don’t go knockin’ …

Genre-bashing.  I’d be willing to bet that a lot of people reading this have experienced it in one way or another, either as romance writers or romance readers.  And while it’s never enjoyable to have someone attack your home genre, what’s even worse is when the attacker doesn’t have much experience with your genre.  I don’t mind hearing from people who honestly don’t like romance.  It’s a big world, and there’s plenty out there to read, thank God.  What bothers me is that so many romance haters have either not read romance at all; have read a single romance and feel comfortable attacking the entire genre; or read their last romance in 1971.

Romance is a bigger world today than it’s ever been, and I often tell people that there’s a romance novel out there for everyone.  Exploring the wide world of romance is lots of fun, I think.  In fact, just recently, I finished reading Tamera Alexander’s Rekindled, an inspirational historical romance.  I didn’t think it would be my cup of tea, but I started reading it on the recommendation of a classmate.  Last week, as I was reading it on the bus to work, I was so engrossed in it that I nearly missed my stop.  I can’t remember the last time I was that into a book, and it felt terrific.  The best part is that I’m re-examining my preconceptions about inspirational romance.  I’m used to a much spicier read, but I didn’t miss the explicit content at all.  In fact, I came away from the book ready to examine the way I approach the sex in my own stories.  (I’ll have a lot more to say about Rekindled in the next book report.)

Anyway, my experience with Rekindled got me thinking.  Instead of engaging in a defense of the genre here — which would come off as, well, defensive — I thought we might have a little community sharing instead.  I found Rekindled through a recommendation from a writer in the know.  Why don’t we all share a recommendation for the reluctant romance reader?  What would you suggest for a reader who might need a reintroduction to the modern romance novel?  How about for a reader who thinks all romance is fluff?  Or the reader who thinks romances are about perfect people with perfect lives?

Or how about this — what would you suggest for a male reader who’s romance-curious?

Aw, yeah!  What books would you recommend as a gateway to the romance genre — or its subgenres?

I hear fictional people

The other day, I was telling a writer friend about the International Dialects of English Archive (which is the Best Thing Ever, as I said here).  “One of my characters has an accent,” I told her, “and I was having a lot of trouble placing it, so I looked — “

“Wait,” she said.  “Can you … hear him?”

Damn.  She caught me.  I stalled.  “Can I what?  Hear who?”

She wasn’t fooled.  “You said you couldn’t place your character’s accent, as if you can hear it but you can’t recognize it.  So can you hear him?”

I’m going to go ahead and tell all of you three secrets.  One: Yes, I can hear the characters.  Two: I can also see the characters.  Three: I do honestly forget that many, many people consider this an indicator of less-than-optimum mental wellness.  So because of Three, I tell people about One and Two.

Not just anybody (any more).  But other writers?  Yeah, I’ve told other writers that I can see and hear these people.  I know I’m not the only writer out there who sees the little movie snippets playing inside her head.  It’s never enough to make up a whole story; I guess that would be cheating.  But sometimes it’s a lot.  (By the way, if you know that what you’re seeing is not real, your sanity’s just fine.  Or so I’m told.)

I’m not sure that I could do any of this as well — or frankly, at all — if I could NOT see and hear the characters.  It seems to me that it would be very, very difficult.  I know that some people do it that way, and quite successfully, all the time (I know this because, for instance, they look at me strangely when I say I can hear this imaginary person’s accent), but I really can’t imagine how.  I’m genuinely curious, so if you write like that, please leave me a comment to tell me what that’s like. 

And of course, if you can see and hear your characters, say it loud and proud right here!

an IDEA whose time has come

I’m taking a little break from the Big WIP (and its sequel: Big WIP II — Electric Boogaloo) to take notes on some new projects.  One of my new characters has an accent that I can’t place.  It’s all hard edges, the sort of accent that puts an H in front of the W at the beginning of a word. He doesn’t roll the r’s, he … turns on them.  It’s hard to describe, but I knew that I would recognize it if I heard it somewhere else.

In my desperation to find it — and to avoid work — I turned to the good ol’ Internet.  I had no idea where one would go to listen to accents (aside from “on the Internet”), so I ran a search for “Italian accent” to see where I could start looking.  And right at the top of my results, I saw the answer: the IDEA.

IDEA stands for International Dialects of English Archive.  It was created in 1997 at Kansas University by dialect coach Paul Meier.  IDEA is a treasure trove of audio recordings of people speaking English with a variety of accents and dialects.  The IDEA speakers are from around the world and represent a wide array of ages and socioeconomic situations, and the differences in the way each speaker pronounces each word are simply remarkable.

In each recording, the speaker first reads a prepared selection, a brief passage that’s the same for many of the speakers.  You can read the text of the story yourself, but it’s more fun not to, I think.  It’s a different experience to really listen to each speaker reading the prepared text and try to understand each word.  After the speaker has read the selection, he or she will tell a brief personal anecdote, offering you a little window into his or her part of the world, his or her way of life.  (Northern Ireland Two tells an especially interesting tale.)

I still haven’t found my character’s accent; I suspect it’s Italian, but it might have a touch of Eastern Europe in there, too.  I’m just glad I have someplace to look for it now!  IDEA is a really great time, too.  I love to travel, and listening to these recordings felt like sitting across the table from someone from a distant land.  I encourage everyone to go check it out, but be warned: IDEA is a very seductive distraction.  Leave yourself lots and lots of time to explore it!

