Telepathy and Romance

Telepathy and romance are two great tastes that ought to taste great together. So why is it that, so often, a telepathic heroine or hero--finds true love with the one person whose mind can't be read?

It's part of a romance novel's plot, of course, for a couple to get to know each other better. There need to be obstacles in the way. If one person can read the other's mind, a lot of the tension is gone from the story. If one of the partners is immune to the other's ability, that creates tension and can also serve as a signal to the telepath that here is someone special.

But what if the telepathy did work? Usually, in those cases the plot tension arises from the non-telepathic character having secrets which the telepath might accidentally--or purposely--uncover. The telepath might learn things that complicate the relationship further.

But there's another way to use telepathy in romance, I think, a way that I've seen more often in science fiction or fantasy novels that happen to have a romance. Telepathy can be used as a kind of leveller, a new way of looking at how two people interact. "Normal" humans are isolated from each other in many ways. Their intimacies are negotiated and can never be total as we can't see another person from the inside. What if they weren't isolated from each other? What happens then?

If one or both characters can read the mind of the other, most of the simple romantic conflicts can be eliminated. The writer has to delve deeper for plot conflict, perhaps specifically engaging with gender roles in a relationship, or other power differentials. The writer could explore how their characters would interact on another level entirely.

Prose Architecture and Experimentation

Back when I wrote a lot more short stories, I used to use each one as an opportunity for experimentation. This was partly because I feel experimentation is one of the best ways to improve your writing, and partly so I wouldn't get bored.

I experimented with different aspects of craft and character. I wrote a story in first-person. I wrote stories in second-person present tense. I tried out a light-hearted, slangy character voice; I tried a dark, despairing character voice; I tried sounding like a fairy tale and I tried sounding like myth. This post isn't really about whether I was successful or not. This post is more about what you need before you can experiment.

I looked back at some of those stories recently, and realized I wouldn't have been able to write them if I'd tried to do so when, say, I was in college. At that point, I just didn't have the chops. If you don't have the basics of prose down cold, and have not yet found your own voice, it's a lot harder to experiment. I think, once I started to sell those short experimental pieces, that I was ready for them, and it showed.

You can experiment as a beginner, and I think it's good to do so, but I think it's a lot harder to sell those experiments when you're still getting control of your prose. I think, to make a style experiment salable, it needs to have some substance besides the experimental aspect. You have to be a good enough writer to play with more than one aspect of craft at a time. You have to be able to keep the basic architecture of your building from falling down while you layer on the gargoyles and little curlicues.

At least, that's what I think right now. Doubtless a few years from now, after (hopefully) I've reached a new level in my writing, I'll have yet another opinion.

One of the most useful blog posts I've seen this week:
Why you should blog to build your writing career even if you don't think you need to by Justine Musk.

Writing the Senses

Have you ever done one of those writing exercises to make you think more about using all your senses in your writing?

I've at least tried some, but I get bored pretty quickly with exercises, so instead I steal the ideas and try to use them in my normal writing.

One thing I feel strongly is that it's not necessary to use every sense in every bit of description. For some writers that may be a feature; they may be intending to have the reader dwell in the world they're creating, be immersed in it, but for most purposes, I think it's okay to only give outlines. Vivid outlines, but outlines.

My theory is that reading is a collaborative process. Every reader brings something different to the book. The writer can denote, but everything they write also connotes. Every reader will gain different connotations from the same denotations. (Here's a great concise explantion.) A writer can connote a lot with very few words.

I like that, because I admire concise prose. I would much rather read a scene in which one sense is vivid and connotative, and emblematic of the pov character, than one in which several senses have been laboriously included just for the sake of using a lot of different senses.

Research - When to Stop

I actually stole this topic from a discussion I read...somewhere, a while back. The question was, "when do you stop researching?" I have two answers.

My first answer is never. You never stop researching because everything you read or look at might eventually find its way into your fiction. If you stop researching, I think your stories can grow stagnant.

My second answer is to stop when you have what you need for the story. It's very tempting to read every book you can find, watch every documentary series in its entirety, read a whole decade's worth of newspapers on microfiche. And you can do that, if you have infinite time available to you, or are a really, really fast reader. But for most writers' purposes, all that isn't necessary; research should be secondary to story, or else no one will want to read your novel. Though they might use it as a research source....

I think there's a difference between research for its own sake and research for the sake of fiction.

There are two facets to knowing when you've done enough. One is that there are things the writer needs to know that the reader doesn't need to see. I think of a lot of that as preliminary research: reading general books on the time period, making notes of possible items of interest.

