Getting Inside Your Character's Skin by Betsy Ashton

Any of you who have read my work know I love writing in the first person singular. Why? Because I can get deeply inside a character and gaze out through her eyes. I can say "her," because so far all of my first-person works have had female main characters. I really like the narrowed lens of a singular point of view. I don't want to know more about what's going on beyond what my character sees, feels, smells, etc.

I've stayed with one character for a three-book series, the Mad Max Mystery series. Max is a grandmother, a youngish grandmother. She's smart, rich, sexy, and snarky when she needs to be. She's strong minded and strong willed, a force of nature not to be messed with, particularly when it comes to her family, extended and nuclear. She can go from mild-mannered to tiger mom in 3.5 seconds flat.

Max is as familiar to me as my own husband. I know what she thinks (not the I ever really know what my husband is thinking). I know what she carries in her Jimmy Choo handbag. I know what she keeps on her bedside table, on her bureau, in her medicine cabinet. I know what caliber of gun she carries.

Writing Max is as comfortable as sliding into a favorite bathrobe and pair of bunny slippers, until she does something that surprises me. As I said, writing from inside her head leads me places I hadn't anticipated. I can put her in a situation and get out of her way. Readers seem to like her, so I continue.

On a challenge, actually a dog-dog dare, I decided to leave the Max comfort zone and delve into the dark realities of a psychopath. At least, I think That Thing is a psychopath. She's not sure, and since she tells her own story in EYES WITHOUT A FACE, who am I to argue.

I had to do a ton of research into various personality disorders. She could have been a sociopath or a psychopath, except she denies she's either. She is a narcissist, because she thinks only she can get revenge for people who are victimized and can't stand up for themselves. She hates people who prey on the weak, women, children, the elderly. A compendium of our society. She thinks she's the only one who can get rid of the perpetrators, because justice is too slow for her liking. She might be a vigilante. She might not.

That Thing doesn't want you to put her in any kind of box, with or without bars. She refuses categorization. She acts with conviction and with a range of poisons, knives, and ice picks. She doesn't use guns. Too noisy. Harder to kill up close and personal. No exploding heads, either. Her kills are tidier.

How hard was it to write Mad Max and That Thing concurrently? Damned hard. One was easier. I took a break from dark personality disorders, until Max had to deal with a demented, delusional villain in UNSAFE HAVEN. Then, the personalities merged.

I've heard from readers of both books. They say I scared them with That Thing. Good. That means they got into the story and into her rationale. What they didn't like was rooting for the "bad guy." Actually rooted for That Thing.

Thank you. You got the book.

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Betsy Ashton is the author of the Mad Max Mystery series. Her stand-alone serial killer novel, EYES WITHOUT A FACE, is a departure from her normal fare.

Promiscuous Point of View by Alison Henderson

No, I don't mean your heroine is a shameless tart. I'm talking about frequent, almost random head-hopping in fiction. After having been schooled in the highly-focused point of view promoted in modern romance fiction, I thought head-hopping was a thing of the past. Oh, no; not so!

For the past couple of months, I've been doing most my leisure reading outside our genre. I think it's healthy for a writer to expand her exposure beyond her own genre, but also--and there's no gentle way to put this--I'm bored with romance. 

First, I chose a contemporary village mystery set in Quebec. I enjoyed the setting,exotic but not too much so, and the plot was sufficiently intricate to keep me guessing. However, the author made a habit of popping in and out of characters' points of view for a paragraph or two here and there. And these weren't just the major characters, either. There was a large cast of characters, and nearly every one managed to score a brief place in the sun. By the time I was half-way through the book, my head was spinning. To be fair, this was the author's first book, written a number of years ago. She's become very successful, and I need to read a more recent volume in the series to see if she's still doing it.

My most recent read was a VERY long literary novel written by a well-known and well-regarded Minnesota author that followed the life of an ordinary woman in a small town in Minnesota from the turn of the twentieth century through the nineteen fifties. To my amazement, this author did the same thing--giving a POV paragraph to whichever of the umpteen characters struck her fancy, seemingly willy-nilly. This woman has also been writing for many years and has won a number of awards.

When I first started writing twenty-seven years ago, the issue of POV was largely ignored in popular fiction and certainly in romance. Nora Roberts ignored it, so I ignored it, too. I wrote intuitively; I wrote what I read. It was only after joining RWA and my first critique group in the mid-nineties that I was introduced to the term. I will always be grateful to the leader of that group, who patiently explained and corrected my manuscript until I figured it out.

