Tag Archives: Characters

September 28, 2014 · 9:36 am

Reading is fundamental and…everything else!

When my daughter was doing the college search several years ago, she was required to write short essays on topics of her choosing, many related to her current lifestyle and family life. My husband and I let her have freedom on this, knowing she was an excellent writer and had a stockpile of stories she could tell. We figured that one or two of them might mention us – after all, we were funding the school she’d eventually get into – and we were prepared to be slightly embarrassed or roll our eyes at how we were depicted from her 17 year old perspective.

To say we were floored when we read the first essay is a totally inadequate statement. We were blow away.

And in the best sense of the word.

The gist of the piece was on reading. She stated that she could never remember a time in her life where she wasn’t (a) surrounded by books, (b) reading books or being read to, and (c) when her parents didn’t have a book in their hands or handy. She wrote the first memories she could conjure were when I would read to her before bed, during the day, anytime she asked, really. She stated unequivocally that her love of reading, writing, the spoken and the written word fell directly from the exposure we afforded her. Since she was planning to major in English in college, this made cosmic sense to me.

From the moment I knew I was pregnant, I read aloud to my daughter. I’m sure people thought I was strange when they would see me, sitting on a park bench, or in a waiting room reading aloud to seemingly no one. But the truth is, she was neonatally conditioned to be a lover of books.

It’s easy to explain where I got my love of reading. I was a latch-key kid from the time I was in second grade. My mother worked full time and she couldn’t afford an after school baby sitter. The safest place for me to go right from school was the local library. And I did. Everyday from second grade until middle school, I spent, on average, 2-3 hours, five days a week for over 7 years. In middle school, when I didn’t really need watching over anymore but could stay home alone after school by myself, I still went to the library most days. I finished every book in the kid’s section and then preceded onto the teen section was I was only 8. Nancy Drew, Trixie Beldon, Jane Austin, and a slew of other characters and authors were my friends, companions, family. I learned most of what I know about social skills and social norms from reading books like “I’m Okay, You’re Okay,” and the like.

Books were everything to me.

And as I got older, their friendship and love grew, as I did, maturing, into new authors, new genres, new escapes.

When I first got married, my husband was not a reader-for-pleasure. He could usually be found, sitting in his chair, devouring a medical journal. I fixed that pretty quickly. I found a book that actually appealed to the both of us and every night, when we got into bed, one of us would read a chapter aloud to the other until the book was completed. I can’t for the life of me tell you what that book was about now – it was a very loooooong time ago – but I do remember the feeling I got every time we started a new chapter.

And hubby felt the same way.

When the book was done, my husband was hooked on pleasure reading. That started his reading journey and now he is never without a book when we travel, at home, or even on long car rides. We now go to local book sales and library fundraisers, searching for new authors and genres. The medical journals still occupy some of his reading time, but not to the extent they did in the beginning of our marriage.

We both passed this love onto our daughter. She is never without something to read, and she is a purist: she likes the actual book, not the Kindle version. She will read on an e-reader, but she, like my hubby, prefers the paper and page.

I am an equal opportunity reader: any form, and time, any day.

It’s no wonder I love to write, since I love to read. Creating my own characters, settings, plots and situations, falls seamlessly from this love of books.

The next time you have to give a child – or even an adult – a birthday gift, thank you gift, or even just a little something to tell them you were thinking of them, consider a book as the present. You’ll never know how just the simple gift of words/plot/characters can change that person’s life forever.

Reading: it’s a good thing.

*** horrible self plug: if you’ve got a few moments, check out Harlequin’s SOYOUTHINKYOUCANWRITE 2014 contest. Here’s the link to my entry. Drop by and give me some love. Thanks. http://www.soyouthinkyoucanwrite.com/manuscripts-sytycw-2014/cooking-with-kandy/

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September 15, 2014 · 11:46 pm

Script writing vs. Novel writing…

At my New Hampshire Romance Writers of America meeting this month, guest speaker Dana Biscotti Myskowski gave a lecture titled Romancing the Script. Dana is a professional script writer, in addition to being a teacher of film and film studies, and she gave our group a number of insights into writing scripts, how to get them produced, and the pitfalls and turmoils of being a script writer.

