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.

The Fantasy and the Delicious Contrast

Last week I introduced the Unaware Character technique. The reader knows what’s happening, but the character doesn’t realize.

I’ve been thinking about it as I read Mary Calmes’ Marshals series.

She has this fun little fantasy where Milo keeps getting hit on by just about everyone he encounters and he doesn’t realize it because he’s so in love with his partner. Calmes uses this technique over and over in the series. The neighbor. The witness. The officer he’s temporarily working with. The doctor who heals his wounds. His friend’s friend that he meets at a bar while he happens to be borrowing a purple shirt that’s too small on him and unintentionally shows off his muscles in a super sexy way.

First of all, since the series is in first person POV and we see it through Milo’s eyes, we the reader love the fantasy of everyone who comes across our path falling for us. Sure, I could be a regular person and have everyone be interested in me when I’m not even trying.

Second, we the reader enjoy the contrast that we realize what’s happening and Milo doesn’t. We get to watch Ian gnash his teeth and be jealous. At the same time as we are in Milo’s head thinking “I’m a regular person and my mate is the hot one.”

Why is that contrast so delicious?

What makes a declaration scene great?

I hit 50,000 words!

But I’m not finished.

Looks like this one is going to be longer. And I had hopes of actually submitting this one to Harlequin. But not if it doesn’t fit the standard mold.

I think I have under 5k words left to write. I’m trying to think of a good declaration scene. Which one should declare first? I thought the hero. But does that make him too vulnerable?

Patterning after the declaration scene in Emma by Jane Austen, a great declaration scene has one (preferably both) of the characters uncertain about the state of the relationship (PS kind of the opposite of what you hope for in real life if you’re popping the question). That agony of unsureness makes the reader’s heart beat faster. Even though we know it’s a happy ending, we love to ride that roller coaster as the characters aren’t sure… Even better if they despair…

But you can’t have a guy so unsure that it’s unmanly. (Romance novels being cliches of masculinity and femininity.) It’s a delicate balance.

What if I Leave Out the Black Moment?

When I W-plotted the outline for my current WIP, I outlined a situation that would stress the hero so he would finally understand the position of the person he’s been carrying a ten year grudge against. In theory it was all neat.

But now my characters have been acting on their own, saying and doing unplanned things, throwing monkey wrenches into the plot. I always find that the characters that I envisioned at the beginning of the process evolve and turn into their own people, not quite what I had amorphously imagined at the start.

I’m wondering now what would happen if at 35K words they have a blowup (that’s where I am and that’s where they are headed) and instead of having a dark moment at the end, I just spend the next 15K words slowly repairing the relationship and it just keeps getting tentative closeness, to more intimacy, to growing trust, to more security, to a declaration?

Maybe I don’t need that Dark Moment at 88%?

That’s one of the things I enjoy about self publishing. It may work, it may not work. I get to do what I want and play around.

What I Learned About Romance Writing from Kdramas

Kdramas have mastered the art of nuance in the drama of getting Main Characters together romantically. They take small details and focus on them, on the rich emotional pathos in minor events.

I wrote a detail where my hero is a little bit hurt. I was about to skip over the aftermath and go on to the next point in my plot when I envisioned how a Kdrama would handle this.

There would be no sliding over the event and letting the audience derive and deduce the main character’s feelings. Not at all. There would be another small event that drove it home. And another small event. And we would get caught up in the ballet, in the dance between the hero and the heroine, their looks, their gestures, the significance of all these very minor things.

Kdrama takes very small events and actions and imbues them with romance.

So I won’t move on to the next planned scene just yet. I’ll make a small scene with a very small event with sweeping emotional significance.

When My Own Blogging Improves My Writing

Those who are kind, benefit themselves
–Proverbs 11:17

Every since I clarified the concept of the Romantic Misunderstanding, it’s been much easier to play with it and use it in my writing. It was something that I sensed as a reader; but it was only through blogging about it, and spending the time putting my finger on analyzing what makes it so delicious that enabled me to now embrace it and deliberately use it as a technique.

