Torturing Characters

I love to torture my characters, it’s such fun to get back at them for all the trouble they cause me, and the huge numbers of hours of my life they demand.

But I’ve noticed a disturbing trend, especially in paranormal- romance- land, where authors are resorting to literal torture (hot irons, etc.) or degrading forced sex to torture their characters… and for the life of me I can’t figure out why they are doing this.

To me, literal torture screams “LAZY AUTHOR!!!”, and I skip those scenes because they’re boring. Been there, done that… <yawn> and I flip pages until I get to something interesting, then I never read the book again, nor do I buy another by that author.

Why do I think ‘lazy-author’ when I run across literal torture?

Because literal torture is the cliché answer to “what’s the worse thing that could happen to this character?” Literal torture as the answer to that question means the author hasn’t taken the time and energy to got into the character’s head to really find out what is the worst imaginable thing for this character.

How much more interesting it would be to find out each character’s unique answer to the question “What’s the worst that could happen?” rather than resorting to the quick and easy cliché.

For instance…

Torturing my heroine. She’s done the degrading sex bit, and lived through it, so it holds no power over her. She’s done the literal torture (a battered wife), has the scars to prove it, and again it holds no power over her.

So… I as her author, I ponder… how can I torture this character… what’s the worst thing that I can do to her? And, being one who tries to not take the lazy way out, I delve into her psyche and her history. And find something vastly amusing, truly surprising and far worse for her than any literal torture conceived…

Her parents arriving on her door-step.

How much more interest and empathy does that invoke in her as a character than literal torture? And isn’t that our jobs as writers to invoke interest and empathy?

So, how about some of you out there, quit being lazy, and maybe I’ll start reading your books again.

Besides the fact that it’s soooo much more fun to write her reaction to parents’ arrival.

Ahhh… the delights of torturing my characters. 🙂

A Smile…

I was in the grocery store yesterday, wandering in my own little world as I waited for #1-son to finish filling out the endless electronic job application, and grumbling about my life and my world, which in reality are just fine, but were really getting on my nerves yesterday…

and something caught my attention. I don’t even know what it was, but I looked up and there was a guy. I can’t even say what he looked like beyond medium-tall, nice-to-medium build (slightly baggy clothes), not too far from my age, medium-colored hair, and he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring… but what I will recognize for the rest of my life was his smile.

I don’t think I’ve ever been the recipient of a smile like that… a smile so deep and heart-felt that he seemed to glow from the inside out.

Over the years, a lot of people have smiled at me, but… damn! Never before have I even thought about a smile the next day, let alone still been effected by it. His smile, just for that moment, still makes me feel… like… Wow!

I read enough paranormal and metaphysical stuff to believe we aren’t alone. And read enough experiences of people encountering benevolent beings– angels, if you will– and experienced enough weird stuff of my own, to not be shook at the idea that he might have been an angel… for never have I encountered a human smile like that.

But–damn!– if he was a real guy… please universe … I want to meet him again and if nothing else, I’d like to have him smile at me one more time.

What is a Romance?

I was over visiting Paperback Writer’s blog this morning, checking out reactions to my very first comment on anybody’s blog, and one very nice gal had responded to the comment I made, and in my response to her I wrote something that to me was profound:

For me, there are three promises the author/publisher makes to me when they put a book on the romance shelf:

1) A good romantic story,

2) A promise that’s been around as long as the genre for a happily-ever-after ending and

3) In the last 5-10 years the genre has changed so the current promise is that the man doesn’t force himself on the woman (physically or mentally).

This is important to me, because I disliked all the examples I saw of RWA’s attempt to define “romance”, and at the same time I think a definition of “romance” is needed because I keep running into books on the romance shelf that aren’t romances.

Those three were just off the top of my head, but as I think more about my personal definition of romance, I’d leave #2 and #3 basically the same:

2) A their-relationship-will-endure-and-prosper happily-ever-after ending.

3) No rape of heroine or hero by the other, either mentally, physically or psychically.

But #1 needs to be thought about … A good romantic story… what makes this up?

Number of people involved limited to two? Nope, my next book will be extremely romantic (if I do it right) and it’s a threesome.

Only a man and a woman involved? Nope, some of the neatest romances I’ve watched evolve have been between my lesbian friends.

Oh, and I also feel that there is a difference between a “love story” and a “romance”… “love story” doesn’t require rule #2. For a really neat “love story” you can kill off the hero in the last chapter, for a “romance”, you can’t.

It also has to have a (at least semi-) realistic depiction of the stages of emotional involvement, and their love has to be tested at some point in the story, to pave the way for rule #2.

A “romance” is:

The evolution of a loving relationship between the main characters, that is strengthened by the tests they face and culminates in a long-term commitment to each other and their relationship.

Hey, I like that. 🙂

Getting Un-Stuck

I’ve been fighting myself for weeks with this book and yesterday discovered two of the reasons. Neither of which, once I realized them, came as a big surprise. I’m just horribly frustrated to be this close to being done enough to send it to an editor, and yet having so much trouble starting this last edit. So, what did I realize yesterday?

Perfectionitis
I’m sure it comes as a huge surprise to everybody that knows me (Not!), but I have a bad case of perfectionitis, which is the disease form of perfectionism. Everything I write has to be perfect the first time and I can’t start writing until I know it’s going to be perfect. I’m not saying it makes sense, because I know it doesn’t… but that’s one of the things that’s been hanging me up. This is the first scene of the book, the most critical scene, and it’s got to be perfect. Gladly I have already found the cure, because this is a condition that flares repeatedly… rambling. Instead of even attempting perfection, I purposefully ramble in a train-of-thought mode. “Well, she walks into the room, no she kind of ambles, and looks around… and what does she see? Well, she sees this and that.” And before I know it, I know exactly what’s going on and how to write it. So, today I ramble.

Hypobackstoryosis
This is the disease form of lack-of-back-story, which for an intensely character-driven book is a huge problem. How can I write the story of this woman’s romance if I don’t have any idea of what her past relationships have been like? Duh! And, interestingly enough, it was a guy that pointed out this major flaw and none of the women caught it enough to be able to verbalize it as a problem. And the cure is simple… write their back-story. For this gal, I need to detail her past relationships with men and her relationship with her mother, because both are vital to the telling of this story.

Hypermyopicheropathy
The disease in which you’re so near-sightedly focused on the hero that you can’t see what’s going on in the rest of the story.

Symptom: You don’t have a clue what the hero is supposed to do next. I can’t tell how the heroine is responding… because I don’t know what she’s responding to because I don’t know how the other characters are acting and reacting.

Cure: Write the scene from the other person’s POV. You, as the author, can’t know how the hero is supposed to react unless you know what the other character is doing/ thinking/ saying. In the case of my story, two more POVs besides the heroine’s because she’s reacting to both her mother and her almost-mother-in-law.

So, I’ve got my work cut out for me, and I’m actually looking forward to starting on it.