It would really be good if editors or agents could just lift the story straight from our heads. But sadly, since thought sharing devices haven’t been invented yet, we have to actually write the stupid thing down. In a way that not only makes sense but also makes the editor/agent hungry to read the actual story. Oh and that fits onto one page (or two, double spaced if you’re my agent).

And that’s the tricky part – how to distil your story down to its essence without losing its essential amazingness (cos all our stories are totes amazing right?).

The first thing to know is that if you’re writing romance, the essence of your story is, naturally, the romance. Not the relationship between your heroine and her brother. Or between the hero and his dog/cat/next door neighbour. Basically it’s not the economy, stupid. It’s the romance.

My big breakthrough when it came to writing synopses was realizing that the best kind of synopsis to write for a romance was an emotional one. This is especially great for a pantser like me because if you don’t know quite how the external plot is going to work, then you don’t have to worry because you shouldn’t include it anyway.

So what should you include then? Okay, this what I put in mine:

A brief introduction to the characters – who they are, what they do, what they want at the start of the book, and the setup. Example – ‘For top ferret whisperer Larry Larryson success is the only thing that matters, so when he’s chosen to do the impossible – tame a rare and dangerous ferret – he’ll stop at nothing to make sure that ferret is tamed’. I tend to do a paragraph for the hero and one for the heroine.

How the characters meet, what draws them to each other and what they do about it. ‘When Carla meets Larry at the latest ferret trials, sparks fly. She hates ambitious men but their chemistry is undeniable. After being ignored by her ex-husband for years, she decides Larry can do a little bit of ferret whispering on her’.

The growing attraction – what is it about each character that holds the other characters attention? This has to be deeper than the intital attraction. Example – ‘Carla starts to see that though Larry is ambitious, his care for his ferrets is obvious. And it melts her heart.’

Why these two can’t be together (black moment) – Example ‘Carla  can never be with a man who puts success before love and Larry can’t be with a woman who doesn’t understand how badly he needs to prove himself.’

Then a closing paragraph about how these two overcome their conflict and get together. ‘Carla tells Larry he doesn’t need to prove himself, he’s okay as he is. And Larry realizes that as Carla has accepted him, she’s accepted his ferrets too. Together they become ferret whisperers to the stars’.

That’s it. You don’t need anything more. You don’t need to put in that the heroine goes shopping or has a confrontation with her mother. Or how the hero builds a new ferret house and tracks down a villain intent on stealing his ferrets. Or anything else really. All you need to include in the synopsis is why these two fall in love with each other and overcome their conflicts.

In which case, to save having to go into the details of the external plot, suitably vague words and terms like this can be your friend:

‘complications arise’  ‘a situation occurs’ ‘circumstances mean’ ‘But things get complicated when’ ‘soon they are’ ‘after a situation where’ ‘Eventually they’

So there we are, a quick and dirty guide to synopsis writing. I have sold a few books on proposal alone and I guess there must be something about my synopses that work for the editors concerned, however I’m by no means an expert. If anyone else has any tips/questions, feel free to comment!

Oh and why ferrets? Why not?

BUT

I have a post I’ve been meaning to write. And it’s about the problem of writing a difficult heroine. I’ve written about this before a few times but I wanted to write it again because, well, I think it bears repeating.

We’re tough on heroines as readers. They either have to be like us or better than us and yet not so perfect as to be sickening. We forgive things in a hero that we wouldn’t forgive in a heroine because, well, he’s the hero. Perhaps it’s because we expect more of women than we do of men, I don’t know, but a hero can be an a-hole and that’s mostly okay. But a heroine can’t get away with the same thing. If a hero is a billionaire because he loves money, he’s adorably selfish. If a heroine loves money she’d be just selfish and grasping (unless she has a poor ailing mother/sister/father/brother/granny/next door neighbour’s ancient aunt Flo to support). A hero who sleeps around is a playboy. A heroine who sleeps around a slut.

Double standards my friends. We don’t like ’em but they’re there.

It makes it tough for a writer. Do you write a heroine whose flaws are miniscule in order to please editors/readers? Or do you write to please yourself and the story you want to tell?

People in real life are complicated – too complicated for fiction often and so writers have to simplify, especially in genre fiction. But does that mean you have to write only aspirational people leading aspirational kind of lives as a writer? If you’re writing romance then you DO have to make at least some part of your characters identifiable – heroes at their core have to be heroic and not the creepy pedo from down the road for example. But I know I don’t want to write about of bunch of Mary Sues. I never have. I think that’s partly why it took me a while to get the hang of writing romance and why I got a lot of Rs from that ‘orange tree’ I wrote about in my second to last post.

