By Cara Gabriel

Romance novels are driven by characters. Sure, we all like a nice, juicy plot, but ultimately what drives the book forward is the conflict, and that conflict comes from your characters.

So it makes sense that you should get to know your hero and heroine really well. Better than you know your nearest and dearest. Maybe even better than you know yourself.

There are heaps of resources that tell you how to fill out your heroine’s character, but many of these focus on things like recording what colour eyes she has, or where she went to school. I think the idea is that then you don’t get her eyes changing colour half way through the book.

Sure, it would be annoying to realise you’d switched her from a blue-eyed babe to a brown-eyed girl in chapter six, but something that superficial is actually pretty simple to fix up during your edits. What’s much harder to fix is a character who is inconsistent or illogical in their behaviour; where this happens, it not only jolts the reader out of the story (something we want to avoid at all costs), it also creates distrust in the reader’s mind. 

It's imperative that you really know your heroine – and that goes way beyond eye colour and what she studied at university. Delving that deep into a character can be tough however, so I’ve put together a list of ten questions that I like to be able to answer about my heroines.

1.      What does she carry in her handbag?

Why? A woman’s handbag is a microcosm of her life. Beyond the usual requirements of purse, phone and keys, you need to know what she carries and what that tells you about her. Old receipts, discarded lipsticks, a handful of Euro coins, appointment cards, a cheap plastic ring from a cracker, scribbled phone numbers… (and that’s just my handbag!). Check out this flickr group for more inspiration.

2.      What’s her favourite CD of all time and why?

Why? Music links very strongly to powerful emotions. It’s possible to remember what was playing the first time you met your partner – even decades down the line. The last great summer between school and university might have its own soundtrack. Or perhaps there’s a break-up album that she can’t get rid of. Either way, if you find out what music she loves, and what emotion in provokes in her, you can start to understand some key elements of her backstory.

3.      Tea or coffee?

Why? Little details like this do matter due to what they tell us about her character and her backstory. Maybe she loves afternoon tea because it reminds her of Sunday afternoons spent with her grandmother. Or maybe she only drinks a boutique Guatemalan blend thanks to spending six months there doing charity work.

4.      Cats or dogs?

Or neither. Why? Having a pet gives you roots – you can’t jet off so easily when you have a furry friend to worry about. So a heroine on the run (either physically or emotionally) might be petless. If she does have a pet, what is it? A pedigree cat is much more high-maintenance than a mutt from the animal shelter, and might suggest similar about their respective owners.

5.      She’s running late for work, the car has a flat and….?

Why? It’s important to understand the way she reacts under stress. Does roll her sleeves up and change the tyre herself, or does she call roadside assist? Perhaps she decides to work from home, or does she see it as a sign she needs a day off, and head off to the shops?

6.      What Disney film did she love as a child?

Why? It’s all about the heroines in those films. Does your heroine love Sleeping Beauty (sitting around waiting for Prince Charming), or is she more of a go-getter like Pocahontas? Does she swoon at the idea of Cinderella and having a fairy godmother give her everything she wants, or is she like Ariel, willing to sacrifice everything for love?

7.      What is she most proud of achieving?

Why? This will give you a hint about what she’s most passionate about. It may have nothing to do with her current career, relationship or lifestyle, which will also give you some ideas about her internal conflicts. If she’s a corporate lawyer who’s most proud of her charity work, what does that tell you about her character and place in life?

8.      What is she most ashamed of doing?

Why? What she’s ashamed of doing is an important part of her backstory as it will colour everything she does from that point onwards. Going forward, her actions might revolve around hiding her past actions, or going out of her way to make sure she never does it again. Either way, one action from her past is impacting all her present actions.

9.      What stops her from sleeping at night?

Why? Waking up at four am guarantees one thing – your mind will start enough mental gymnastics to make sure you’ll not see sleep again that morning. But what back flips and somersaults does your heroine’s mind attempt? Is she worried about money? Her family? The environment? Where our mind goes when there’s nothing else to stop it shows us what we’re really worried about, which in turn reveals a lot about your heroine’s conflicts.

10.  What would she spend her last $20 on?

Why? When we were asked this at a recent team building event, there were some interesting answers; depressingly, most of the room said they would spend their last few dollars on cigarettes or red wine. But what about your heroine? Would she buy a train ticket and hand deliver her manuscript to the publisher she’s always wanted to work with? Would she donate it to charity? Or would she buy a toy for her favourite niece or nephew?

