On Writing Romance (32 page)

When they reach a place where they can be married, she can't prove her identity — an effect of having lost her driver's license. So they're refused a marriage license but — another bit of backward plotting here — if that honeymoon she was planning was outside the United States, she'd have her passport, so they can get over that hurdle.

One event leads to the next. One incident becomes the cause of the next event. One problem complicates the next.
What if ?
and backward plotting work together to create a logical, almost inevitable plot in which each event involves both the hero and the heroine, drawing them closer together and giving them every opportunity to fall in love.

Use the What if? and backward plotting techniques to develop the following ideas into potential stories:

1. In the middle of winter, a half-frozen man stumbles into the heroine's house.
   

2. The heroine wants to have a baby, but she doesn't want a husband.
   

3. The hero needs a date to the company Christmas party.
   

4. A couple who split up a year ago are asked to be best man and maid of honor at the wedding of mutual friends.
   

5. The hero gets the job the heroine wanted.
   

Sometimes, when you know that your hero and heroine are lovely people who are perfect for each other, it's easy to forget that the main characters themselves don't yet know that they're destined to be together. So the characters start acting as if they already have an understanding about how they'll spend the rest of their lives, even if they've just met.

This is how you get a heroine who, when her car breaks down in the middle of a strange neighborhood, puts her trust in a stranger with a gun, follows him back to his place, and spends the night — instead of locking the doors and asking him to call the auto club. This is how you get a hero who's sure that the strange woman shrieking insults at him is just having a terrible day, that she isn't ordinarily like that, and that she'll be the perfect woman to bear his children.

How would a sensible person react in these circumstances — knowing what she knows
right now
, not what she'll know in a few days or a few weeks? Is the character acting logically? Is she reacting realistically to the events in your plot?

The character's motivation — her reason for doing what she does — is all-important, and the more understandable the character's motivations are, the more engaging the story will be. Why do the characters get involved? Why do they think the action they're taking is the best one for them at the moment?

In the example of the runaway bride, the story would be much less compelling if she'd been having doubts all along or if — with no outside impetus — she simply decided not to get married that day. Because she has a good reason for calling off the wedding (discovering her fiancé is more in love with her trust fund than with her) and for running away rather than facing her guests (her father's refusal to believe her), the plot is much more plausible and engaging. Of course, the story would also be much less interesting if the hero just went along on a whim. But, because he has a reason for wanting to protect the heroine (his gentlemanly instincts, brought out by her self-destructive impulses) and a reason for wanting to get closer to her (that crush he's had on her), his decision to go along for the ride is understandable.

Why does the character do
this
, rather than
that
? What does the character want, and why? Why is this event happening right now instead of last year or next month? Why is this event or problem seemingly the worst thing that could happen to this person?

If you can explain
why
— and make your readers believe that the reason is logical and sensible — then you can do almost anything you like with your characters and your plot.

In real life, coincidences happen all the time. We shrug them off and go straight on. So the temptation when we're writing fiction is to say, “Well, it
could
have happened that way,” no matter how improbable the situation.

The trouble is that, unlike events in real life, the events in a story have to make sense. Too many coincidences — too many convenient happenings, chance encounters, and just-happen-to-overhears — only serve to remind the readers they're reading a story.

In fact, books are full of coincidences. The trick is to make them so logical and believable that the readers don't notice (for example) what a strange thing it is for the hero and heroine to be in the same place at the same time.

If you have the slightest suspicion that an episode in your story is just a little too convenient, then it probably is. Your challenge is to find a way to make it logical and believable that your characters would be at that place, at that moment, in that company, under those circumstances.

To keep your coincidences under control, give your characters a reason for what they do, and foreshadow their actions (foreshadowing will be discussed in greater detail later in this chapter).

In order to keep the readers' attention through the long midsection of the book, you'll need to continue to develop the conflict and advance the plot in logical steps without making the story predictable. What keeps the readers turning pages is suspense, which you can create using a variety of techniques, including tension, pacing, and foreshadowing.

The suspense that keeps the readers paging through your book isn't the same kind of suspense named in the romantic suspense subgenre — books that involve characters being chased by bad guys, or trying to solve mysteries, or spying on the enemy. The suspense we're discussing here doesn't necessarily involve the characters being in peril; it's created whenever there's something the readers want to know. Will Joe kiss Brenda? Will Sally give in to Brad's demand that she work for him? Will the letter Jill just took out of her mailbox be the answer she wants? Will Jared answer Katherine's question or dodge it?

