dun dun dunnnn….

THE VIRGIN HERO!

Yes folks, it’s true. My current WIP contains a virgin hero. A tattooed, bad boy virgin hero to be exact and no, that is not a contradiction in terms. Now, I know some people will shriek that it’s not possible to do a sexy virgin of the male persuasion but those that do so have obviously never read A Royal World Apart by the inimitable Maisey Yates (yes, spoiler, sorry).  It is possible for a man to be a virgin and be sexy. Oh, yes it is. It is all, as they say, in the execution.

However. Writing a female virgin in this day and age is difficult enough, let alone an alpha male in his early thirties. I mean, are there even men like that around who aren’t geeks, weirdoes or still living with their mothers? And why would you even want to write about that kind of guy?

Well, for me it came about because my Samhain editor said on Twitter she was looking for more stories that contain virgin heroes. And of course Maisey was listening and told me about it, and naturally – because I ALWAYS want to tackle the hard subjects –  I thought excellent, there’s my next Samhain story. Easy.

Not. Because it’s fine to think ‘I know, I’ll write a virgin hero’. It’s not fine when the time comes and you actually have to think up a reason for why a tattooed bad boy would be a freaking virgin. I know, I know, I could have made him a priest. Or a sexy geek who’s never really been interested in women before because he likes science too. But oh no. I like to do difficult (yes, I am stupid) so I wanted him to be a bad boy. With tattoos. And a dirty mouth. Because the contrast between that and his virginity was just too, too delicious to resist.

But then, naturally, I had to think up a reason for his holding out. A reason that would encompass his bad dude appearance too, because that’s a part of his conflict as well. This, gentle readers, was not easy and has resulted in a seriously screwed up individual. It’s kind of scary how messed up he is. And yet really interesting at the same time. Role reversal has always been a particular interest of mine and I’m intrigued by how my non-virgin heroine will deal with this guy and what she’ll say when his virginity is revealed. Already I’m feeling very protective of him and my heroine (who has loved him for a long time) is getting kind of pushy and I want to tell her to back off and leave him alone. He has issues, man.

Anyway, the point I wanted to make is that his virginity is NOT his conflict. It is a consequence of his conflict. And it is his conflict that is the important bit. Because when you have a consequence like this – and let’s face it, it’s an unusual one in this era for men – if the conflict doesn’t make sense or is not deep enough, then the reasons for his virginity won’t be convincing. He’ll come across as either being a martyr or a cry-baby or a whiner. None of which you want for your hero (and I’m hoping to God that my poor hero won’t be any of these.

So maybe there is a lesson here for SYTYCW. Make your conflict simple. Make your conflict deep. Make it about your character. Once you have those things, the story will follow.

Alrighty so who is intrigued by the thought of a virgin hero? Who is crazy pants like me and wants to write one??  (oh and who entered SYTYCW??)

They’re usually BIG SECRETS. And the characters think they can NEVER TELL anyone about them because then…I don’t know, the world would explode or something. You get the idea.

Secrets are cool and neat and can drive conflict really well. And it’s tempting to keep them until the very end of the book so you can have the BIG REVEAL, where the character will finally TELL ALL and the reader will go ‘ah ha! So that was the problem all along!’.

The problem with secrets is that although they are cool and neat and drive the conflict, they can also hide the conflict as well. The true conflict. Because it’s not so much the hero’s hit and run that’s the issue as why he ran away after he hit someone. Same with the heroine and her shoplifting. Why did she need the rush? It’s what they DO in response that’s the important bit, not the secret itself.

But so often the secret becomes the whole of the story and the more interesting questions like why did the hero run or why did the heroine keept stealing, get lost under the big reveal. Sometimes it’s the secret driving the story, not the characters themselves. Which is easy to do because it’s fun to keep it from the reader. And it’s fun to keep it from the other characters. Makes creating tension really a piece of cake too because all you have to do is threaten the BIG SECRET and hey presto, instant tension.

It’s really easy for the big secret to become a crutch for conflict. If you have your characters going to extraordinary lengths to hide their secrets, if you have to manipulate the plot in order to do the same then you really have to ask yourself why. What would happen if the big secret was discovered halfway in? Would the book end? If so, then either you’re not going deep enough into the conflict, or the book itself relies totally on the big secret which can also be not so good.

I guess it depends on what type of book you’re writing, but for character driven stories I’m a big fan of getting that big secret out in the open when it’s appropriate (not manipulating plot and characters to hide it). Because when the big secret is finally out, then you can start dealing with the real meat of the conflict – why did you run away after you hit that person? What were you scared of? Why did you like the rush of shoplifting? What did it give you that the rest of your life didn’t?

