A while back, I shamelessly asked for blogging ideas, and (I believe?) suggested I blog about how my writing process has changed since I began writing romance.
Gee, what an interesting question! Honestly, I am not sure. Let's see. I'm currently writing my 6th romance novel (not counting the novella).
Things that have not changed: My pace of writing. Compared to many, I am a relatively slow writer. If I get 1500 words in a day, I'm thrilled. With deadlines every 5-6 months, this has meant I must be very disciplined and write almost every day. Of course, I inevitably fall behind--and I'm able to push myself to write 4 or 5,000 words in a day occasionally, when I need to. But that's rare.
I still use the same method of plotting (or lack thereof). I tend to sketch out a fairly loose plot, basically strung around a series of "moments" I'm building toward (turning points, I suppose you might call them). But the connecting scenes between points A, B, C, etc. usually develop and evolve as I'm writing.
I like to think I'm a little better at identifying plot or characterization problems as they arise, and taking steps to correct them earlier rather later. Not perfectly prescient, of course, but to some degree I think I've internalized the voices of my trusted CPs and editor and can "hear" what they'd say before they say it.
Which leads me to another difference--I don't exchange writing with critique partners as much as I used to. Or at least, not on a chapter-by-chapter basis. Part of that is sheer time constraints, but also just a certain comfort level we've gained with our own voices and craft. I still try to recruit several people to read finished drafts of every book so I can get a variety of reactions to the plot and characters, check for continuity and confusing scenes, etc. And if I've written myself into a corner, they help me talk me through it.
So those are my thoughts on it, unorganized as they might be. For the writers out there, how has your process evolved?
It's been ages since I added an entry to this "How I Write a Book" series. I really have been writing a book in the meantime. I just started to get a little superstitious about blogging about it before the book was actually sold. But now that it is (yay again!), I'm gonna back up a few steps and pick up where I left off.
Which was with outlining. I write a long, rambling narrative outline that will not fit into squares.
The next step would be (drumroll, please)....to start writing the book.
By the time I sit down to write chapter one, I've been thinking about it for months. I have this elaborate vision of the setting and set-up, and whole chunks of dialogue planned. I sit down to my keyboard, knowing that this opening scene is just going to flow onto the page, and it will be perfect.
Two pages in, I know I'm screwed. It's not coming out the way I'd thought it would. Characters are saying things on the page they never said before, in all our many pre-writing conversations. Or they may refuse to behave in ways we've worked out well in advance. When I express my irritation with them, and tell them that they are being uncooperative and ruining my Perfect Opening Scene, they give me a diffident shrug and say, "Not my problem."
Thanks, guys. I thought we were friends.
And then there's the backstory. It's like a mammoth logic pretzel, figuring out how to craft a scene, or a series of scenes, that will allow me to introduce all the main characters, communicate the protagonists' motivations, set up the conflict, fold in details from their pasts that inform the current action... it makes my brain hurt.
So once it's clear that Plan A just isn't going to work, I start tweaking it. And the more I tweak it, the more I realize the problem is not just in my envisioning of my Perfect Opening Scene, it is in my whole concept of the book. This is where I quietly freak out. Or not so quietly. And then I take several deep, cleansing breaths, eat something bad for me, and come back to basically reevaluate everything I've planned for the book.
With the book I'm currently writing, tentatively called The Desire of a Duke (Stud Club book one, dontcha know), I had I don't know how many false starts. Writing the beginning of this book was excruciating, because it is not just the beginning of one story, it is the beginning of three. There are six characters introduced in the first three chapters--no, wait. Seven. All three heroes for the series, two of the heroines, and two important secondary characters. If you count a very important horse, we're up to eight. Some of them are strangers before that night, some are related by blood. Some have a history of love, some have a history of hate. Some are grieving, some are desperate, some are by nature uncommunicative, and one is dead. AND, to make matters trickier, I'm one of those writers who prefers to limit the POVs (points of view) to two. So whatever I need to tell you about six of the eight people, I have to get the point across through one of the remaining two.
