On Writing Romance_ How to Craft a Novel That Sells - Leigh Michaels [109]
But of course there was one very important difference in her life—the child she had craved as a little girl wants a doll. The child Gibb couldn't give her.
Her son had just turned eight, she'd said. Gibb's mental calendar told him that she had waited only three or four months after he'd left Elmwood before she'd taken up with her child's father.
Or maybe she hadn't waited at all.
Gibb's musings on his failed marriage are intentionally far from complete. Had he been considering a business problem instead, he'd have been a great deal
more linear and thorough in his thinking. Even more important is the way his thoughts light on and then skitter away from the subject of Lindsay's son. Only a masochist would think in detail about such a painful subject.
When Not to Use Introspection
If it's necessary to do more than hint at a character's experiences or emotions, consider using dialogue instead of thoughts. It's livelier and more natural to have someone explain a situation to another person, especially if it's a complicated situation, than to think about it step-by-step. Keep the characters' thoughts to a minimum, and use introspection only when other ways of relaying the information don't work as well.
1. Look through the romance novels you've been studying. How much of the story is told through the characters' thoughts?
2. How are the thoughts shared?
3. Find examples of direct and indirect thoughts. Is one style more common than the other?
4. How does what the character says and does compare to what the character thinks?
5. Can you find differences in how the various authors handle thoughts? Differences between different kinds of romance novels?
Write a dialogue, including body language, gestures, words, and the thoughts of the POV character, between a man and a woman as they:
• Are on their way home from an office party where one of them was offended by the other's behavior.
• Stroll through a park.
• Talk about a friend who has fallen in love.
• Discuss whether they should have a large wedding or a small one.
• Reminisce about how they met.
The plot of your romance novel is the sequence of events that keep the characters together until they've learned to love each other and until they've grown and changed enough to resolve their long-term problems—the character flaws or past experiences that have kept them from forming a permanent commitment.
A story's plot can't simply be a series of random events—the kind of thing we experience day after day. Real life sprawls and wanders; it doesn't have neat beginnings and endings; and the loose ends are almost never completely tied up. A story that does the same thing—that wanders from one event to the next—will quickly lose the readers' attention.
Simply falling in love isn't a plot, either. There isn't enough action to keep the readers involved if you simply show two people dating, going out for dinner or to the movies, and talking about their childhoods, pets, jobs, or dreams.
So the plot of your romance novel must be a meaningful and logical series of events, not just a bunch of things that happen to your characters. Those events must cause the hero and heroine to become more involved with each other. Each occurrence or decision or episode should lead to the next, creating a surprising yet believable pattern of events that carry the characters from beginning to end.
In a romance novel, the events of the plot are closely related to the developing romance. Most of the plot events will involve both the hero and heroine, drawing them closer together—forcing them to spend time together