Google Me This

Most of us remember the 90's and earlier where you had to actually go to a bookstore or dig out your encyclopedias to research anything.  We have become completely spoiled by the internet and our smart phones and how easy we can find information.  If someone is talking about a song and argues with someone about what year it came out, we simply whip out our iPhone and Google it.  In a matter of seconds you can have the date it was released, the person who sang it, the position it was on the charts and the full lyrics.  I say, thank you internet gods for inventing such a marvelous thing! 

When I started writing in the early 90's I had a hard time referencing real places or historical facts since I only had an encyclopedia from 1970 and it wasn't a good one.  It was difficult writing about different places or people since I didn't have enough information at my fingertips.  I also couldn't drive at the time and didn't want to have to ask my grandmother to take me to the library so that I could write for fun.  It just didn't work.  Now that I'm older and technology has advanced to the point of instant information, I am overjoyed.  I desperately try to use it to my advantage.  Without even getting out of my chair I can search for a type of perfume from 1995 that a teenage girl would have worn...and no I had no personal reference since I was not cool and trendy enough and never wore perfume.  I was clueless. I found out that Angel perfume was popular at the time and it fit perfectly into my story.  Yey Wikipedia!  Don't even get my started on video game references.

The interesting thing about using search engines to aid in my writing is all the different ways I have been able to use it.  Yes, I can search for natural disasters that happened 3000 years ago and I can learn about different geographical locations created by an ice age, but I can also use it to help me design furniture or room layouts.  I'm the type of writer who is good with characters and speeches.  I can do emotions and drama.  My downfall is describing what a room or a landscape looks like.  I'm terrible with interior design and don't know a chaise from a vanity.  Just last night I was try to design my heroine's room and I had to Google a ton of different furniture ideas.  I would have never been able to come up with such elaborate designs without a little help.  Even if I don't always describe them in epic detail, just looking at the image will sometimes help me set up a scene.  I personally hit up the Pottery Barn website to get an idea of what my vampire farmboy's modern apartment would look like.  It gave me so many ideas of how to layout the room that I felt more comfortable writing about it. 

I personally have collected images that remind me of my characters or my locations so that I can rummage through them when I need inspiration.  While I'm a very visual person, I tend to have trouble keeping the images focused in my head.  When I write, I think about the characters actions and words, not necessarily the way they look so I need to go back and look at what photo originally inspired me so that I can create the detail.  My collage of photos makes everything real, allowing me the freedom to create my story. 

If anyone were to look through my browser history they would immediately be concerned.  I know the genre that I'm writing for is dark and there so many different kinds of characters that I am creating that I need a vast array of websites needed.  There are many times when I have to turn to the dark side and learn about less favorable subjects.  I have Googled prisons, insane asylums from the 1800's, cult leaders, and of course Satan.  I have even looked up what is considered to be the first prison in Italy located in Rome.  Some of these subjects would be embarrassing or difficult to research in person.  I like keeping my distance from the asylums since they freak me out.  I'm perfectly happy to let Wiki and Google access the information and keep me safe.

I know people will argue that going to these places and searching through books is the best way to learn about these things, but I'm not writing a historical romance novel but merely sprinkling these things throughout my stories.  Besides, I was in Rome and I don't remember the prison being on the tour, though the building does look vaguely familiar.  (My personal favorite was pulling up pictures of the Colosseum and turning the camera view to get all the sides.  Having been there it was a nice refresher and I enjoyed the detail.)  Also, I'm not going to rummage through furniture stores looking for the perfect chair.  I find that taking a few hours away from what I'm writing to research something outweighs the time taken from writing.  Having pictures of Romanian castles, cliffs in Norway and cabins in Montana have vastly improved my settings and detail so that I can put my characters in interesting a exciting locations.  I wouldn't give it up for anything.

Write, Read, Rewrite, Repeat

I have heard about writers that write an entire story in one day and publish it/post it immediately.  This concept baffles me.  It's one thing to sit in English class and be asked to write a short story or an essay and hand it in at the end of class.  No one expects it be a masterpiece.  You make your points and support them as best you can given the time limitation, but it will never be War and Peace.  Granted, I have no interested in writing War and Peace, but I also want to write something that took time and effort to think through and compose. 