Those pitfalls and turmoils sounded a lot like the same ones  fiction writers have.

You’ve got this great script ( novel ) that you want to get made into a film ( published ). In order to do that you need someone willing to read it ( agent/editor ), produce it ( publisher ), market it and promote it. You need to get the right actors ( characters) into  the right scenery ( setting) and  develop a worthy plot that people will want to pay to go see – along the same lines that they pay to buy your book.

You usually don’t get paid until the screenplay is optioned, green lit, and then produced, much like the way you don’t get royalties until after the book is sold, and if you’re lucky enough, to get a paid advance prior to publication.

You pour your heart and soul into your script ( novel ) and most of the time it goes nowhere but to live on your laptop.

The two really are very similar.

They’re similar in concept and construct as well. You need  plot, settings, dialogue, characters, and secondary characters in both.

The major difference – in my opinion – seems to be in the development aspect. In a script you’ve got roughly 120 pages to get the story told, the characters set, and the action moving from page one. Every scene tells a story and advances the plot. ( Okay, that happens in books, too.) But in the novel, the writer has much more page time to develop the characters, give that internal dialogue a voice, and get into the character’s head so that the reader knows what they are thinking and going through on an internal level.

A film is visual. The words of the script are in place to give you a picture – a real one – of what is happening.  It is an external medium.You don’t leave it to the film watcher’s imagination to figure out what is happening, you show them. In a book, you use your words to paint that picture you want to give the reader. This is more an internal medium and you do – to some extent -rely on the reader’s imagination for them to “see” the word pictures you are showing them.

Whether you write scripts, novels,  scripts based on novels, or anything else, the most important thing to remember with all of this is that : you are writing. You are doing something you love, something that gives you unlimited pleasure. And hopefully, something you can share with another that will also give that person the same pleasure.

Writing: it’s a good thing.

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September 9, 2014 · 9:37 am

Location, Location, Location. It’s not just about Real Estate

We’ve covered plot driven books, and character driven novels. But what, exactly, is a setting driven novel? It almost sounds wrong when you say it out loud, as if the words don’t make much sense put together. Setting driven novel. All novels have a setting don’t they? They don’t occur in a vacuum, but in a place. Or more than one. But a setting driven novel?

I’ll probably take some heat for this along the line, but I can think of several novels with their setting as the main imeptus of the story. Sure, there are characters in it, and a plot or two along the pages, but the book was set – or placed – in this particular area to tell the story from that location and that location alone.

James Michener, for one author, was a prolific writer who used the settings of his novels as major roadworks. Hawaii, Chesapeake, Alaska, Iberia, are just a few of the titles of his novels. Yes, these books were sweeping family sagas that told generational tales, but where they occurred was a huge factor in how the story was told.

James Lee Burke, Pat Conroy and Annie Proulx are authors who use their settings to weave out their story lines. You can’t really image the Prince of Tides taking place in any other setting than the South, can you? Or The Shipping News taking place anywhere else but the Newfoundland coast?

All these authors know the value of having the proper setting to tell their tales.

Now, the argument I can feel forming is this one: Yes, these are books with setting as a major factor in them, but they are really not about the South, or Hawaii, or any of those places. They are stories about the people in the books.

Well…yes. But… imagine if Tom Wingo in the Prince of Tides had come to New York to see his sister from, say, Seattle. Would he have been the same person? Would his background – his deep southern background, in which he was stepped in traditions and culture indicative of that place – have proven to be such a driving force in the book with regards to his actions, non-actions, and how he handled his sister’s most recent suicide attempt?

