Welcome To The Darkside
Monday, October 02, 2006
Romantic Suspense has been going through some growing changes lately. Note the sudden changes at Harlequin with the loss of the line Bombshell and the restructuring of Sihouette and Intrigue. Then, there was this on Romancing The Blog. http://www.romancingtheblog.com/blog/?p=729
In the middle of a pretty sticky romantic suspense manuscript, I recognize the difficulty of coming up with a believeable and interesting plot. Making it all fit together and having characters still be alive at the end isn't as easy as Agatha Christie made it look.
Now wait. I'm not whining. I'm commiserating with my fellow mystery lovers out there. We're picky. Not only do we want a Happily Ever After for our hero and heroine, we want a Miserably Ever After for the bad guy. So what's the big struggle? Romance Writers always have a "bad guy" even if it's a minipulative ex-girlfriend or an overbearing father.
The trick is tension.
My biggest question while I'm writing is how in the world do I maintain the edge-of-my-seat tension while I'm writing the necessary "information"? Hospital scenes are the worst. Picture it. Your hero (or heroine) has been shot (stabbed, run over, beat up, whatever) and now, you have to deal with the difficulty of medical drama as well as continue to keep the reader interested in the original plot.
Whew.
That would be hard enough, but my characters usually start running rampant and twisting the plot into a million convoluted turns that go......nowhere. That's when I run to my crititque partner and say things like "This went really funky somewhere. Can you help me fix it?"
I'm sure more experienced writers can force their way out of this self-inflicted box, but I still need a little help.
Here's a question for you. Do you like your mystery with a little bit of romance? Or do you like your romance with a little bit of danger? Believe me. I think the industry has been trying to figure this question out for a long time.
Posted at 1:09 PM by Jennifer McKenzie
3 Comments:
I like romance with good tension, strong conflicts and characters with enough know how to get out of it all, stay alive and fall in love.
Small requests, I know. *G*
I'm the other end of the spectrum, of course. I like lots of suspense, twisted plots and danger. If the couple fall in love at the end, all the better :)
And Jen...I can only relate re. hospitals...I was stuck as a writer for three weeks on a hospital scene that only lasted 12 hours 'booktime'.
Next time they're getting taped up at the scene and skipping the hospital.
Hmm. I've rarely found medical scenes boring, unless nothing happens. Then again, I'm fascinated by the medical profession and would probably have gone to medical school if not for the fact that I don't have the patience to deal with doctors with god complexes and administration with their heads permanently stuck up their asses. (Mum's a nurse.)
As for characters traipsing all over the place... that's what an outline's for. :) Even if you don't stick to it strictly (and you really shouldn't), it'll give you a better "visual" as to where everything is and how it's all laid out.
As for mystery vs. suspense... I'm really not a fan of "whodunit" mysteries. I read far too many of them as a kid and they eventually all felt the "same" to me. I mean, that's certainly an issue with some of the rom-susp out there (which is why I prefer paranormal rom-susp myself), but the stakes and tension feel a lot higher to me than in mystery.
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