Elizabeth Drakes's Site

Fantasy Romance

character arc

Writing: The Slog

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I have gone from the euphoric high of new characters and fresh beginnings to the slog.

ImFine
Yep, just fine.

 

So I decided to procrastinate do some research, and curl up with a couple of good books.

Which may have made the situation I’m currently in with this WIP worse as now I am yelling at myself not to compare my first draft with a New York Times best-selling author’s final finished product.

Perseverance
Easier said than done.

I know this. Mentally. But the reptile brain is less easily convinced by reason.

And it doesn’t help that my characters are not behaving. They are not doing what my notes said they should do. The hero is not at all what I thought he would be like. He’s a dark and powerful mage that…likes puppies and kittens?!?

Wait, what?!?

Leikar, you are supposed to…never mind. You do you, and let’s see if that gives us a story.

PaperAirplane
What I’m doing with all my notes for this story.

And this is what happens in the middle of my stories. My characters are off doing things they weren’t supposed to do until later in the story. Acing in ways I’d never intended.

I have to slog through it and find my way to the end.

Usually, writing the ending is much more like writing the beginning. At that point, the characters have tossed my ideas aside and just run toward their own ending.

But, I have to get to where they are taking me.

Let them show me the path even though its not the path I chose.

So, yes, the writing is going much slower. I am in the soft morass of the middle where things happen that I know I’m going to have to go back and add foreshadowing for in earlier chapters. Where I know a ton of things are going to need to be tidied and cleaned up.

But that’s for later.

The middle is where I most need to silence the internal editor as every word is a struggle to get on the page anyway. The last thing I need to do is quiet the ideas that are coming because I started three sentences in a row with the same word.

Still, I am getting there. Perhaps in another few weeks, I will have another completed first draft.

To add to my pile.

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My editing pile isn’t this bad. Yet.

 

I need to figure out how to edit faster. But that will wait until I get through this journey.

First, Leikar has to show me how he’s going to get out of the mess that found him.

*evil author laugh*

 

 

Soul Mates?

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Soul mates. The person that completes you, that is your other half. This person is more than true love. This is the person that literally shares a piece of your soul.

You’re drawn together even if you hate each other. Your souls will find a way to reunite…

Sorry, I don’t buy it.

If, for some chance you do have one true soul mate, how are you going to find them among the over seven billion people in this world?

soulmate1

I suppose you could say the halves of the soul are somehow attracted to each other, but what are the chances you’ll speak the same language? Have been brought up in the same culture?

I’m a romance writer, and I read a lot of the genre. While I’ve seen soul mates used a lot, it almost never explained how it works. Was a soul ripped in half so each character only has half a soul (might explain a few people I know)? Are they like two pieces of a jigsaw puzzle? Or maybe mirror images of each other?

I can’t think of a single time an author used soul mates and I didn’t think they were mailing it in by relying on this to bring togtether characters that had no other reason to be together.

It’s like the author chased the characters up a tree, and then along came a handy-dandy zeppelin to get them down.

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Hi!  I just happened to be in the area.

Given my preferences, if I read that the main characters are soul mates in the book blurb, I don’t buy it. If I find it out they’re soul mates later in the story itself, I tend not to finish the book as I usually can’t stop rolling my eyes. After the eighth or ninth eye roll, I’m worried they’re going to get stuck in my skull and decide it’s time to put away the offending book.

Yes, I love romance, and I love happily ever afters, but the characters have to earn it. It’s part of what makes the endings so delicious.

If the story has enemies become lovers, I can buy that. Seen it often enough in real life.

But if the story wants enemies to fall in love with each other? That’s tougher, but put them through a strong enough crucible in the story, and I can buy it. I want to buy it. I like reading romances. I want the characters to get together. But I also want to believe it.

Tell me they overcome their hate for each other because they’re soul mates? I’ll smile politely and slide that book over to the “don’t waste my precious reading time” pile.