This is a topic that requires a lot of thinking on the writer’s part. I can imagine that all of the characters in these novels were shaped and formed BECAUSE of and DESPITE where they are from. I could easily write a story about apple pickers in the Northeast. But would The Cider House Rules have been such an effective book if it had taken place in California? ( I don’t even know if they can grow apples in California, but you get my drift!)

Where you place your novel, where you set the characters into place, is a huge part of the story you want to tell.

Choose wisely and well.

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September 7, 2014 · 10:22 am

Two Masters, One Passion

My chapter of the Romance Writers Of America group is having a week long challenge on what I call “get the butts in the seats and write.” Every day we are encouraged to record our writing time in minutes and then submit them at the end of the day for a chapter and individual total. Published writer and NHRWA member Lisa Olech,  author of Picture Me Naked  is our motivator and head minute counter. This is the second summer I’ve participated in this challenge and I love it. It really inspires me to find time every day to write – anything and everything.

My actual challenge with this particular writing prompt  is in the finding of spare time on the days I must go to my paying job. I’ve blogged about this time management issue for me before, but I can give actual numbers to the situation with this challenge.

This week, on  three consecutive days, these were my totals : 150 minutes, 675 minutes, 180 minutes. Can you tell which day I didn’t work at my paying job?

This inconsistency has limited me in the amount of pages I can produce on a consistent basis and it can be frustrating. But I think I’ve found a very small light at the end of my tunnel. Because I can’t write the volume I want to write on a predictable time table, what I do write must  be almost perfect the first time around. This time constraint forces me to write tight, write short, and write concise, three things every Editor wants their writers to do on a routine basis. This means that every word must count toward something valid in the scene I’m writing.

I’ve mentioned before that I’ve spent this summer re-reading some of the manuals I feel have helped me be a better writer. One of those books is  How to Write Short by Roy Peter Clark. His thoughts and ideas on how to take paragraphs that are filled with superfluous words  and shorten them down to the bare bones of sentences that convey the entire thought wanted, are priceless jewels for writers and is well worth the read.

I’ve used these writing short principles in my daily life as well as my writing life. I teach for a living – no, I’m not standing up in front of a classroom inspiring young minds. As part of my nursing/contact lens job I teach patients daily how to keep their eyes healthy and I instruct them in  the proper care, wear, and cleaning of their ocular devices. I only get so much time per patient, so my instructional style has to be short, concise, and totally explanatory without needing to repeat, reiterate or revise what I’ve said in order for the patient to comprehend it without any confusion. For someone who likes to Tawk as much as I do, this has proven difficult in the past. Not any longer, thanks to Mr. Clark’s instructions.

Today I am not at my paying job but at home, typing away on the laptop. Today I will be able to devote many hours to my  writing passion. The writing loft door is closed, the cellphone is on silent and I’ve disabled all my other social media for a while. It’s my time to write.

Today I hope to set a personal writing record for the challenge. We’ll see….

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September 6, 2014 · 9:16 am

Are you driven by plot? And I don’t mean in the literal way…

Plot driven stories are just that: stories that are fundamentally about the…wait for it…Story.

The world is going to blow up unless the hero can save it and defeat the evil scientist. The largest diamond in the world has been stolen and the heroine needs to get it back. An island volcano in the Pacific Ocean is primed to blow and destroy half the world. Who or what can stop it? There’s a contagion on the rampage killing off half the world’s population.

All of these stories are plot driven. Something is going to happen ( or already has) and something needs to be done about it. There’s a lot of action, a lot of external maneuvering of the cast of characters, and hopefully a resolution of the problem in the end. There isn’t what you find in character driven stories – namely the deep internal conflicts, the emotional descriptions and the development of internal/external changes of the main characters.

The easiest way for me to remember the difference between character driven and plot driven stories is this way: In character driven stories, the people ( characters ) change. In plot driven stories the outcomes change, such as, potential earth destruction is now world peace.

