Dishin' It Out: #ffprwa #Romance #CajunRomance

Friday, August 20, 2021

Are YOU Appearing in Your Stories? Characters with Your Habits? By Connie Vines #RR87, #BWLAuthor, #MFRWAuthor,

Round Robin Blog Fest! (87) Aug 21

This month's topic is a bit like a 'tell-all"/ true confessions, it seems 😉

"Do you have any character habits or favorite words that always crop up in your writing?"

"Yes," she admitted with a heavy sigh. "It seems I've corrupted my darlings."

I drink a great deal of coffee, and so do my characters. In my first novel, "Lynx" Rodeo Romance, Book 1. My hero was drinking coffee, my heroine was drinking coffee, My heroine and her best friend were working at a cafe. Where you guessed it, they prepared and poured coffee (which would have included the adult members of the small Montana town).

Funny, no one seemed to find it strange. My critique group never pointed it out, readers never posted any negative comments. Shoot, Lynx even had a thermos of coffee in the barn when he was tending to his horse!

I noticed (lol) 'we' all seemed to have a caffeine addiction, when I was scanning the story while drafting the second book in the series, "Brede". Everyone in the story had moderate caffeine consumption.

Upon further thought:

I have a wicked/quirky sense of humor.

It only appears in bits in pieces in my western and historical romances (for which my darlings are eternally grateful, I'm sure).

However, in my Paranormal/Fantasy stories and YA/MG stories, it's embedded in the DNA of (usually) my main character.

Poor Meridith, as if becoming a zombie wasn't challenging enough, she has to deal with the twisted sense of humor I've bestowed upon her. She has a hamster named Gertie, for heaven's sake!

Writing is a craft, I keep reminding myself. We develop our skills, adjust to reader preferences: more action, less introspection in contemporary novels, etc. However, since our darings (our characters) are of our creation, there will always have a bit of the writer in the main characters.

There is no way around it.

It may be an unimportant part of my character which creeps into a story. I dislike turnips, so no one will be chowing down on a plate-full, even if they were roasted by an award-winning chef.

What habits are my current characters engaging in? I'll be re-reading my story after I type: The End. I'm certain I'll be making revisions because my characters like to sit out on the patio/veranda/porch in the evening--without a cup of coffee.

Happy Reading,

Connie

Link to my youtube channel. Click here to watch my new video: Gumbo Ya Ya

Also, be sure to check out our wonderful authors:

Anne Stenhouse http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com

Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea

Victoria Chatham http://www.victoriachatham.com

Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/

Diane Bator http://dbator.blogspot.ca/

Beverley Bateman http://beverleybateman.blogspot.ca/

Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-2ow

Fiona McGier http://www.fionamcgier.com/

Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com/blog

Rhobin Courtright http://www.rhobincourtright.com

Judith Copek : http://lynx-sis.blogspot.com/2021/08/characters-habits-or-favorite-words.html

See you next month!

Friday, July 16, 2021

Cutting Scenes - Yea or Nay? By Connie Vines #RR

Marci Baun Round Robin topic for July 2021: “Deleting scenes: Do you ever delete scenes? When and why do you delete them? And what do you do with them? Do you save them? Or just toss them?”

Sometimes, the scenes I delete are simply that, scenes. Other times I rub out a whole character.

I do not know about other writers, but when I write novels, I delete as much as I write. Sometimes I delete more.

The problem is some of these deleted scenes are great. I like them, anyway.

But there are other scenes I delete because the story turns in a direction different from that in which it was going. Or I have written my character into a hole, realized something cannot happen. Or you write a scene that happened way too early for the book.

Or characters have unfocused conversations. Conversations should have a purpose. Babbling is not allowed.

I do keep deleted scenes.

Some writers have massive OneNote file with pages and pages of deleted scenes. Others keep paper copies. I have a file with subfiles: Romance, YA, Historical, etc. (seems organized, doesn’t it?). It is. However, I save it multiple places: on my desktop, in the Cloud, in my one Drive. My tech guy asked if he would like him to organize it.

Remember my statement about babbling? Well… “We” decided ‘saving it everywhere’ would work for now.

Sometimes you will find that two or more characters fulfill a remarkably similar role in the story, and your reader ends up struggling to tell them apart.

If that is the case: consider consolidating multiple similar characters into one.

It will give you more room to make the resulting single character more memorable and compelling and will help remove some excess fluff as you try to juggle including two or more characters and their backstories.