Whenever you cause the readers to be curious about what comes next, you're creating suspense. Suspense arises naturally from good writing — it's not a spice to be added separately.

In fiction, you create suspense by withholding information from the characters and/or the readers. You, as the author, can therefore create suspense in three main ways:

• By withholding information from the readers.
  The author knows the entire hidden story behind the plot and characters: the backstory and the plot twists that are yet to come. A new writer is apt to spill out the backstory and hidden story right away, but most stories are improved when at least some of that information is held back — sometimes up to the very end.
  

• By withholding information from the characters.
  This is the Hitchcock effect — so called because Alfred Hitchcock was a master of it in his films. By reading between the lines and applying common sense and experience, the readers (like Hitchcock's movie audience) can draw conclusions about what's likely to be coming up. But, like the movie audience, the readers are powerless to prevent a character from stepping into a yawning trap that only the readers can foresee.
  

• By having the main characters withhold information from the readers and other characters.
  Just because a character knows something doesn't mean he has to share it with the readers (even if he's a POV character). And even hidden motives will affect how a character acts, clueing alert readers to what's really going on.
  

  When you're writing scenes in which suspense is crucial, keep in mind that putting too much backstory early in the book and using too much introspection to divulge information about your characters are great ways to bore the readers and destroy any suspense you may have established.
  

  There are, however, a number of techniques you can use to increase the level of suspense in your scenes:
  

• Keep the action intense.
  If significant amounts of time go by without suspenseful action, with the hero and heroine living their everyday lives, the story loses momentum and the readers may lose interest.
  

• Make the danger feel real to the readers.
  If the hero and heroine stop in the middle of a chase scene to share a passionate interlude, trusting to dumb luck to keep them from being discovered, then it's going to be hard to convince the readers that they have reason to be fearful. If the readers are to believe in the danger, then the characters must act as if they're threatened. Even if the danger isn't physical, keep pressure on the characters; don't let their problems slip into the background.
  

• Keep the bad guy in check.
  The villain needs to be believably, logically bad, not a cartoon. But to allow him to actually rape, pillage, and torture moves the book into general fiction rather than romance.
  

• Keep the emotional level high.
  Even if the story doesn't involve physical danger for the characters, their lifelong happiness is at stake. Keeping emotions at the core of the story reminds the readers how important the situation is.
  

• Limit the story's time frame.
  Putting restrictions on how long your story can last increases suspense. A two-week vacation, a school semester, a train journey, a wedding date, a project deadline — all can function as time clocks, pushing the hero and heroine into action. Because the ending point of the story is inflexible, the characters will act more quickly and somewhat differently than they would if they had all the time in the world.
  

• Repeat an action, phrase, or event.
  The first use of the action or line of dialogue may be almost casual, doing little more than getting the readers' attention. The second use makes it clear that this bit of information is important (though the readers may not quite see why) and foreshadows the important action to come. The third use is the most emphatic: The stakes have grown enormous and the readers, having been properly prepared, are on the edge of their seats waiting to see what will happen.
  

• Don't show what everyone's thinking.
  If the heroine assesses the hero's clenched jaw and assumes he's mad at her, and then you show him thinking about his aching molar, the heroine doesn't know she's wrong, but the readers do — and all the suspense is gone from the scene. In this example from Claire Cross's chick-lit novel
  Double Trouble
  , we see the heroine drawing conclusions about the hero, but we have no idea whether she's correct:
  

What's going on with James? We don't know why he's haggard and annoyed. We know what conclusions the heroine has drawn — but is she correct? Why does the heroine have a reputation as the strumpet sister? Why are these two in so much conflict that they have a “usual script” for their interactions?

We will have to turn the page and go on if we want to find out.

Maintaining tension means maintaining pressure on the characters. Over the course of the story, the characters' troubles should grow larger, harder to handle, seemingly more insoluble. The characters' emotional involvement (and hence the readers' attachment to the characters) grows right along with the difficulties the characters face.

Many beginning writers raise a problem and immediately solve it, let the characters take a break, and then move on to the next problem. But if the characters are hunting for a hidden diamond necklace and they find it in the first place they look, all the excitement is gone. Dangle the problems, let them get worse step-by-step — let the readers enjoy watching the characters deal with pressure.