In Opposition to Poorly Done Black Moments

I’m about 30K into my current WIP and I have been reading so many romances lately with disappointing black moments. I’ve never been especially good at writing a black moments but the ones I’ve been reading have been about as disappointing as my own efforts. While mine are tepid, these have been melodramatic, not really believable in terms of the internal lives of the characters, and just stirring up drama for the black moment’s sake and not really in service of the story of their relationship.

I’m working on the arc of the 2nd half of my book and the romantic relationship and how it progresses. And I’m thinking about all these horrid black moments that I’ve been reading.

No conclusions yet. Just thinking

When All the Arcs Come Together

This is probably obvious but today I’m mapping out my hero’s relationship with his father. I chose their past relationship (“His relationship with his father was fine. Not super close but his father was present. A little demanding and pressury but not overly. He was distant-ish, present, mostly interested in his own thing, didn’t bother his son too much”). I chose their current conflicts, which have echoes of conflicts from his childhood. I chose how I want those conflicts to resolve emotionally. Now I’m trying to construct scenes that illustrate these conflicts, how they blow up, and how they resolve.

This is actually a pretty small part of the book, which is a romance novel, and mostly about the relationship between the hero and heroine. But it got me thinking about how a writer creates different arcs and different threads in a book, and if you can have them all come together towards the end where there is a situation that ties all the conflicts and pressure points and growth together–that’s very satisfying for the reader.

Why I Sometimes Like Writing More than In-Person Conversation

Heroine makes a statement.

“xyz abc defg,” Hero shoots back smoothly.

(Where the sentence he just shot back so smoothly took six minutes to think of and another three minutes to get the wording just right)

Pantsing vs. Plotting

I’m usually a plotter. I like to map out the whole plot, ideally scene by scene. When I get to a new chapter, I sometimes like to map it out into even smaller chunks. Then for “the writing” part, I like to flesh out the outline and turn it into dialogue, description of action, thoughts, and feelings.

So a Pantser (one who likes to just wing it and “write by the seat of their pants”) is not usually my style.

I get enough seat of the pants writing when my characters go off script. Somehow, no matter how rigorously I outline them, they tend to have minds of their own on the page. And I enjoy that (though I do not enjoy the havoc this creates with my outlines as I have to craft new motivations and new conflicts because the old ones were created with slightly different personalities in mind).

That aside, today I was working on my sub-outline, figuring out in more detail how I want the next few chapters to head where I said they would head on my main outline. And an idea blossomed of a fun little scene. So I started just jotting it down. And it bloomed some more and took some more shape. It was a lot of fun to write. I started writing in “outline speak” and it gradually morphed into more detailed dialogue and action as I worked on it. Some spontaneous pantsing. Always a joy when that happens.

I hope the characters are still behaving characteristically when I get up to the part of the story where this goes, so that I can use that scene!

Either way, it was fun! And that’s a big part of what I like about writing.

Thesaurus verb: give a dirty look

Uh, oh. My characters are glaring too much. Six times in 15,000 words. And I don’t like any of the thesaurus offerings. (Not those kind of dirty looks, even though it’s a romance novel. That’s later. After they are done glaring. Love me some enemies to lovers trope.)

At best there is scowl, which is really more annoyed than raging. Stare angrily? Come on. Glower? That’s more moody than confrontational.

For now, I’m leaving the excessive glaring. But let the record show I know it’s in danger of becoming a drinking game.

Things That Maybe Ought Not Be Done in a Run-of-the-Mill Romance Novel

When you’re writing a specific genre, certain types of wordplay don’t really fit. (Unless you’re writing a satirical punny subgenre of the specific genre, which is acceptable.) It’s jarring to the reader.

And yet sometimes it’s tempting. An editor would surely edit it out. But when you self publish… there is no editor to be the voice of reason or the insistent adult in charge, and it’s tempting to leave these types of things in. They are quick. So quick, quirky and silly, the reader might miss it. Maybe the reader won’t notice 3 different uses of the word “cross” just for fun:

He also noticed that a part of him was hoping Cleo would notice he was good at what he did and be impressed by him. That was a fool’s errand; Cleo had her arms crossed and a cross look on her face. Every part of her said “don’t cross me.”

