Back to School: Better Beginnings
Ruthie Knox and I are going back to school. We are going to teach ourselves to write better romance beginnings by reading the books that we admire the most. You can read more about this on her blog, where she reveals that she misses structured education and the syllabus. I, on the other hand, swore I’d never go back to school and have done a pretty good job of keeping that promise, but I don’t mind a little bit of study if I can do it from the comfort of my couch and it involves romance novels. (Syllabus is below. You are invited, no, URGED, to join us, because as Ruthie says, a seminar with only two students isn’t much fun. Even if you love the other student, which I do.)
Ruthie has done an excellent job of diagnosing her own problem with beginnings (she leaves backstory “breadcrumbs”). I don’t have a complete diagnosis for what’s wrong with my beginnings, but I do have a succinct statement of the problem, which is that they don’t work. My beta readers call me up and say, “I’m fifty pages in, and I love it! I’m really getting into it now!” That’s great, I think, only you’re at least 45 pages too late. Ruthie sent me an e-mail critique of my second book in which she said that she didn’t want to tell me to write less sensitive and nuanced romances, but the romances she was used to developed much more quickly and, for lack of better word “baldly.”
So my tentative starting diagnosis is that my hero and heroine have to be dropped into the book at a point much closer to boiling. They have to meet when they already have much more at stake. You have to see them for the first time in a situation that–by its very nature–holds their feet to the fire. As far as I can tell, this is the problem with most bad beginnings, not just mine: They start in the wrong place, an insufficiently *intense* place.
It’s also possible that my first two book start in more or less the right place but that I haven’t done a good enough job of mining the H/h’s emotions and amping up the conflict–we don’t see their suffering clearly enough on the page (even though it’s there in my mind), and I don’t make their lives miserable enough (let them off the hook too easily).
(I think I’ve been doing a much better job of it in my third book, so I may have intuitively grasped what Ruthie and I are about to try to lay out the “rules” for.)
This weekend I read Unit One of the syllabus, so here are some additional thoughts.
The beginning of Nora Roberts’ SEA SWEPT is a great portrait of Cam. Right away, you know he works hard, plays hard, womanizes. But you also quickly learn that he’ll drop everything for the people that matter to him.
I don’t think you could get away, now, with starting a romance as slowly as she does (SEA SWEPT was 1998). She spends a long time, several chapters, with Cam before you even meet Anna. The intro to Anna is much shorter, and probably a better model for the amount of time you can realistically spend with a heroine before you drop her into the thick of things. Both chars are introduced in very deep POV, so you know exactly what they’re thinking and feeling as they encounter their new and very intense situation. Cam has substantially more at stake, but that’s OK, because it’s clearly his book.
What I learned from Nora: That the right situation reveals a tremendous amount about a character very, very quickly and that you can forgive a hero for being a jerk if he’s an over-the-top loyal-to-his-family jerk.
I’m fairly certain that NERD IN SHINING ARMOR by Vicki Lewis Thompson has one of the best beginnings ever written. If you haven’t read it, you must. Within a couple of pages, Gen, the heroine, has gotten what she’s been wishing for, and Jackson, the hero, has put himself in a position to ruin it for her. It’s pretty-much unputdownable. That’s a real word.
Part of why it works is that the characters are so distinctive and quirky that you immediately feel like they can’t be made up; they *have* to be real. And part of it is that what the characters want is so simple and elemental: Gen wants to be alone with her boss Nick, so she can convince him to marry her, and Jackson wants Gen.
What I learned from Vicki: Wacky works if you pair it with familiar, human emotions. And physical danger is an excellent aphrodisiac.
Ruthie and I paired BET ME with ANYONE BUT YOU because we thought BET ME was an example of what NOT to do and ANYONE BUT YOU was an example of what TO do. There’s some truth to that: BET ME’s beginning is so ludicrously complicated that I dare anyone to ease into it without having at least one strong urge to give up. And ANYONE BUT YOU’s beginning is so simple and elemental–lonely woman takes home pathetic dog–that only if you’re a dog-hater can you put it down. Which is pretty funny, because by super-contemporary (2011ish) standards, BET ME’s beginning leaps into the action a whole lot faster, and ANYONE BUT YOU’s (every time I type that, I feel weirdish) takes quite a while to get hero and heroine on the same page, let alone into anything that remotely resembles romance mode.
What I learned from Jenny: There’s so much going on in the beginning of a book that you can’t afford to get too fancy (unless you’re Jennifer Crusie, in which case you can do whatever the hell you want, and I’ll read it). You’ve got to introduce two characters from scratch, make them quirky/distinctive/interesting and, more to the point, SYMPATHETIC, and you’ve got to introduce, as quickly as possible, both their internal and external conflicts, while making it clear that sparks are going to fly. Why would you also include an ex-boyfriend, an ex-girlfriend, and four best friends, not to mention a whole bunch of off-stage characters we’re more or less expected to keep track of? (unless you’re Jennifer Crusie)
Or to put it another way, you’ll (I’ll) know you’ve (I’ve) arrived when you (I) can pull that kind of thing off and still manage to write one of the most popular books in the genre.
