Columns: Tag – Relationships
-
A Romance Writer's World
Setting up your story
The first few chapters of a book can start off with a bang, or take a while to take shape. It all depends on how you prefer to set up your story. I find that I tend to feel my way along in the first few chapters, looking for a firm foothold as I put the platform in place for the rest of the book.
A Romance Writer's World
Do you like your characters?
Even though an author creates her characters, she also has a relationship with them. And it’s very clear whether a writer either likes – or dislikes – her characters. It comes out in the level of empathy she has for them. Is her attitude sympathetic, caring - or judgemental? Does the author gloss over her characters’ faults or does she dwell on them? Does she present them in a black and white fashion or does she allow for the varying shades of grey to shine through?
A Romance Writer's World
Opening scenes in novels
When I was writing my first novel, The Dashing Debutante, I sent the first few chapters to a well-known American romance author and asked her for some feedback. She emailed me a critique of the book and told me that I had started it in the wrong place and that I needed to grab the reader’s attention with an action scene rather than the scene I had written, where my heroine was sitting on a log next to a stream, fishing and contemplating her life. I proceeded to make the changes the author suggested, and started the book with a much more dramatic scene.