Okay, long story short - I find this hard. I typically have to take several cracks at it. (That's before my editor has her say, which usually necessitates yet more cracking.) Even though I'm pretty happy with the opening chapters of DOAD right now, I know I may still need to change them once the whole book is complete.
For me, the beginning's never right until the ending's in the bank. But then, in writing - at least we get as many do-overs as we want. Or as many as we can squeeze in before our deadlines.
What do you think? Are unlimited do-overs a bright side? Or a curse?
Okay, so getting back to this whole "How I write a book" series.
Lessee, I've blogged about the thinking and the "moments" and the research and the imaginary casting call for my characters. Once I've let all that ferment for a while, I usually sit down and outline.
Well, sort of. This would not be a formal-looking outline, with neat indents and A's and IV's and etc. This would not even be a scene-by-scene outline. It's more like, I sit down with my laptop and just spew out all the notes and scenes and dialog that have been coalescing in my brain, in somewhat sequential fashion. Some bits will be very fleshed out, with whole chunks of inner motivations and dialogue. In other parts, I'll have something like "they encounter difficulties"--meaning, the difficulty will be mine when I reach that section and must figure out what the heck should happen.
I begin at the beginning, and I work to the end. The end result is messy and uneven, but this is the stage where it starts to all come together as a story. And to swipe the motto of , "It's all about the story."
I have writer friends who swear by storyboards, post-its, index cards, spreadsheets, and the like. I've tried them all. I've learned this: I am allergic to squares. Trying to fit a story into a series of boxes...erg, it makes me break out in hives. To me, a story is linear. It has a beginning, it has an end, and those two points are connected by a line. (not a straight line necessarily, but a line nonetheless) I can't look at squares and see a story. That is not to disparage anyone who can, of course. We're all different, God bless us. As shown in the photo above, some people can take squares and make beautiful art with them!
But no squares for me. I just write out whatever I've got into a big long Word file, and I name it something ridiculous and save it. Then I rarely look at it again. Just like I almost always leave my shopping list at home after I've written it out--but I still remember 90% of what was on it, once I get to the store. The other 10% was probably stuff I didn't really need.
How is your holiday shopping list coming? Do you take a list with you to the store? Are you allergic to any particular geometric shapes? Do you see a story as a line, a grid, a string of beads, an Alexander Calder sculpture, other?
So, moving right along with the writing process...
I've got characters, a vague plot built around these "moments", and I've started my research. As part of the research, I collect pictures. I find it helpful to imagine my settings and characters' physical traits from the foundation of a painting or photograph of an actual place or person. Or horse.
For example, for the book I'm working on right now (working title The Desire of a Duke, since it includes the essential Tessa Dare titling element: the word "of", LOL), I'm loosely basing the hero's estate on an actual estate in Cambridgeshire: . Pretty impressive, no?
And there's a very important racehorse in the book, who I am making the fictional "great-grandchild" of the famous stallion .
Lastly, I also pick celebrity models for my hero and heroine. I know different authors have mixed feelings about this - I don't know why I find it so helpful, but I do. It's important that it not be just a photo of a model, but someone I can watch in action, on TV or in movies. Somehow this helps me develop a visual image of how my character moves, reacts, stands, sits, relaxes, and so forth. Seldom does the character in my mind match up exactly with his/her inspiration, but it's just a helpful starting place.
If you're one of those readers who prefers her own imagination, I'll put the pictures of my Spencer and Amelia inspirations below the fold:
This would be the third installment in my little "How I write a book" series; click the tag below for all of them. It's my continuing effort to understand myself and have a cogent answer for people when they ask me that dreaded "are you a plotter/pantser/pepper" question.
Warning: Overextended analogies ahead.
At this point in my process, I have characters. I have this constellation of "moments" that I believe I can string a plot around. My next step is to take all these wild ideas I have--like, "Ooh, what if she gets on a ship for the West Indies!" or "Ooh, what if he runs for Parliament!" and let historical reality crush them. Mua ha ha.
No, not really.