After that, specificity is key. (Yeah, I know, I say that a lot.) When I'm writing about World War One, it helps me to know the political background of the countries in which the story is set, but the reader is more concerned with the lives of my original characters, and the details that are related to them. I think of it as a matter of focus.

Research what you're going to use, as much as you can; I skim through books, marking necessary details with post-it notes, or cut and paste from websites into a single document. I try not to research small items until I know for sure I'm going to include them in the story; instead, I keep a list of details I need to check, so I can search for all of them at once, perhaps on a day when I'm not writing.

I have to admit, I am constantly reining myself in. I buy research books related to a current project that I know for a fact I have no time to read until the novel is finished. I don't recommend it. Unless your apartment is bigger than mine.

Related posts:

Historical Detail in Fiction.

Reading for the Writer.

Synergy in Writing and Research.

The Research Book Dilemma.

Writing for Women, Writing for Men

I read about a workshop at the RWA Conference whose topic, I think, was writing for women versus writing for men. I didn't attend, so the actual title didn't stick in my mind. However, it sparked thoughts, and I of course had to pour those thoughts into a blog post. With a hot picture of Josephine Baker wearing a top hat.

I write for women. At least I think I do. The line that publishes my novels, Harlequin Spice, is aimed at a female audience, so by default that says I write for women, right? I'm not sure what that means, exactly, beyond "books most women will like," which to me also suggests "books some men will also like."

I've had reports from a few men who've read either The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom and Their Lover or The Moonlight Mistress or both. Most have been boyfriends or husbands of female friends who'd bought the book. All of the men whom I've heard from, about five, so it's not a large sample, have liked the books; most commented not only on the stories, but on the erotica. They commented very favorably on the erotica; more so than some female readers who told me they were uncomfortable with the language I used.

I didn't really expect to hear anything from male readers, especially not that they'd liked the sex scenes. Possible factors include 1) these particular men like reading erotica in general, and are willing to talk about it; 2) my direct language in the sex scenes appeals to men; and 3) they were just being nice.

I don't really have any conclusions. Though I do wonder how I might market my books more effectively across genders.

Thoughts? Comments?

Descriptive Worldbuilding

When I was writing The Duchess, Her Maid, The Groom & Their Lover, I was doing a lot of my worldbuilding on the spot, whenever I felt something was needed.

I do think about aspects of the world before I begin writing, but probably just as much comes along in the middle, or during revisions, when I suddenly realize, "I never described this room, and that would set the scene better."

If I'm in a hurry, or just can't decide how to "dress" a room, I sometimes use the internet to find items I think would be appropriate for my setting and story. I use the pictures I find to inspire me and decide how to describe the often-vague images in my mind. The octopus lamp that illustrates this post is one such. I'd already decided I wanted octopuses to be a theme of Maxime's duchy, and had planned to give the decor a mingled Mediterranean/Asian feel. This lamp gave me the idea to have oil lamps as described below. Sea creatures of other kinds would also be popular there, as the duchy's economics depend on its port. In addition, I wanted to give the duchy's aesthetics an Art Nouveau feel, for two reasons. I like that aesthetic; and decor can subtly show how this duchy is different from the oppressive duchy shown earlier.

Camille's palace furnishings are shown as heavier and more medieval in style, mixed with eighteenth-century French decor, that I intended to hark back to Louis XIV and the French revolution. Sometimes I was even more explicit: ...the corridor of red marble was lit by yellow beeswax candles, sweet-smelling and thick as his forearm, in gold sconces shaped as unearthly smooth disembodied feminine hands, braceleted in cruel red stones. I actually saw a picture of a lamp in the shape of a woman's hand, though it wasn't as disturbing as the sconces I wrote about! I looked at a whole variety of pictures of medieval and Renaissance beds.

All of my ideas about the various duchies, plus looking at images online, yielded these descriptive passages for the scenes set in Maxime's duchy:

[Henri] entered the room, which flickered with oil lamps behind colored glass, red and gold and sunset orange. On a second look, he saw the glass had been blown into the shapes of bulbous octopuses with bronze tentacles and bright bubbles encircled by bronze dolphins.

He'd left his red and black lacquered portable writing desk on a bamboo stand nearby.

She strolled with Captain Leung...up a short staircase to a tower room filled with padded divans in shades of cream and buttery yellow, bamboo tea tables, and potted plants, some large enough to be called small trees, others draping vinelike from the walls and ceiling.

Luckily for me, I'm using some of the same settings for The Duke & the Pirate Queen; that saved me a little effort when I had scenes taking place in Maxime's ducal palace.

