Yes, it’s a Falling for Finn cake. I’ve already shared this on Facebook and it was so good that I had to share it here too. As you can see, there wasn’t enough room for ‘Ashenden’ so I’m just Jackie. The brown thing off to the left is a ‘chocolate fish award’ so as you can see, I am an award winner already.  Aren’t they fabulous children??

Jackie Ashenden, Chocolate Fish Award Winning Author! 

Definitely has a certain ring to it.:-)

Anyway, while you help yourself to some virtual Finn cake, may I also bring to your attention a fabulous post on writing emotion by Maisey. It’s a must read, no matter what type of romance you’re writing.

PS. If you’re desperate to know my news, you can DM me on twitter. Bribes of chocolate, expensive champagne, and diamonds gratefully accepted.

I really love my sheikh but honestly, in the process of rewriting Mr Sheikhypants, he and the wretched heroine decided to go to a place I was NOT comfortable with. And no, it wasn’t Huntly (though they do go into the desert, which is also not comfortable). It skated close to a line that pushes all sorts of hot buttons and to be honest, I REALLY didn’t want to write it.

Which meant, of course, that I HAD to.

I’m always of the opinion that if it’s scary to write and you don’t want to go there, then you have to write it.  Believe me, the times I haven’t gone there and pulled the characters back, have been the times when the story gets derailed. It becomes mediocre and flat. Because you can’t trick your characters. They want what they want and if they don’t get it, they get pissy with you and just lay there like cardboard cutouts.

So, I anyway, I wrote the scene they wanted. And it was intense. And I’m scared to death of keeping it in because it could be a rejectionable offence. But it could also be the scene that sells the book. Oh and also, if I take it out, their whole relationship falls apart since they needed that scene to happen in order to fall in love.

This is why pushing those boundaries they’re always talking about is hard. Because you don’t know which side of the boundary you’re standing on and it could be the wrong one. But it’s also why you have to write those kinds of scenes and not pull back. Those scenes are the ones that can be the most emotional, the most wrenching, the ones that take your book from being ‘okay’ to ‘unputdownable’. They’re not easy scenes to write and they shouldn’t be. The best ones never are.

Of course, I don’t know what side of the boundary I’m on but I do know that the scene was intensely emotional and I cried  while writing it so at least that’s one person who likes it.

So I’m going to advise you to write the uncomfortable scene. If your characters want to go where you’re afraid to take them, take them anyway and don’t pull back. Ignore the voices that are telling you the hero/heroine can’t do that, that it’s not PC, that it’s not sympathetic. Just write it, push it as far as you can. Then see what you have. Pulling back is easier than ramping up and if you don’t go as far as you can, then you don’t know how far it actually needs to go.

It’s scary but it’s worth it.

So have you ever had characters do something that scares you? Did you let them do it?

If that doesn’t float your boat and music is more your bag, then go here where, for your veiwing pleasure the lovely Maisey Yates covers an Adele song. She can write, she can sing…Is there anything this woman can’t do??

Angry, fighty scenes are all yummy and angsty and delicious but if there’s too many of them, you start to wonder why these two people are together if they hate each other so much and/or you just know their HEA is going to last all of five seconds. That, people, is not a romance. That is a soap opera.

Now, I’m not dissing soap operas here but if you want to write a good romance, you can’t have fights and angst all the time. You have to have some moments where the characters love being together. When they make that all important emotional connection that tells the reader that these two are made for each other and when they sort out their issues, they will be together forever. And not in a ‘eat every meal in total silence cos they can’t think of anything to say to each other’ kind of way, but a ‘still having lots of nookie way into their 80s’ kind of way.

Anyway, the reason I’ve been thinking about this is because I’ve hauled out my chess ms with the idea of submitting in a contest and am wrestling with the beginning of it. I’ve rewritten the first three chapters of this wretched thing 50 million times already and it still isn’t right. Why? Because it’s a one night stand story and I just have NOT been able to nail down the emotional connection. When you find yourself writing paragraphs of justification and reasons for the heroine to sleep with the hero, you know something isn’t going right. In fact, I figured that if couldn’t write down her motivation in one sentence then I needed to stop writing until I could!