For a writer of historical romance--okay, at least for this writer of historical romance--research is a chicken-and-egg thing. Meaning, I eat a lot while I do it.
No, okay, seriously. It usually starts out as, "Here's the story I want to tell. How can I make it historically plausible?" (Note, I am relatively unconcerned about it being historically probable. It's more than okay with me if I have my characters doing highly unlikely things--that makes for good story, IMO. I just try to avoid having them do chronologically impossible things.)
So I crack open that egg and start the research, and discover all the defects in that perfect, fluffy adorable little chick of a plot I'd been dreaming about. I have the inevitable moments like these: Read the rest of this entry »
So, last week I blogged about how my novel-writing process starts with months of thinking, and that usually the thinking starts with the main characters.
Once I have these two protagonists in my mind, even in very vague, shadowy form, what I start thinking of next are "moments". I'm not sure why, but this seems to be how I plot a book. I don't get big story trajectories coming to me in during all those long walks and hot showers, I get (what I've taken to calling) "moments". Little scenes with the potential for great humor, drama, angst, suspense....or heat. 8) Some might call them the book's turning points.
Anyway, these evolve in different ways. Sometimes I just have a vague idea for a situation, and other times whole swaths of dialog just pop into my mind. But they give me that "ooh, that would be soooo funny/sad/hot" feeling. My gut tells me, I just HAVE to put that scene in the book.
I start to mentally refer to these "moments" by little one- or two-word tags. For Goddess of the Hunt, for example, they might have been things like: orchard, wardrobe, letter, dinners, tears. Right now, for this new book, I'm working with moments like: hay, party, piano, symmetry. The moments are like a constellation of stars, and then the rest of the plot is a line connecting them. By the time I finish the book, that line may change a dozen times--but the stars are pretty permanent.
Once I have this vague notion of what will happen, I start to research. And I'll blog about that next time.
Hey, it's a new month. I'm starting a new book. And I thought it might be an interesting experiment, this time, to blog about my writing process (such as it is) as I go. I'll tag them all "How I Write a Book."
I know many of you who read this blog are writers, and you each have your own process. I certainly don't mean to suggest anyone should follow mine! It's messy, as you'll see, and continually evolving. But there are some people who follow this blog who may be wondering, "Just what it is Tessa's doing when she should be [returning my phone calls/addressing my Christmas card/making my dinner]?" This is mainly for them.
Right now, I'm getting ready to start writing this book. Which means, I'm wrapping up the work involved in preparing to write the book. Which brings me to
My Messy Process, Step One: Thinking.
Lots of thinking. Lots and lots of thinking. In the case of this book, my fourth, I've been mulling over these characters and their story for at least 8 or 9 months now, since I was in the middle of writing book two. And beyond Spencer and Amelia (the hero and heroine's names), I currently have three other couples - wait, four - whose stories are spreading roots in my gray matter.
The thinking part of this process is the longest step, obviously. It's also the one most often mistaken by bystanders for daydreaming, inattention, child neglect, etc. Well, in truth, there's an element of each of those in it.
I think about the characters while I'm out for a walk, making dinner, washing dishes, taking a shower, and so on. Becoming a professional writer has actually been some salvation for me, because I am a person who has a hard time turning off her brain. If I weren't thinking about character histories and plot tangles, I'd be thinking about something else - something that would probably get me into trouble. By nature, I'm inclined to endless rumination, so it's handy to have this endless supply of mental alfalfa.
The thinking usually starts with a character--in this case, it was the hero. And then I decide on his pair--the person who is nothing he wants, but everything he needs. In the earliest stages, they are very flat characters. I simply start with a few personality traits that will clash spectacularly at first, but with a bit of time and affection, dovetail nicely. For example, in this book I began with the idea that I would pair a character who is socially awkward and introverted with one for whom close relationships and hospitality are paramount.
And then the fun begins...I start to imagine all the things they could possibly argue about, all the ways in which they could find themselves at cross-purposes, and what it will take to bring them together in the end. That's where plotting comes in. And I guess I'll blog about that next time.
