Writing Tips #7

Today we're looking at characters again. Your characters are the most important part of your book because they are the way into the book for your reader. This handy checklist will help you to create satisfying characters.

Make sure your characters learn something by the end of the book.

Make sure the reader is rooting for them.

Make sure they have something at stake in the book - a new business they want to succeed, a character trait they want to overcome, an ambition they want to achieve etc.

Make sure they have pasts and futures, talking or thinking about hopes, fears, dreams. Make sure they do things throughout the book to help them achieve their goals.

Make sure thehero and heroine are likeable. This doesn't mean they have to be perfect, but the reader has to care about them. Make sure they have have flaws, but make them understandable flaws and also basically likeable flaws. Self pity isn't a likeable flaw, for example. Rashness is.

Make sure they react in believable ways.

Make sure you would like your hero and heroine in real life.

Make sure they try to solve their problems rather than just moaning.

Make sure we see them in a range of situations so we see a range of emotions.

Make sure they're not Too Stupid To Live. A heroine who takes her cheating boyfriend back time after time is too stupid to live, for example.

Make sure you don't have too many minor characters and make sure you don't let them run away with the book.

Make sure your hero and heroine are together in most scenes and have meaningful interactions that engage their emotions.

Amanda Grange

Getting to Know You – Fenella J Miller

Although I've been part of this blog since its inception many years ago perhaps some of you don't know a lot about me. I've had a chequered career path but always knew from my early 20s that one day I would become a published writer. I have worked as a field worker, cleaner, waitress, restaurateur, hotelier, chef, and both as a secondary and a primary teacher. When I was offered early retirement from teaching I grabbed it with both hands, determined to finally become the writer I'd always wanted to be. My cupboards were full of half finished manuscripts and I hoped to be able to turn them into something publishable. Like many romantic fiction writers I tried writing for Mills & Boon – even got as far as having critical feedback and a request for the next story – but never quite made it. I never wrote the entire manuscript, but just the first three chapters as I thought that if they wanted the rest I could write it quickly enough to satisfy them.

I had written four complete contemporary novels over the years but none of these were publishable as they had all been written for myself. I continued to write contemporary romance until Katie Fforde, who I met at my first RNA conference in Leicester, said I should be writing what I read and at that time I no longer read contemporary romance. That remains the same today, I read mostly thrillers and historical fiction – the only contemporary fiction I read are those of friends This was the best piece of advice I've ever had and I wrote the first three chapters of both a Regency novella and a long book and sent one to DC Thompson, and the other to Robert Hale. To my astonishment, and horror, both were accepted subject to seeing the rest of the novels. You can imagine how frantically I wrote both those books and I'm happy to tell you they were both accepted.

Then along came Kindle and a whole new world opened up. For the first time in my writing career I had thousands of readers rather than hundreds and began to make a significant amount of money from my work. Things have gone from strength to strength, all thanks to those who read my books and enjoy them, and I now have around forty box sets and books available on Amazon. I am a grandmother of three, have two adult children and a husband and a half Bengal cat – I live in a four bedroomed, modern house in the pretty town of Wivenhoe in Essex. We used to live in the wilds of the country on a 5 1/2 acre plot, in a huge, ancient 400-year-old house. Moving here was the best thing I could have done as I am now my husband's carer and wouldn't have been able to get the help I need if I'd still been living in such an isolated place.





I don't define myself by my gender, age, or family status – I call myself a writer because that's what I am. I write because I have to, I hope I can keep writing until the day I die and hope that my books will continue to be read long after I've departed this world.

Fenella J Miller

Fenella's latest Regency romance is Lady Emma's Revenge.

Lady Emma Stanton is determined to discover who killed her husband even if it means enlisting the assistance of a Bow Street Runner. Sam Ross is not a gentleman, has rough manners and little time for etiquette, but he is brave and resourceful and Emma comes to rely on him - perhaps a little too much?

Available from all Amazons including US  UK 

WELCOME TO THE DREAM FACTORY

As a writer I am often asked where my stories come from. Clearly they have to come from somewhere, and I call it my dream factory.  Today I thought I would show you around.  So, welcome, come on in….

