Innovation

• Write what you know
• Write what you love to read
• Be true to your voice
• Every writer has their own, distinctive voice
• Write from the heart
• Innovate, don’t Imitate

Since the RNA conference last July, when the editors from HMB repeated that last phrase over and over, we Minxes have discussed ad nauseum what exactly they meant by it. I'm pretty sure I asked “What kind of airy fairy advice is that? Of course they don’t want us to imitate what others have written, but what do they want?”

It took The Vampire Diaries (see my series of previous posts) to make me realise that actually all the above advice, which we’ve heard dozens of times, phrased in endless ways, all boils down to just one thing: when you write, you have to be true to yourself.

I imagine that a lot of you blog readers out there might be going “duh!”. You probably know this already. But it was something I only discovered after a couple of days wallowing and wondering why I even bother to write when clearly my work is nothing more than mediocre, and if there’s one thing I don’t want to be it’s mediocre. I want to be stellar. (And just in case you think I’m being a tad arrogant here, read my earlier post, which were not entirely about The Vampire Diaries).

For me, realising this was a bit of a bombshell. Being true to oneself is the theme of my published novella, Let’s Misbehave. I try to live this in my every day life. So I’m not sure why it took me so long to cotton on when it comes to applying it to writing!

I’m not entirely sure of the answer (feel free to help me out here) but I suspect it might be because I haven’t yet discovered where my voice lies. I think that I fall somewhere between HMB’s Modern Heat and Romance lines (now wonderfully combined into the new Riva line in the UK) because that’s what I love to read. But is it really what I need to write?

We all know (we’ve heard it often enough) that you have to be passionate about what you write, because that passion will come through in your writing. I’d like to take this a step further and add that if you want to be extraordinary, then you need to be more than passionate, you need to write the stories that only you can write.

At last I understand what the editors at HMB are telling us. You have to write the stories that are true to your voice. And your voice is you.

So this is how we can each be extraordinary. By knowing ourselves, by being true to ourselves, we can rise above the mass of romance novels that are being published every day and we can each reach extraordinary heights.

Don’t imitate. You will never be able to write Harry Potter or Twilight, Frankenstein or Wuthering Heights. Not because it’s already been done. Not because you’re not a great writer. But because you are not JK Rowling or Emily Bronte. You’re you, and you should celebrate your uniqueness by writing the stories that are yours, and yours alone.

I know this is easier said than done, and might take a while to figure out, so I’m heading off now to write, and write some more, until I find where my true voice lies. While I’m off finding myself, please feel free to leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Have you found your ‘voice’ yet, or are you still searching? Have you tried to write for a certain line and got nowhere only to discover that perhaps your voice lies elsewhere? And do you have any magic tips on how to fast track all this soul searching and jump straight to extraordinary?

Acting out of character

I am nothing if not consistent. It’s a Monday and I’m blogging, which means this post will have a lot to do with writing, and at least a little to do with The Vampire Diaries.

Consistency

In order to be believable, your characters should be consistent. In real life, most people behave in set ways. I obsess about The Vampire Diaries and writing (no necessarily in that order). Your colleague who keeps his desk exceptionally tidy is unlikely to suddenly turn into a complete slob. The devoted PTA mom who volunteers in the tuck shop and runs the lift club is hardly likely to take off unexpectedly for Vegas without telling anyone.

Exceptions to the rule

Yet as important as it is to keep your characters consistent, behaving in believable, established patterns, there are exceptions to every rule.

There are two instances when you might want your characters to deliberately behave out of character.

Firstly, inconsistent behaviour can spark a really interesting story. Did the neat freak colleague snap because he came home to find his wife had left him and taken everything? Why did the PTA mom suddenly take off for Vegas, leaving her family in the lurch?

Secondly, inconsistent behaviour can add depth to your characters. By exploring why your characters are behaving inconsistently, you can discover new layers to their conflicts.

Example: The young woman who dreams her whole life of getting married, runs away from the church on her wedding day. Why can’t she face going through with this marriage? Has she just learned something that changes everything she believes in?

Moderation and Motivation

I was raised on the maxim of “all things in moderation” and this is one instance where that definitely applies.

A character who swings from one extreme to the other, never being consistent, is simply going to annoy the reader. But get him or her to act out of character just once, at the moment when it has the greatest impact, and you’ll have your reader gripping the edge of the seat.

Similarly, too many characters behaving inconsistently, and it’ll appear to the reader that you don’t have a grasp on your characters. As the writer, you need to make a conscious and deliberate decision as to which character is going to behave inconsistently, when, and why.