Because I don’t want to write perfect people – especially not perfect women. I want to write about women who have real issues, who make mistakes and bad decisions, who are mean to the hero. Who screw up. Who are selfish. Who are scared to trust. Who are vulnerable. Who have sh*t to learn and sh*t they have to get together before they get their HEA. Who are difficult to write and get right.

And I’ll continue to write heroines like that. Because ultimately, I’m not writing for my editors or for every reader. I can’t, not if I want the books I write to be Jackie Ashenden books. In order to do that, I have to write for myself. I have to write what I enjoy writing. And I like writing about effed up people.

On the upside,  I also don’t write the same character over and over again so for those of you frustrated by Anna from Falling for Finn, you might find Izzy from Black Knight, White Queen easier to connect with. She’s definitely not perfect but she’s gutsy and open and likes a game of strip chess now and then.   (BTW, that was a completely transparent promo attempt if you hadn’t noticed). And I’m thinking of giving away a copy of the book to newsletter peoples so if you’d like a chance to win it, sign up! (down the bottom of the page, see? SEE?)

So what are other people’s thoughts on heroines?

I’m going to be busy in other words. I’m going to have to take work away for our holiday at the end of January too because when the kids are home from school, I can’t get much done and have to write when Dr Jax is around. Ergo taking work away on holiday.

I feel guilty for doing that. Guilty because you’re not supposed to work on a family holiday. And I feel doubly guilty because actually, I love what I do so it’s not really work for me.

This is where having a job that is also a passion can be difficult because people don’t understand that working makes you happy. Yeah, I take time off, of course I do, but working also keeps me sane.  I’m also at the beginning of my career, where I’m making a name for myself, and that takes time and it takes work. Like when you set up a new business, you have to channel a lot of time and energy in it to get it up and running, so too with writing.

You see what I did there? I justified myself. Because I feel guilty about it.

I feel guilty for feeding my kids ready-made food because I hate cooking and want to write instead.
I feel guilty about my house being a tip because writing is more important than cleaning.
I feel guilty about writing during the holidays instead of doing lots and lots of stuff with the kids.
And I feel guilty about enjoying what I do.

Really, there is no end to the guilt.

Being a mother working from home, is hard because, well, you’re at home.And being a writer makes it even harder because isn’t it just a hobby?  I can ring you anytime during the day or drop round for coffee because hey, you’re at home and you’re only writing. And man, it’s just romance, right? It’s not like that’s even important.

Sometimes I wonder if I’d get these guilts if I was a man. I know some men would and that father guilt can be just as awful as mother guilt. But you know, people judge mothers way more harshly than they judge fathers. And I can’t help wondering how people would view a man working on ‘serious’ literature, or hey, even just a man working hard to feed his family. Maybe they’d find that just as egregious or maybe they’d be okay with that because that’s what men are allowed to do.  

I don’t know. People are weird and I don’t have any solutions to my guilt.

All I do know is that writing makes me happy. And I shouldn’t have to justify doing something that makes me happy to anyone.  Happy mother, happy family right?

Writing without fear. That’s what I was doing. And that’s what I HAVEN’T been doing for the past year. Nope, the past year, I’ve been writing scared. Scared of getting it wrong, scared of messing it up somehow. Certainly all the Rs I’d got seemed to indicate that I wasn’t getting something right and sure enough, that little belief kept getting reinforced and poor Jackie kept getting scareder and scareder. Her writing lost her spark. All the life got drained out of it. And, most important of all, she lost her joy. Nothing like a self-fulfilling prophecy huh?

Fear will do that to a writer. It’ll suck the creativity right out of you. And it’s a b*tch to overcome, let me tell you.

The good thing is that at least I have an idea of where I might, potentially, be going wrong. So at the moment I’m trying feel the fear and write it anyway. I’m trying to recapture what I felt when I wrote the Hammer Pants ms. I’m trying to just be in the moment with my characters and not think about whether this ms works for Riva or Presents. Or whether my hero is being too alpha. Or whether my heroine is being too unsympathetic. Or what to do with it when I type The End. I just need to switch all that off, immerse myself in the story, and start enjoying it again. I need to stop writing for an editor, for a reader, for my CPs. I need to write for me first.

This is something that a lot of people have been saying to me. And it’s not that I haven’t listened, it’s just that I haven’t understood why it’s important. Well, I do now.

So goodbye creepy fear. There is no place for you when I’m writing. You can haul your sorry skeletal carcass out of my study and you better do it before I go all Chuck Norris on your hide. Sure, I know you’ll be back when I hit the send button again but hopefully by the time that happens, I’ll have so many subs out that you won’t know which one to attach yourself to. So asta la vista baby!