Really understanding your heroine means asking questions that will highlight her deepest fears, strengths and beliefs. What would you ask your heroine today?

By Margaret Tanner

The start of a new year is a great time to de-clutter, figuratively and literally speaking. A time to cast off the old and start afresh with the new.

I am a clutter collector from way back. I figure why throw anything out; you never know when you might need it. I inherited the hoarder gene.

 

“Waste not, want not” was my mother’s motto and she lived by it the whole of her life. Maybe it was because she lived through the great depression of the 1930’s and World War 2, that she would use and re-use, save and squirrel away stuff. Our house was never untidy, because most of the hoarded items were well out of sight. 

I should have learned my lesson after my dear mother died about 20 years ago and my sister and I had to clear out her house. To say it was a nightmare was an understatement. It took weeks. My mother had kept receipts from the 1940’s, even her World War 2 ration book. And speaking of books, she had hundreds of them. Then there were the ornaments, pretty little knick-knacks that reposed on every shelf or level surface in the house. Boxes of china. Well, you get the idea.

Now you would think that after all this trauma and angst, I would have dashed home and gone through my own cupboards.  I didn’t, but I did take a lot of my mother’s stuff with me.  Well, how could I let it go?  All those little treasures.

My mother-in-law passed away, same story, I kept a lot of her things too. I was a hoarder.  It came as naturally as breathing or eating.

Well friends, retribution did come. The youngest of our sons finally left home, so hubby and I decided it was time to downsize. We bought a smaller house, and put our larger house on the market. “We’ve got a lot of stuff here, we’ll have to get rid of it,” hubby says.

Over my dead body. “No, we won’t do anything rash,” I said, “there’s plenty of time to work out what we want to keep.”

A week before the auction of our house, my husband had to have heart by-pass surgery, so I had to go on with the sale alone. After the auction and hubby’s successful operation, I had to start packing, because when he came home he couldn’t do anything for eight weeks. I really hit the panic button because we had a short settlement. Forty days to clear out all our stuff, that of my mother and mother-in-law (things I had kept, and shouldn’t have). Well, it was a nightmare. I did most of it on my own.  I don’t know how many trips I made to donate all these “treasures” to the second hand thrift shop (we call them Op shops here in Australia.  They are run by charities to raise money to help the less fortunate).  And I did help the less fortunate - big time.  The Op shop manager must have thought I was Mother Teresa re-incarnated.

It was terrible. I cried because I had to give away my treasures, mum’s treasures and my mother in-law’s treasures. Worse still, was the time it took to pack them and deliver them to the Op shop. 

With the clock ticking, I had to be ruthless – and I was.

If you are even contemplating moving house, start to get rid of your surplus stuff early.  In fact, don’t collect it in the first place.  A lady once told me that if she didn’t wear a dress for a year, she was probably never going to wear it again, and she got rid of it. Smart lady. Wish I had such courage.  I still cling to my favourite dresses, hey I might lose weight and they will fit me again???

The moral of this story is - don’t hoard. De-clutter as much as possible, because one day you will have to sort it out, or your children will have to sort it out.  

The same goes for your writing.  Be ruthless. If the manuscript you have expended blood, sweat and tears over isn’t working, discard it.  Temporarily cast it into your bottom drawer is what I mean. Don’t destroy it, because you might be able to resurrect it at a later date.  Start on something fresh and new. Once you get your writing tastebuds tingling again with a new premise, a feisty heroine and a spunky hero, the words will start flowing until they become a torrent.

Never give up. It is a steep climb to the top of the publishing mountain, but oh what a view once you get there.

By Emmie Dark

It’s a strange recommendation to make, I know. Why would I urge writers – especially romance writers, whose key tool of trade is dialogue – to go see a silent movie?

If you haven’t heard about it, “The Artist” is a new release movie that’s not only filmed in black and white, it’s almost entirely silent. (It has a beautifully orchestrated score.) At its heart, it’s a love story between a fading silent-movie hero, George Valentin, and a rising talking-movie diva, Peppy Miller.