Trusting Authorial Voices

I've recently been thinking about novel beginnings, and how it's common (and good) advice to start with big obvious conflict. However, I don't think that it's always necessary to do that. More importantly, I've been thinking about why that is true for me as a reader, and by extension, as a writer.

When I begin reading a new book, I want to trust the author, and the author's voice. I want that as much as or more than any other element of the story. If the author's voice is strong/interesting, she doesn't have to be describing Things Blowing Up Real Good. Her prose can ease me into the story. This is more likely to happen if I am familiar with the author, and that trust is already established; otherwise, she has to show me she has Style. Not too much Style--not so much that I'm annoyed--but a level that makes me feel I'm in good hands.

As you might guess, the author's voice is something on which everyone's mileage will vary. Widely.

More prosaically, I can get involved with a story quickly if it immediately poses questions, either through presenting a mystery or presenting a contradiction or something otherwise unexpected. Even an unexpected description (which goes back to voice, a bit) will do for making me want to read on. (Ditto chapters, scenes, paragraphs, sentences...it's turtles, all the way down.)

Immediate suffering/problems on the part of the narrator does work for me, as well, quite reliably. I think that's the quickest and easiest way to engage the reader. What does the protagonist want, and why can't she have it?

However, I prefer the feeling of being safe in the author's hands.

As an example, as a child I loved the Chronicles of Narnia. I looked forward to seeing the movie version of The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe after hearing how faithful the details were to the book. However, I didn't love the movie. After some thought, I realized that what made the experience incomplete for me was that in the movie, the author's voice was gone. And that voice was what I loved, without even knowing it. I don't remember flashy opening sentences. I remember the voice.

Related Post: Novel Beginnings - On Opening Sentences.

Hooks and Anchors

I recently heard about an article which talked about paragraphing in terms of anchoring and hooking. I didn't find the article, but this is how I would use those terms.

At the beginning of a scene, even if you haven't shifted locations or times, you have to set that scene in the first sentence or paragraph. Think of it like an establishing shot in a movie. The camera shows the place, lighting which indicates whether it's day or night, who's in the room. Clutching his greatcoat around him against the November chill, Weston weaved his way among wagons with chocked wheels, tents, campfires, pitiful attempts at vegetable gardens, coppers of boiling water.

Or Three weeks later, Imena straightened her embroidered turquoise dress coat and brushed off the matching silk trousers as she emerged onto the deck of her ship, Seaflower. It's okay to just say "Three weeks later" and tell the reader Imena is on her ship.

You can also anchor a paragraph with an opening sentence that's a little hook if that works: Imena wasn't able to enjoy her soak in the baths. Well, why not?

Hooking is, basically, ending a sentence or paragraph or scene with a mystery. The "mystery" can be something that's a tiny bit confusing to the reader, but just enough so to make them want to know more. A contradiction of some kind also works. I don't go out of my way to do this for every paragraph; sometimes it's best to just end the paragraph in an organized way, so you can go on with the scene:

She stormed into her cabin and swiftly divested herself of her turquoise finery, tossing it onto her wide bunk.

"No, sir! You'll crush it!"

A more traditional hook to end a paragraph and make the reader want to keep reading might be: The gentle sway beneath his feet was not a ship docked, or even a ship at anchor, but one in motion, fleeing before the wind and propelled by a good tide.

Finally, you have to consider prose rhythm. Sometimes you need a paragraph or scene to end with finality, to emphasize or to make the reader stop and think: She wasn't his, much as he wished she could be.

Punctuation & Style

I participated in a panel at Readercon last weekend that was all about punctuation. We were asked to bring examples of prose that used punctuation in interesting ways. I chose examples that I thought used a wide variety of punctuation, all of it intended to have specific effects. We didn't end up using any of those examples for the panel (and it turned out I was the only one who'd brought any, anyway!).

So here are some of the examples that I found interesting to study.

Nalo Hopkinson, from Midnight Robber:

Plang-palang! Plang-palang! Cockpit County was in the full throes of Jour Ouvert morning revelry. People beat out their own dancing rhythms with bottle and spoon, tin-pan and stick. What a racket! Bodies danced everywhere: bodies smeared with mud; men's bodies in women's underwear; women wearing men's shirt-jacs and boxers; naked bodies. They pressed against the car, pressed against one another, ground and wound their hips in the ecstatic license of Carnival.

