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Fantasy Romance

Character

Writing Process: To Love a Prince

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I am a panster.

 

For those that haven’t heard this term before, it means I write books “by the seat of my pants” rather than plotting out my novels.

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This can be a real issue for a pantser

My prep work involves knowing who the characters are, a little bit about them, and the high-level issues they’re facing. Combined with a huge dose of “I really want to write about them”.

There’s a lot of debate about pantsing versus plotting. Plotting is where you spend a lot more time outlining what’s going to happen and when.

I’ve tried plotting.

Many times.

And I have 4 novels with 10k-20k words in them that I’ll probably never complete. I’m not sure why plotting doesn’t work for me.

Maybe I feel like the story has already been told when I plot. Maybe I get bored writing it. Maybe I rush forward to write all the plot points and ignore the characters.

I’m not sure, but I do know it doesn’t work. For me.

Writing To Love a Prince really taught me this. I started this story three times. I have one 60k work that is not salvageable where Prince Eli was supposed to be the hero. Yeah. 60k. But it was awful.

And it wasn’t Eli.

I couldn’t make him weak. I couldn’t make him indecisive.  He needed to be in control, and if he wasn’t, he was going to fight like an injured bear to get back into control.

He also didn’t care much what society said about him. He was a Prince. Let them fear him. Despise him. But they would respect him or face his wrath.

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The end result of listening.

Yeah. The first story I wrote with him being injured and nursed back to health failed spectacularly. The second story where he was stymied by social pressure made him raise a brow. He almost rolled his eyes at me, but he’s too dignified for that.

Sure, the stories were plotted, but they weren’t his story. So I let him tell his. I was very hesitant at how the story progressed, especially as it involved a slave and royal succession.

I also worried Auburn’s kindness would be perceived as weakness. I tried changing her, but it just didn’t work. She had to be who she was because Eli fell in love with her for that. In a world as conniving as the court he’d grown up in, Auburn was his beacon of light.

I tried plotting once or twice more after To Love a Prince, but those failed, too.

So now I write by the seat of my pants. Yes, it means a lot more revisions. But I love writing that first draft! Seeing the characters revealed, their love grow, and see them overcome whatever I throw at them..

That is why I write.

Book Review: Her Highness and the Highlander

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Book: Her Highness and the Highlander

Author: Tracy Anne Warren

Status: Worth a Look

This book was isn’t going to knock your socks off, but it’s a nice afternoon read.

Premise: A princess (from a fictional country) and her entourage are attacked on her way from her finishing school to London. She is the only survivor, and in her bedraggled state, no one will believe she’s royalty. She’s far from friends and family, and completely out of her element. A Scotsman on his way home from the Napoleonic Wars takes pity on her, helps her out, and eventually agrees to take her to London. Along the way, they fall on in love.
Plot: It’s pretty thin. We need a reason for the hero and heroine to be together. So, despite the massive battle that killed her entourage, captain of her guard, her uncle etc. no one finds any evidence of it. I guess they must’ve really been on back roads, and the bad guys must’ve had a veritable army to clean up the mess. Oh, no wait, it was one guy that cleaned it up. *shakes head*

I didn’t find it believable. But I suspended disbelief as we couldn’t have good guys finding her if she was going to need the hero to get her to London. Alone, of course.

Romance: They fall in love along the way to London. They’re so in lust with each other, that they need to quickly marry so they can have sex. Par for the romance genre, if a bit unbelievable. The author did try to make the princess seem like she’d be okay giving up her extremely privileged life to live with a commoner.

Steamy Scenes: This is really where the author shone. The steamy scenes were steamy, the prose pretty without getting in the way of what was going on between them. She used none of my automatic close the books words, so we’re good there.

Characters: There is no character development. Not really sure how they would develop as both seem pretty perfect from the beginning. This is your typical romance fare, so neither character is going to grow or develop in the story.

 

All in, a decent read. I finished it on a blustery afternoon, and it wasn’t gripping enough I couldn’t put it aside with ease to make snacks for the kids. At the same time, it entertained and didn’t disappoint with the ending.

"Us" vs "Them"

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We see this a lot. Us versus Them.

It’s “your” team versus whomever they are playing. It’s the Rebellion versus the Empire. Democrats versus republicans. Geeks versus jocks.

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This was so my “in” group. C’mon DPS.

Pick your “in” group, and you’ll automatically have an “out” group. It’s everywhere, and once you side with a team, you will automatically favor them even if the evidence doesn’t agree with you.