Okay, that example was a little corny, but appropriate for this discussion.

In romance, plot driven books are usually the old standard lines, called tropes.  Tropes are  familiar or recurrent themes in stories.  For romances, some – but not all – include: Marriage of convenience, a surprise baby,  damsel in distress, opposites attract, love triangles. Writer Romy Sommer did a great piece on listing romance tropes in an article from 2012, that you can read by clicking on the link with her name. Suffice it to say that any  number of tropes can be categorized as being plot driven. So even in romance, plot can be the motivator for the story.

Before I wrote romance novels I wrote mystery and suspense. These books were totally plot driven. I would come up with the idea first and then get my characters to join in the fun.  I always had to keep the ultimate goal in the forefront of my brain, though,  because it was too easy to start slipping in the emotions and desires of the characters. I needed to save the world, not the individual characters! Once I made the switch to romantic fiction, I was able to do what I loved doing and wish I could have done with the other books: delve into the characters.

Plot drive books have a lot of action. They need to because SOMETHING needs to propel the book forward and keep you turning the pages. Action adventure movies are typically plot driven. Not a great deal of time or effort is put into developing the characters. Instead, the big money is spent on the special effects and the blowing up of things. By the way, I know that last sentence sounds a little snarky,but it’s not meant to be. I actually enjoy action adventure movies. I just don’t enjoy reading them as much as watching them.

So if you’re basically a plot driven writer, good for you!  Keep that action flowing, save the universe and defeat the bad guys.  Or, if you’re plot driven and you write romance, make that surprise baby REALLY a surprise – even to the mom! Save that damsel from the international jewel theft ring. Make those two opposite personalities have to marry to save the family business. Just don’t forget that the ultimate goal once you have written all that is for the happily ever after.

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September 2, 2014 · 5:23 pm

Casts of Characters.

“It begins with a character, usually, and once he stands up on his feet and begins to move, all I can do is trot along behind him with a paper and pencil trying to keep up long enough to put down what he says and does.”
― William Faulkner

In my humble opinion, this is a great quote, and it describes how I go about writing a story. For me, it begins, ends, and is 99% about, the characters. I couldn’t write a story without my imaginary peeps first coming on board.

From the time I was a young girl, probably 6 or 7 years old, I LOVED people watching and  listening. Whenever I went somewhere, be it the grocery store, a movie theater, a department store, or even just to the park or library, I was fascinated with watching people interact with one another, and individually.

I’m still that way.  Some would call it nosey. I call it being in love with human beings and wanting to know all about them. Everything.

Ok, so maybe that is a little nosey.

Anyway. I remember being 10 and being in the bank, on line with my grandmother, waiting for our turn at the teller’s window. There was an elderly lady behind us who had what must have been a companion with her. The older woman was very mean spirited and sharp tongued, continually complaining to the companion about things she’d done wrong that morning from how  poorly she’d cooked the old lady’s breakfast, to the way her clothes felt as if they hadn’t been put in fabric softener when washed. To hear the old bat tell it, the collective problems of the world rested on this young woman’s shoulders and had been caused by her. Even back then I was a champion of mistreated people and I longed to turn around and say something nasty to the old woman, but I knew if I did my grandmother would slap me upside my head faster than a hummingbird’s wings flapping, so I kept my comments to myself. Instead, I turned around and looked at the person being verbally smashed. She was pretty, quiet, and had the most amazing closed mouth smile I had ever seen. I remember thinking she looked like the Virgin Mary – serene and tranquil.

Now, a 150 years later ( kidding. Close, but kidding) my writer’s brain has  tried to imagine just what that lovely lady could have been thinking to block all the vituperative comments being hurled at her. Maybe the old lady was going to leave her a gazillion dollars in her will and she was thinking of the day she’d get to spend it; maybe she was envisioning the next time she would see her secret lover  who was waiting for her to get off work and come to him. I tend to think she was conjuring ways to shut the mean old lady’s mouth. Permanently. Whatever it was, her face and the situation has been stuck in my memory bank for all these years and I know one day I will base a character on her.

