On Writing Romance_ How to Craft a Novel That Sells - Leigh Michaels [72]
"You might as well know. Slade's planning to tear down this place, and the cottages too, and build himself a grand riverside villa. ..."
Doubt and fear stirred. His father, for all his faults, was not a fool, nor had his illness turned him mad. "What have you done?"
The squire took a sip of brandy, managing to look down his long, straight nose. ... "I have gained a peerage for us."
The father's actions prompt the rest of the story, as Hawk's efforts to save the family home force him to court a woman he doesn't love.
The Extended Family
Sometimes it seems that romance heroes and heroines come in just two varieties—those who have no family at all (or at least none that they want to speak to) and those who have enormous, close, warm-and-fuzzy families.
Family members can be terrific tools for giving information to the readers. They're likely to be delightfully and brutally frank, they can act as a catalyst for a main character's action or change of heart, and they know more about the hero's or heroine's past experiences than most friends do.
One danger with using family members as characters is becoming too involved in explaining the family relationships. If you find yourself detailing the birth order of siblings, or how their current quarrels and disagreements hark back to their childhood days, refocus the story on the hero and heroine.
It's tempting sometimes to throw a kid into a story just for the entertainment value—maybe an ornery little brother, the precocious child of the hero or heroine, a cute niece or nephew. But unless this child is an important part of the plot, think twice. Even if the child is an important secondary character, it's easy to allow her to distract you from the main story. Send the kid out to play or put her down for a nap so you can keep the focus on the hero and heroine.
The Best Friends
Next to family members, friends are the most likely characters to speak their minds. They're also the characters most able to influence a main character's actions. Unlike heroes and heroines, friends aren't restricted to speaking gently and being polite. Showing a hero or heroine interacting with a friend is one of the best ways to demonstrate what sort of person the main character is.
Friends are also a good source of information for the hero or heroine, allowing the author to share details in an interesting way. In her long contemporary The Secret Wedding Dress, Roz Denny Fox shows her heroine, Sylvie, and her best friend as they piece together information about Sylvie's new neighbor:
Anita heard the bumping going on next door, and paused. "Has someone moved into Iva's house?"
"In the process of moving. See the van? ... You mean you haven't heard any scuttlebutt at work?" Anita was the loan manager for Briarwood's only bank.
"We wouldn't necessarily hear if there's no mortgage involved. Iva's great-nephew probably sold the property. I think he's employed by a newspaper in Atlanta. Iva used to brag on him. ... I can't remember, but I think he may have been Iva's only living relative."
"Wouldn't we know if he'd listed the property for sale?" Sylvia ducked to see if she could ascertain what was going on next door.
"I suppose it's conceivable the nephew just retired."
"Then he's not the man I saw carrying stuff in from the car. And there's a little girl. She can't be more than six or seven."
Through their dialogue, the two characters fill in the reader while the main character also finds out what's going on. (We'll talk more about the use of dialogue in chapter twelve.)
Friends or groups of friends sometimes creep into stories because the author would like to write sequels featuring related characters. New writers often spend so much time and effort setting up such a sequel that they get distracted from the initial story. Or, in an effort to make a secondary character suitable to star