This is called Social Identity Theory, and humans do it all the time. Once we identify with a group, once it becomes ours, a part of ourselves becomes intertwined with the success of that group.

Think how many times you’ve seen a sports fan became angry over how “their” team played. Now, if you actually owned the sports team, you’d have a lot riding on their success. But most of the people I know who are invested in “their” team don’t even have a bet riding on the outcome.

I’ve even heard fans make disparaging comments about fans of other teams. What would make an otherwise rational person hate someone else just for the team they support?

Social Identity Theory says this is actually pretty common. Once you identify with a group making it the “in” group, humans will discriminate against and disparage the “out” group as a means of making themselves feel better about the group to which they are associated.

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This is some pretty powerful stuff. Wikipedia links to a series of studies, one that shows people aren’t even willing to bet against their “in” group even though it could mean that they make money doing so.

There is some thought that this was an evolutionary response. Those that favored their own tribes to the exclusion of all others were more successful, had more children, etc. Hard to prove, but a reasonable theory.

Interestingly, though, humans are actually more successful the larger we make the “in” group. The research corroborates what Adam Smith said in The Wealth of Nations that human prosperity is dependent on the voluntary exchange between and co-operation of different nationalities and races.

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It’s an interesting dichotomy. On the one hand, research shows us that Social Identity Theory tells makes us want to favor “our” group, yet other research shows us that this is not necessarily what makes us the most prosperous.

Sadly, this isn’t fiction. If it were, I’d get a note from my beta reader telling me about the inconsistency of my character, and how his actions didn’t align with his goal. I’d fix it, and all would be well.

Not that easy in the real world, even if does explain a lot things we see happening around us.

But, perhaps it gives us some insight into making a character that our audience will identify with. Give them someone that’s in their “in” group so that they’ll want to see them succeed even if he is a whiny farm kid more interested in racing speeders with his friends than tending to the droids on his aunt and uncle’s farm.

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How about you? Ever read about a character you could identify with and wanted to see them succeed no matter what? Or maybe you have a sports team you love no matter what? Or maybe you found yourself in one “tribe” when you wanted to be in another?

 

 

Kindness Matters. So Does Empathy.

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This is so amazingly true.  Everyone is experiencing life, and you may or may not know why they’re doing what they’re doing.

I try to remember this when I get cut-off in traffic. Maybe, just maybe, the person in front of me got a call from their daycare, and they’re rushing to get a sick child. Or they can’t afford to be late to work because they’ll lose their job, but their kids’ bus was late picking them up. Or they just learned their mother died and aren’t thinking straight.

It’s possible they’re just a jerk. Looking at you man in the red pickup truck that made a left turn in front of me and flipped me off. I almost didn’t stop in time, and pickup truck versus minivan isn’t a pretty sight for either of us. It took me the next half-hour to stop shaking.

But maybe, just maybe, there is something else going on.

We’ve all been there. We’ve all done it. But it’s different when we do it, right?

Except, it’s not.

I was at FedEx the other night to pick-up a package, and a woman was there with two little kids. The boy was being especially difficult, and I could see she was trying really hard to keep them under control. Rather than glaring at her, I smiled at the kids, waved at the little girl, and told her my daughter loved My Little Ponies, too.

The girl was wearing a MLP shirt.

Completely eased the tension, and it cost me nothing. I was able to continue to ignore the boy as the girl talked all about ice skating and Pinkie Pie. The boy was still surly, but he was coming around for his mom and sister.

No idea what happened in any of their day, but I certainly didn’t need to make it worse even if I was getting frustrated with FedEx as it took them fifteen minutes to find my package. A smile and a nice word made everything more pleasant.

I’m not sure why we don’t practice it more. Why it’s so much “cooler” to come back with some snarky comment than it is to show kindness. Why we’ve equated kindness with weakness.

Kindness is not weakness.

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It actually took me some time to realize I was making this mistake, and I almost completely rewrote a character because she was kind.

Yeah, I know. I’m not immune to culture either.

Part of the reason why the hero fell in love with this character was her kindness, that inner light that refused to dim despite everything she’d been through.

I was going to change that because I mistakenly assumed that made her a weak character. It didn’t. It was part of who she was, and it made her no more weak than my smart-mouthed character in a separate book. Different, but not weak.

What do you think? Do you equate kindness with weakness? Do you try to see the other side, even if it is a jerk in a red pickup truck that almost killed you both? Perhaps you’ve known a jerk in a red pickup yourself?