another lesson learned…
Don’t spend hours sharpening the dialogue until you know you’re going to keep the scene.
Some of these latest cuts and reorganizations just hurt…
Sigh.
breaking my Buffy habit…
… for a good cause. I should never have unpacked the box containing my Buffy DVDs! I thought I could just watch one.
Yeah, right.
I need to write my book instead. But…
Buffy: My mom said some things to me about being the Slayer. That it’s fruitless. No fruit for Buffy.
Angel: She’s wrong.
Buffy: Is she? Is Sunnydale any better than when I first came here? Okay, so I battle evil, but I don’t really win. The bad keeps coming back and getting stronger. Like the kid in the story, the boy that stuck his finger in the… duck.
Angel: Dike. It’s another word for “dam.”
Buffy: Oh. Okay, that story makes a lot more sense now.
Angel: Buffy, you know I’m still figuring things out. There’s a lot I don’t understand. I do know it’s important to keep fighting. And I learned that from you.
Buffy: But we never…
Angel: Never win.
Buffy: Not completely.
Angel: We never will. That’s not why we fight. We do it ’cause there’s things worth fighting for.
Gingerbread / Jane Espenson
The “never win” and “we never will” lines get me every time. It’s one of my favourite Buffy moments.
I love love, and Buffy is so full of love and all its permutations.
I’m trying to remind myself that I want to switch roles. I want to be the creator instead of the consumer. (Or maybe, more accurately, the pusher instead of the addict). Therefore, I am going to turn off Buffy and write my book.
Right.
Now.
Done.
Phew.
another strong female character…
is Solara (played by Mila Kunis) in The Book of Eli.
Some mixed feelings about the film, but no disputing that Solara rocks.
girls – to the bat cave!
I spent much of yesterday researching my next book by reading Nora Roberts’ Bed of Roses. Sigh… the trials of being a writer. Such a dreadful job!
The book is the second in a four-part series, which focuses on four women (Emmaline, Laurel, Parker and Mac) who run a wedding planning business.
Their headquarters is the Brown estate (bequeathed to Parker Brown and her brother), a mansion with sprawling grounds, where the women host many of their weddings. Each of the women lives in a different part of the estate. They have a home gym where they work out each morning, but best of all, they have a housekeeper, Mrs. Grady, who keeps them in continual supply of delicious (and healthful) food.
They deal with Monster Bitch Brides and weeping MOGs (Mothers of the Groom) with their mixture of super-powers (baking, floristry, photography, business) and constant communication via cellphone headsets.
Bruce Wayne, eat your heart out.
Anyway, as I was trying to fall asleep last night, some other girl-power elements of the story began to line up in my head. One scene, in particular, stood out. Emmaline, the protagonist of this story, has just had her heart broken by Jack. She’s run back to the estate. Jack has followed to apologize and to try to patch things up with Emmaline. But Parker Brown, the ultra-efficient ringleader of the team, answers the door. She doesn’t let him in. When Jack persists, Mac and Laurel back her up. They lay out the rules: no contact until Emma says she’s ready. If he wants to maintain his longstanding friendship with them, much less ever see Emmaline again, he has no choice but to obey.
The story, of course, ends happily. One can debate the ethics of letting both Jack and Emmaline suffer through the ten days of radio silence and Emma’s inability to eat anything more than an extremely small portion. But just explore this image – a stronghold of women who have the power to make and enforce rules, to admit or evict men from their midst. Subversive. And all nicely packaged into a happily-ever-after “romance novel.”
a heavy backpack…
…full of books. The process for the second novel has begun! Yesterday, I went to the library to begin research for the second saga of the Hart siblings.
I’m planning to finish up the critiquing and revising of the first book while researching the second. Then, when my summer vacation time comes up, I hope to get a very good start on writing it.
I have two main goals related to the writing of this book:
1. Learn from the lessons of the first book.
2. Finish it faster.
(Theoretically, the first should support the second. Theoretically.)
tell me whom you love…
Tell me whom you love and I will tell you who you are and, more especially, who you want to be.
- T. Reik. Quoted in Helen Fisher’s Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love.
In order to be with the person you want to be with, you first have to be the person you want to be.
- My mom.
best of the spam
So, over the past four months, this blog’s main activity has been to gather up spam comments. I started getting the spam shortly after my District 9 post, which linked to another blog. Hm…
I just kind of ignored it until I started getting spam from Russia earlier this week.
