On Monday, we talked about the draw of uncertainty in romance. There needs to be an element of uncertainty or conflict between the hero and heroine of a romance for readers to be truly vested and interested in the outcome. Predictability is anathema to a story question.

But sometimes, there isn’t conflict between our leads. Sometimes, the romance between them blossoms and grows without too many problems. I think the potential problem here is obvious—even the description sounds boring.

When the course of true love actually does run smooth, we still need conflict. External conflict is good—but if the story is, at its heart, a romance (or possibly a romance hybrid, like romantic suspense), that external conflict really should impact the developing relationship in some way.

Rather than continuing to speak in the abstract, let’s get concrete. A story where Lucy meets Gary, they fall in love and live happily ever after doesn’t sound compelling. Monday, our example was of Lucy meeting Gary and neither of them could tell—and perhaps weren’t sure themselves—whether they would get together, or how the other felt about him/her.

Today, our example is more along the lines of Lucy meets Gary, and Gary is a cop investigating a murder. It’s possible to write a story where the external plot basically has nothing to do with Lucy and Gary’s relationship. I wouldn’t advise that if you’re trying to write a story with the romance as a main plot. Instead, search for ways for the external plot to intersect with the romance plot.

To my mind, there are two basic categories of this intersection: where the external plot pits the hero and heroine against one another, and where the external plot simply gets in the way of their relationship.

For an example of the external plot pitting the hero against the heroine, we’ll go back to Lucy and Officer Gary. Lucy and Gary meet, and they hit it off—until Lucy has information about Gary’s homicide case that she just can’t tell him. Kaye Dacus did this subtly—the police officer hero didn’t have to directly confront the heroine he was investigating—in Love Remains. I do it in at least one of my manuscripts—the heroine has information about the criminals the hero is tracking, but she’s trying to protect him from those criminals, so she steers him away from them at every opportunity.

Alternatively, you could have the external plot simply getting in the way of their relationship. Officer Gary’s murder case interrupts Lucy and Gary’s first date. He stands her up when questioning a witness takes too long. He has to prove his commitment to the relationship by finding a balance between his work life and Lucy. (This isn’t a great example, because that’s kind of life when you’re with a cop, and PS catching a murderer is pretty important, but you get the idea.)

Finally, another way to add a level of conflict to what would be a smooth-course romance—possibly as a subset of the second type of external conflict/love story intersection—is to forbid the romance. This one is a bit harder to do in a contemporary, but many historical settings have rigid rules of fraternization and marriage. However, we can borrow a contemporary example from Shakespeare—their families are enemies, or simply do not understand one another’s cultures. Another contemporary example might be having the hero or heroine already dating someone else, especially someone close to the “real” love interest (best friend, brother, roommate, etc.).

I use this technique in a pretty specialized way in one of my manuscripts: the hero is a priest—or at least the heroine believes he is. (And yes, this is the same MS I mentioned three paragraphs ago. Seriously—read the excerpt and it’ll make more sense.)

What do you think? How do you use external conflict (or like to see it used) to add conflict between the hero and heroine in a romance?

Photo by Paul Morgan

This week: the return of Writing Wednesday!

I like reading. (Gasp! Shock!) However, I’ve become pickier and pickier in my reading. I no longer feel compelled to finish a book just because I started it. I have waaay too many books waiting that might be better to waste time slogging through something I don’t enjoy. And after all, isn’t that why I read? Because I enjoy it?*

So I really appreciate that the reading public’s eye-time is valuable, and I know that I have to do all I can to make any eye-time I get worthwhile. I’m always interested in what it is that keeps people reading, myself included. To me, characters—people I care about—and mysteries—questions the story has raised that I want to see answered—are key in getting me to read on.

The “mystery” in a romance should be fairly obvious: will they get together or won’t they? I think it can work well to have the intended couple obvious toward the beginning of the story, but sometimes, it seems like the developing romance is a foregone conclusion—even to the characters. A total lack of conflict between the couple throughout the book raises no questions in my mind about the outcome. To put it bluntly: I lose interest.

Don’t get me wrong: I don’t care for a couple that squabbles bitterly throughout a novel only to do a complete 180 in the last ten pages. I don’t hold out much hope for them. But I need to be wondering about the outcome to feel compelled to read to find out what happens.

This weekend, Livia Blackburne posted a fascinating study on uncertainty in romance: when college-aged women were shown profiles of men who’d seen and rated the women’s profiles, the women were most attracted to the men when they were not told whether the men had rated them average or highly.

The uncertainty made all the difference—the women who were told the men (imaginary, by the way) rated them highly were interested, but not as much as the uncertain women. The uncertain women also reported thinking about the men more often.

For a writer, uncertainty is a powerful tool, and not just in romance. The uncertainty in any story question is a major factor in keeping people reading, and the question of a developing relationship is the biggest draw in a romance (which, it should be noted, is heavily read by women, of course).

Sometimes, though, uncertainty isn’t as viable an option. We’ll need another source of suspense in the romance, but we’ll talk about what to do in those situation—next time (Friday, I hope).

What do you think? What keeps you reading a romance?

*Enjoying reading, to me, doesn’t mean that I have to read something less-than-serious. I enjoy “thinky literature” as well as “mindless escapist genre novels” (and there’s no condescension intended!).

Photo by Courtney Carmody

Writing Wednesday returns this . . . well, Wednesday!

Feel free to enjoy this song (which my littlest sister would call “really old”) while you read. It’s stuck in my head anyway, if you couldn’t guess from the title.