Ysabeau Wilce, from Flora Segunda:

And she was sure to mention, too, how sad it was that I had failed her so close to my Catorcena. My Catorcena was only a week off. It’s a big deal, turning fourteen, age of majority, legally an adult, wah-wah, suitable now to be received by the Warlord, wah-wah, and so it’s celebrated in big-deal style. There’s an assembly where you have to make a public speech about your family’s history and obligations and the responsibility of adulthood. There’s a reception where the Warlord greets you by name, thus acknowledging you as his loyal subject. It’s all very tedious, overwrought, and complicated--a big whoop-de-do.

Molly Gloss, from Wild Life:

The rain went on until we were thoroughly wringing wet and our boots sloppy; until every depression in the ground, every bunker in the rocks, every hollow among tree roots was inches deep with muddy water and floating detritus. Then the sky lightened to Quaker gray, and steam began to rise from the ground – a startling illusion of vulcanism – and it was the end of rain for the time being. (Why do you suppose one feels the clamminess of clothes more miserably when the rain has stopped than while it is still falling?)

Jane Austen, from Emma:

The event had every promise of happiness for her friend. Mr. Weston was a man of unexceptionable character, easy fortune, suitable age, and pleasant manners; and there was some satisfaction in considering with what self-denying, generous friendship she had always wished and promoted the match; but it was a black morning's work for her. The want of Miss Taylor would be felt every hour of every day. She recalled her past kindness—the kindness, the affection of sixteen years—how she had taught and how she had played with her from five years old—how she had devoted all her powers to attach and amuse her in health—and how nursed her through the various illnesses of childhood. A large debt of gratitude was owing here; but the intercourse of the last seven years, the equal footing and perfect unreserve which had soon followed Isabella's marriage, on their being left to each other, was yet a dearer, tenderer recollection. She had been a friend and companion such as few possessed: intelligent, well-informed, useful, gentle, knowing all the ways of the family, interested in all its concerns, and peculiarly interested in herself, in every pleasure, every scheme of hers; one to whom she could speak every thought as it arose, and who had such an affection for her as could never find fault.

Adventures in Pronouns - Jessica Freely Guest Post

Please welcome my guest, Jessica Freely!

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Hi everybody and good morning! First of all, I want to thank Victoria for generously opening her blog to me -- again. I had a great time last time I was a guest here and I'm sure today will be just as much fun.

In a second I'm going to tell you a bit about my new release, Amaranth & Ash, and one particular challenge I faced in writing it. Before I do, I want to make a couple of announcements. We're running a contest today, right here on Victoria's blog. Leave a comment and you'll be entered to win a free copy of Amaranth & Ash. That's easy, isn't it? Secondly, a free short story featuring some of the major characters from Amaranth & Ash is up in the files section of my newsletter group. It's called Amaranth & Grail and it's available exclusively to newsletter members, so if you'd like to join, here's the link.

Okay, on to the matter at hand. Amaranth & Ash is an erotic male/transmale fantasy romance set on a highly stratified colonized world. Amaranth is a vasai, born with both male and female characteristics and forbidden from sexual relations with any but the ruling class. Ash is a chel, a member of the underclass. Their unlawful passion ignites a rebellion and transforms their world.

In my other life I'm a science fiction and fantasy author and with Amaranth & Ash I decided to create a full-blown world with all the bells and whistles. I created a society, a religion, an economy, and a geography, and I had a blast doing it. Harken's Landing, the setting of the story, is a city founded by colonists from earth who came to their new world to escape oppression back home. As these things sometimes go, no sooner had they landed than they began oppressing one another. The society is strictly segregated by caste, and each caste has its own distinctive physical characteristics.

When it came to the vasai, who are intersex, I had some decisions to make regarding pronouns. I realized I had an opportunity here to play with gender neutral pronouns. But before I'd even finished writing the book, I had people telling me I couldn't do that. Reasons given were that it's distracting to the reader and that gender-neutral pronouns "just sound silly."

I'm not real big on being told I can't do something, especially when the evidence summoned to support the sanction is subjective. Isn't speculative fiction supposed to be about imagining worlds and people radically different from our own? How far can we really get if we must constantly adhere to a gender binary system? I felt locked into a male-female dichotomy that I don't happen to think represents contemporary humans very accurately, let alone the people of Harken's Landing. Worst of all was the expectation that I was supposed to accept that as "just the way it is."

So, predictably, I started fooling around with all kinds of pronoun systems. A great resource I found is Regender.com. With this handy web tool, you can read any internet web page a variety of ways: with gender pronouns switched, with gender neutral pronouns, or with pronouns based on race instead of gender. It's a fascinating way to shake up your preconceptions and I recommend it.