Every book starts with an idea and when we think the idea is good enough, we write it down.  One idea leads to another and suddenly you have a story.  That doesn't mean you have a good story, it just means that you have words strung together that hopefully make sense.  It doesn't mean that it's interesting, well though out or entertaining.  The problem is, sometime we think our idea is amazing and the best thing ever.  Then we leave the idea alone and come back to it only to realize it wasn't all that great.  I am reminded of Brave New World where they took hallucinogenic drugs and thought they had the most inspired and fantastic ideas while under the influence.  The speaker in the story decides to write down all his mind blowing thoughts to record them for posterity.  Once he is clear headed again he goes and reads the notes he made.  It turns out that it was complete nonsense and sounded more like a rhyming jumble of words, most of which weren't real worlds.  So, as you can see, it's important to leave the idea to rest for a little while and go back to it with a clear head and new perspective.

There have been many times when I'm on a roll and I'm furiously writing because I have so many thoughts in my head.  I think that it's the most brilliant writing to date and I am proud of it when I'm done.  I will walk away for a day, a week, a month and work on other sections or books.  When I return to my brilliant work I often find mistakes or sentences that are unclear.  That is why editing it paramount.  An idea can always be improved and expanded.  So many times I have a simple frame work that originally seemed epic, so I have to go back and add detail or descriptive words.  Other times I will have come up with an even better idea and have to make changes along the way.  The more that you put into your story the better it will be.

I love examples, so here we go.  My main heroine has a hall within the castle in the underworld, the Hall of Mirrors.  I never questioned why she had it, she simply did.  I decided that it was given to her along the way.  It was an abandoned hall before her.  I went back to the idea and wondered why it existed.  Did someone own it before?  Yes, one of Lucifer's previous lovers had it, though sadly she was absolutely insane.  Well why the mirrors?  Oh, well she was a punisher and used them to punish people.  Well, the hall wasn't built for her, so who was the original owner.  Tabbris.  There were three angels who fell from Heaven to reign over the underworld.  The hall in the tower was created for him but he hated being in the underworld and wanted to go back home.  No one liked him and he didn't trust anyone, so he installed the mirrors so that he could thwart the attacks on him and see his enemies coming for his back.  My simple thought of my heroine residing in the Hall of Mirrors turned into a much more interesting and elaborate story after many rewrites and additional ideas.  Mind you, that's only a fraction of the story, more of a side note, but it I had published my story after my original thought, it would have been very two dimensional.  I managed to create two entirely new characters because I had a simple thought of, who owned a hall.  Both characters have become full blown leads and are heavily featured throughout the series...oh and one of them is dead.

In the end, no matter how brilliant our idea is, there is always room to make it exceptional.  I find that it helps me to read and reread and read again so that I can fill in the spaces within the story and build something that is more interesting and detailed.  I also find it helpful to talk through some of my ideas with people I know so that I can get their perspective and see if it makes sense.  Often one of them will find a problem with my logic or train of thought and I will have to made adjustments.  If you don't go back and read what you have written, you will never go forward and finish your amazing story.

Writing Characters That You Connect With

It's sometimes hard to create an entire cast of characters from scratch.  It may seem daunting but if you want your book to be interesting, then you need to have a great plot, descriptive landscapes, imaginative worlds and above all, interesting characters.  If the characters are two dimensional and bland then people won't want to read past the first chapter.  So how does someone write a character that is interesting?  I find that the more I can connect to a character the more emotional I am and the more realistic the character becomes.  Once I have the idea for a character and have some kind of connection, (i.e. I like them, hate them, want to kill them, or want to love them) I have an easier time describing them and coming up with their dialogue.  When a character is fully realized, they can practically write themselves.

Let's say, for example, you have a guy, dressed in a suit, holding a gun.  It's clique in our violence saturated movie and TV worlds but it's still someone people like to see or read about.  So we take our simple guy in suit, holding a gun, and we decide, is he a good guy or a bad guy?  Well go with the choose your own adventure method and go with good guy.  (Well like good guys when they are armed.)  So we have a good guy with a gun.  Why is he wearing a suit?  Businessman...presuming it's a normal work suit, bodyguard...presuming he looks like Jason Statham, FBI...we'll assume it's off the rack, former gangster...if it's seriously pinstriped.  Let's go with former gangster.  Having once been a gangster gives him an edge over most of the other suits.  So we have a former gangster with a gun.  Why is he holding the gun?  He's facing off against his former associates?  Someone is trying to rob him?  The FBI doesn't believe that he has really left the mob?  Let's go with that.  So our former gangster is being hunted by the FBI because they believe he is still the bad guy.  Well go with gun stand off with the FBI as the reason for the gun.  Next, will he shoot?  Probably not since he is now the good guy, though he could shoot at something harmless like the tires of the cop car or avoid the fatal shot and wing someone to delay the FBI's pursuit. 