Since I write romance novels primarily now, I know how my stories will end and what the plot will be. The characters are the impetus for me, the parts of the story  I must find and learn about. I’ve been to conferences where I’ve been instructed to write complete and detailed character profiles before I ever type a word on the page. Other courses have suggested that I conduct character interviews with my potential peeps to find out what makes them tick and why they would be good candidates for my story. One multi-published author at a recent conference stated emphatically that you shouldn’t even name your characters until you have written at least 100 pages in your novel. Just refer to them along the way as hero, heroine, sidekick, villain etc. Ok, I think it’s safe to say I am not going to be doing that one. It’s just too out there for me to even consider. Sorry, multi-published author. And you know who you are.

For me, it’s pretty simple. I come up with the names of my hero and heroine first. Once I have the names I troll Google images and find people that look like the names I’ve come up with. For instance, I wrote a story about a guy with jet black hair and blue eyes. I found an old picture of Christopher Reeve ( Superman) and bingo – he was the archetype for my hero. All my descriptions of the hero were then based on Super– I mean, Christopher Reeve. After I know their names and what they look like, I figure out the conflict between the two of them. Once that’s done, I roughly plot out the story, scene by scene. This plot isn’t written in stone and I do modify it along the way if I think something better will work. But my goal is to move those two characters around as much as possible into each other’s way until they realize they love one another.

Then I type THE END.

Okay, so it’s really not that simple. But it is safe to say that the last 15 novels I’ve written were all character driven. I love these people. I sweat for them.  I want them to wind up together for eternity, happy and secure in life and love. Since I’m so invested in them, it stands to reason that they  – the characters – are what motivates me to tell their stories.

They drive me to write. Plan and simple.

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September 1, 2014 · 9:34 am

Character? Plot? Setting? What drives your writing?

I mentioned in an earlier blog that I’ve been re-reading some of the books I consider ‘Bibles’ for writing and writers. One of them is Karen S. Wiesner’s book Writing The Fiction Series . In it, she sets forth the mechanisms you can use for writing a series of books. The series can be based on the characters that reappear in each book, they can revolve around a quest that threads through each book, whatever connects them all can be considered a continual series.

One of the questions she asks the author to think about when envisioning a series of books is whether they are character, plot or setting driven, and which format the author himself/herself uses. This got me thinking about they way I write my books. In the past I did mostly stand alones, or one and dones. The story ended on the last page. Once I started writing romance novels, I realized there were so many fun and wonderful characters  drifting on the page that had their own stories, that I knew I needed to start writing them down. I currently have two separate series in production, both involving multi-member families and story lines. So, to answer the question are they character, plot or setting driven, I’d need to say character for the most part. Although all three facets must come into play for a cohesive and interesting book, most of the time when I write a romance I find my characters first and move through their development above all else.

The basic – and I mean BASIC – plot line of every romance novel is that the hero and heroine get together in the end, find that they love one another, and live happily ever after ( HEA ). Like I said: basic. Most romance plots are really much more than that, but if you start with that core nugget, you are golden. In both of the series I am currently working on, love and dependence on family is the central theme. Mixed into that theme are various subplots and  topics dealing with stalking, cooking, television  production, ice skating and veterinary medicine.

I know. But, it’s me, so remember that.

Family stories are great to write about because there are so many varied dynamics in each one. Birth order always plays a big role for me with my characters. Since I am an only and married a man with a clan, I love the idea of who is what in the family food chain. Which sib is the closer? Who is the baby – and it doesn’t necessarily mean the last to be born. Which kid is the pleaser? The go-between? The fighter? The people pleaser? And where do they fall in the order of their  birth? With a large family, you can find so many different ways to tell each individual’s love story and how it effects the family as a whole unit.