As always, we’re back to Motivation. Readers will forgive you (and your characters) almost anything if they understand the why. You just need to decide how and when you’re going to reveal the why.

The easiest way is to give the reader advance warning of what’s coming. The bride is on her way to the church when she discovers that her parents, devoted to one another for thirty years, were never really married. The reader, following her POV, understands her realisation that maybe love is more than a piece of paper and a big white dress. (Whether her fiancé understands is another matter entirely!)

Shock Tactics

Alternatively, you can leave the reveal until after your character has done something completely inconsistent with who they are. Don’t let the reader see it coming. Don’t leave clues along the way.

Take the reader on a journey right to the altar, where the groom hears that his bride has done a runner. Allow the reader to experience the shock with him. Then shift to her POV, where she's getting on a plane for the Bahamas, and then reveal her motivation.

This may be a little harder to pull off in deep POV, but in the hands of a skilled writer, this technique can have your reader gripping the edge of the seat (and leaving hubby to cook dinner!).

This is where The Vampire Diaries comes into this blog post.

In the penultimate episode of Series 1, we meet the vampire Isobel, played by Mia Kirshner.

Isobel makes her appearance quite late in the series. She’s a fairly new vampire, and she has history with a number of the regular characters.

Throughout this episode we see her as deceptive, heartless and inhuman. She threatens, she blackmails, she hurts, she kidnaps. By the end of the episode the viewer has come to know Isobel quite well. They understand that she is capable of absolutely anything to get what she wants, including murder. And we fully expect her to laugh at the moment she commits murder.

* Spoiler Alert *

Her final scene of the episode is only about two minutes long. Isobel has achieved what she set out to achieve. This is her moment of triumph. She sits in the back seat of her car as she is driven out of town; presumably out of the series. She makes a phone call that turns the entire episode upside down.

In that final minute of the episode the viewer learns Isobel’s motivation for her ruthlessness, and discovers that she really does have a heart. Her inconsistent behaviour is not that brief moment of softness at the end. Her inconsistent behaviour was her role throughout the entire episode.

As the end credits roll, the viewer starts to replay the episode in their heads, seeing everything in a completely new perspective.
That is powerful writing.

The Caveat

As the awesome Bob Mayer often says, you need to understand the rule before you can break it.

You need to know your characters exceptionally well before you let them run amok. And for maximum effect, your readers also need to know (or think they know!) your characters well enough to recognise when they are behaving out of character.

Finale

The question I’m going to leave you with today: Why do you think the PTA mom ran off to Vegas?

Character Arcs

One of my favourite heroines of all time is Becky Sharpe in Vanity Fair. She is selfish, ambitious and willing to do anything to get what she wants. No, she's not particularly likeable, but she's sassy and strong, and by the end of the book I really want her to get her Happy Ever After.

Why? Firstly, because I understood where she was coming from (see my previous post on Motivation). Secondly, because she changed and grew.

In my opinion, the character arc in any novel, and especially in a romance novel, is far more important than the plot arc. The reader will forgive you not resolving a plot point (though it's perhaps not a great idea to leave the reader feeling unsatisfied!) but they're less likely to forgive characters that do not change and grow.

Which brings me back to The Vampire Diaries.

The best example of a well-written character arc, as Lacey Minx pointed out on her blog, is the character of Damon in TV version. In the book there is hardly any change in Damon between his arrival on the scene and the end of Book 2 (which is as far as I got before giving up).

In the TV series, as in the books, Damon starts out as evil incarnate. He only acts in his own interest. Then in the series, we slowly glimpse his feelings for the heroine. We learn what motivates him, and gain understanding of why he is as heartless and ruthless as he is. He starts to do things for the heroine rather than himself, and finally he develops a heart and acts to help the community, even though he stands to gain nothing from it.

Though his character is unlikeable, when he faces death at the end of the series the viewer is on the edge of the seat praying he will survive. Because the writers have made us care. As with Becky Sharpe, we understand him, and we know he has the potential for change.

The screenwriters also radically rewote the heroine's character.

In the books, the heroine Elena is a self-absorbed, manipulative creature who wants to be the centre of attention. She has a little back story (her parents died a few years earlier) but it's almost a non-issue. I never really got a sense of why she wants to be 'queen bee'. But my biggest issue with her is that over the course of the first two books she does not change. At the end of Book 2, Elena is still as self-serving and self-absorbed as she is at the very beginning.

The screenwriters re-wrote Elena's character as less selfish and manipulative (even heading into Goody Two Shoes territory!), but in addition they have given her the two things I've been yammering on about: motivation (almost before the opening credits the viewer discovers that her parents died recently and she's struggling to get her life back on track) and they give her character a growth arc, as she moves from being a sad, introspective and reactive character to a happier, more in control, proactive individual.