I had a wealth of ideas to play with. My personal favorite was a caste-based pronoun system I devised. It made sense! After all, in Harken's Landing the most important thing that everyone needs to know about you, before anything else, is your caste. So it stands to reason that their language conventions would enshrine caste divisions instead of reproductive roles. To keep it simple, I created pronouns for each caste based off of the name of the caste. It looked like this:

Male - He smiled. - I kissed him. - His hands shake. - That is his.
Female - She smiled. - I kissed her. - Her hands shake. - That is hers.
Elai - Ei smiled. - I kissed Eir. - Eir hands shake. - That is Eirs.
Vasai - Va smiled. - I kissed var. - Var hands shake. - That is vars.
Pel - Pe smiled. - I kissed per. - Per hands shake. - That is pers.
Chel - Che laughed - I kissed chem. - Ches hands shake. - That is ches.

See? Simple!

Here is a section of Amaranth & Ash and how it would have read if I had gone with this idea:

Evanscar inclined var head. Even with var soul packed up tight as a fist, Amaranth could feel the vasai’s eyes boring though var back as va made var way to the refreshments. Va handed var empty glass to Build, the pel attendant. "Thank you," pe said.

Then, Parnal appeared. Amaranth went to Eir immediately, took Eir hands, and bowed over them. "Can you forgive me?”

Parnal was a middle-aged Elai of solid proportions, a hair shorter than Amaranth but wider and thicker. Ei was balding, and the hair that remained was dark with flecks of gray and trimmed short. Eir eyes were pale blue, Eir face rectangular and stolid. “I wondered if perhaps I had done something to put you off,” Ei said.

Hmm. Interesting? Perhaps. But readable? Well... even I had to admit that the pronoun business was distracting.

I had a decision to make. Was I going to market Amaranth and Ash as a romance, or as experimental science fiction? Call me mercenary if you like, but I had a pretty good idea of the respective markets for each. I knew I was choosing between getting Amaranth and Ash in front of a decent sized audience within the year, or in front of a tiny audience in two to three years, maybe. Since Amaranth and Ash began as a love story, I decided to do what I had to in order to keep the romance front and center for my readers. That meant scaling back on my adventures in pronouns quite a bit.

But I didn't want to abandon the idea entirely. I decided to compromise by having individual vasai adopt a pronoun of choice that can be male, female, or gender neutral. While Amaranth identifies as male, Grail, a third major character in the book, identifies as gender neutral.

Now the question became what gender neutral pronouns to adopt. I have a wonderful editor at Loose Id, and she worked with the copyediting staff and me on this issue. We considered keeping the va, var, vars pronouns, but finally decided to go with sie and hir. Next to the colloquial use of the singular they, sie and hir are the most common gender neutral pronouns currently in use in English. They look more like what we expect to see as pronouns too, making them less distracting. Hopefully my approach serves to introduce the concept of gender neutral identity without turning the story into a vocabulary exercise.

In the end, I'm highly satisfied with the way Amaranth & Ash turned out. The story is one of love across social boundaries and the backdrop of Ash and Amaranth's love affair is the breakdown of a rigid hierarchy based on class and race. Gender identity is actually a minor part of the story, but it's the part I struggled the most with because our own culture and language place so much emphasis on he and she as absolute and exclusive to one another.

You can buy Amaranth and Ash here.

I wonder what other kinds of ideas the conventions of our language make it difficult for us to have? What do you think?

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Thanks, Jessica!

Pointing the View

I recently had Thoughts on point of view, based on a writer buddy's questions about differences between using first and third person, and single versus multiple points of view.

I think a big difference between using a single point of view in first and third persons is voice. In first person, the narrator's voice needs to be really strong, really consistent. In third, "your" (the author's) voice can be a little more dominant, depending on how close a third you're writing. I realize they're both your voice, but in my opinion, your voice is more subsumed into character in first than in third.

Here's my take on the difference through examples. In first, the reader feels what the character feels (my heart froze). In third, the reader sees what the character is doing from the outside (she crushed the flowers beneath her heel); it's more show and less tell, even though you can tell to some degree (She felt awful.)

You can get some good fun for the reader out of the first person narrator not realizing/figuring out stuff that the reader might understand/figure out (for instance, when a child narrator is witnessing his parents fighting; we know one of them is having an affair, but the kid thinks it's about the last slice of pie). Ditto third because the reader gets to figure out what's going on from the clues presented, just as the character is doing. You can increase or decrease the mysteries the reader has to solve by how you present information to her.

I'm going to ponder this further. Any thoughts?

May-Ten-Centuries-Back Vampire Romance

The May/December romance is one thing. The May/Ten Centuries Back romance is quite another.