For your entertainment and enjoyment, here are some of the comments I found most amusing:
They desperate straits to differentiate if you entertain any of these conditions:
• cerebral disease
• sentiment working order
• liver sickness
• seizures ferment
• pregnant or trying to bag in the pudding club
• breast-feeding
Breast-feeding is a condition of “desperate straits?” Cerebral disease? And “trying to bag in the pudding club”?!?! Wait, is that something naughty?
How much money does Wisconsin make a year from speeding tickets, and where does that money go?
Abbreviation is such a long word because they dont allow abreviations in scrabble
And you know you’re getting spam when you read the following:
your blog is so cool
I’ll recommend your blog to all my friends
All people in my office read your blog
And my personal favorite:
The best blog which I saw before. Hope to vissit it again
back on track… excuses, excuses
We sold the condo.
My husband had a major surgery. (Yeay for universal health care!)
We bought a house.
My mom and I did some MAJOR cleaning.
We moved in.
The Olympics happened.
We finally got internet (much delayed because of the aforementioned Olympics).
My husband mostly recovered.
My office is almost finished.
When we decided to move, I figured I would lose about a year of writing time. It’s only been about four and a half months, and there has been progress – a revised and critiqued prologue and first chapter! A group blog started (more on that, later).
But now it’s really time to get back on track…
it’s a mad, one-orange world…
My friend and writing colleague Bronwyn Storm has opened her blog to questions about writing. Head on over to Brown’s Town to take a look!
She’s just posted an answer to her first question, where she talks about what a romance novel requires in relation to secondary characters. She also has a tiny rant about that stereotypical romance novel conflict she calls, “Dysfunction Masquerading as Conflict.”
Regarding DMaC, she says,
One of my favorites is the external conflict that a five year old could solve. [The heroine] needs the rind of an orange, and [the hero] needs the inside, but oh-uh!! There’s only ONE orange. What are they going to do?
The hero and heroine go through the motions until the black moment when the heroine
realizes it’ll never work in this mad, one orange world, and runs away.
(Aside: I love it! That’s my new, favourite quote! It’s a mad, one-orange world, baby!)
Check out Bronwyn’s post for more excellent tidbits and her complete answer.
But speaking of conflict and black moments….
I just read (last night, in fact) a great Harlequin SuperRomance novel called, The Man Behind the Cop (2008), by Janice Kay Johnson. (Johnson is my favourite Harlequin author – do not hesitate to pick up any of her books if you love great characters, realistic details, and an absence of Dysfunction Masquerading as Conflict.)
Bronwyn’s post about genre characteristics is the perfect lead-in for what I want to write about this book. Because this book, though published by a traditional romance publisher and absolutely a pure romance novel, is rather a misfit when it comes to the romance formula.
Going back to the black moment, it just doesn’t have one. The hero and heroine have a very serious argument, but it is a moment of triumph rather than despair for both of them.
Furthermore, the book is really more about the hero than the heroine. The majority of the book is from the hero’s point of view and, although the heroine does grow, the hero is the character who experiences the most significant change. (I think Johnson would agree. She writes in her forward that, “Once in a while, one of my own heroes comes to life in a way I can’t quite take credit for…. At its heart, this book is about one man… I hope you’ll find his journey as wrenching as I did….”)
So what does this mean? That when you’re an author as prolific and respected as Johnson (she’s written over sixty books and is a four-time RITA finalist), you can get away with messing with the formula? Or that the “formula” is changing? (Well, I hope so – everything has to evolve to stay vital).
What I would like to think is that there is room in category romance for a little diversity, that the characters are the most important ingredient, and that when the narrative flows from their authentic internal and external conflicts, even a story that doesn’t perfectly follow the writers’ guidelines can be successful.
Provided there is a happily-ever-after ending, of course. This is romance, after all!
The Art of Plotting
The Art of Plotting: Add Emotion, Suspense, and Depth to Your Screenplay. By Linda J. Cowgill
I read a review of this book somewhere and am very glad I took a closer look! Cowgill clearly explains the nitty-gritty of constructing great plots and shows how plot and character development build upon each other. I have found the chapters on conflict (Role of Conflict, Principles of Action) and the first chapter on plotting (Tools of Plotting) very useful.
Another source I wish I had read before I started my book.