So today's exercise: look at your own WIP to see whether the characters change and grow. Are the flaws that they start with addressed by the end of the novel? If your character has any unsympathtic qualities in the beginning, how does this change as the novel progresses?

Motivation

In my previous post, I explained why I loved the TV series version of The Vampire Diaries, but the book version not so much. I said that the book never really made me care enough about the characters, and that many of the characters came across like cardboard cut-outs. Since I wrote that post, I've been mulling over why that is, and I think I've come up with an answer.

Motivation.

In the books (at least the first two, since I haven't had the enthusiasm to read beyond those) the reader never really gets a sense of what the secondary characters want. Their sole pupose is to give the main character, the heroine, someone to react to.
An example: her aunt is a student, engaged to be married, looking after her two orphaned nieces, and who makes her dislike of the heroine's boyfriend clear. Period.

Considering how much more information the written word can share compared to a film camera, I feel the author missed a few tricks here.
What does the aunt want from her life? Is she getting it? How does she feel about her situation: is she coping, resentful, happy, tired? Is she pre-occupied with wedding preparations? Or even: how did she meet her fiance, a shadowy character who barely exists except as a name on the page?
A simple line here or there showing any of the above could have rescued this character from cardboard cut-out territory!

In the TV series, the screenwriters have given every single character, no matter how minor, motivation. They all want or need something. They all have flaws and strengths. They all have feelings. Suddenly they become real people. They become characters that the viewer cares about.

Watch the first couple of episodes and do this exercise: Make a list of the supporting characters. Then next to each one name their flaw, their strength, their desire, and their main emotion.

For example: The heroine's aunt Jenna.
Flaw: too young to be responsible for two orphaned teens.
Strength: her humour and compassion.
Her desire: to help her niece and nephew cope with their tragedy and raise them as good people, all while completing her own studies.
How does she feel? Out of her depth, inadequate, determined.

Even though she's a minor character who appears in only a couple of scenes, we get all this from her interaction with the main characters in those scenes.

Now I want you to do this same exercise for every character in your own WIP. Do they all have strengths and weaknesses? What are they feeling? What do they want? Will they get it?

Even if this background information never makes it onto the page, you will know your characters well enough to turn them into real people. Though I do suggest, even if it's just a line here or there, that you should at least make it clear to the reader what this character wants and why. Yes - even for the supporting cast.

Because it is the Why that makes readers care about your characters, and if they care, they'll keep turning the pages.

An awakening - part two

Two weeks ago I raved about the great job done by the screen writers of The Vampire Diaries. (Perhaps this is a good moment to say that all the opinions expressed here are my own and do not reflect in any way upon the other Minxes).

Today I'd like to share with you my deep disappointment in the books. I mean no disrespect to Lisa Jane Smith, author of the original books, who obviously writes well enough to be multi-published and to have a massive following (which is certainly more than I've achieved!) but I had the misfortune of reading the first two books after watching the TV series, and there is simply no comparison.

Having spent two years at film school, and worked for a while in film and television, I know better than most that film is a collaborative process and it's easy to bring added value when you have a whole team of experts working together on something. But the vast difference in depth and scope between the books and the TV series highlighted an issue that is very personal to me.

Mediocrity.

The TV show is stellar. The books are good. There's a difference. Ignoring the thousand and one things the film-makers changed, including setting, whole characters added or removed, an entire new back story created, there are two major differences between the book and TV versions.

1. Depth. As I said in my last blog post, there is a sense in the TV series that each and every character is a well-rounded and very real individual, with an entire background and motivation whether it's revealed or not.
Sadly, the book does not achieve this. Most of the minor characters, even the heroine's closest friends come across as one-dimensional. This is unusual in a book adapation as books are usually able to dig so much deeper in films. Just think of all those Jane Austen adaptations that have to leave out great chunks of story to fit the screen time. Not to mention that the camera cannot go places where the author's imagination can reach.

2. Likeability. This is something else I touched on in my previous post. No matter what a character does, or why, you get the sense in the TV show that there is something redeemable about them. Not just with Damon, who is the obvious example, but with minor characters like Logan Fell or Tyler Lockwood.
The book does not achieve this. Maybe, if I read further than Book Two, I'll find something redeemable in those characters. But I don't think I'm going to persevere that far. And I won't even get started on how unlikeable the heroine is. Maybe that's a blog post on its own. I could not relate to someone who thinks of herself as The Queen Bee, and as a result I never really cared about her as I did about the Elena of the TV series. Or for Bella in Twilight, for that matter.