It's always disturbed me a little that vampire heroes in romance are so often much older than their heroines. When the heroine is not only not immortal but young for a human, it's even harder to convince me that they could have anything in common. Perhaps that's why writers sometimes rely on strong sexual attraction between the two (sometimes natural, sometimes superntural or "fated"), or on plot reasons that require the two characters to be together, such as only she has the necessary scientific/psychic/genetic abilities to save the world and is thus forced to tie herself to an ancient vampire who thinks swing music is "dynamite."

There are advantages to the forced relationship; for one thing, it automatically introduces tension into both the relationship and the plot.

It's the innocent heroine/jaded vampire who instantly fall in love, no questions asked, who, to me, fail the possibilities. They're not doomed to fail; but to me they do fail because it's very, very rare that the writer actually shows me why they like each other and why they belong together. Isn’t the whole point of a romance to see the romance developing? To watch the hero and heroine overcome their differences?

True, it's very difficult to imagine what centuries or millennia of experience can do to a person, but it's our job as writers to do that imagining. At the least, we can look at relationships in real life where one partner is much older than the other, and see what we can learn from that and apply to our writing.

Or just once, I'd like to see a vampire romance hero fall for a woman who's at least in her fifties or sixties. Or how about a futuristic human who's two hundred years old?

Vulnerable Vampires

I would love to see vampire heroes and heroines who are more vulnerable, even, than ordinary humans. I know most readers don't want to see that, but I do. Vulnerability is what draws me to a character. I want them to be in trouble so I can become involved as they struggle to get out of trouble.

The vampire novels I enjoy aren't any different. If the vampire is all-powerful, I can't get interested in him or her as a protagonist. A protagonist without flaw is...not a protagonist, not the way I think about it.

It's easy enough to include vampire vulnerabilities such as sunlight burning them, deathlike sleep during the day, or susceptibility to yummy buttered garlic bread. Being able to subsist only on blood is an exceptionally good one--all the best vampire books have the vampire in danger of starving unless fed willingly by his or her unwilling best friend or random stranger. (Like that scene in a Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode in which Buffy has to offer her blood to Angel so he won't die from poison.)

I don't think it's enough to just mention those vulnerabilities. I think, as a writer, you have to show them, and their effects. As a reader, knowing the vulnerability exists is one thing; experiencing it through the character is much more vivid.

And I think that, whatever magical physical weaknesses the vampire character has, they should be matched by emotional weaknesses. Emotional weaknesses are what we, as humans, can really understand. The vampire who hates what he is, or can't resist drinking from his beloved even though it leads to future doom, or merely gets depressed because he's outlived all his friends--that's the vampire I want to read about.

Making the Paranormal Real: Boundaries and Consequences

This post was originally written for Midnight Moon Cafe.

I was a reader and writer of science fiction and fantasy long before I read romance, and in many ways my reading tastes still reflect that early influence. I tend to favor paranormal romances that have dense worldbuilding that makes sense to me and holds up to questioning. I think, in general, that's a good thing, because anything that can contribute to the realistic/true feel of a story means the reader is less likely to be thrown out of their imagination and into the cold. True, a paranormal romance must focus on the relationship between hero and heroine, but their conflicts can seem much more real if the world in which they live is fully realized. In urban fantasy, which often tends to series format, a well-developed world is even more necessary, and should grow more complex over time, so the readers (and writer) don't become bored.

To me, one of the keys to creating a world that seems real and layered is to ensure that the world has boundaries. And that when those boundaries are trespassed, there are consequences.

It doesn't matter if the paranormal character is "traditional" (vampire, werewolf, ghost) or a creature you've created. As with any other character, you have to decide what they want and why they can't have it. Those issues can be tied tightly into the paranormal aspects of both the character and her world. Barriers to achieving their goals might be supernatural or magical as well. For example, what if the hero can only live in sunlight and the heroine can only live in the dark? Those limitations instantly generate an external barrier that yields conflict, which yields plot. There's a reason the "he's a vampire, she's a vampire hunter" setup is so popular!

I think the more integral the paranormal elements are to the characters and their problems, the richer the story can be. If their problems are "normal" problems, then why make the characters paranormal at all?

Characters with paranormal boundaries to cross means the stakes (wooden ones, even!) can be even higher for them. A vampire's failure might mean not only death, but eternal torment. A werewolf might not merely lose her boyfriend, she might accidentally eat him. The consequences can significantly ramp up the story's tension. Overcoming them can result in a more intense payoff at the story's end.