And while fear is making itself scarce, I shall leave you with the words of wisdom my five year old daughter gave to me. When I told her about my R she said, ‘Were you writing quietly and carefully, mummy? You must always write quietly and carefully.”

Anyone else writing quietly and carefully? Or alternatively, giving fear a good roundhouse kick to the head?

I don’t.

Firstly – and most importantly – I am still unpublished so there’s obviously something I’m not doing right. Secondly, I don’t think I’ll EVER know what I’m doing since the day I admit I do know, will be the day I stop improving and learning. Thirdly, I am still learning so the things I think I know today, may be the things I’ll prove to be wrong about tomorrow.

However there are some things about writing category that I can assume are correct since I got them in rejection letters:

1. Conflict must be simple, clear and deep.
2. Sex must have an emotional connection.
3. The conflict (for MH/Riva) can’t be too dark.
4. The characters must grow and change.
5. Characters must be well rounded people, but keep it simple because real people are far more complicated and messy than you can fit into a category length book.
6. Category romance is all about the fantasy and escapism (and must include actual romance!).
7. No stereotypes please.

All the rest of the stuff I talk about on this blog is just supposition and assumption really, and you shouldn’t take anything I say as gospel. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that I am wrong about a LOT of things.

But, that being said, here are some things I am not wrong about. Prepare yourselves.

1. If you don’t write, you won’t be published.
2. If you don’t submit, you won’t be published.
3. If you give up you won’t be published.
4. The day you think you know what you’re doing is the day you’ll find out you don’t.
5. Rejection doesn’t kill you.
6. The tiniest success goes a loooong way.
7. Drinking helps ease the pain.
8. Over-thinking will kill your story stone dead.
9. Taking risks sometimes works and sometimes it doesn’t.
10. Loving your writing is the first step.

Anyone got anything else they’re NOT wrong about?

But news on the writing front? Nada. I am instead working on my next sub which is, I have to say, one of my favourite stories. Yes, it’s been in a constant state of rewriting ever since I first wrote it for NaNo in 2008, but it finally is starting to look more and more like the story it should have been in the first place. That doesn’t mean, of course, that it’ll be accepted, but I really hope it will be! I’ve also started another story and I have to say, I’ve forsaken my other wips for this one because I LOVE my hero. He’s an ex-soldier and woah is he hot. At least I think so. He’s alpha (natch), very protective, and – on the surface – laid back. But of course the heroine is going to get under his skin something chronic and then it’ll be no more Mr Nice Guy. Hehe.
Now all I have to do is think up a plot!

Anyway – the real point of my post guys – in my blog perambulations recently, I came across a post about pet-names (can’t remember where sorry!). It was really interesting seeing what people’s favourites were and what were their irritants. Interesting because I’ve realised that in every one of my stories, my hero has a pet name for the heroine. Now, I’m a fan because they can be very useful, epsecially for the purposes of riling said heroine. They can be first used ironically, if it’s that kind of story, or they can be used to expose deeper feeling in quite a subtle way, ie the hero calling her by an endearment can reveal quite a lot about their feelings for each other – especially if this is unspoken in most other ways. Even more interestingly, I’ve realised that my heroines don’t reciprocate. Which I’m going to remedy for my soldier hero – have the perfect name for him. One he won’t like at all. Heehee!

So pet names: love ’em? Hate ’em? What don’t you like?? For myself, I’m not a fan of baby or babe. I don’t know why, it just feels too casual. It’s not even about the infantilising aspect of it either, because I read a great story by Trish Wylie where the hero calls the heroine ‘little girl’ and I found that very sexy!

*the book is One Night with the Rebel Billionaire and it’s great!

Anyway, I’m a Kiwi and Kiwis are bl**dy tough. Wussy talk about giving up is NOT the Kiwi way (thank you Kerrin!). Real Kiwis stop complaining, put their big girl panties on, and get stuck in. So that’s what I’m going to do. I’ll stop obsessing over the NES (Natalie, I’m trying to forget about it!) and get stuck in with finishing all the WIPs I’ve got lying around.

So, to get the positive vibes rolling, I’m going to ignore the things I have problems with in my writing, and list two good things about it:
1. I write kick-ass dialogue.
2. I can write smoking hot love scenes.

What about you guys? Tell me two good things that you’re good at – and it’s writing here folks. I don’t want to hear about how great you are at vacuuming.

Note: I’m not giving up whining forever though, okay? I still reserve the right to whine a little when the occasion demands. All those who aren’t comfortable with it, look away.