Most romance writers these days employ deep, third-person POV because it is best for conveying characters' feelings, and that's what we strive to do. Neither of the books I mentioned above focused on feelings, but that's the primary reason our readers buy our books. I know that even if I decide in the future to experiment with other genres, I'll stick to limited, deep POV. I can't imagine writing any other way.

I wonder if the successful authors I mentioned write the way they do because they've always written that way and their editors don't try to change them, or if POV isn't important in other genres the way it is in romance. What is your experience reading outside our genre? Do you think POV matters, or is it merely a stylistic technicality we get wrapped up in when we should be concentrating on the meat of a story?

Alison
www.alisonhenderson.com 

Professor Russo Was Right by Vonnie Davis

Most of you know I didn't start college until I was forty-four. I was in a deep depression over my divorce and dealing with an empty nest with my daughter married and living in another state and my two sons in college. Then my older son talked me into going to college. "Please, Mom, you've got to do something with yourself. Take a creative writing course or something!" Well, I've never been one to do things halfway, so I enrolled as a fulltime student, which meant I worked fulltime at night, attended classes during the day and slept whenever I could. It was marvelous!

I qualified for Honor's English and Professor Russo impressed upon us to "know our audience." She claimed we wouldn't know how to write if we didn't have a solid grasp of WHOM we were writing for. One writes differently for a data-hungry, scientific community, for example, than one would for fantasy enthusiasts where the author must do extensive world building.

As romance writers, we get that. Let's take description, for example. Any time we write outside the average reader's frame of reference in, say, historical or paranormal sub-genres, description becomes more important. Because we are removing our readers from their known world to another.

But there are other factors to consider in identifying our readers. An important one is AGE.

I recently saw on a show similar to "Sixty Minutes," if it wasn't that show itself, that the Millennials now command a larger market share Baby Boomers. Stores and businesses are now targeting the greenbacks these thirty to forty somethings hold in their young wrinkle-free hands. Well, that makes sense, doesn't it? Business is business.

Now, let me lead you farther on that same thought trail--

I've been concerned about my book sales. While better than they've ever been, they still aren't what I'd call fantastic. I did make the Amazon's Best Seller list for three whole hours, but that accomplishment like a butterfly quickly flitted away. So I emailed my editor at Random House and laid out my concerns. Were there any weaknesses in my writing she was seeing? How could I improve so I could up my sales rankings?  

She assured me it wasn't me. "It's the crazy market," she said. "We've been on this pleasing the Millennials trajectory for the past couple years. Our stories need to be more character driven and less plot driven." Then she told me something I thought I'd never hear an editor say. "Vonnie, you need to dumb down your writing."

WHAT?

"Why do you think I had you rewrite the final half of your last book? While there was technically nothing wrong with it, the plot was too heavy. The readers wouldn't have gotten it."

Okay, so maybe describing how a SEAL planted explosives so the building would implode instead of explode was a little too intricate...or how snipers scrambled onto roofs...or wound care was given to a SEAL while on a flying helicopter could be construed as heavy stuff. But had the reader seen it in a move, they'd have gotten it. I hadn't written rocket science. I'd written suspense.

My editor didn't stop there with her wounding. "You also take the reader into deep point of view which is fine for the older reader, the baby boomer generation. The millennials don't like it. They want you to tell them how to feel. It's okay for you to write I felt angry or I felt hurt."

I nearly toppled out of my chair!

My editor's remarks took me back to Professor Russo's class at Penn State. Know your audience. Silly me, I thought romance readers were alike everywhere. Granted we all have our preferences. Regency over paranormal, perhaps. Or sweet romances over erotic. I get that. It's a matter of personal taste. But to have writing rules change by an age group is ... Just. Too. Much.

I've worked extremely hard to learn point of view, to become familiar with all the powerful nuances of it to gloss over it now. My editor gave me the link to a book to read and study--the second book of The Cocky Bastards series. Since it's the book all the pubs in NYC are raving about--dear Lord, what are they drinking up there???--she was sure my reading this book that was holding Amazon's top rankings would help me. She wanted me to understand what constituted a character driven story. Heck, I thought I already knew. *shakes head in shame*

The plot was mainly how could this billionaire, who yells at his employees so badly, he's had 74 secretaries in 4 years, wants to get into the heroine's pants. He never struck me as the "hero" type. It was character driven, I'll give it that. Their initial banter was fun; their comedic timing, perfect. But halfway through the book, the ballsy, comical heroine I liked turned into an insecure, whiny woman. The hero allowed his ex-fiancé to run his life because of a secret child. He practically became the "ex's" slave. So, the character arc for both the heroine and hero was skewed in a different direction--instead of growing into better people, they'd morphed into two weakened unlikable souls. The book had two authors and it was quite evident where one stopped and the other writer took over. 

