BIG DILEMMA MAKES GREAT PAGE TURNER

In this time of pandemic, lockdown, global warming and general mayhem, I find I’m doing a lot of reading. And not, surprisingly, of SFR. For some reason, I don’t want to read about the future, about technology or science or shiny spaceships going to far-off planets. And certainly not about apocalyptic dystopias. I’ve got enough of that right out my front door, thank you very much. No, I choose to lose myself in the past a lot these days, in a time that may not have been any better, or even simpler, but was different enough from today that I can truly escape from the world of computers and cell phones and television news trumpeting the latest inanity 24-7.

I’ve written before of my admiration for historical romance writer Eloisa James, whose work was my entrée into the subgenre, and her incomparable talent for witty dialogue. I’ve blown through her catalogue and I’m anxiously awaiting her next book. Author Kelly Bowen has a way with broody heroes and quirky heroines. Mary Balogh writes beautifully of wounded heroes and heroines and how love heals. But right now I’m in the middle of a long string of books by Grace Burrowes, who is devilishly good at setting up what appears at first to be an insurmountable dilemma for her hero and heroine.

 

One of a series I've been caught up in lately.

This, of course, is the essence of the drama in a romance novel. In the girl-meets-boy, girl-loses-boy, girl-gets-boy-back, happy-ever-after romance arc, the central dilemma is behind the whole loss part. The loss, or black moment, is inevitable, if you’ve set up the dilemma correctly, because the hero and heroine have different goals and motivations, which lead to an underlying conflict of interest. How the lovers resolve the conflict/dilemma and find their happy ending keeps you turning pages. The more seemingly unsolvable the puzzle, the faster you’ll read, even when you know (because this is a romance!) that the story will have a happy ending.

For example, in A Truly Perfect Gentleman, The True Gentlemen Book 6, the hero is a newly minted country earl with lots of brothers and tenants (not to mention a crumbling estate) to support. He needs to marry a wealthy heiress.  But despite the financial pressure, he’s just not the fortune-hunting type. What’s worse, he’s already met and fallen in love with the heroine, a respectable widow who, alas, has not much money. Even she recognizes she’s not the right person for him and tries to bow out gracefully, though she loves him, too. Can they find their HEA, despite disasters at the home estate, uncooperative siblings and several wealthy young ladies who have set their caps at the earl? 

Well, yes, of course they can (and do), but all along it seemed like a narrow thing, thanks to the talent of the author, who keeps putting obstacles in her lovers’ path and reminding her readers that success is just impossible. As a reader, I’m enthralled, devouring the book—all Burrowes’s books—in a fever until the HEA is achieved at last. As a writer, I’m constantly trying to dissect the author’s methods, to see if I can learn her secrets.

One thing, at least, is obvious, if not easy to do: you have to keep up the pressure. My mentor in this business, science fiction author A.C. Crispin, once said you have to chase your protagonist up a tree, set a lion at the base of the tree, then throw rocks at your guy (or gal). In other words, you have to do everything you can to make it hard for your hero and heroine, throw obstacles in their paths, set up roadblocks, pile it on. Make your readers believe their situation is impossible, unresolvable. Only then can you perform the miracle of the happy ever after ending.

Some writers believe the way to do this is to have their heroes and heroines squabble through three-quarters of the book, then just randomly decide to make up for the climax and HEA. That doesn’t work for me. The central dilemma has to be real. It has to arise out of the goals and motivations of each character, which have to conflict in some way. That conflict can be mostly external, as it was in the book I described (the hero’s need for money and the heroine’s lack of it), but it helps if there is an internal component (the hero really couldn’t bring himself to marry solely for money). If the dilemma can be resolved simply by talking about it, it’s not a dilemma.

No danger of that with Grace Burrowes’s books. Every conflict is genuine, every dilemma seems incapable of resolution. Until it isn’t. Because, of course, this is romance, where we are guaranteed a happy ending.

Cheers, Donna

CHEMISTRY 101: CATALYSTS FOR CREATING SEXUAL TENSION

The hero and heroine in my work-in-progress are not cooperating. Not only are they not getting along (after all, we expect some of that in a romance, even a science fiction romance), they don’t seem to find each other interesting. Their eyes don’t meet across a crowded room. Their hearts don’t thud in their chests. They don’t breathe hard when they’re together.

They have no passion. I’m considering sending them to chemistry class.

Creating sexual tension between your hero and heroine is no easy task. It’s not a matter of having them bicker for a hundred pages or so, then putting them in a room (or a spaceship cabin) together for a few hours to let nature take its course. (You think I’m kidding. I can’t tell you how many dozens of books I’ve read where that is exactly how the author thought it was supposed to work.) 

Just like there has to be science behind a chemical reaction in a lab, there have to be good reasons for the chemistry that happens between your couple. Only then will the sexual tension you create be believable. And if you're clever with the catalysts you use in their relationship, the reaction will heat up on its own.

First, there has to be a reason they will be attracted to each other. What qualities does he have that she is looking for—not just in a man, but in the man? What is it about her that makes her special to him? What makes them irresistible to each other? Why can’t they walk away?

Second, there should be equally powerful reasons why it’s maybe not impossible, but certainly life-altering, for them to be together. Maybe they have to defy their families, or their crew, or their governments. Maybe one has to leave a past life behind and go with the other into a new one. Maybe both have to jettison old ways of thinking or behaving or simply have to overcome emotional old wounds. In any case, love should shatter their old lives and recreate a new one in its place. This is not without risk and/or danger.

Of course, you can’t come up with these reasons without answering the most basic question about your hero and heroine—what are their goals? What do they want, in the context of your story? That question gives you their motivation—everything they do is because they want X. We all know the good guys and the bad guys in your story want different things. But in the best of all story worlds, even your hero and heroine should want different things. That leads to conflict, which leads to sexual tension.

How does this differ from the bickering-into-bed scenario I mentioned earlier? Let’s look at Rayna Carver, the Rescue agent heroine of Fools Rush In, the third book in my Interstellar Rescue series, and Captain Sam Murphy of the pirate ship Shadowhawk, the book’s hero. 

At the outset of the book, Rayna wants only to get to the spaceport at LinHo so she can continue her mission to infiltrate the slave labor factory of Kinz. Murphy, who has intercepted the slave ship on which she was embedded undercover, wants only to get the rescued slaves to safety. He thinks she’s crazy for wanting to complete her mission; she thinks he’s arrogant for trying to stop her. Yet they’re both intensely attracted to each other because she can’t resist his compassion and he can’t resist her brave determination (ironically, the very things that push them apart).

Over time, they realize they have more in common—a hatred of slavers born of personal experience, a shared code of ethics—and passion grows between them. Yet as circumstances make it more inevitable that Rayna will have to complete her dangerous mission, a new source of conflict emerges. Sam’s protectiveness clashes with Rayna’s independent spirit.

All of the sexual tension in Fools Rush In, arises naturally out of who Sam and Rayna are as people, out of what they want and how they go about getting it in the course of the story.

As we speak, I’m asking my WIP characters some tough questions about what the hell they really want and what they plan to do about it. “What is it you see in him, girl? And if she’s not all that and a bag of chips, why don’t you just leave her?”

I’m expecting some lively discussions in my head over the next few days. And some combustible chemistry on the page to follow.

Fools Rush In, Book 3 in the Interstellar Rescue series, launches October 18. It’s available for pre-order on Amazon NOW!

Cheers,

Donna