinship you have with someone as a writer, even if you don’t know them well, is incredible. The knowledge passed between groups, the camaraderie, the friendship- I honestly think writerly conferences are a good way to build back up some self-esteem (no matter if you pitch or not) and rekindle the fire you have for writing. You come home recharged and ready to go full steam ahead on your current (or new) manuscript. You keep in mind all the contacts you made, cross your T’s and dot your I’s and work super hard to produce. And sometimes at the end of the road, you’re rewarded with what you’ve worked so hard to do in the first place.

Work conferences are like that as well.

Right now I’m at a work conference. Not quite as fun as a writerly conference (and from what I’ve heard, not even a TENTH of fun as the RWA National conference.) but most of the time just as educational. Once a year I mingle with the state speaking to others who do what I do and work supportively to what I do. It’s a chance to trade secrets, learn new techniques and pawn off evil doings on others. (-That I’m kidding about. Slightly.) I’ve been at this conference every year for 7 years. Every year is a learning experience because the medical world is always changing, just like the writer’s world. As a writer we have to keep up with trends, remember who we’ve met, who we’d like to meet, what publishers want what and what agent want what. In the medical field, we have to keep up with ICD-9 (soon to be ICD-10) codes and HIPAA,  Red Flags and lien laws (Just to name a few). In the writer world we fight so hard to keep our new stories private so that no one has the chance to flag our unique ideas and rewrite them. In the medical world, we have to fight to keep your personal information private and keep you safe from identity theft. In all professions the opportunity to learn more, progress into a smarter version than the person we were. Conferences are a way to branch out and discover new ways to reinvent ourselves (or our office.)

So, as you’ve probably guessed, I’m not going to be on the blog today but the RWR pirates have promised to keep everything afloat while I’m out teaching the world how to ice pick properly and trying not to fall asleep in the back of the class. Let’s talk about our writing in a practical sense. Have you been to a conference? Taken a class (in person or online)? Belong to your local RWA chapter? What have you benefited from getting out there and improving yourself and your writing?

Well, they’re not technically jailbait, I suppose, as all of these fellows are over 18.  But they’re so young I almost feel dirty oogling them.  Almost.  I mean, they’re in the public domain, right?  It’s not like they aren’t putting themselves out there for oogling.

Right?

I know all the girls are all over Justin Bieber, but really, I don’t get the fascination.  And he’s literally WAY too young.

Any other teenie heartthrobs these days?

The picking of winners was long and of course, rigged. I kid. Actually Susan threw darts and here are the winners in no particular order. Congratulations if you are a winner:

Melissa

Nancy Northcott*

Irish

Suzanne Ferrell

Sin

Please email susan@susansey.com with your snail mail address to have your copy of the wonderful and delightful Money, Honey sent to you! (Be sure to use your REAL names *coughsSINcoughs* because nicknames are generally not recognized by the Postal Service or FedEx.)

*To anyone who looked at this post previously and thought they saw Donna’s name, Donna said, “I bought this book already and Patrick is yummy, so please let someone else have the chance to win.” My lucky dart found Nancy instead.