My editor is calling me this afternoon to discuss my next series. I have no clue what to write about. I've got nothing to propose. She claims she has some ideas for me. I'm asking her point blank who she's expecting me to write for--the ones who understand romance or the ones I have to tell how to feel. Because I'm not dummying down anything. Reading is supposed to help you learn. That's why we do meticulous research. With the thin plots I'm seeing, no one researches. There's simply no need.

Forgive my long rant, ladies. I'm provoked and shocked and, yes dammit, disheartened. I don't dummy down. It. Just. Ain't. Happening.

Falling Into Like With A Place

by Betsy Ashton

In the beginning of a new series, several different things have to come together. First the story needs a strong main character. Next it needs a plot with conflict. Third it has to have interesting secondary characters. And fourth, but not last, the story must move the reader toward the conclusion.

Those who've read my current book know that I like opinionated, often snarky, women as main characters. This WIP has an alpha male at center stage. He's not a chest pounding, knuckle dragging, hard drinking Federal law enforcement officer. He's a widower with a four-year-old daughter and a sister who lives with him to help take care of the child. Because he works for the government, he's often moved around for different assignments. His new challenge is to lead a law enforcement team requiring coordination among several state, local and Federal agencies. Therein lies part of the plot and the conflict.

This male is also a stranger in a strange land. His current transfer is from his home in Northern California to a mid-Southern city. He knows virtually nothing about his new city. He is also a minority in a place where his ethnicity is unusual. He looks at the people on the streets, in the markets, at public events and finds little that is familiar. (No, he's not from a foreign planet, but he might as well be. Few of his "people" make this city their home.) He has to learn not to gawk at people. Conflict #2: How does he help his daughter and sister fit into school and neighborhood when no one looks like them?

Daughter and sister are part of the supporting cast of characters. Their feelings about being uprooted, about losing a mother and sister-in-law, about looking different and about having different accents work to give them depth. Throw in local law enforcement officers at the state and local level, add a couple of Federal agents from other task forces. Stir.

Put these folks in peril from the bad guys. Stir again.

What do you think? Would you read something like this?

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Betsy Ashton is the author of Mad Max Unintended Consequences available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. The second book in the series, Uncharted Territory, will be released in June 2015. She lives for words and writing.

Her Lilac Blouse Matched the Color of Her Eyes --- MY FOOT!

By Andrea Boeshaar

Ah, the male mind. What woman can truly comprehend its complexity? As an author of romance, I certainly try – quite a feat.

For instance, I would once describe, in great length, a woman’s attire as she strode into a room and the handsome, alpha hero got his first glimpse of her. I wrote from the male POV (point of view) and I’ve since learned that he wouldn’t likely notice how her lilac-colored blouse complimented the hue of her violet-blue eyes.

Some men might, yes. But most men – particularly alpha heroes – would not.

To illustrate this point, I conducted my own personal survey. That’s right. I emailed my grown sons. I asked them if, the first time they saw their significant others, they noticed the outfits the young women wore (color of shirt, slacks/jeans, etc). My sons’ replies are as follows:

“Mom, are you kidding me?”

“Mom, is this for one of your books?”

After I replied that yes, it was, a second reply was not forthcoming.

“You don’t want to know what we noticed, Mom. We’re dudes, ok?”

Ok! So much for the lilac-colored blouse…

Of course, I recall what my sons’ girlfriends wore when I first met them. One gal was in Army fatigues as she and my son had just come from their 1 weekend a month duty. Another was casual, wearing jeans and a tee shirt. Another had on a cute jumper and had her hair all curled.

But, realize this: I was “the mom” checking them out – and I’m a writer who is trained to notice details.

The average guy is not.

Regardless,
I went ahead with my survey anyway and asked my husband.

“I noticed your smile,” he said.

At last! A more sensitive guy.

“And those cute, white painter’s pants you used to wear, remember?”

I did.

“But it was your smile I noticed first. Definitely your smile.”

My husband went on to add that he would never describe a lady’s blouse as “lilac.” To him it would be either blue or purple. And he probably wouldn’t even notice a woman’s attire at all, unless it was outrageous or, at least, out of the ordinary.

My survey now complete, I scanned my results and decided that when writing from the male hero’s point of view, it’s best not to overly describe women’s wear and their accessories. A man may very well notice a woman’s tight-fitting jeans or that her sweater looks two sizes too small. But he most likely wouldn’t be aware of colors or whether the sweater had a lovely lace inset around the neckline.

I’m sure you get my point. When we, as authors, have to create a hero and write from his POV, then we  have to step over the line and cross into the dark side – into the male mind!