My chess ms was a book with a character with a big secret. The hero did something bad in his past and he didn’t even tell me what it was until the end. So I had to go back and rewrite it so he told it earlier, beacause the bad thing he did was the symptom of a deeper issue he had. A deeper fear. Even now I’m not sure I got it out early enough – but then again, he was a reticent kind of guy and it wouldn’t have been something he would have told just anyone. I guess only time will tell with that one.

Anyway, I suppose the real thing to watch for is to make sure that when one of your characters is nursing a secret, you don’t have that as the entire conflict (unless you’re writing a murder mystery and they’re the murderer). Ask yourself why the character is keeping it a secret in the first place? Do they even care what people think of them? What would happen if everyone knew? And if the answer is ‘my book would end’ then you know you’re in trouble.

Do you have a favourite big secret book? When was it revealed? And if you say right at the end and it was still cool then I’m sorry but I’m going to have to kill you.

Still, thought I’d mention that I was talking to Dr Jax over the weekend and asked him if he might like to do a Q&A on conflict. We’re told we have to be psychologists with our characters and their conflict so I thought conflict issues from the point of view of a bonafide psychiatrist might be kind of helpful. He was amenable so what do the rest of you think? Got any conflict questions you want to ask? A particular issue or how people behave in general? Let me know what you think would be most helpful!

What do I mean? Well, for example, whenever I am introducing a bit of conflict and find myself writing the same thing over and over again without really capturing what it is I want to get across, it’s usually because I don’t know what it is I’m trying to say! A specific example may be: ‘He reminded her of her parents. Their lies, their judgements, the way they made her feel small’.
This does tell you something about her conflict. She had issues with her parents, they lied and judged her and made her feel small. But there are some questions unanswered: what did he do to make her think of her parents? What lies did her parents tell and did they tell them to her or to each other? What about their judgements? Did they judge her or each other? And what made her feel small? The lies or the judgements or both? And why did that make her feel small?
Obviously you don’t answer all those questions immediately, they are revealed as the book goes along, but what you have to do as a writer is know the answers to the questions. And what I think really builds the characters, and what I have NOT been doing, is having an example to illustrate the answer.

So if her parents had lied to her, thinking about a specific lie at a specific time by a specific person, can tell you so much more about a character and their conflict that some vague generalisations. Example: When she was ten, her beloved cat went missing and her mother told her that the animal ran away from home. However that night, when she was supposed to be a asleep, she got up to get a glass of water and spotted her father in the backgarden digging a hole, her cat lying dead on the grass next to it.
Doesn’t that tell us so much more about her and her parents and their relationship? And also gives us insight into the motivations of her parents too. It tells us she had a pet she loved. That her mother lied (to protect her maybe?) to her about what happened to it. That her father was in on it. And that by burying it at night when they knew she was alseep, they were trying to hide the cat’s death from her. Perhaps this is a terrible moment for the heroine. Perhaps finding out that her parents are not always truthful causes her to subconsciously be suspicious of anything they might say. What is certain is that it gives us more information than ‘her reminded her of her parents. Their lies, their judgements….etc’.

It’s those little snapshots of pivotal moments in the characters lives that really – for me at least – build up a great picture of who that person is and what in their past might had led them to think the way they do. Of course, what I’m missing from that example and what it is just as important as the situation itself, is how the heroine acts in response to it. Did she not say anything to her parents about her cat or did she confront them?

So what helps you build character? Anyone got any useful examples?

Okay, so Janet ask me to give an example of the difference between a character trait and conflict. This was in response to me saying that what I thought was conflict in my heroine, turned about to be a character trait. So what do I mean?

Well, we’re told that asking the ‘why’ questions are really important to figuring out conflict. And it’s true, you do need to ask those questions. But my problem is that I didn’t know when to stop! My heroine – I thought – is an emotional girl so I kept asking myself, “This is her conflict so why is she emotional? Why? Why? Why?”. I kept looking for a reason for my heroine to not hide how she felt but there wasn’t one that fitted with the idea of her I had in my mind. So there comes a stage where the ‘why’ comes down to ‘well, they were born that way’. And if they were born that way, it becomes a character trait, not the conflict. So one of my heroine’s character traits is that she has no problem with telling everyone exactly how she feels.

