I’m in conflict about Conflict

You can’t have an emotional romance without conflict, right?  Conflict is one of my biggest challenges.  I generally don’t like a lot of plot in my romances.  (That’s why I don’t like intrigues.)  I do love conflict.  I love the story to be essentially about how they meet, how they get together, and the emotional bumps as they fall more and more in love with each other.  But I only like a certain type of conflict.  I don’t like conflict that comes about from ridiculous misunderstandings that can easily be dealt with through healthy communication.  I don’t like conflict stemming from immaturity.  I do love conflict that comes about from blackmail situations, but these days with (happily) women’s empowerment, women can quite easily walk away from most scenarios that cause the type of conflict I love to read.  A relative putting the heroine in a difficult situation?  Unhealthy and poor boundaries.  The hero being a jerk with an inner core of vulnerability?  That’s one of my favorites, but the more I understand psychology, the harder it is to pull that off realistically.  Are men like that really able to change and communicate and be vulnerable to the women they love?  I have a similar problem with scarring childhoods.  The happily ever after is a tough sell.

An emotionally stirring romance is about the internal journey of both characters as they master inner conflict.  The book What I Did for a Duke by Julie Anne Long did an excellent job of building a relationship that made both characters into better human beings and expanded their worldviews.

I have a really hard time creating conflict that highlights the exciting dynamic between male and female and yet is still emotionally believable and has the behavior patterns of emotionally healthy communication and admirable choices, which is what I want from my heroes and heroines.

I Hate Editing

I know some authors can ruthlessly delete pages of material, decide on completely new storylines, and are ruthless about what doesn’t work.

Me, I’d rather just finish up the book and let it be mediocre, and try to improve my skills on the next book.  I’m willing to change direction in the middle of a story, but once it’s finished, I’ll just let it be as is and move on.  As I mentioned in this post, I think I made a mistake in choosing a certain plotline.  But rather than revising it, I left it as is and tried to improve on the next book.  I finished that one, too, and hopefully it will be editing and up within the month.  The book I’m working on now had a fantastic first chapter.  I was so excited about it.  But I don’t seem to be able to sustain that level of adrenaline for 50,000 words.  I think that means I’m looking at another fun but not truly great romance.

I sometimes read and reread my favorite romances to try to learn, to try to understand how the plot and character development flow so that I can learn to create that pathos.  But I get so caught up in enjoying the book I forget to study it!  And then I don’t feel like reading it again for a while.  If I want to learn, I’d better get a little more self discipline about that.

I am hoping that some really harsh reviews will give me insight as to how to change direction in my books to make them more powerful.

On writing sex scenes

This is going to be a little funny for me to admit.  I’ve been reading romances for almost thirty years.  And when I was a teenager, of course I devoured the sex scenes.  I was hungry for knowledge.  The sex scene in romance has changed over the years.  There were euphemisms like “rod” and things were hinted at a lot more.

Even though my personal favorite subgenre of romance is the wealthy billionaire (specifically the Harlequin Presents line), which tends to come with more sex scenes than, let’s say, the Harlequin Romance line, I find that I don’t especially enjoy the sex scenes.  Unless they give insight into the relationship or the characters, they usually fall flat for me and I end up skipping to the next scene.  Sometimes I find myself thumbing back because I later realize I didn’t notice if they consummated or got interrupted.

So you can imagine writing a sex scene was going to be tough, since I personally am bored by them.  Not to mention, I wasn’t sure how much sex I wanted in my books.  For my first book I found myself really confused about which direction to take.  Try to write what I love to read (but, what it turns out, I don’t have an especial talent for)?  Write more lighthearted, which I’m better at, which lacks the pathos and gut churning emotion that I love to read?  I unfortunately tried a compromise and I’m concerned that I achieved neither.

Another reason I started writing is because I noticed that as I age, the romance genre is writing for younger readers (which makes sense), and the story lines that I adored– specifically the virgin stories– are not showing up anymore.  I simply love the build up and emotion of that line (despite the absurdity of the virginal non-clitoral orgasm).  In my first attempt at a romance novel, I tried to do that.  I think it was a mistake.  I don’t think I achieved the shock and emotion that I love to read.  And the whole story line felt forced.  I think I would have been better off not attempting that plotline.  I started off my second book (not published yet) with that approach and changed it in the middle, which I think was smart.

Anyway, I’m still feeling my way about what level of sex scenes are comfortable for me as an author.  Self publishing gives me freedom because I am not stuck into whatever type of sex scene the genre “requires.”  I’m still a newbie, though, and still finding what is most comfortable for me.

Self Published!

After my disappointing rejection, I decided to self publish on kindle.  I had to learn how to use their kdp but the instructions are very thorough and it was easy to use.  I loathe marketing, so I’m just going to keep writing and hope that over the next few decades I improve my skills and slowly create a reader base.