lori sizemore

An excellent article on how to create a set of rules for what’s selling and, more importantly, what you like reading in your romance novels.  It makes it a lot easier to know what to write when you know what you like.

But I needed help—some guidelines when it came to spinning a story that was right for the market.

And that’s when I realized I should turn to the bible. No, I wasn’t getting religious. This was all about research and the creation of my own bible—a set of rules to follow and requirements to incorporate. This was all about identifying the sort of things that had to appear in a book.

I’m not merely talking about love scenes. I’m talking about lifestyles, backgrounds of characters, how to get to that happily ever after at the end of the book, and a myriad of other elements.

How to Dissect Romance Novels and Create Rules for Writing.

So I’m a third to a half of the way through my manuscript and oh. my. God.

I knew the beginning.  I had so much to write, to get all these threads and storylines moving.  I had to write and then condense and rewrite just to make sure I could get in everything important without rambling.  And then I get to this point and I’ve got nothing.  What comes next?  I sort of know the ending, though not the specifics, so where do I go from here?  Some ideas.

1. A preset time (say, 30 minutes) of freewriting, preferably with a program that pushes you to just keep writing, like Write or Die.
2. Use note cards to just jot down scenes or even ideas and then piece them into order.  Great advice from Johanna Harness on her magic note cards.
3. Use these 4 tips from Writer’s Digest to tame your ideas.

Don’t worry about failing. Be fearless about taming your best ideas, and about tossing out those that don’t fit your model. Choose paths that illuminate your own unique take on the world.

Most importantly, don’t give up! The middle is supposed to be hard, the whole writing process can be hard.  Don’t let that make you think you don’t have what it takes to be a writer.

I know, subtle title, right?  So, I’m revising because I realized I need more sexual chemistry.  And how do I get that?  Subtle sensuality.

It’s not that I’m an idiot when it comes to writing the sex.  Some people have told me I’m quite adept at it.  It’s just that, sometimes, when you’re trying to get a hundred other things right, like plot and characters and goals and motivation–you get it, it’s easy to forget that people who just jump into bed aren’t sexy.

I started thinking about personal space.  I’m married with kids, so people are in my space all the time.  We hug, we kiss good night, we hold hands.  I forgot, for a moment, how sexy personal space could be.  Because letting someone in your personal space, or someone pushing past that bubble, is incredibly intimate.  A touch on the hand, a massage, a hand brushing the thigh–tell me that couldn’t send your blood pressure through the roof with the right person.  So, I’m focusing on showing sexual chemistry and attraction by showing that secret, tingly sharing of personal space and putting off the payoff as loooooong as possible.  I’ll let you know how it goes.  Maybe even posting a sampling.

Love scenes are not all about the physical act, they are more about the characters and the story. What happens to change them and advance the plot?

via Writing the Love Scene in Fiction Stories: How to Add Heat to Romance Novels without Turning the Reader Off.

Writer’s Digest is studying the romance novel today (and giving you a bit of a glimpse into the book I’m currently reading, On Writing Romance: How to Craft a Novel That Sells by Leigh Michaels).

I say: If you’re not a beginner, the first 85 pages are full of info you’ve heard before.  But then, it’s writing gold.  Give it a shot.

My favorite, the real “formula” of a romance:

What romance novels have in common is this: A romance novel is the story of a man and a woman who, while they’re solving a problem that threatens to keep them apart, discover that the love they feel for each other is the sort that comes along only once in a lifetime; this discovery leads to a permanent commitment and a happy ending.

via Writer’s Digest – Studying the Romance Novel.

One of the few things I know about writing is this: Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book, give it, give it all, give it now.

ANNIE DILLARD

via AdviceToWriters – Encouragement.

Writing is entirely too hard to not take seriously.  Like the decision to go on living, the decision to decide between life and quality of life, writing is a choice.  It’s not something we’re called to (though it may call to us, like the siren); it’s not something you do halfway, because maybe you can make it.  You commit to it, the way you commit to a career, to a marriage, to having children.  Because once it gets into your blood, there’s no quitting.

Is writing fun?  All too rarely.  It can be thrilling, heartachingly frustrating, gut check time, and some of the highest elation you’ll know.  But it’s not for fun.  It’s for real.  It’s for grown ups.  It’s for those of us who don’t consider life lived if it doesn’t include writing.