Where the conflict comes into it is how this character trait makes the character behave in response to certain situtions in their lives. Not hiding how she feels is NOT the conflict, but it does affect how she responds to the conflict. Does that make any sense?

My hero, on the other hand, is emotionless – which of course is a big lie because he’s not really. But being emotionless is his response to his conflict. He’s actually just like her, feels things very deeply, but unlike her, his experience has taught him that such emotions are dangerous and he won’t have a bar of them. So he’s shut himself down.

Here’s another example. Perhaps you might have a hero who really, really likes cars. He likes the way they look and the mechanics and the speed, he’s just right into them. And perhaps there’s no reason for it, he’s just always been the kid who loves machines. So his liking of cars is NOT his conflict. It’s part of his character. But say he had a car as a teenager he lovingly built from the ground up, spent years on it, spent lots of money on it, it was his baby. And say his father decided he spent too much time on his cars when he should be in school and so sold his beloved car without telling him…. This is where his love of cars interacts with what could potentially be some great conflict, because it’s not really about how much he loves cars is it? It’s about how he views his Dad. How he responds to this would be a character trait. Is he the type of guy to head straight into a confrontation with his father? Or is he more of a restrained, quiet type of guy, who would say nothing but spend every resource he had finding the car and getting it back…(no you can’t have this example, I’ve decided I’m going to use it. Hehe!).

So that’s how I view character traits and conflict. Anyone got any more advice cos God knows, I probably need it.

What you say? Jackie Ashenden actually writing? Unheard of!

Yeah, yeah, I’m being sarcastic. I never really stop writing to it’s no surprise. But lately I have been turning off the net to concentrate wholly on what I’m doing. And good thing too because my poor Chessman needs the attention. His issues are turning out to be waaaay bigger than I thought. He’s a very closed off guy, very cerebral and, naturally enough, there is a reason he’s like this. Yes, that’s right, ONE reason. Not fifty million in the way I usually always overcomplicate stuff, just one. And that’s where the whole keep it simple, dig deep stuff comes into it. Taking that ONE reason and exploring it, not chucking in a whole lot of other stuff like I did, say, with the heroine…

Women. Honestly, why do I have such problems with women?? Maybe it’s because I’m a complicated girl myself, I dunno, but some heroines just give me gip. I think it’s due to the fact that I’ve focussed on one character trait for this particular heroine and turned it into conflict, whereas it just should have stayed as a character trait. Does that make sense. Anyway, thanks to awesome CPs, I think I’ve ironed out that little kink. Like the hero, I’ve taken ONE thing she does (not one aspect of who she is) and focussed on that as conflict instead. Which may be a breakthrough for me. Anyway, Comic Book girl now lives! Woohoo!

So, anyone else mistake a character trait for conflict or is it just me???

Sigh. Figured out that I have too many things going on for my heroine. I have two major problems with her and really, I should just have one and go a bit deeper with it. I should have realised a couple of weeks ago when I was writing a major scene for her, where her conflict starts to get resolved, and I could not seem to make it so that the two issues were dealt with at once. I ended up dealing with one and leaving the other for the black moment. But the other one is a biggie and…it’s just not going to happen in the word count! So, I need to get rid of it. Of course this brings me to the main point of this post: the trouble with Riva.

It’s a feel-good, fun, flirty line. Contemporary, with a ‘young’ voice. But the problem with feel-good, fun and flirty is that it’s very hard then to get conflict that’s deep and yet isn’t too depressing or dark. Groan. My feeling is that the most emotional storylines come from tough conflict but how you do that and still make it feel-good and fun?? Double groan. And it doesn’t help that I like angst but my voice is Riva (my secret love would be Presents/Modern conflict with a Riva voice).

The big thing is that I don’t know if my conflict is too dark or not. My poor old bad boy has had a pretty dark, depressing past and I wonder if that’s too much. But then, if he’s a bad boy, he HAS to have had bad stuff in his past, right? I’ve tried to keep this out of the present as much as possible but now I’m getting into the later stages of the book, it’s feeling pretty angsty. The pay off will be an emotional ending but have I gone too far? Same with my poor old heroine. She’s got two problems now – physical scars and guilt. But I have to choose one. Which one? Scars or guilt? And are they too dark? Too real life? The other sub I have in at the moment – the soldier story – again, there’s some depressing stuff in both my characters’ lives. Not in the present, in the past, but still, it’s there. Will that be a problem? Is it worth even writing the rest of that one?