A Small, Significant Interaction

This is one of my favorite romantic moments and I put one of these in almost all of my books. It’s when they are still getting to know each other. There is an interaction that seems like it was special. It was an ordinary moment, but he felt it was special. Perhaps she gave him a little gift. Or did him a favor. He feels that maybe it’s a sign that she likes him.

Then he discovers that she’s like that with everyone. And he is disappointed. Because he thought it meant something.

Then when we shift over to her perspective, we discover that even though yes, she does do this type of thing for everyone, it did have special meaning towards him. Because she does like him.

(He vs. she is irrelevant–I do this moment both ways).

Why do I like this small romantic moment so much?

These little moments are the bread and butter or romance. A lot of romance is in the little ordinary things that are not special because of what they are, but are special because it is with someone you are excited about and who is excited about you.

It also has the element of romantic misunderstanding that I so adore. A moment of hope, followed by a moment of despair, followed by a moment of elation. The emotional ups and downs we love to read!

When Scenes Write Themselves

My characters went AWOL!

I had a specific conflict in mind, and as sometimes happens, when I was writing the scene building up to this conflict, the scene sort of wrote itself. The scene came out really nicely and illustrated both their strengths exactly as I wished. BUT the characters kind of jumped the gun on the conflict.

I was not planning to have that kind of culmination of the conflict that early in their interactions. I had planned to have that kind of scene after a few more exchanges where I had built up the conflict.

I’m trying to write the next scene and now instead of them fighting full force and having their goals at cross purposes, their goals are somewhat aligned because she already realizes what he can bring to the table. I didn’t want that to happen yet. The scene I’m writing now is supposed to have more overt and compelling conflict!

So now I’m not sure what to do. Should I move things around and put the culmination scene later so that my characters can really get into their opposite stances here?

Probably. But I almost never edit that drastically. I’m more of a “write ’em and leave ’em and do better next time” type.

But this is messing with the plot.

Maybe it’s time for me to move into a new place a writer and enter the world of more heavy editing.

Thanks for being here while I talk this out. I’ll update you if I have the guts to do some major editing. (Or if I get super creative and solve the problem another way because I can’t bear to edit like that.)

Imago Opposites

I was not so enthusiastic about this current WIP. The idea didn’t come to me in a flash of inspiration like the others, I painstakingly crafted some characters and a plot that seemed like it might work. I wasn’t excited about the characters or the plot.

I decided to do a genderbend of my favorite genre. I like moody, jerky millionaires who intimidate everyone except the heroine. Or moody, jerky millionaires who intimidate everyone including the heroine but she has something special that makes him fall for her.

This time, I’m making the moody, jerky boss who intimidates everyone the heroine.

And it turns out I’m having a grand ol’ time writing this. I love yin-yang balance, how opposite character traits play off each other. How people with balancing traits both annoy each other and help each other get out of their comfort zones. Fun repartee, fun situations, fun dialogue, fun to write!

Crossing the Fourth Wall

Certain writing styles don’t really belong in some genres. I’m writing a basic romance. One might question why I stick to this genre when my writing sometimes tries to wiggle in a different direction, but that’s what I’m doing.

Today, my brain and fingers wrote something that just does not go, stylistically. But I snickered as I wrote it.

I self publish. I can basically do what I want. I write adequate romances. Not great ones, but entertaining ones for people who want to read a basic romance for a few hours. I can certainly leave this in if I want, because there is no one to stop me.

But it does not belong, in terms of tone.

But it makes me snicker.

EXCERPT:

“Nobody has the figures for this? John?”

The man who was presumably John flinched. At her piercing glare, he shook his head.

“Anna? Immanuel?”

Her team was frozen. Lev caught some darting looks between some of them. A woman with black hair opened her mouth, but the pursed lips and widened eyes of a burly footballer looking dude made her slump back. They sat there like deer in headlights, like bugs under the microscope, like pranksters at the principal’s office, for the time it took Lev’s brain to formulate three cliched similes as the team leader’s ire grew.