Finally, boundaries and their consequences are important as turning points in the plot. The characters might have a single significant problem to overcome at the book's climax. Leading up to that, the characters can face subsidiary problems, all of them related to the paranormal worldbuilding elements. First, the hero is freed from the tree where he's been imprisoned. Second, the heroine demands payment for freeing him – he must pay her a portion of his soul. He doesn't remember they were once lovers and she gave him part of her soul; he refuses. Third, the heroine begins to die because the hero hasn't complied. Each boundary causes a problem for the characters, and they must find a way to cross it – or avoid crossing it – and survive the consequences.

Related Posts:
Paranormal Appropriation.
Choosing Your Paranormal Creature.
Why Werewolves?

Less Is Enough

There's a reason stories aren't made up of eighty percent description. It's because there has to be room for the reader.

Reading is a collaborative exercise, between the writer and the reader. The writer has a shape or picture (or insert preferred visualization here) in her mind. She approximates that shape with words, intending to communicate them to readers. (Does any writer ever think their prose matches their mental story exactly?)

Readers read the words the writer chose, bringing to them their own memories, opinions, and interpretations. What the reader "sees" will never be exactly what the writer "saw" in her head, or even what another reader "sees."

That's where the fun begins.

Writers and readers have to treat the different stories they hear as a feature, not a bug. We're not telepaths who can send our mental shapes into the minds of others (at least I'm not! I don't know about you). If writers try too hard to force their impressions on readers, it's like locking their minds in a cage. Isn't it better to leave some room for the reader's version?

Related Post: What happens in the reader's mind.

Conflict

This is one of those posts where I'm writing about something obvious, but writing about it helps me to internalize it.

You can't have a story without plot, and you can't have a plot without conflict.

Conflict is wanting what you can't have. Barriers between you and what you want mean you have to make choices, either to face the issue or flee from it, or find that third decision which is something else (what I call the Reed Richards choice). Those choices have outcomes. The outcomes might not be getting what you want; the outcomes might be more barriers. And so on, and so forth, until at last a problem must be solved or something explodes. (Like skits on The Muppet Show, which would end with either an explosion or a digestion.)

Barriers can be of many sorts, some of them in combination. They might be exterior: there's a tornado, or someone dies, or the car breaks down, or the heroine is wounded and can't make the rendezvous. Barriers might be interior: the heroine swore she would never, ever marry, or she can't marry the hero because of his religion.

Some characters will get what they want. Some characters won't. Conflict can also result in compromise, or in changing your mind about that thing you wanted so badly at the beginning of the story. If there aren't any decisions, the story can never end.

If no one has any conflicts, and no one makes any decisions, why should the reader care?

Related Post:
Maintaining Sexual and Romantic Tension.

Line Editing, Up Close and Personal

I spent a large portion of the month of April revising The Duke and the Pirate Queen; some of the revisions responded to my editor's comments, some responded to a workshop critique, and some came from my fevered brain.

I thought it would be interesting to share some of the line edits I made in the manuscript.

Original version:
Imena was far more devious than he'd predicted.
Revised version:
Imena was delightfully devious.

Original version:
...he could hear feet above, pattering on the main deck, distant shouting, the loud creaking of wood and rope and the snap of sail.
Revised version:
...he could hear feet pattering on the main deck above, distant shouting, the loud creaking of wood, the heavy hum of rope, and the snap of sail.

Original version:
Maxime stopped him from closing the door with a hand on Chetri's shoulder.
Revised version:
Maxime grasped Chetri's shoulder to stop him from closing the door.

Original version:
Gently, he dislodged Maxime's hand from his shoulder and stepped back.
Revised version:
Gently, he dislodged Maxime's hand and stepped back.

Original version:
She hadn't thought it was like her to brood, but in the cold dark hours of the morning, her past decisions surged and receded in her mind like surf.
Revised version:
In the cold dark hours of the morning, her past decisions surged and receded in her mind like surf.

Original version:
He turned his head and kissed in the vicinity of her ankle, dragging his mouth along her shin and nibbling with the edges of his teeth...He curled one hand around her calf and slowly slid upwards, seeking the top of her stocking.
Revised version:
He turned his head and kissed in the vicinity of her ankle, dragging his mouth upwards and nibbling with the edges of his teeth...He curled one hand around her calf and slowly slid up to her thigh, seeking the top of her stocking.

Original version:
Sunlight only occasionally filtered down through the trees, but when it did, the heat was trapped, and she felt it more powerfully with her clothing on. Sweat had begun to trickle down her back, mingling with tiny fragments of bark from her tree-climbing and the slightly sticky residue from The Knife's insect repelling balm.
Revised version:
Sunlight filtered down through the trees where the heat was trapped. She felt it more powerfully with her clothing on. Sweat had begun to trickle down her back, mingling with tiny fragments of bark from her tree-climbing and the sticky residue from The Knife's insect repelling balm.