I don’t know And the only way to know is when I hear from the ed. But I’m beginning to think that this is another thing that’s all in the execution. Some conflicts, no matter what you do with them, will always be too depressing otherwise you risk making light of them. Yet with others, maybe it’s possible if you don’t dwell too much on the depressing parts. Like if it’s death, you don’t dwell on the grief and loss, or you make it happen in the distant past so it’s not an issue in the present. Fundamentally though, who knows? I’ll find out eventually about mine when I hear back. Until then…not sure what to do really.

Maybe I’ll just give up the present WIPs for my new idea which was inspired – don’t laugh please – by the song One Night in Bangkok (oh, okay, you can laugh). Hehe. Can anyone say cheesy? I’m aiming to bring the sexy back to chess!!

So, what do you reckon about conflict that is light and happy, fun, feel-good, and flirty, and yet is deep enough and emotinal enough to last 50k? Any ideas?

PS. If you don’t know the song, here it is. Go Murray Head!

1. The story is boring.
2. The conflict is confused.
3. The characters are irritating.

As you can tell, I’m at the ‘they’re never going to want any more of this story so what’s the point in writing it’ stage. Sigh.

I always get to this point in every story I write and mostly when it’s the first draft, which is why I hate first drafts so much. I usually try and get them down as quickly as possible since I much prefer editing. I don’t know why I find them so tough. I think it’s probably because I’m a pantser by nature and so the plot kind of reveals itself as I go along. Oh, I know the character arcs and the emotional development of the story, but it’s the how that happens. The ‘what do the characters DO’ that gets me. She needs to learn that he isn’t like her father so what does he do to show her that? He needs to learn she won’t leave like his mother so what does she do? etc, etc.

I know, I know, just sit down a write without the internal editor going blah, blah, blah in the background. And believe me, I do that. But I still get the I can’t be bothered with this anymore thing happening.

Anyway, my usual approach to first draft suckage is to start a bright, shiny new idea which, of course, does not help because to get past the first draft stage, you’ve actually got to finish the first draft!

Grrr.

So far my best option has been to write ahead to a scene I particularly want to write and this is usually the black moment. Because I love writing black moments, doing this can be a really good way of getting things flowing and it’s fantastic for figuring out whether your conflict is going to work or not. In fact, skipping forward to writing the black moment for the Hammer Pants ms enabled me to see that my poor old bad boy wasn’t all that bad. He kept insisting that he was a b*stard and that he wasn’t good enough for the heroine and I kept wondering why that was since he actually didn’t have a past that would make him ashamed. Same with the Frenchman. In the story, there’s a choice that as an alpha male in control of his life, he probably would have made, except in my story, he doesn’t want to even make the choice. And I kind of thought I knew why, but it wasn’t till I’d written the black moment that I went ‘Ooooh, so THAT’S why!’.

So, anyway, that’s my tip for getting past the ‘bogged down’ stage in first drafts. Anyone else got any ideas? I’d be glad to hear ’em!

**I mean it.***

**Well, okay, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.***

I like subtlety. My very favourite historical romance in all the world – The Lymond Chronicles by Dorothy Dunnett, that I first read at the tender age of 15 – was chock full of it. I liked the way nothing was ever semaphored in large, friendly letters, merely hinted at. Whispered. I liked the way that sometimes I had to go and re-read parts just to see if what I thought happened, actually did happen. Or that I’d missed something that I should have picked up on. I liked how you had to pay attention to the most seemingly innocuous conversation because it might contain some clue to a character’s emotional state or to their past. Or how even the way they were standing was some hint as to their deeper emotions. I liked the way there was ALWAYS a subtext going on and how half the fun was guessing what exactly the subtext was. And I liked the way you hardly ever got the hero’s POV because it kept him mysterious.
But most of all, I really liked how my best friend and I used to argue for hours about questions the answers to which were never clearly answered – what really happened to his father? What was it with his mother? Was the boy who died really his son or the son of his enemy? Was he really in love with the woman in book 2? And what exactly was the nature of his relationship with the Turkish prince in book 4?
In fact, those questions and many others, kept a whole web discussion forum going for years and probably still does. But that’s beside the point. I loved the subtlety of it and I read and re-read those books over and over again, just to see if could pick up any more bits and pieces of information that I’d missed the first ten times I read it.