Authors can bring together difficult characters, even characters that might strongly dislike each other at first. We believe the change in how they feel about each other through repeated interactions between the characters, with them learning through these interactions that they’d misjudged the other.

soulmate-meme-2

If they haven’t misjudged the other, than we need the characters to change and realize why their preconceived notion was wrong. And it has to more than, “oh, but I love this person, so clearly I was wrong all this time.”

The more you want the change, the more the plot has to challenge them.

Social Identity Theory tells me it’s not going to happen easily. The bigger the change, the harder it’s going to be to make it happen.

You see the enemies (or at least adversaries) become lovers a lot in television, especially when the writers have multiple seasons to build the romance.

Most romance novels don’t have multiple seasons, but it’s still doable in a single book. After all, in a romance novel, the whole point of the plot is to get the characters together. Yes, it’s possible, and most of us can think of some characters that we loved seeing get together even though they were ready to kill each other at the beginning of their relationship.

Done right, it makes an amazing an unforgettable romance. Done wrong, and an author has to tell me the characters get together because they’re soul mates and just can’t live without each other.

*eye roll*

 

How about you? Do you believe in soul mates? If so, why? I’m open to changing my mind! Have you ever read a soul mates story that was very well done? What made it good?

Hero Analysis: Flaws

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Mariah Avix again posed a great question. What hero flaws are generally “okay” and don’t turn me off as a reader.

superman-1275374_640
Hi. I’m superman. I’m perfect except when exposed to Kryptonite.

 

Thinking through this made me realize that in many, many novels I’ve read, the heroes don’t have too many flaws. As I think through these books, and the heroes I’ve liked, here are some of the flaws I’ve seen that worked for the character without making me dislike the character:

Demanding. Setting extremely high standards for themselves and those around them, sometimes too high.

  • In Finders Keepers, the Captain was known for being extremely difficult and held his crew up to the same high standards he held himself to.
  • I’ve seen this is several other books, such as the The Bride. He takes responsibility for his entire Clan, keeping peace, etc.

 

Bucking Society. This one usually works when something perceived as appropriate by  historical society differs with today’s views. For example:

  • A hero that spends most of his time with his wife and family rather than away from them. (Most Regency)
  • A hero that accepts being considered crazy because he married for love and still loves his wife. (Accidentally Compromising the Duke)
  • A hero that dances with his wife to the exclusion of all others.(Accidentally Compromising the Duke)
  • A society that forces a woman who was raped to be shunned and viewed as a “soiled dove” (The Study of Seduction).

Interestingly, I recently read Loving a Lost Lord and the Madness of Ian Mackenzie (book reviews are coming, I promise!). I rated both of these books very high. The first dealt with a duke whose father was English and whose mother was Indian. This was a central issue of the book although it was mostly glossed over. This was treated as a “flaw” for the historical time frame, with the heroine loving him without regard to his heritage. The second had an autistic hero. The author did an amazing job with the hero, keeping him powerful, brilliant and in control. Yet, he clearly had flaws. Such as being unable to meet people’s eyes, shunning large groups, and being unable to lie.

 

Ruthless. Granted, this tends to be a trait the hero has to put aside for the heroine. It always makes me a little uneasy as I am not a fan of the “being saved by a good woman’s love” trope. But ruthlessness can really work. I am in the middle of reading Marrying Winterbourne, and he is most assuredly ruthless. You see ruthless heroes in Stephanie Laurens’ work as well.

 

Selfishness. No great examples of this in recent fiction I’ve read, but Han Solo always comes to mind.  Granted, he overcomes it by Return of the Jedi. Character arc?

 

Arrogant. Thinking of Darcy here in Pride and Prejudice.  Again, he gets over himself somewhat by the end, but that’s the point of a character arc, right?

 

I’m sure there are more. What do you all think? What character flaws can a character have or grow out of that you can still find them a good hero?