Plotting

I feel like I should be rubbing my hands, going, "Bwa ha ha ha ha!" at regular intervals when I say that I'm plotting. And in many ways, planning a romance is a bit like being an evil mastermind. I take two lovely characters, ask myself what's the worst possible thing I could do to them, then go ahead and do it. And like an evil mastermind, I have enormous fun watching them suffer :)

Anyway. Progress report: I've got a feel for my hero and heroine now. It took me a long time to get to grips with my hero. Then a single phrase jumped into my head while I was out on a walk and it immediately showed me his internal conflicts and the turning point of the story. I even managed to write it down before I forgot!

I finished the outline today. Now it's time to start the first draft. I'm setting myself a low target of 800 words per day, because I've got other writing projects I'm working on at the same time. With a target of 70 000 words, that brings me to the end of October. It seems like ages away, but I bet it speeds past.

Typical...

I'm going on holiday to Prague on Tuesday, so of course my body decides that now would be a good time to catch a stinker of a cold :( On the upside, it's a good excuse for eating ice cream (to soothe my sore throat) and watch dvds.

 A couple of years ago I bought the complete series of a BBC adaptation of Dorothy L Sayers' Lord Peter Wimsey mysteries and I've been working my way through those again. As a writer and reader of romance, I suppose it comes as no surprise that what I love best about Dorothy L Sayers' books is the relationship between Lord Peter and Harriet Vane. And what's struck me, watching the dvds this time, is how much she has to teach a budding romance novelist on the importance of internal conflict. Of course, being crime stories, there's plenty of external conflict in her books to keep the lovers apart - the little matter of Harriet Vane being in gaol on a murder charge for starters - but what really keeps them from each other's arms is the multi-layered internal conflict. Right from the start you can see they are perfect for each other, but Harriet pushes Peter away owing to a crippling inferiority complex: the fact that he's cleared her name and saved her from the gallows means that she'll always feel beholden to him, and that is not a sound foundation for an equal partnership. The fact that Sayers manages to sustain the tension for three books (Strong Poison, Have His Carcase and Gaudy Night) shows just what a master she is at her craft. It just goes to show you don't have to stick with reading romances to learn how to write one :)