Now, I reckon emotional ONS stories are very difficult to get right. It’s easy to get them to have the sex but to get two complete strangers to connect on an emotional level? Nup. Because what has to happen, in order to get that emotional connection going, is that both your characters have to drop – at least momentarily – their armour and be who they truly are with each other. You know that Michael Hauge thing about essence and identity? That essentially characters hide who they truly are behind a mask? What I mean is that in order for them to connect, each of them has to drop that mask. But because a ONS happens usually at the beginning of the book, it’s actually very difficult for them to do that because as far they’re concerned, they don’t wear a mask. Their identity IS their true self (and I’m not talking dropping it all the way, I’m talking glimpses here. Flashes that intrigue and fascinate the other character enough that their emotions are engaged). Grrrr!

The other thing you have to get right in order to get that emotional connection is motivation. There is debate about whether guys need less motivation – it probably depends on the hero – but like it or not, the heroine has to have it (I know, I know, double standards). And it has to stem from something emotional, something to do with her conflict, because otherwise it’ll end up being ‘woohoo, sex!’ which isn’t bad if you’re writing for Blaze. But it is if you’re writing for some of the other categories (and hey, I know, I’ve got the Rs to prove it).

The reason this particular story has been difficult is partly because of the type of people my hero and heroine are, and partly because earlier, I didn’t actually know them well enough. I knew their identities, but not the people they were inside. And without knowing that, I couldn’t get them to connect on a deeper level. It was a bit like I’d taken two random strangers, put them in a room together and told them that they were hot for each other and could they make love now please. So not happening in other words.
It didn’t help that my hero is not wanting sex at this particular time in his life and he’s also EXTREMELY guarded so getting him to drop his mask for a bit (not to mention his trousers) was very, very difficult. Weird, I know. I eventually had to change the setup so he met the heroine at a moment in his life where those guards were perhaps lower than they would be normally. And then, because he wasn’t into casual sex at that particular moment, I had to figure out what it was about the heroine in particular that affected him because mere sexual attraction was not enough for him (yes, he’s a pain in the butt). But in order to know those things, I had to know him.

All in all, it was a very tricky business and no wonder I had difficulties at the start. Because what I was trying to do was make two people who would walk through boiling lava rather than admit to an emotional connection, have a bloody emotional connection!

But then isn’t that what makes writing fun? Making our characters worst nightmares come true in the nicest possible way.

So, what’s the hardest thing you’ve ever made your characters do? And when I mean, ‘you made’ I mean that they did it themselves because of course you would never, ever, make your characters do anything…

It’s kind of exhausting feeling like that. As is the rollercoaster of hope and despair that the writer’s journey seems to consist of. And sometimes I think that perhaps I care TOO much about it.

I’ve never had a blinding ambition to be anything. I was librarian for 15 years because a) I liked books and b) I could never get into publishing. And being a librarian suited me very well because it wasn’t too stressful and at the end of the day it meant I could come home and write.
Actually, when I say I never had a blinding ambition to be anything, that’s a small lie. I have always wanted to be a writer. But it wasn’t ever something I thought I would be. It was just one of those nice dreams.
But in the last few years, I’ve realised that perhaps I could be one after all. That perhaps it doesn’t just have to be a nice dream. And whaddya know? It turns out I have ambition after all. And boy does my ambition want this. It wants it SO bad! It cares so deeply about it, that some days I have difficulty switching it off.

The downside of this means that I am a writing bore. I write every day and get grumpy when I don’t. I think about writing obsessively. When it’s not going well, nothing goes well and it’s all bad. I have a love/hate relationship with my inbox and I feel like throwing up every time I get an email from the ed. When I get an R it’s DEVASTATING. When I get a ‘you’ll have to rewrite it from the top’, I’m ECSTATIC. It’s exhausting.
On the upside wanting it badly, caring too much means that I channel all that drama back into my writing. Which does make for lovely, emotional scenes. It also means that giving up is much harder. And….I’m sure there was another upside but maybe not!

So I don’t know, admitting how badly you want something isn’t fashionable these days. You’ve got be ‘well, whatever, I’ll give it a go and if it doesn’t work out, so what’ kind of thing. Some days I wish I did have that attitude. It would be so much easier. But the thing is, that kind of attitude would mean that I probably wouldn’t still be here on sub number 6. I’d have stopped after sub number 1.