HEAphobia vs. the Whatever

I had a great response to my post about HEAphobia; lots of reassurance and words of wisdom from fellow writers have helped me to look at things a little differently.  Today, I got a little extra boost from an article in the Writer’s Digest newsletter.  It’s entitled “Organizing Your Story Ideas,” something I need tons of help with.  But within a few paragraphs, it was like N.M. Kelby had read my last WIP (as much as there is) and was speaking directly to me.  Kelby writes:

Ideas often start with boundless energy, vying for your attention. But when you get them on the page, they don’t always live up to how you thought they would be. A plot line feels contrived. An emotion falls flat. When this happens, you can easily feel defeated.

Yep. That’s where I was. Remember my couple that was so in love — the ones who sounded like they had the stomach flu?  I could see where I thought I wanted the story to go. But no amount of writing would get it there. Kelby’s got a plan for getting those ideas in line so that they’re doing what they should, and I’m going to give it a whirl with the WIP.  Or the other WIP.  Or maybe the third WIP.

Step One in the Kelby Plan is to get calm and centered in order to focus on the writing.  I know that works; just this past Saturday at the VRW meeting with Douglas Jones, we did two ten-minute free writes. The silence of the room was broken only by my own growling stomach.  For ten minutes, and then for another ten minutes, there was nothing but the writing, and the words flowed out like water. Everything I wrote sounded just like I wanted it to. Now, sitting here with the laptop in front of my TV, I’m struggling to make my point in a way that even I can understand. There’s a lesson to be learned here, and I promise I will learn it after the next commercial. Right now, I can see John Saxon in Enter the Dragon, and that’s helping me do my job somehow.  (Oh, my stars!)

Step Two is to consider the reader’s expectations of the genre you work in. I wrestled a little with that in the last post, and I’m still fighting it a little, to be honest. But after Step Three (cut everything that does not serve the purpose of your story), Kelby makes a suggestion that clarified a lot of things for me.

Referring to The Life of Pi by Yann Martel, Kelby writes

Martel took this simple story and added his unique take on it based on subjects he’s interested in, such as faith and zoology. By being true to himself and his own vision of the world, he boldly created a fable that became an international bestseller.

Over the last six to nine months, I think five or six people (and thank you, all of you) have told me to bring my own particular Whatever to the story. No one else can bring my Whatever to the story, they said. Only I have my special Whatever, and my Whatever is what makes my story special.

I’m not sure what made it click this time, but there it is — click!

The Whatever is the treatment for HEAphobia.  It may even be the cure for it.  I might not be able to make the HEA work for me.  I see it working for other people, and I love all of them.  But it is just not an Alexa way to end a story. 

So off I go to bring a little Whatever to the conclusions of my stories.  Everyone will still be Happy and Together at the end of the story, I promise, in a way that’s appropriate for the genre and for myself.  And I’m going to try writing without the TV just to see what happens.

Right after Enter the Dragon goes off.

HEAphobia

Valentine’s Day.  Right around the corner.

Depending on how you feel about it, you might be filled with excited anticipation, or taking deep, calming breaths and telling yourself it’ll be over soon.  I’m not going to tell you which camp I fall into.  Mostly because it’s hard to talk and take deep breaths at the same time.

Today’s reflection is about make-believe romance, though.  (And I know there’s a debate about whether the line between real romance and make-believe romance is or should be blurry, but that’s not where we’re going today.)  Today I want us all to think about the HEA.

Let me tell you a secret: the HEA gives me fits.

HEA is shorthand for Happily Ever After, and according to the Romance Writers of America, it’s what makes a romance novel a romance novel.  When I first started reading romance novels (and the caveman hero really did live in a cave), the HEA necessarily meant a wedding proposal (accepted, of course) with a baby on the way.  Well, that didn’t say happy to me.  I wasn’t buying that these people — many of whom had just met at the start of the book — were at that particular emotional milestone by the end of the book.  And the baby?  Already?  Aren’t we going a little fast?

The newer HEAs are a little different.  It’s still clear that the hero and heroine are Happy Together For Good, but the number of situations that fall under that heading  is much, much larger.  Now, there’s even room in romance for the HFN — or Happy For Now ending — and those work a lot better for me.  I can get behind these two people making the decision to move in together, or even committing to see what happens next together, a lot more easily than I can see a marriage proposal.  That sounds a lot more real to me, and I want my stories to sound real. 

Having said that, as much as I love romance, and as much as I love to read about the hero and the heroine falling in love with each other and ending the story Happy and Together … I’ve had the worst trouble writing those daggone HEAs.  They just don’t sound right to me when I write them.  I don’t know what’s wrong with them, really.  The dialogue starts sounding artificial.  My characters experience a variety of physical symptoms that are equally indicative of lovesickness or a good, old-fashioned stomach flu.  And don’t start me talking about people’s eyes and teeth shining and twinkling and glistening.

I see other people making all this stuff work for them.  Their HEAs sound perfectly natural and … well, happy.  Mine sound terrible.

Right now, HEAphobia is preventing me from finishing stories.  I am becoming frustrated and abandoning drafts just at the point where the HEA is in sight.  I’ve got to finish something if I’m going to sell it and make a go of this writing-for-a-living thing.  So I embarked on a long journey of soul-searching and self-flagellation (figuratively? Only I know for sure) and research, research and more research.  This is what I came up with.

(a) I could figure out what the problem is with me and the HEA and then get to writing romances.

(b) I could moderate the HEAs into HFNs and then get to writing romances.

(c) I could stop fretting about the HEA, HFN and the rest of it; just let the stories end as they end; and then figure out what to do with them.

(d) I could do none of the above.  None of the above should always be an option.

I’m inclined to roll with C.  Most of the trouble is, I think, that I’m forcing the end of the story, and that’s causing everything to come out wrong.  I’ll be sure to let you know how C works out for me.

In the meantime, why not let me know how you feel (or don’t feel) about the HEA, the HFN or None of the Above?