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Crafting Great Beginnings 101
Fall Semester, 2011
Unit I. Books We Already Own and Think Are Good Models
V. L. Thompson, Nerd in Shining Armor
N. Roberts, Sea Swept
J. Crusie, Anyone But You and Bet Me
Unit II. Books One of Us Owns and the Other Doesn’t, and the One Who Owns It Thinks It’s Awesome Sauce (note from Serena: use of “awesome sauce” in this context is Ruthie’s; I’m just not that cool)
J. Shalvis, The Heat Is On and The Sweetest Thing
M. Marlowe, Touch of a Thief
R. Gibson, Tangled Up in You
S. E. Phillips, Dream a Little Dream
Unit III. Books Someone Else Told Us to Read
L. L. Miller, one of the Creed books
R. Carr, Harvest Moon
V. Dahl, Good Girls Don’t
OhmiCrusie! How to Begin, Unit I | Ruthie Knox
September 27, 2011 @ 3:22 pm
[…] Bell’s done her homework, too, and she shares her thoughts on the first unit here. Great stuff. I’m gonna go over there and comment in a minute. But first, I think I’d […]
September 27, 2011 @ 3:34 pm
Awesome insights! I’m so pleased you’re taking this class with me. Want to meet up at the library later? I’ll bring the Ben & Jerry’s.
I agree about Cam. How La Nora contrived to make the shoving of a naked woman out his door admirable, I’ll never quite understand, but she did pull it off. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about situation — how there must be a perfect situation to introduce one’s characters in, and the trick is to find it.
I think the Nina-and-the-dog scene in Bet Me is a master class in How to Introduce Your Heroine. It ought to be schmalzy or pathetic, but Nina is so self-aware and honest and funny in her own head, it’s just perfect. I keep thinking there’s some key to why I like Crusie’s characters that I’m missing. What does she DO to make them so likable?
FWIW, my thoughts on Unit I. http://bit.ly/mW3vUE
Onward to Unit II!
September 27, 2011 @ 4:03 pm
Yes! I like Cinnamon Buns and Karamel Sutra best, but just about anything works.
The shoving of the naked woman is admirable because he does it in service of something larger we can totally understand: endless devotion to the family who saved him.
I, too, have been thinking a lot about situation. It’s tempting to think a book starts “when the story starts”–think of what you said to me about the beginning of DANCE FROM THE HEART (my second book), that you couldn’t imagine my starting it later because that was where the story started (just after Claire, the dancing heroine, was badly injured in a potentially career-ending hit-and-run). But I think sometimes the book doesn’t start “where the story starts” but with the situation that most succinctly illustrates the nature of the characters. That’s what Cam’s scene works so perfectly: in one stroke, he’s a hopeless womanizer who nevertheless has a core-deep loyalty to family.
I’m going to spend some time thinking what that scene would look like for Nate in DFTH. If you were going to literally translate it, it would probably be something like … it might be him firing the employee who has “stepped over the line,” illustrating his commitment to upstanding morality (which the situation with Claire then challenges) … or maybe his sister Di showing up and wanting to move in with him b/c their father has just thrown her out, and Nate flying off the handle about his father’s total failure to be there for his family. As I wrote it, the first scene DOES start where the story starts, but it doesn’t tell us much, if anything, about who Nate is. Even if the scene were about how Nate feels like he has a moral obligation to treat Claire even though he has a heartfelt loathing of dancers because he hates single-minded people as a result of his father’s workaholic response to his mother’s death (I’m going to write it just like that), that would be better than what I’ve got.
Nina-and-the-dog is an amazing scene. I completely understand why we love Nina. The thing I can’t fathom is why we love Min. I think the fact that Crusie’s characters say EXACTLY what they’re thinking is a big part of our affection for them. Who doesn’t wish they could do that?? And they’re sharp without being cutting.
And now I must apply myself to writing book number 3, or it will be a book that has only a (pretty good, I think) beginning, and no middle or end.
September 27, 2011 @ 4:20 pm
Why we love Min is a serious puzzle. I’ve been trying to figure it out, too. In summary, I don’t care for her much, but inside her head, I adore her. I think partly it has to do with humor (“Barney’s slut cousin” is pretty damn funny), partly with her refusal to hate herself (despite insecurity, she gets irritated with other people for putting her down, and she knows she deserves better treatment — and a better maid of honor dress), partly with her even-keelness (she gets mad, but she gets over it quickly, and she recognizes when she’s stepped over the line). But none of those answers really satisfy me. Will I really like any character who is funny and centered and self-aware? Despite whatever else is obviously wrong with them? Maybe I will. I’m not sure.