As we’re burying our clues it’s important to remember that mysteries are central to stories in every genre. As Nathan Bransford points out, mysteries are what keep us reading (emphasis mine):

When it comes to crafting a mystery, I think sometimes aspiring authors get distracted by the bodies and murders and the actual plot mechanics of mysteries, and miss what really drives a great mystery.

Mysteries are about people. And more specifically, they’re about people wanting something, whether it’s an object, person, or knowledge (see also: Do You Know What Your Characters Want?). The character wants the woman to fall in love with him or to catch the killer or find the truth about what happened. We keep reading to find out if they’re going to get it.

Here comes the word math:

A character’s desire + Consequences/stakes + Obstacles + Delay = Mystery

Getting too caught up in the clues and how exactly to bury them isn’t something we need to worry about as we’re brainstorming, outlining, or even writing our first draft. (Unless, of course, you have a brilliant idea during any of those processes—then use it!) The fine work of layering in just enough but not too many clues requires practice, patience and critique partners.

But beyond all that, we have to keep in mind that the real key to mystery, and to suspense in any story is to keep our readers guessing about whether the protagonist will get what s/he wants.

This concludes our series on clues in non mysteries!

What do you think? What are the most important elements of a mystery to you?

I’ve been wanting to do this series for a while. As proof, when I saw this article on Story as Garden on Flogging the Quill five months ago, I saved it to use in this series.

In it, Ray Rhamey describes the foreshadowing we’ve mentioned here like “seeds.” He gives a few good examples: setting up a wedding ring that will later save the protagonist’s life, or the massive fist of someone who’ll deliver the knockout punch later (and yes, both of those are literal). Seeding these dramatic turns takes them from the territory of “over the top surprise,” making the reader feel cheated, to the realm of flawless, almost magical storytelling—and, he points out, can help make seeming Deus ex machina plot twists feel, pardon the pun, organic.

This applies across all genres, he says: “A mystery writer must, of course, plant clues—interesting how even the language for doing this kind of thing is from gardening—but the rest of us need to pay attention to our seeding as well, for both action and characterization.”

But if you haven’t been leaving your clues all along, all is not lost! Ray points out that with computers, it’s really easy to go back and add little phrases, hints of backstory (or heck, even whole scenes and chapters) to build up to a new element you’ve decided to add. Here’s his example (emphasis mine):

About a third of the way into a novel, the female protagonist needs to be pulled out of a suicidal dive caused by the tragic death of her once-in-a-lifetime love. She encounters a small boy who seems to suffer from autism. She is a healer, and is sympathetic, but his condition and innocence didn’t seem like motive enough to stir her from her depression.

So what would? How about if the child reminded her in a specific, powerful way of the man she had loved and lost? So the author went back to the scene leading to her love’s death and gave him a “little-boy-lost” look that had always melted her heart. Then the narrative showed her seeing that same look in the eyes of the boy. That stimulus started her on the path of helping the child, which ultimately brought her back to emotional life. The phrase “little-boy-lost” was seeded in three places that added up to powerful motivation for her when the right time came. By the way, the seed had to be distinctive enough to be easily recalled when the time came; in this case, little-boy-lost not only fit unobtrusively the first time it was used, i.e., didn’t call attention to itself, it was distinct enough to remember later.

So seed your novel with small things early on that grow to be significant.

Check out the full article!

What do you think? Do you “seed” your clues as you go, or “post seed,” adding them in behind you once you’re further along?

Photo by Fras1977

Writing Wednesday will return next week!

If one critique partner pegs the killer by page 30 and another says that the surprise reveal was unfulfilling because it wasn’t foreshadowed, which one is right? They both are, of course, because they can only describe their own experience with the book—but that doesn’t really help you, does it?

Naturally, there are detriments to foreshadowing too heavily:

(You only have to watch 15 seconds to get the message; you don’t have to actually learn the bball technique.)

I watched a movie recently where every time a “little fact” was mentioned, I could see the plot twist they thought they were “foreshadowing.” (“I don’t swim,” says one character. I called it—she was going to fall out of the boat and the lead would have to save her. Took about 30 minutes to get there.) Maybe I’ve just seen too many movies and thought about these things too much, but total predictability is definitely not our goal as writers.

Or, to go back to our basketball analogy:

So, what’s the writing equivalent of a no-look pass? I don’t think a reader has to see a surprise coming. But I think that once the surprise is sprung, readers should be able to remember (ideally) or go back and find the clues you’ve been planted along the way.

In The Plot Thickens, Noah Lukeman gives one example of setting up a surprise—specifically, a secret:

For the secret to be used for suspenseful effect, we have to know there is a secret; Norman Bates’s mother is alluded to in shadowy fragments; in Casablanca Ilsa flat out reveals there is something she cannot tell Rick; in the whodunits, we know from the long looks the staff exchange with each other that someone is not saying something. (137)

Conversely, some surprises don’t actually have to be heavily foreshadowed: if you really can’t foreshadow because none of the POV characters have enough information or interactions to come across those clues, for example.

Again, predictability is not a virtue in most storytelling. It’s not a bad thing to surprise your readers. But it is a delicate balance with foreshadowing and betrayal. Make sure your readers have all the pieces your characters do—but beating your readers over the head with the coming surprise is a good way to ruin it.

What do you think? What’s good foreshadowing for a surprise?

A version of this post was first published on 16 Feb 2010 as part of the Tension, Suspense and Surprise series.