For the next several blogs I’ll be breaking down each facet : character, plot and setting –  for how to develop a book series, with some advice from Ms. Wiesner thrown in along the way.

 

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August 31, 2014 · 10:41 am

HEA?

What, exactly, does happily ever after mean?

It’s written as the last line of every fairy tale; it has its own acronym – HEA – in the romance writing world, and every English speaking girl and boy has heard it when read a bedtime story.

But what does it really mean? Does HEA happen and then the hero and the heroine NEVER go through another bad moment for the rest of their lives? They live on the wings of their love for evermore, never to have a bad day or  a moment that’s not filled with undying bliss?

Does it mean never to grow old and complacent with one another? Never take the other for granted, or become so dependent upon the other that you lose you own identity?

Does the happily ever after take into account how the hero and heroine’s lives are changed forever when they have kids? No longer allowed to sleep through the night because of feeding schedules, diaper changes, midnight upset tummies and bathroom accidents? Not to mention all the childhood illnesses and traumas that come hand in hand with child rearing. And don’t get me started on the teen years.

Does the HEA provide for lost jobs, school tuition bills, mortgages and braces? Aging parents and no health insurance?

I think for me, as a romance reader and writer, the HEA that comes at the end of the story, is not the end of the story, but the beginning of two lives filled with all of the above.

And a lot more.

The easiest way to explain myself is to simply refer to my own life.

When I found my HEA and married the love of my life, we moved away, right away. We were now geographically far from family, friends, secure jobs and the lives we’d made for ourselves where we’d been. Skype hadn’t been invented, and there was no such thing as a cell or mobile phone yet.

No, this wasn’t the Stone Age, just the 80’s.

We were entirely dependent on the two us, alone. Weekly phone calls to family were the norm, but the friends began to wax and wane, too involved in their own lives to devote much time to catching up.

To say I was lonely in the beginning would be to underscore the situation. Hubby was at work all day, while I was looking actively for employment, not an easy feat in a small, rural upper mid-west town.

Many things could have affected our relationship at that time. The isolation, loneliness, dependency on just the other for emotional, spiritual, and varied kinds of support, could have led to a negative outcome for our marriage. The saying “familiarity breeds contempt” has some backbone to it.

But it didn’t because we had each other and knew we only had each other. I’ve always thought that being taken away from family, friends and familiarity could either make or break a young marriage.

It made mine. Totally.

When you have just one person – a person you love without end – in your corner all the way, all day and every day, your HEA can’t help but come true, despite the outside influences that topple into your lives on a continual basis.

You’re forced to talk to one another, lean on the other, seek advice from the other and just plain interact with the other. You must support one another in any way, and every way, possible. In its simplest form, you’ve only got one another. From this, bonds can be tightly formed.

Everlasting bonds. Happily Ever After bonds.

So, when you come to  the last page of that romance novel, and the hero and heroine have declared their love and desire to be together for eternity, believe it. Because those kinds of HEA’s do come true. Every day.

And for ordinary people, too, not just fictional characters.

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August 28, 2014 · 5:19 pm

The 10 character challenge

A few days  ago I posted a challenge, asking you for the 10 books that changed, or impacted your lives. It’s the character’s time.

List 10 – I don’t care about the male/female split – of your most memorable characters from fiction. They can be villians,  heroes, heroines, secondary characters. I don’t care. Which ones made an impact on you and, briefly, why.

Here are mine in no order.

1. Rhett Bulter.   Gone with the Wind. The original fictional alpha male . When he carries Scarlett up that staircase, oh, Mama!

2. Roarke. the JD Robb In Death Series. Owns the galaxy. Loves Eve Dallas. Survived Every bad thing that ever happened to him. Plus, he’s Irish.