I’m currently writing a synopsis for a competition entry and it’s giving me gyp. Of course, synopses are the devil’s own work and this was annoying me in particular because it’s a rewritten version of my Feel the Heat story. Now rewriting previously rejected stories is HORRIBLE. Especially when they only have a passing acquaintance with conflict. Actually, scrub that, this story wouldn’t have known conflict if it leapt up and bit said story on the backside. Hence the complete rewrite. In fact, nothing remains of the original apart from the character names, the hero’s profession and that there is a protest involved. The rest of it has been totally done-over. Sounds good right? Well, it would be if I could get the conflict sorted. For nearly a year and a half I’ve been trying to get the conflict on this story okay. Yep, that’s right, a year and a half. You’d think it would be easy. Nope. Problem has been not knowing what the hey I’m doing. I mean, here’s the thing, you’ve got to make each character the worst possible person for their counterpart, and yet the best. They each have to learn something from the other which means they both have to lack something that the other has. But they both have to have qualities that the other admires and yet also something that keeps them apart.

Think I’ve mentioned jigsaw puzzles haven’t I?

Groan. Anyway, think the last part of the puzzle slotted in over the weekend. Bout bloody time. Now, the reason it’s taken me so long is that I never really had a good enough idea about what I was doing with conflict until now. Of course, the editor could disagree with that but at least it’s more right than it’s ever been (famous last words!). And the answer – as it was in the beginning – is in the characters. Their lives up until this point, the kind of people they are, what they admire, what they dislike, what they’re secretly afraid of, and what they’re currently doing in order to mask this secret fear. I think I’ve done it and then I realise that I’ve neglected to ask myself what my heroine’s relationship with her mother was, or how she viewed her father or her siblings or whatever.

I have to say, the friends we went on holiday with were rather puzzled by my conversations with Dr Jax. “You know Kate? What’s she afraid of?” I would ask him as we were walking along the beach. Or, “Remember Kate? I need her to do something that teaches him this thing but I don’t know what she does,” as we were in the middle of a card game. Or “I think I’m getting rid of the baby. It doesn’t add anything,” as we were watching one of the kids having a tantrum.

Yes, even on holiday I do not have a holiday from writing. One of my friends asked me how many hours I put into this ‘job’ and I couldn’t put a number on it. Suffice to say that if I was actually paid for every hour that I put into it, then I’d be rich!

Anyway, now I have my conflict sorted, I can write my synopsis and send away my competition entry. Woohoo. In the meantime I am reading Mira Lynn Kelly’s debut Modern Heat and loving it. Gosh those Modern Heat gals are good eh? Tough acts to follow. WTG and congrats on yor release Mira!

The other thing to bear in mind is that although I may have three finished mss, it doesn’t mean that they are, in fact, any good! They could all be complete crap! If and when I finally do get to submit any of them, I could be soundly rejected or be told to completely rewrite them. In which case it’s back to the old drawing board.

However, I’m fully of the belief that it actually doesn’t matter if they are all complete crapola. They were all great practise. Old Coot (mountain climbing hero) is one that I wrote the start of, realised I had no conflict to speak of, and then completely rewrote. Kate and Alex is my Feel the Heat entry, minus the stereotypes and with added internal conflict. And Panic Attack…well, actually that was the latest one I started and the only one where I felt I actually knew what I was doing when I began it – meaning I had the internal conflict worked out first. So even if they are all rejected, I figure that each ms was a great learning experience. Nothing is ever wasted!

And now the fun really begins. Editing! So now I have to contemplate which one to start editing first (and finding titles for since I can’t really submit something called Old Coot!) . While I do that, the other thing I’m wondering about is whether to pitch to an agent at the RWNZ conference. Sadly we’re not getting an HMB editor this year but we are getting an agent from the Knight Agency who is actively seeking category projects. I don’t know whether to pitch or not. I’m thinking not, because you don’t really need an agent to write for HMB. What does everyone else reckon? To agent or not to agent?

Okay, I’ll stop wibbling about the boots. On more important matters such as writing, I have nearly finished Kate and Alex. Again I find myself charging towards the finish line, wrapping the whole thing up in seconds flat. I think it’ll take at least 5k to finish and then end up finishing in 1! What’s with that? I suspect it’s because I don’t like endings. The whole let-me-explain-why-I-acted -so-badly explanation thing is very tiresome to me. Plus I don’t like mush. I know, odd for a romance writer, but I can’t stand it when things get too syrupy. And inevitably, there’s always a certain amount of syrup required for an ending.

What about everyone else? Do you like endings? Or do you prefer buying boots?