Romance is about risk
Esoteric as the title of this blog is, in my opinion it's right on the money as a metaphor for love. There's a reason why human beings the world over find the subject of romantic love endlessly fascinating - there's nothing like the excitement, uncertainty and danger of falling madly, deeply, insanely in love. Kind of like the thrill of smoking a cigar which may or may not blow up in your face, in fact.
Thinking about the element of risk in romance led to one of the breakthrough realisations I had as a romance writer. After working on a TV soap in Australia for over a year, I realised that very often I was giving my heroes and heroines too much insight into each others' thoughts, feelings and motivations. They were damned psychic, the little devils. But the moment you give someone sure knowledge of how the object of their affections feels, the tension drains right out of a scene. Great if you're married or in a long term relationship - who doesn't want to know that their partner loves them? Who wouldn't kill sometimes to be able to read their mind? - but in romance, certainty is death to tension. So, my big writing motto, writ large in red texta on the back of my eyelids is this: Romance is about NOT KNOWING how the other person feels.
I bet everyone has their own ideas about what makes a great romance novel work. Am I on the money? I'd love to hear your theories, the touchstones you work from when writing, or what you look for when reading.
Until next time,
Sarah
















Oh, this is a juicy topic....
My characters can be dead certain about how they feel, and often think they're certain of each other. They're certain about things working out or not working out in a particular way. And they're usually wrong, because the only one who knows for certain is ME. Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha.
But to address your question, for me the thing that makes a romance work is watching the characters grow toward each other....I like to create (and read about) characters who have to sacrifice for each other, learn to be together, and become important in each other's lives. Sometimes it's a very sharp learning curve, and we wonder if these people will make it. Or, they keep trying to make it work, but there are obstacles that have to be solved before that can happen. I often have characters fall in love mid-book, rather than at the end, but things still are not resolved between them, because it's never that easy.
So it's always about who are these people in the beginning of the book, what set of beliefs are they operating under? And how it that all about to change? Their lives are going to change bigtime, and they have to be ready to embrace that. :) And each other, of course.
Sam
Love and Risk
When you think you know but you don't...
Jen, I so hear you. I'm constantly surprised by people I think I know really well, even my partner of 15 years. As for what motivates anyone to do anything...food is good for me most of the time. There's a quote out there that goes something like this: normal people use about 90% of their brains worrying about being liked by the rest of the world; with writers, that increases to 99.9%. I can so relate to this. Anyone else?
Really? 90%?
Hmmm. I guess my years in academia conditioned me to expect that the better part of people I was working with (students, LOL) wouldn't like me much because I was ruining their lives with work they had to take home and toil over late at night, and then I would end up giving a majority of them "C's". LOL It was nice if they liked me, but not necessary, as long as they respected me. I think I still have some of that notion.
Of course, I want to be liked, to have friends, etc but I don't typically change myself to do it, and I don't worry about it too much. At least, not with people I don't know. With people I care about, or share a connection with, I do worry that we have a good relationship, but I always see it as going both ways, it takes two and all that.
I do care if people like my books -- I want them so much to love my books, which is more important on some level than if they like me, though maybe those things go hand in hand? I like to be likable, but being a forthright person, I think sometimes I put people off, but then again, a lot of people find it charming. ;)
Though can't we be the eccentric artistes who sometimes annoy people but then dazzle them with our brilliance? (I hope everyone hears the humor here...) ;)
Sam
1% functioning...
I suspect the quote was supposed to be more of a comment on writers than on the rest of the population, Sam. You know, us working in our little garrets, agonising over whether our words will be accepted, throwing darts at bad reviews... I definitely hear you on being too old to change, but a part of me still worries about being liked. Maybe I should teach for a while as therapy...?! There's this old door-to-door saleman's trick where they come into your house and drop something. If you bend to pick it up for them, they know they've got you because you're a people pleaser, and people pleasers can be manipulated. Cut to me holding a boxed set of Encyclopeadia Britannica, a new vacuum cleaner, and a garage full of Tupperware! Thank goodness they don't have door-to-door salespeople in Australia any more;)
That's really cool...
I love that! The dropping things trick. Reminds me of something you might see in a Mamet movie. :) A friend of mine grew up in Boston and used to tell me all kinds of things about pickpocketing, and even once managed to get a ring off my finger without me knowing it. Clever -- (Dave, you out there?) LOL
I think we all want to be liked, accepted -- I agree with that. It probably comes down to some kind of survival/evolution thing, but I think it's good to not worry about too much, since the other thing we learn pretty quick as writers is that we can't please everyone, so you have to hope for the best, but there will always be a few stinkers in the woodpile as my Dad always says. ;)
Funny how these conversations develop, isn't it? They all wander away from the initial points in interesting ways, and I think that's great!
Sam
Hey is there room for me?
Come on in!
Mads, there's soooo room for everyone. I think I scored the writely replies because I chose a writerly first blog topic. Next week I promise to be a little more frivolous! Thanks for your feedback on Anything For You. I loved writing that book. Sam, the hero, was just such an idiot - he's one of my favourite heroes so far. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of beach action in my next book. Take On Me is set in LA, around a day-time soap called Ocean Boulevard. The trilogy follows the lives and loves of Sadie, Grace and Claudia, three very different ladies with lots of attitude. I used to work on a soap over here in Australia - in fact I still do freelance scripts for it - so I had a lot of fun coming up with scenarios and acting out fantasies on the page. It was great working with interconnected characters, too - like coming home when I started each subsequent book. And tough to say goodbye at the end of the last one, too. Who knows? If people like the first three, I can always find more folk at Ocean Boulevard to play around with...
Daytime Soaps
thanks
Thanks, Mads. You are balm for a writer's soul.
Stay well
S
Ha Ha He He
whew....
For a moment I read "Sam was an idiot" and then remembered it was the hero.... ROTFL....
Sam
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hmmm.
I know how the books starts and ends, but I don't always know why my characters have done what they're doing. For instance, I knew the heroine of the Forbidden Fantasies Blaze that I'm writing right now took off on a spontaneous trip across the country when I pitched the book, but I didn't know why. I had to figure that out, and it's taken me in some interesting directions with her.
I have two books going right now (well, technically three though one isn't due until May, so I don't count that one), and one is extremely planned out, with note cards and everything, and still I find I have to discover the characters real motivations, etc -- most of the notecards have only to do with plot, but I have to figure out how my characters react to certain events, why they react that way, and then that can change things, too....
I also sometimes overdo some parts, mostly because I'm figuring it out for myself, and then have to go back and edit, or my cp picks up on it. [G]
Sam
I think you're right because
favourite books
Definitely my favourite books are when you know they belong together but they don't - yet! It's one of the reasons I fell in love with Georgette Heyer books when I was in my teens. She does a great line in unaware hero/and or heroine. I must say, given the kind of books I write, it's hilarious to see all those Georgette's on my bookshelf, but I love 'em. My gauge for if a book is really working for me is when my chest aches - not in a dial-emergency, get-the-shock-paddles-out kind of way, but in an oh-my-god, they-just-havet-to-work-it-out kind of way. I am just a big, softy, mushy sentimentalist at the end of the day...
me, too :)
Sarah, I know exactly what you mean -- I always think of it as when writing the book sort of feels the same way as when I'm reading one, you know, you get all caught up and can't write as fast as you could read and have to keep moving through it as quickly as you can because you're so sucked in! I love that. It offsets the times when its like pulling teeth...
I think a good romance has to have a "chest ache" -- that's a great measure! (Of course, a really sexy romance can induce other aches, as well! LOL)
Sam
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