3. Eve Dallas.  the JD Robb In Death Series. The most kick-ass heroine with a tender heart you will ever meet.

4. Laura Ingalls before she was Wilder. The Little House On the Prairie Series. I always wanted to live on the prairie.

5  Elizabeth Bennet. Pride and Prejudice.  It’s so tough being the second, not so attractive sister, but Lizzy did well for herself.

6. Atticus Finch. To Kill a Mockingbird. When I was little, he was the embodiment  of what I  wanted in a father.

7.Madeline. The Madeline books by Ludwig Bemelman because really, she lived in Paris! In a convent! And had such cool adventures.

8. Nancy Drew.  The Nancy Drew Mystery Books. She drove a Corvair. Enough said.

9. Jake Brigance. A Time To Kill. Second best lawyer portrayal after Atticus Finch. Plus, he’s hunky, a southern boy, and loves his wife and dog.

10. Elinor Dashwood. Sense and Sensibility. The oldest, not as beautiful daughter with a heart of gold, a steel core and a hopeless romantic.

Those are my 10.  If you don’t recognize a name, click on it and it will take you to a link, describing the character.

Now, what are your 10 most influential fictional characters??

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April 26, 2014 · 10:19 am

Why I write romantic fiction

Those who know me personally already know the answer to this one. Sometimes, though, it’s good to lay it all out so everyone knows the same thing.

For most of my life I’ve loved reading mysteries. As a kid I read Nancy Drew and the Trixie Beldon mysteries like they were sustenance for my starving body. As I got older I discovered Agatha Christie and by the time she died I had read every one of her novels and short stories at least twice. I never really read what was called “love stories” until after I had my daughter. I was browsing through the book store one day, looking for a new author – since most of the ones I liked had died! – and I spotted a Nora Roberts paperback. It was Irish Thoroughbred. I read the back jacket and it seemed like I’d like it, so I took it home and read it. In three hours. I was absolutely hooked by the way she wove a story. The same day I went back to the bookstore and bought the other three titles they had in her name. They were devoured within three days. For the past 25 years I have read everything published by Roberts, including her JDRobb works. By opening my reading world to romantic fiction, Roberts introduced me to a wealth of  other  romance novelists who have made my life so much sweeter and more exciting with their writings.

When I decided I wanted to try and write romance, I sat down and made a list – really! a list – of why I loved reading it so much. These were the highlights:

  • there is usually a happy, relationship-resolved ending. And who doesn’t like a happy ending?
  • the female characters are always independent, smart, many times funny and witty, go-getters, nurture-ers, thoughtful and someone I would like to be friends with.
  • the male leads are usually – but not always – alpha males, successful in almost everything but love ( hence the heroine!), smart, charming, family oriented ( usually) and someone I would like to have in my life. The beta males are pretty hot, too.
  • the secondary characters seem real to me, not walk on’s who come in and then go, usually just to deliver a message, like so many other kinds of novels I’ve read. You never see them again and they serve no purpose in the character’s life except to tell them one piece of info. In romance writing, the secondary characters are real people, just like you’d have in your own life. And they serve real purposes in the main character’s lives.
  • the sex is written from an emotional viewpoint, and not a clinical one. I’ve read enough “popular fiction” where the obligatory sex scene describes a going into b and then c happening. Boring. In romance, we get to hear and witness the character’s emotions, responses, desires and dreams. And a really good author will make you feel like the character’s emotions could be yours as well.
  • the stories told around the romance are fun, sad, exciting, mysterious, thrilling, though provoking and sometimes even just sweet.
  • who, after all, doesn’t love LOVE? Being in love, feeling loved, loving someone else. Even the Bible says “Love one another.”

Those are the main reasons I like reading – and now writing – romantic fiction. I’m sure if you ask ten different romance authors their reasons, you will get ten or more different answers than mine.

Some of my favorite Romance Novelists:

Nora Roberts, Tami Hoag, Julie Garwood, Linda Howard, Lisa Kleypas, Kasey Micheals,

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