I’ve written it before–if you can quit, you should.  It’s just too damned hard.  But, if you can’t, come sit by me.  Let’s share our heartbreaks and successes.  Let’s cheer for one another and mourn for one another and, most importantly, brainstorm for one another.  Let’s inspire one another, knowing at least someone else has been there already and survived it.  Let’s share motivational quotes and pat each other on the back.

• Try this: #amwriting guidelnes.  And big thanks to Johanna Harness for bringing us together.

If you are writing and feel alone, I strongly suggest you join twitter, (add me, because I love following fellow writers and promise to follow you right back), and start joining the #amwriting movement.

It’s a job. It’s not a hobby. You don’t write the way you build a model airplane. You have to sit down and work, to schedule your time and stick to it. Even if it’s just for an hour or so each day, you have to get a babysitter and make the time. If you’re going to make writing succeed you have to approach it as a job.

ROSELLEN BROWN

via AdviceToWriters – Home – You Have to Sit Down and Work.

Do not pay any attention to the rules other people make…. They make them for their own protection, and to Hell with them.

WILLIAM SAROYAN

via AdviceToWriters – Rules and Commandments.

I want to land an agent and be published, you want to land an agent and be published.  I scream, you scream, we all scream for representation.

Rejection is simply part of the process of being a writer.  It stings, it’s hard to get past.  But what’s the other choice?  Quit?  If that’s an option for you, then it’s probably the best course of action. Most of us, though, can’t imagine a life that doesn’t involve writing.  So, it’s not that quitting isn’t an option in the “I’m too tough to quit” way, it’s that it’s not an option, period.

But what should you do?  When do you take it to heart, when do you wonder if it’s you or them, when do you make (God help us) more changes to your MS?

1. If you’re not getting any requests for fulls or partials, work on your query and synopsis.  You’ve got a solid story, but if no one thinks it’s “right” for them, then you’re missing something.  Start there.  Send it to a crit group.  Do research on query letter and synopsis writing.
2. If you get a request and you still get a generic no, go directly to beta readers, crit group, or crit partners.  Explore everything to see if you can make your story stronger.  But stand by your story.  If you know that’s how it was meant to be written, believe in yourself.  There’s a middle line.
3. If you get a rejection with feedback, by all means, consider it strongly.  But not too strongly.  Take a step back.  Read your story.  Can you see where the feedback can be coming from?  Again, go to the betas and critique sources.  Evaluate.  Stand by your story.  It’s the same idea, but this time, you at least have something specific to look for.
4. Most importantly, don’t give up.  Ever.

All this to say, don’t resent the challenge. Stop complaining about how difficult it is. Nobody cares.

via So You Can’t Seem to Land an Agent—Now What?.

Excellent article about how to plot your novel so the reader can’t put it down.  Also, will explain what an “HCM” is.

Today’s best novels make readers so desperate to know what happens next that they’ll stay up reading well past midnight, blistering thumbs and all, until THE END. Then and only then will they be able to relax, their souls flooded with satisfaction, relief and peace. Only to be followed—ideally!—by a gnawing sense of unfulfillment, anxiety and a compulsion to read more books by you.

via Writer’s Digest – How to Make Your Novel a Page Turner.

Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depth of your heart; confess to yourself you would have to die if you were forbidden to write. ~Rainer Maria Rilke

via Writing Quotes, Sayings about Writers, Quotations about Words.

Writing makes me crazy.  One minute I feel heady and at the top of my game and the next I feel like the worst writer ever, ever in the history of ever.  There are days that I can’t stop writing, even if I wanted to, and the story just keeps coming.  (I call this writer crack–no better feeling).  On other days, I stare in desperation at the screen or my notes and will something, anything to come.  And if I get a hundred words down, I’m grateful.

Writing is all that, but I could never not write.  Writing brings me so much emotion and joy, it makes me feel alive and real, it makes me feel like I have something to say and that something matters.  It’s my passion, and I love sharing it with others, talking about it, learning it.  I give hours of my day–I sacrifice time I could be doing other things, but it calls to me.  This matters, it says.

And the thing I find most amazing about writing is that not only are those feelings of elation and frustration universal to writers, so is the deep passion for the craft.  And in that way, those of us who often can’t venture out easily, who prefer living inside our own skulls, we can connect.  And we just get it.  Ah, you’re a writer.