On Writing Romance_ How to Craft a Novel That Sells - Leigh Michaels [112]
But where are they going to go?
What if she's so annoyed at her father for not believing her that she's ready to run away altogether? And what if she's ticked enough about being tooled by her fiance the gold digger that she proposes to the gardener's son? What if she decides that if she's going to be married for her money, it might as well be to a man of her choice? What if he thinks she might be crazy enough to marry just anyone, so he agrees to the proposal in order to keep her from doing something even crazier? What if they decide to elope, choosing a destination where they can be married without delay?
Does she mean to go through with it? Does he? Or are they just going through the motions? In the meantime, they've got to start off somewhere; they can't just sit outside the estate. So what if they head toward their selected marital destination?
It's a long way, and they know her father will be looking for them. How are they going to manage the trip? You don't want it to be too easy, so do some backward plotting here—have her be honorable and leave her diamond ring behind so she can't pawn it.
What resources do they have? Surely they each have at least one credit card, but card transactions are easily traced. He'd planned for a day trip to see his father, so he's only got a little cash. She was figuring on a honeymoon, so she doesn't have much cash either.
What if they're pulled over by a highway patrolman for having faulty lights? (Here's another good backward plotting point: If you make the car an old one, you also gain an excuse for the heroine tripping over the hero—he was lying in the driveway, changing the oil.) With a ticket, they can't drive the car until the lights are fixed, but they can't wait around for the mechanic either—so what if they buy another vehicle for their getaway? Since they're short of cash, they have to settle for a clunker of a truck—which is bound to lead to more trouble, but at least now nobody can guess what they're driving.
Now they have no cash left at all. In order to replenish their resources, they have no choice but to use a credit card. To throw off pursuers, they drive in the opposite direction from their real destination to get a cash advance from an ATM. That goes smoothly—now you've arranged it so they can at least eat and buy a change of clothes. Their success prompts them to try for a bigger score before the credit card issuer is notified that there's a problem. But when they go into a bank to make a larger withdrawal, the teller realizes there's a flag on the account and she confiscates both the credit card and the heroine's ID. They have to run again to avoid being questioned about how they got the credit card, without the cash they'd hoped to get and now with the heroine having no driver's license.
When they reach a place where they can be married, she can't prove her iden-tity —an effect of having lost her driver's license. So they're refused a marriage license but—another bit of backward plotting here—if that honeymoon she was
planning was outside the United States, she'd have her passport, so they can get over that hurdle.
One event leads to the next. One incident becomes the cause of the next event. One problem complicates the next. What if? and backward plotting work together to create a logical, almost inevitable plot in which each event involves both the hero and the heroine, drawing them closer together and giving them every opportunity to fall in love.
Use the What if? and backward plotting techniques to develop the following ideas into potential stories:
1. In the middle of winter, a half-frozen man stumbles into the heroine's house.
2. The heroine wants to have a baby, but she doesn't want a husband.
3. The hero needs a date to the company Christmas party.
4. A couple who split up a year ago are asked to be best man and maid of honor at the wedding of mutual friends.
5. The hero gets the job the heroine wanted.
LOGICAL AND BELIEVABLE ACTION