I loved that subtlety SO much that I swore, as a writer, I would never hit my readers over the head with conflict (actually, I didn’t really know what conflict was back then but you know what I mean), that I’d dole out little bits of information like cheese before mice, leading the reader into the story but perhaps never revealing anything too much till later. If at all. I’d give them little puzzles so they would be fascinated about my characters motivations and perhaps go and re-read bits so they could maybe pick up on something they’d missed. And I’d also keep my hero very mysterious and not give him a lot of POV so no one would know quite what he was doing or why until right at the end. Oh yes and I’d torture him lots too because there’s nothing like a tortured hero.

And I bet you can guess how well that worked out when it came to writing category romance.

It didn’t.

I blame Dorothy Dunnett and Francis Crawford of Lymond completely for my inability to get to grips with category romance. And I have to repeat to myself daily what worked for six 500 page books published in the 60s will not work for one 50k book published in 2010.

So, no to subtlety. No to little reader puzzles. No to carefully hinted at emotional states. No to mysterious motivations. No to limited hero POV. No to roundabout dialogue where the characters talk about everything but the thing they actually need to talk about. Oh and BIG nos to torturing your hero with opium addiction (seriously!).
Yes to have that conflict in the first chapter. Yes to being absolutely clear as to the motivations of your characters. Yes to the reader knowing more than the characters do NOT the other way around.

Still, I suppose if Dorothy Dunnett had actually written on the first page ‘Francis Crawford had always secretly feared he was the secret lovechild of his mother’s affair with her husband’s father’ then I’m sure there would not have been six books to write.*

Anyway, that’s my excuse as to why this category romance lark is so damn difficult for me and I’m sticking to it. And you’ll be pleased to know that I have actually broken the habit of a lifetime and in the latest couple of WIPS, got out my conflict stick to beat the reader over the head with it.

So, question for the day – have there been any particular book/books that have had an influence on you as a writer?

*Note: okay, so that’s kind of a spoiler. Sorry. But it’s only part of the conflict not all of it. Or is it? You’ll have read it to find out. And you may come to an entirely different conclusion.

Anyway, that digging deep post really set me thinking about the problems I’m having with this current WIP. I know these characters so well now that I am forgetting the reader doesn’t. Remember the hero burning his toast? And the digging deep we did below the surface? We found out his real fear is that he’s inherently unlovable. Now the thing is, he doesn’t know that in chapter 1. In fact, in chapter 1, he’s fine. His life is great. It takes the whole book for him to realise that he’s not fine and it’s not until right at the very end that he understands why he isn’t.
Make sense?

Well, imagine my burnt toast hero thinking he’s not lovable in chapter 1 and that’s pretty much sums up my problem with my wip. I’m revealing my characters too early. I don’t have much in the way of external conflict – okay ANY external conflict – so I really wanted to get to the heart of their problems, get that conflict down on the page. I had my heroine – who doesn’t want a relationship – freaking out in day two of them seeing each other. But come on, really? She’s having a nice time with him sure but would she really be feeling worried? Just because you’re having a nice time with a guy doesn’t mean love, marriage and babies is on the cards. Especially if that’s not what you want. Besides, as far as she’s concerned she’s having a holiday romance, there’s no way she’d want anymore so freaking out about enjoying herself the second time she sees him is a bit odd wouldn’t you say?

Bascially what I did was dig too deep, too early (made her too self aware if you like). Sure, you need to let the reader know she’s enjoying herself, and maybe hint a little that she hasn’t had so much fun with a guy for a long time (cos this is special yes?) but save the freaking out for when she really needs it.

Which brings me to my blog title. Without mentioning stripper poles and pasties, I went for the tasteful option and thought about it in terms of veils. You need to reveal your characters conflict slowly. Like the dance of the seven veils, you drop one veil at a time. Mine didn’t want to do that, they wanted to drop three. Hey, my heroine went for broke and threw them ALL off, the silly girl! Anyway, slow is what you want so that by the end of the book, all the veils are down and we can see what’s at the heart of the problem for these characters.

Other people have other ways of saying this. Kate Walker I think calls it the layers of the onion. I quite like the veil analogy because it’s also how the characters reveal themselves to each other as well as the reader. Slowly, as trust grows between them, they allow another veil to drop, letting the other person see a deeper part of them. Not having conversations about how they hated their parents in chapter two after they’ve only just met (Jackie, take a bow!).

Anyway, that’s just my take on it. The speed at which your dance progresses really depends on the story though. Sometimes it’ll be fast, sometimes it won’t. But what you don’t want to is have naked characters half-way through the story because then there won’t be enough conflict to get you to the end and you’ll be forced to throw in a car chase or something.

So, anyone have problems with their characters throwing off veils willy nilly or is it just me?