It’s a series of three blog posts based on Middlemarch that helped me unravel how to build up the tension when both characters have something holding them back and both characters have reasons to (mistakenly) think that the other one is holding back.

Ever since I wrote it, I’ve been able to see it more clearly and I’ve been able to incorporate it consciously into my plotting. It is so much fun!

Technique: Romantic Misconceptions

I’m reading The Quarterback by Mackenzie Blair.  It’s one of my favorites and I re-read it frequently.

Usually I have a hard time reading to study technique while I’m reading to enjoy.  I get lost in reading and forget to analyze what’s working and why.

This time I noticed that I shivered with delight at least three times and I noticed that the technique was always the same.

It’s similar to the Romantic Misunderstanding I wrote about previously.  It’s the same technique that makes the Marriage Proposal in Jane Austen’s Emma just about the best marriage proposal ever.  It’s because one character thinks the other character is about to reject them.

But then, turnabout, the other character was hesitating, not because they were going to reject, but because of their own insecurity.

Matt calls Trevor his boyfriend.  Trevor is dazed and amazed that Matt thinks of him that way, and thinks about the many types of relationships he’s had, none of them as a boyfriend before.
Matt, not knowing what’s going on in Trevor’s mind, backpedals and says, “It’s ok if you don’t want to be boyfriends.”  Actually, Trevor is thrilled.

Trevor thinks Matt doesn’t want to sleep over because he’s not out and he figures Matt doesn’t care enough to take the risk.
But No! Matt is actually insecure and cannot believe that Trevor actually wants him to sleep over!

So we have a moment of despair, quickly followed by a moment of elation.  Just the type of roller coaster readers love!

Chapter Ending Woes

I reached 50k words!  Congratulations to me!

Unfortunately, the book isn’t finished.  I have a few more thousands of words of plot left.  Ironic, since I spend every book counting down that magical 50k number.

But since I’m self-publishing, I can be flexible.  I’m in the last chapter plus I want to write a small epilogue.

Also, the characters ended the last chapter before I was ready.  I had planned a high point and a low point to converge together at the end of the chapter, leaving the reader both excited and upset.

But the characters had such a poignant moment that the end of the chapter wrote itself.

Now how am I supposed to place a high point and a low type (still needed for the plot) in the middle of a chapter?  I can do it, but it lacks punch to have it happen in the middle instead of at the end.

They’ve got me in a muddle.

On Bonding and Creating Intimacy

I have some information in my hero’s backstory.  We are about halfway through the book, and it’s time for that information to come to light.

The question is, what will create more intimacy and better bonding–
If she asks him to tell her what happened?
Or if he spontaneously shares what happened?

When I started out, I imagined that the greater intimacy would come about if I created a relationship where he felt safe enough to share this information and he told her.  And then sharing this information would make them closer.

But you know how characters end up behaving differently than planned once you sit down to write them…

I was trying to transition the scene to have the topic come up naturally.  But then the heroine just came out and asked him about it.

And now I’m trying to decide which way would be better.  Is her being brave enough to ask about it and him responding by answering honestly the better creator of intimacy?

Or is it better for him to naturally bring it up?

Where to End the Chapter

I had this chapter mapped out.  Scene with heroine’s mother.  Flash to how heroine feels about hero.  Move to how hero feels about heroine and why he’s been away.  Put the hero and heroine together for an interesting second meeting.

So most of the chapter was the buildup to the meeting, and then ending with the punch of the second meeting.

That was the plan.

You know how sometimes these things write themselves.  I ended up spending more time on hero’s background, and then there was a suspenseful moment where he is standing before the door to see the heroine.

A perfect place to end the chapter.  You’re dying to turn the page to see what happens.

 

But then what?  The next section, their interaction, is not enough for a full chapter.  And that, too, was a natural ending.

How to decide?  To go with the natural ending or with the more suspenseful moment?