Okay, so our former gangster turned good guy has a shoot out with the FBI who are hunting him down for his involvement with the mobsters.  He grazes someone with a bullet and blows out the tires of the car.  Now, why did he leave the mob?  He was tired of the drugs, the backdoor deals, killing?  Did they threaten his family?  Did he simply take the money and run so that he could start a better life?  Let's go with threaten his family and being tired...we can mix and match.  So his mob boss questions his loyalty and kidnaps his young daughter to scare him and prove to him that they can get to him through her.  This now gives our character a wealth of emotions to play off of.  His daughter is being held hostage and instead of giving into the demands of the mobsters, our hero decides he is tired of the lifestyle and wants a better live for his family.  Now he can play off of fear...losing daughter because the mobster could easily kill her...anger...that's easy enough...love...he shows he loves his daughter during a tear jerking moment when the mobster puts a gun to her head....vengeance...he swears that he will hunt them down for killing her.  Not exactly noble..but he has that edge to him since he was once a bad guy, it makes him unpredictable.  Will he kill everyone in the end, or will he lead the FBI right to the doorstep of the mob?  You decide.

As you can see, we took a simple two dimensional idea of a guy in a suit, with a gun and gave him a reason, motivation, emotion and detail.  We could give a whole background of having a terrible childhood which caused him to become involved with the mob.  He could find an amazing woman who shows him how to love and gives him the strength to leave his life of crime behind.  Now it becomes a romance.  The more you put into your characters, without flooding them, the more your readers will find a reason to like them and cheer for them.

Why Write Romance?

While most people wouldn't bat an eye lash over someone writing a paranormal novel given the popularity of scary monsters and sexy vampires in our culture, many of them will raise an eye brow, or two when you tell them that you are writing a romance novel.  I get many interesting responses when I decide to share my secret with people that I know.  The responses range from interest and questions, to, "oh, that's nice", while changing the subject.  Others just don't quite know what to say.  The funny thing is, we are all adults and it's obvious that they enjoy intimacy with their spouses, yet it's still considered risque to talk about.  I try to limit my conversations when people hear that I am writing a book series and keep it vague on purpose.  Wouldn't want to offend anyone.  That isn't certainly is the kind of person I'm writing for anyway.  I am writing for the people who need a little kick start in their day who, even if they have intimacy, may enjoy hearing from someone else about their different experiences with relationships.  I know I do.

I didn't start reading romance novels, or even books, until I decided to read Twilight.  Before that I was more of a movie person, despite being an English major and writing for fun in my spare time when I was younger.  I always like vampires, so don't think Twilight turned me on to the paranormal, I have always been interested in the strange stuff.  But once I read Twilight, I realized that I could read for enjoyment instead of the books that I hated reading for English classes.  Much like me telling my son to write about things that interest him and blowing his mind, this book showed me that I could care about a character I had never seen in a movie (obviously I read it before the movie came out) and could make a connection to.  Up to that point in my life I had read Shakespeare, which was interesting, and some other books that were okay, but the majority of them were classics like Paradise Lost, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Tom Sawyer, The Yearling, The House of the Seven Gables, 1985, Brave New World, and the like.  While I could relate to some of the Shakespeare characters, as a kid I had trouble relating to fawns, kids from Missouri painting fences, futuristic government controlled worlds, new civilizations, odd mind altering drugs in a supposed Utopian society vs savage worlds and a house that had seven gables (my English teacher that year, God rest her soul, was terrible at teaching House of the Seven Gables and combined two different characters into one...Malborne Holgrave...even after being told by my one friend who had read the book, that she was making a mistake...so I only remember that much about the book).  My mind was had always been dark and has always sought out disturbing and dangerous characters.  Kids from Missouri who paint fences may have been real trouble makers at the time, but are not what I would consider dangerous.  Being a goody two shoes my whole life and having suffered from some seriously disturbing life altering situations, I tended to seek out the darkness to appease the side of me that was angry and frustrated with my life since I couldn't change it.  I channeled all my rage into the evil side of the stories.  I cheered for Maleficent when she turned into a dragon.  I wanted Keifer's vampire to win.  I would have been chosen for Slytherin.  So I had trouble finding my niche when it came to stories.