So what does any of this have to do with mediocrity?

Reading these books brought my deepest fear to the surface. What if my writing is only mediocre? What if my novels have as little impact on the reader as The Vampire Diaries books had on me? What if my characters don't hook the reader, and have no depth? What if it would take a whole team of experts to turn my books into something special?

I could shut down my laptop and go and hide under my duvet and never write another word. That would certainly save me from writing anything mediocre.

But you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to write. And write. And polish. And I'm going to make sure that the next time I send out a submission it sparkles as brightly as one of Stephenie Meyer's vampires.

Or in the words of the editors from Mills & Boon: Innovate, don't Imitate.

Next week, I'll be talking about Motivation.

An awakening - part one

A blog post by my fellow Minx, Lacey Devlin, sent me scurrying to the video store to hire the first disc of The Vampire Diaries. I got so hooked by those opening episodes that I didn’t go back for more … instead I bought the entire first season on DVD.

This post is about why I think the screen writers for this TV show are so awesome.

The first thing I took away from this TV series was the structure. In age-old TV tradition, each and every episode ends on a cliffhanger and with the entire DVD set handy, the effect is akin to reading a novel: you just have to keep turning the pages. Each episode has twists and developments that keep the viewer riveted.

The next thing the screenwriters did well was to keep the show unpredictable. About half way through the series I started to think “Stefan is getting boring. He’s just the same anxious, serious, devoted character in every episode.” Immediately after I’d thought that, his character began to change and grow in interesting ways. It is a very rare skill, knowing exactly the point at which the viewer/reader’s attention is starting to drift, and being able to snatch it back again.
And they’re doing this on so many levels all the time, juggling character arcs and plot lines, bringing some to the fore, then others.

Now as a category romance writer you're probably wondering "what does this have to do with me? I don't have room to juggle secondary characters." The point isn't that you keep shifting story-lines or characters, the point is that you shouldn't be predictable. Yes, there's an expectation in romance that hero and heroine will get their Happy Ever After. But that doesn't mean you have to make it obvious. Take your reader a different route to that HEA. Reveal unexpected depths in your characters.

Another really difficult skill is getting your audience to care about your characters. There’s a certain magic in achieving this, and sadly there’s no paint by numbers manual out there that can help a writer create characters that hook your readers as deeply as these do. I believe it’s instinctive.

As Lacey’s original blog post pointed out, The Vampire Diaries is an excellent example of how an antagonist can be turned into a protagonist. Making an unsympathetic character sympathetic takes skill. Of course, creating sympathetic characters that stay sympathetic is also difficult, as any romance author can tell you!
The TV version of The Vampire Diaries does this in spades. In my opinion they achieve this by layering the characters. Every single character, no matter how small or seemingly insignificant, has a history. There are no cardboard cut-outs here! No character is purely good or purely evil, and because each and every one is relatable in some way, the audience cares.

Finally, it's all about the characters. This series could have been very action or Special FX orientated, but the film-makers deliberately kept the focus on people. As the host of the bonus DVD interview states, you could take the vampire element out of this show, and it would still be worth watching.

I’m sure there are other reasons why The Vampire Diaries is such a success, but for me, as a writer, these were the elements that captured my attention.

Having run through all 22 episodes of Season One (and the bonus DVD) within 5 days, I looked around to find my next fix. What better than the books the series was based on? More next week ...

Ogle Alert

Ogle alert is not to be mistaken for Google Alert and it’s a heck of a lot more fun.  So hold onto your fanny packs while I introduce you to the two new men in my life – that’s right two.



Paul Wesley aka Stefan Salvatore & Ian Somerhalder aka Damon Salvatore



Hello boys.

For anyone who doesn’t recognize them, they are costars on The Vampire Diaries.  I’ll admit when the series was recommended to me my first thought was “More Vampires?” and they are, but this is really something special.

The obsession with the Salvatores all started with a blog post - an educational blog post.  I can hear you all snickering!  It really was!  We were discussing the transformation of an antagonist into a protagonist (Damon is a great example of more than just being hit by the pretty stick) but then the shirts started coming off…

…what was I saying?...

There’s a heck of a storyline behind the series, but when it comes to romance both of the Salvatore brothers are in love with the same girl.  Who doesn’t love a tortured hero redeemed by love?  However only one of the brooding brothers gets the girl, so there’s also an element of forbidden, unrequited love that ramps up the tension.

Season 1 of The Vampire Diaries is out now and Season 2 isn’t far behind.  So buy it, hire it or bite someone for it because the writers are amazing and the characters are unforgettable.

But wait....

Who doesn’t love a man with a puppy?