Dialogue Tricks

This post was originally written for Lauren Dane's Writerly Wednesday.

The first time I tried to write a novel (the one I started over and over and over again), I workshopped it with a very small group of friends. One wrote journalistic nonfiction, one was writing, essentially, memoir, and one was a published poet and writer of mainstream literary fiction. As you can imagine, I learned all sorts of useful things from these other writers, despite them being well outside my genre.

One of the things the poet said to me has stuck for all these years. She told me, and I paraphrase, that dialogue is one of the most essential methods of characterization. No two characters should speak alike.

There's an exercise one can do, which involves taking a piece of one's story and stripping out everything but the dialogue - all the names, all the tags, all the physical business, even the order of the sentences that provides clues - and then seeing if you can tell which character is saying what.

So in that first novel, I decided I would tackle this craft issue. I did it with what I considered to be a trick. Not that using tricks is bad. And eventually they start to sink into your skin and you no longer notice you're using them, and they're not really tricks any more.

My trick was simple: to assign each character one notable feature for their speech that would work with their personality. One character was in a position of power and confident about it. She tended to ramble when she spoke, assuming everyone would want to listen to her, and mostly spoke in statements. A second character was diffident and frightened. He was careful never to ask anyone a question for fear of appearing weak; he would often turn his questions into statements. A third character was speaking what was to her a foreign language, so her phrasing reflected that; also, since one of her main character traits was her anger at her situation, that too affected her speech patterns.

First character: "Here, put this on. It's freezing in here, we should have shut the window. Ziya collected clothes for you yesterday. And there're a couple of extra quilts in the closet if you need them."

Second character: "If I do not deviate, I am safe."

Third character: "You are giving up. Foolish. You are free. Not shut up in their labs."

I don't make those decisions so mechanically any more, but it's good to know that if I need to, I can go back to the trick.

What Does the Reader Need To Know?

Research is fun. Fun. Fun.

However, research for the writer's sake isn't always needed for the reader's sake. I get questions about this a lot.

The writer may need to know the mechanics of a specific task. For example, in 1901 in New Jersey, where does ice come from? How often does the ice man deliver? What does the heroine do with the ice after it's brought to her house? The reader, however, doesn't need every detail. The reader only needs what's relevant to the story.

If the key plot element is that the heroine is out of ice, the reader might need to know why (the ice man only delivers once every two weeks because the heroine's too poor to buy more, and the minister came to visit the day before the delivery). If the key plot element is needing ice to put on an injury, the reader might only need to know that the ice is kept in a box in the cellar, perhaps with some sawdust clinging to it to give the detail distinction.

Details are a good reason to research. When you're writing, it helps a lot to have details already in your mind, ready to slide into the story when needed: a woman in colonial America tested the temperature of her baking oven by how it felt against her hand; a dolphin's skin (and maybe that of a mermaid's tail) feels cool and rubbery; the smell of a fired musket lingers. The trick is not to include every detail.

It's usually better to explain less rather than more. Some things your reader will know already. To be really obvious, the reader knows that when it rains, things get wet. The writer doesn't need to tell them about cloud formation, weather prediction, and global warming. She only needs to let them know that Susie's clothing gets soaked and Joel offers to wrap her in his dry coat.

Elements Critique

A writer friend once commented that sometimes she needed a critique on plot and sometimes she needed a critique on character. And I think she was absolutely right.

Characters make plot, of course. And plot affects character, giving them things to do and things to which they must react. Plot and character have synergy. Sometimes, though, one of them is working better than the other.

A physical example of what I mean: you're lifting weights using a resistance machine. The weight for your left arm and the weight for your right arm move independently of each other. One of your arms is generally weaker than the other, so it takes concentration and skill to lift and lower both weights at the same speed.

If your plot is stronger, or your characters are stronger, the story can be out of balance or synch. An outside reader might be able to identify the problem for you: "The attacking herd of hippos is really awesome, but Ermengard never would have stood in front of Yvette; she's terrified of any animal larger than a cat. She would run instead, wouldn't she? Which means Yvette is the one who'd be more likely to take action." Or, "I love that The Great Og has to make a difficult decision here, but 'pea soup or lentil soup?' isn't as intense a choice as it could be."

Identifying the root of the problem can make it a lot easier to solve. Sometimes it's all in the angle you're using to look.

Related Post:
Backwards Outlining.