  Romance/Love
This week: Bertrice Small Edited by: ember_rain
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I write romance because I have no choice. I dreamed about the love of my life as a young child. His eyes were always what woke me up from nightmares when I was little. Not that he was there but that all my nightmares ended with the last thing I saw were his eyes and heard him say, "Sssshh, It's just a bad dream." Then I would wake up expecting to see him. He was never there. Until one night when I fell asleep on the couch waiting for my date to show up.
He didn't stand me up. He did call to say his mother needed his help after work so we would have to go to the late movie. When he came in everyone else in the house was off doing their own thing and I was having a nightmare. I woke this time to the eyes and voice I usually dreamed about but this time, they were real. He and I have been married 25 years and together 27. We have 6 kids and despite what all the experts say we spend all of our non-working time together. I can't think of anyone I would rather spend time with. He is my best friend.
So you can expect that my newsletters will be sappy. They will be very, "Princess Bride" except when they aren't. He is my worst enemy too. I love to hate him as much as I love to love him. So buckle up you never know where my mood will take us as we explore the world of Rmance. |
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Let's talk Bertrice Small. She has been around for a long time and she is a best-selling romance novelist. She is also the first writer to ever make me throw a book across the room in frustration. I had to read her books in short bursts instead of all the way through as I could with so many other books. The book I threw across the room...A Moment In Time. I read it till it fell apart. I mean pages falling out, binding broken and the cover missing. I read it until it pretty much disintegrated in my hands.
I wasn't just studying it because it was a romance that had substance and didn't feel like a formula. I was reading it because I loved it.... and hated it. How in the world did she make me want to strangle her for being so mean to her characters? Was she really a sadist at heart? Is that what you have to be to be a good writer? I didn't want to believe it. I still don't... want to believe it. She did what I couldn't do then and still struggle with now. She put her female lead through hell so that she could bring her back from it.
It is a past life kinda story that starts off in one life, moves to an earlier life where she tortures people then moves forward in time to a completely different life where they are able to get it right. She didn't just give us boy meets girl, something stops them from being together, they come back together, then are pulled apart again until finally, they get together. You know the classic Romance "Formula". Then again that is exactly what she did.
But, she gave us characters we could root for though I must admit there were times when I hated Madoc, the main male character. I didn't think he deserved Wynne and I don't know that I have completely changed my mind about that. Though she tortured poor Wynne it wasn't without purpose. It all came together to show you how everything fit and ultimately made sense in the end. Though I would call this novel a fantasy-gothic romance, not a historical one. She pulled it together so well. I used it as a study guide on how to develop characters.
So what is wrong with Bertrice Small? Well, to be honest, I got so caught up in vampires, werewolves, and dragons, I really haven't read any of her stuff from this century. She may have improved on this. She may not have but at least for her earlier works, she was really bad about giving us too much detail.
She and J.K Rowlings have a lot in common. The most boring part of Harry Potter was the banquet scene. Describing every single detail not only of the food but the room and leaving nothing to the reader's imaginations can really drag down a scene.They both forgot a simple rule: The devil is in the details, both those you leave in and those you take out. Strategic elimination of info that doesn't really further your story and instead bogs it down is one of the biggest favors you can do for your readers. It's also one of the best things you can do for yourself.
Readers today don't have the attention spans they used to. You have to catch them at the start of each chapter, hold them through to the end of the chapter then hook them again to get them to go to the next chapter. If you learn nothing else about writing learn that. You are pulling threads and weaving them together into a literary tapestry. Too many colors and the tapestry loses its continuity. Not enough colors or threads and it falls apart before you get to the end. The challenge of every writer regardless of genre is to find the right balance. |
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Romance/Love: February 08, 2017 Issue [#8115]
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