When I found Edward Cullen and his sullen life, I became addicted to him.  In my head, I removed his in action and recreated him into someone who had the best of both worlds.  He could kill with his teeth, yet he still got the girl.  In many senses I made him my own, just like most of the world.  What I was surprised to find was that I enjoyed the intimate moments that he shared with Bella.  Because of his raw power and killing potential, he had to force back his dark side and make himself kinder for her.  In many ways, I felt the same way.  I had to curb my anger and hatred and become kinder if I wanted my relationships to work out.  It was because of Edward that I remembered what it was like to want intimacy.  I had been going through a hard time in my life and I forgotten how to connect to people because of my pain.  <3 were having trouble talking to each other and remembering why weren't close anymore.  Edward unlocked some of the feelings that I kept hidden like, desire and love and kindness and compassion.  When people are in turmoil, they seal off the parts of themselves that can be hurt, to save themselves, and only show people what will keep their enemies at bay.  We snarl and growl to keep people away and protect ourselves.  Edward showed me how defensive and cold I had become.  In short, Edward helped me remember my softer side.  Ironic that a vampire, the creature I had turn to when I was angry with the world, could help me open up and discover what I was holding back.

After Edward, I wanted to find other books that would help to chisel away the ice inside of me.  I needed something to restart the fire and passion within me that I had buried.  My outer shell was too tough for anyone to get through so I needed to crack through it myself to be able to reach out to people. They certainly weren't getting in, so I had to get out.  I went to Barnes and Nobles and wandered into the taboo Romance section and was embarrassed at first.  What if someone saw the me there, oh no?  I picked up a novel and took it home and read it.  While the genre wasn't right, the cover had mislead me, I did find a little of what I was looking for.  I got to read about an impossible relationship and how the characters were attracted to each other and compatible, yet had to overcome great adversity to be together.  That was exactly how I felt.  Once I found the right genre, I made the connection complete.  I read about vampires who's emotions were locked away since they were warriors and how they found someone who made them want to change.  I read about how they learned how to love someone and be intimate.  Ultimately it helped me on many levels.  I found my passionate side, which is always fun.  But I also learned to how to trust someone.  I had to learn that it was okay for me to give a part of myself to them for safe keeping.  I didn't have to keep this wall around me to protect myself, even though I was already sharing my life with someone.  It taught me to rely on someone else for emotional support.  It showed me that I don't have to be an island onto myself.  For the first I trusted someone enough to be intimate.  So I fell in love with the genre.

My heroine was locked in Hell for years and years before I allowed to her to return to the human world.  In Hell she had been miserable, wandering around lost and insecure.  She feared everything and never grew up.  After years of holding her hostage, I finally let her interact with people.  That's when she found her romance.  Orginally, I came up with different men for her to deal with and learn from.  Over time she developed relationships with them.  That's when my story started to write itself.  Granted, as I've said, the characters in my head for 16 years aren't exactly the characters that I'm writing now, but the characters now have more substance to them.  When I started envisioning the men in her life, it was because they were cute or friendly, but once I started writing them, they took on problems and issues of their own.  In writing about her getting through to her men, I realized that I am writing about people getting through my own wall.  I have been able to throw all of my pain and experiences into my characters so that they can hold onto the pain for me and I can breath again. 

So when I write about romance, it isn't just about the intimacy between the characters, it'ss more about how they got to that point and what is going on in the moment.  They are allowing themselves to trust someone for the first time.  They are finding out that it's okay to have love and be loved.  That no matter what they did up to this point, they still deserve to be happy.  Most romance novels have that message at its core.  Unfortunately most people can't see past the bedroom moments to dig deeper into the message leading up to and following the bedroom scene.  I have cried more at my romance novels than I have from any of the books I read in High School or College and I think that's a good thing.  If you cry, that means you are connecting to something, whether good or bad.  While I may have cried with the deer died, it wasn't as gut wrenching as having a hardened man who had endured years of abuse finally embrace someone and tell them that they love them.  It gets my every time because it gives me hope.  At least they could eat the deer to survive if they needed to.