As I was watching the movie, I was struck by how the actors and all the things surrounding them (the set, lighting, costumes, music, etc) had to work so hard to tell their story in the absence of dialogue. How do we know George Valentin’s wife is unhappy in their marriage? Amongst other things, she draws fake moustaches and blacks out his teeth in the photos of him that appear in the newspaper. She doesn’t ever say, “I’m not in love with you anymore.” But we see it, clear as day, through her actions.

I loved the opportunity to observe, without the distraction of dialogue, all the elements that go into telling a story. Facial expressions, body language, habits, tics. All the vital things writers need to use to envelop a reader in their story, to immerse them in the life of their characters.

Without giving away any spoilers, there is an important scene, a turning point in the story, that is beautifully shot on a multi-level staircase. Apart from the obvious symbolism of George going down the stairs while Peppy is going up, there is acres of meaning in their postures and expressions that tell us what is going on for each of them at that point in their lives. There is a tiny amount of dialogue in the scene – provided through captions on the screen – from each of them, but many layers of meaning behind their otherwise superficial words.

Perhaps it was because the actors had to deliberately exaggerate their expressions and movements that I was suddenly noticing elements of movie making that I don’t usually pick up in the average Hollywood blockbuster. Perhaps today’s movies are so much more subtle than those of the silent era that we don’t notice the characters in quite the same way. Or perhaps it was simply that without the audio queues of dialogue I had to rely on my other senses to “feel” what was going on. Whatever it was that was happening, I was constantly amazed at the level of meaning the story managed to convey.

I couldn’t help thinking that it was just like a good book, when there’s more happening than what appears on the page. When an author has skilfully shown you their characters, has drawn you into their lives, you feel their pain, share their excitement, cry when they grieve. And this occurs without the author telling you what’s happening, without queues that say “feel sad now”.

“The Artist” manages to tell a fascinating story without actually “telling” you very much at all. That’s a trick most of us writers can learn from. 

By Serena Tatti

It’s likely that at some time most of us have skipped paragraphs of narrative and only read the dialogue. That’s because dialogue can move a story along more easily than loads of description. You can learn a lot about characters from their speech.  

Some suggestions that might help:

*Be true to the times: If you’re writing a book set in the past, research the language and the topics of the day. Inaccuracies can pull a reader out of the story.

*If your setting is contemporary, listen to people around you. Take notes if you have to (much easier nowadays with touchphones with inbuilt voice to text applications). Take note of the way people of different ages speak. What used to be groovy, hot, radical or mad, is now bad. Or maybe there’s another word.

*Remember to take into account the character’s upbringing and line of work.

*Dialogue gives us a sense of time and place by the words and phrases used.

*We can gain insight into the nationality of a character by using a few techniques from their native tongue. Perhaps if an Italian man is frustrated and searching for a particular item he might revert to not using contractions (because English is his second language) and using the order of words as he would say them in his native tongue. Instead of, “I’m searching for a large green box. It was unfortunately delivered here” he might say, “I am searching for a large box green. Was delivered here by misfortune.”

*A man who speaks in short, clipped sentences probably leads a busy life and needs to get on with it.

*A Regency hero who comes out with, “Cowabunga, dude!” is seriously out of his timeline – or perhaps a time traveller?

*A contemporary heroine who says things like, “Psychedelic!” or “Groovy baby” is either a child of “Flower Power” parents who grew up on a commune, or addicted to “The Brady Bunch” (or maybe “Dharma and Greg”?).

*Listening to “real dialogue” is very useful, but to make speech flow in your manuscript, it must also serve some purpose. Does it establish tone or mood? Does it help to reveal something about the character or the plot?  Does it add to the conflict?  

We often use pleasantries in everyday speech that would make your novel quite boring: “Hi, how are you?”

“I’m fine. How are you?”

“How are your parents?”

“They’re fine, too. How are yours?”

“Mum is fine but Dad has the flu.”

You can bypass this sort of thing by stating, *They exchanged pleasantries* or something similar. Get to the crux of the matter! Never pad out dialogue.

*While correct grammar is essential to good writing, people usually don’t speak in complete sentences. They speak in incomplete sentences, at times using only phrases. People interrupt each other. People tend to use *umm* and *aahh* a lot, but perhaps avoid doing this all the time because, again, it slows the pace.

If you pay attention to these little details, it can only make your manuscript stronger.