Anyway, I’ve tried not to care, believe me. To make this whole process easier on myself and my family. I’ve tried to think, ‘oh well, if it happens it happens and if it doesn’t, it doesn’t’. But you know what? That doesn’t work. No amount of trying will make me care any less about it. So I think I’ll just have to accept that I want this badly. That I care about it very much. That I’ll never be a ‘meh, whatever’ kind of person. And that I’ll just have to live with the hope and despair that comes along with caring far too much for my own good.

Lucky Dr Jax. Ah well, he always knew he was getting a drama queen for a wife.

So what about all the rest of you? How badly do you want it?

Bottom line though is that I didn’t get it right. And I know why. To be honest, I suspected that I might not have pulled it off about a month after I’d sent it. Such a horrible feeling. But I really hoped I’d be given the opportunity to correct it…Sadly not. Oh well. I still think the story holds up and I do plan to rewrite it at some stage. You will not have seen the last of it!

Anyway, at least I now know the problem with one night stand stories. How to get that balance between sex and emotion. The partial was rejected because there was no emotional connection between the two characters, which made their romance unbelievable. This approach is okay for something like Blaze, but not so for MH (or any of the M&B lines probably). There HAS to be an emotional connection between the characters first. My thought was ‘but if these two felt an emotional connection, they’d run a mile. And they weren’t looking for one anyway’.
That is true. But here’s the thing – only the reader needs to get a hint of it. The characters themselves don’t need to know. Subconsciously they might feel ‘something’ is different about this person they’ve met, something that is totally unlike anything they’ve ever experienced but do you think they will admit it to themselves? No way. They’ll explain away the feeling by saying to themselves ‘it’s just physical’ or ‘it’s just that he’s unbelievably arrogant’ or that ‘I don’t like people who don’t do what I want’ or some other excuse to explain this weird intensity.
But the reader – who likes to know things the characters don’t – will be going ‘aha!’
And there you have that vital emotion. And that’s what was missing from my partial.

Interestingly, none of the other mss I’ve got suffer from that so at least I don’t have to go back and rewrite all of them!

Actually, now I think about it, that’s why this R doesn’t suck too badly. Because I know what the problem was and I can see it what I wrote. Which means I can fix it for next time.

And speaking of next time, yes, I have my next sub ready to go. Will get the eds thoughts on the premise first and if she’s interested, it’s gone!

Onwards and upwards, my friends. Gotta keep climbing that mountain.

Maisey’s just done a lovely post about the small moments between the hero and heroine, about those moments of connection. And you need them because otherwise how will we ever get emotionally involved? Why will the black moment be so terrible? Because we can see these two people falling for each other and we know they’re made for each other and yet they can’t see it yet. But first we have to show the reader these two are made for each other. And that they are falling in love even if they don’t realise it themselves.

I reckon that’s sometimes what I have problems with. I think that if I create these moments between my characters, they will somehow know what the reader and I know, that it means luuuurve. And then that upsets all my plans because they will run a mile. But you know, just because you have a nice moment with someone doesn’t mean you’re instantly in love. No, you just think ‘wow, what a cool guy’. It’s really the build up of all these moments that leads to the realisation – unless you’re writing a love at first sight story of course.

Anyway, have given them their moment of connection. And hopefully kept the significance of it from them. Actually, don’t know why I’m worried about them finding out. They’re both experts at lying to themselves and they continue to do so right up until the end.

So has this happened to anyone else? Got so caught up in conflict and tension on every page that you forget you’re writing a romance??

Right so, digging deep. What does it mean in terms of your characters? It really means examining their emotional reactions and not just the surface emotion. It’s all about what’s going on underneath the surface. Like an iceberg you may see the tip of it sticking out of the water but there’s a giant continent sized lump of ice going on beneath the water that you may not have noticed.
For example, let’s say our hero makes our heroine some toast but he burns it. Let’s do some digging into his reaction to this. How does he feel about burning the toast? Maybe he’s a perfectionist and feels angry that he burned it. Dig a little deeper – why is he a perfectionist? He’s a perfectionist because his father was careless, broke things, lost money, didn’t seem to care etc. So the hero has decided he’s never going to be his Dad and he’s going to make sure he does things right. But he’s burned the toast which means he’s been careless like his Dad, something he’s sworn never to be, hence he’s angry. Do some more digging – maybe he also feels guilty that by burning the toast he let the heroine down and that is also a part of his anger. Dig some more – why does he feel guilty about letting the heroine down? Perhaps because his father was so careless he let the hero down often and so the hero knows what it feels like to be let down and he doesn’t want the heroine to experience that too. Deeper – why does he not want to be careless like his father? How did having a careless father make him feel? Well, it made him feel bad and he doesn’t want to feel bad. We can go deeper – why did it make him feel bad? Perhaps he felt bad because he’s secretly afraid that his father was careless and let him down because he just didn’t care enough about the hero. And if that’s true, then how does that make the hero feel about himself? Is the truth, the hero’s deepest, most secret fear, really that because his father didn’t seem to care about him, he’s not worth loving?