First there is the Creative Section, where new stories or scenarios are dreamed up. This department has several offices, including the car or even the train, for I often think out plots or ideas while I am travelling. Then there are the lanes and moors around my home. The first picture (left) is an ancient trackway where I walk regularly. The moors are particularly spectacular at the moment, with the heather in full bloom

And I also have a helper: this Willow, a member of my creative team – he doesn't say a lot but I often use him as a sounding board for my ideas. To date he has never made one negative criticism!

 

This next picture is the sort of sky that inspired my recent book The Scarlet Gown: it is set in Yorkshire and my characters are caught in a storm on the moors, easy to imagine when you have this sort of cloud hanging over you.

Then there's the Research & Development Department, where I sort out details of the setting, the historical background, perhaps find some Regency or 18th Century costumes. And of course I have to give my characters A Life. Characters need to have a back story, perhaps a career and sometimes a home. R & D involves libraries, the internet, lots of my own reference books and also places like this,

Lyme Park (aka Pemberley, for some of us!). Wandering through an old property can be very helpful in working out the layout of a character's home, or getting the feel for just how cold and draughty these stately piles must be in winter, not to mention all the hard work involved in lighting fires or getting hot water up to a bedroom!


Then  we come to the hard work – putting it all in order and turning it into a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. This cluttered space is the assembly line, where the dreams and nebulous ideas are pulled together into a (hopefully) coherent whole. (Notice the two stars in pride of place on the top - my Rona Rose Awards from the Romantic Novelists Association. They inspire me to keep going).  I spend so many hours here, typing away, until at last I am happy enough with the result to send it off to my editor.



If we are sticking with this analogy, then Harlequin must be the production line, because they take my typescript and after a bit of judicious editing my dreams are whisked away and turned into a book, not only a digital version but a lovely printed paper version, and here's a selection of recent titles that now sit proudly on my shelf.

So, I hope you enjoyed your whistle stop tour: I am going to get back to work now, but before I go just one more picture – at the end of the day, I put my feet up and relax after a hard day being creative and my assistant needs his rest too: he likes to be covered up cosily so he can sleep, ready for another hectic day in the dream factory!

Sarah Mallory / Melinda Hammond

Never Trust a Rebel – Sarah Mallory, Harlequin Historical, pub. September 2014

A Lady at Midnight – Melinda Hammond – published as an e-book.

Edits - sigh!

Doing edits isn't my favourite way of spending my time, but it has to be done. I write in two genres - historical romance and paranormal romantic suspense, and sometimes, when I get edits in for a book in each genre, it's interesting to note the differences.
My contemporary romances are sexier, and they have heroines who know what they want and how to get it, both in and out of the bedroom. But my historical heroines have to behave appropriately to the period - they're more restrained, less likely to be experienced and sometimes more of a challenge to write, because they can come across as wimps to a modern reader.
I love writing in both genres, I think it keeps me fresh, but this week, when among a slew of edits I received edits for both "Red Heat" and for "Yorkshire" (the latter is the historical) it brought home to me just how different my style is, too.
In my contemporaries I often write American heroes and heroines, so the obvious difference in language is there, and it filters through to the narrative. My point of view in the contemporaries is often much closer and intimate, whereas I like to step back a little in the historicals, even though "Yorkshire" is written in the first person. Rose sees the world around her, and it affects how she feels about everything else, including her beloved Richard. And the reader needs the details. When I write a contemporary, I can take it that the reader knows about certain basic things, like how to operate a computer or a TV, so I don't have to spell it out, but in a historical, things my characters would have instinctively known aren't obvious. In the early chapters of "Yorkshire," there is a carriage accident which is one of the centres of the plot, and I find I have to describe the workings and how the accident happened in more detail, because the modern reader doesn't come across horse drawn carriages every day (unless they live near Central Park!)

Anyway, more about "Yorkshire" nearer the time, but for now, I've put the cover art for "Yorkshire" and the the recently released "Moonfire" just to demonstrate the differences between the genres! Kudos to the artists, I have very little to do with the cover art, but the artists always produce superb covers for me. So Les Byerley ("Moonfire") and Natalie Winters ("Yorkshire")

"Moonfire" is currently available at Ellora's Cave, here:
http://www.jasminejade.com/p-5043-moonfire.aspx

"Yorkshire" is coming to Samhain in December:
http://samhainpublishing.com/coming/yorkshire