Okay, so that’s pretty much as deep as it gets: how does the character view themselves? Now obviously this hero doesn’t going around thinking he’s unlovable. That’s what he’s afraid of. So he’ll do anything and everything to avoid having to test that fear, to make himself feel good about himself. And – in this example – he does that by being a perfectionist. In his mind, if he does everything right, takes care with everything he does, no one will ever have cause to think he’s unlovable. Until he burns the toast of course.

Right, so the toast example may be a little silly. I have another example from one of my WIPs. One I just had a brainwave on due to the whole digging deep thing. I have a heroine who is in love with her best friend and has been for years. So far, her black moment has consisted of her realising he will never love her back so she tells him to get lost because it’s easier than being rejected. But I’m missing one vital thing that will make this black moment even more emotional. Why does she think he’ll reject her? Okay, so he doesn’t want a relationship and has made that very clear. But still, what stops her from saying it? Why is rejection so hard? The answer is really very simple. She scared of being rejected because if he rejects her, it’ll confirm what’s she’s always been afraid of facing – that she’s not good enough for him. And that’s at the heart of her conflict: she’s afraid she’s not worthy of love.
Now doesn’t that pack way more of an emotional punch than simply being scared of rejection?

So, next time you’re puzzling out about digging deep, think about your conflict and go right to the heart of the character first. Ask yourself how they view themselves. Not the ‘hey, I’m a hugely successful billionaire, there’s nothing wrong with me’ surface. That’s the tip of the iceberg. What’s going on beneath that surface? What are they secretly afraid of finding out about themselves? And if they’re not scared, then either you haven’t gone deep enough or you need to give them some more conflict.

Anyone have any other thoughts on this? I’m still figuring this stuff out so if anyone has anymore lightbulbs, do share!

BTW, sometimes burnt toast is just burnt toast.

The problem, gentle reader, has only now sunk in. Having borrowed Maisey’s editor decoder ring, I went back over the rejection letter and there it was in black and white – there was no emotion in the scene. What? No emotion? There was plenty! They enjoyed themselves didn’t they? Oh sure, but we’re not just talking pleasure here, we’re talking emotion that is related to the conflict. As Michelle S told me, every scene has to forward the conflict on some level, and that includes the love scenes. So I quickly looked at the rough draft of my Cat/Sean ms to see what I’d done with the love scene. I’d really gone to town with it and it was pretty sexy but sure enough, I’d made the same mistake. No conflict!

Doh!

Glad I picked that one up huh? So how to put conflict in a love scene? Pretty much the same as you do with every scene. What’s their conflict? How does that come out during love making? What kind of action would the conflict impel them to take and what would the response be and why? So I’ve got a guy who likes control with a woman who threatens it. And a spontaneous, impulsive woman who wants an emotional connection with a guy who is trying to deny it. Don’t know about you, but I can see all sorts of possibilities there…

Anyway, I think the real reason this has taken a while to sink in for me is that as a writer I am the queen of understatement. I don’t like writing OTT emotional reactions, especially during love scenes. Which is why I didn’t put them in. But, as one of Trish Wylie’s lessons pointed out, you can never be too obvious. So I’m going to have to give up my love of the understated look or the many layered piece of dialoge and just be straight up. And boy are those two going to have emotional stuff going on in their scene – I’m going to wring that baby dry.

But if the ed wants to read it, she’ll have to ask for the full.

BTW guys, the old sex without emotion thing was one of the problems the eds mentioned with many of the entries from the last competition. So the lesson is, yes, you can have the sex, but make sure that conflict is front and centre in the scene.