The Makeover – Literary Style

By Robin Weaver

All of us watch those shows (even if we don’t always ‘fess up).  You know the ones I mean.  A frumpy stay-at-home mom and a Goth-looking college student walk onto the set. An overly bubbly announcer introduces some wonderful product and an amazing makeup artist. Then, voila.  A curling  iron and a bottle of hair gel later, Frumpy and Dumpy are now the hot momma who could play Mrs. Robinson and the fraternity girl most likely to get an STD.

I am, of course, talking about the infamous makeover. I can’t tamp down my skepticism enough to believe Frumpy and Dumpy really looked that bad prior to the makeover.  Surely the show’s producers intentionally frizzed their hair for those hideous “before” images.  Maybe they even put gray paste on the To-Be-Made-Overs’ faces.  And I’m certain some production assistant scours thrift stores in search of the worst clothing possible.  When the assistant finds her prize, she stomps on the shapeless dress or baggy jeans with combat boots prior to dressing the poor “volunteers.” When presented in cocktail dresses for the REVEAL, like any woman who goes from Goodwill to couture, the makeover models look one heck of a lot better.

Seriously, short of surgery or drastic liposuction, how much can you really do in a short period of time to improve your looks?

Fiction, fortunately is different. Forget hair products. You, the great and powerful Oz-thor, have magic at your disposal. With a few strokes of your literary pen, you can take a bad manuscript (assuming there’s a decent plot or you have a good voice) and make the tale into a fascinating story.

Have a heroine you don’t like?  Kill her off on page one and promote the amazing sidekick to leading lady status. Are you main characters boring? Just add equal parts of tension and quirkiness and Ozzie and Harriet morph into Morticia and Gomez Addams.

You can even reshape your basic plot into a totally different story. Believe it or not, you can do this with minimal rewrite.

I originally wrote Forbidden Magic, my first novel, about vampire-type characters living in a world without warm-blooded creatures.  My vamps existed on a mineral mimicking the properties of human blood. Naturally, the mineral was becoming depleted (aka external tension). Unfortunately, no one wanted yet another vamp story.

I instigated a makeover.  First, I made my characters Dökkálfar and álfar—ancient elves.  Since my hero and heroine were no longer vampire, they no longer needed blood. Thus I needed another rare substance necessary to my characters’ survival. To keep my external conflict from disintegrating, I decided the sun on my fictional world wouldn’t have the spectrum of Earth’s solar unit.  Naturally, I made this spectrum necessary to elfin survival.  So what could emulate sunlight? What else? Crystals. And all the quartz had been mined.

I kept the same plot. My characters’ goals, motivation, and conflict didn’t change. Yet my novel had a completely different look. And since the story didn't fit my normal writing style--romantic suspense and mystery, I gave my author name a makeover, too.  With an alias--Genia Avers.

If your novel isn’t getting the attention it deserves, if your manuscript is dated, or if you just need more oomph, you too can perform the literary makeover—no license required. Remember, a good story (regardless of genre) needs great characters, with great conflict, and a goal worth achieving. The rest is just…well, hair product and cocktail dresses.

How about you?  Performed any literary makeovers on your manuscripts?

Available at Amazon.com.









Available at Amazon.com.

Writing Romantic Suspense: Multiple Personalities a Plus

 In a nutshell, romantic suspense (RS) has a romantic storyline and a mystery/suspense storyline. You’re saying, “Well, duh.” Right?

Only it’s a bit more complicated. Just how much romance is required? And how much suspense? What kind of suspense?

After you figure out your answers to these questions, you still have to convince the acquiring romantic suspense editor you have indeed written a romantic suspense. Light on the suspense? She’ll tell you the manuscript is a romance with suspense elements. Get skimpy on the romance and the genre editor will insist you submitted a mystery with romantic elements.

Meanwhile you’re screaming, "What’s the difference?"

The answer is simple, yet very hard to execute. In a true RS, each storyline (romance and mystery/suspense) must be equally important. Think about that for a bit. You basically must write two separate books, merge them into one novel, and make sure both storylines are equally important and merge together seamlessly.

If that weren’t difficult enough, you must have a kick-ass heroine. It’s no longer acceptable to have the strapping FBI agent or the hunky cop rescue the damsel in distress. Your leading lady must be equally responsible (if not totally) for resolving the suspenseful situation.

What’s more, the romantic suspense author must know a lot of things traditional romance authors never consider.  For example: what poisons can kill a spouse without leaving a trace? What size hole does a 9mm Ruger leave in a man’s head? And was the silencer really necessary if a tree falls in the forest—eh, scratch the tree part.

Then, while you're engrossed in this intense life and death situation, you have to insert a love scene—or three. Let’s see you do that James Patterson. Writing believable love scenes that are more than the thigh bone’s connected to the hip bone is hard enough. Try getting your characters in the mood while the bullets are flying.

Don’t even get me started on writing a young adult romantic suspense… J

So why do we do it? Why write RS?

There’s a popular song (well, maybe not so popular) that has the lyrics “…the book of life is brief and once the page is read, all but love is dead.” Those words pretty much sum up a romantic suspense (why didn’t I start with that?). Every good romantic suspense author believes this, with every fiber of her soul. But… She can't live without the life-or-death situation or the thrill of resolving a whodunit either.

So the answer is simple. We write romantic suspense because we must.

Robin Weaver
Author of Blue Ridge Fear,  Artifact of Death, and The Secret Language of Leah Sinclair

 

I do love May,

May is one of my favorite times of year. Like spring itself it has been a month for rebirth and renewal.

I can't believe I've been blogging with this wonderful group for one year. It is indeed cause for celebration.

Being a writer and just a tad curious (OK, maybe more than a tad) I looked up other celebrations for the month of May.

This month you can celebrate Asparagus, Asthma and Allergy Awareness, Better Hearing and Speech, National Bar-B-Que, Egg, Duckling, Hamburger, Mental Health, Salad, Photo, Physical Fitness and Sports, Strawberry, Older Americans and Transportation. Whew! That's just the monthly celebrations, we won't begin to get into the weeks or the days designated to celebrate things.

On a personal note I met my husband in May. Our first date was May eighteenth, twenty nine years ago. It was a blind date and little did I know what I was in for!<G>   We also moved to Arizona in May, arriving here on Memorial Day nine years ago. Six months later I sold my first book. A few years later my husband started writing and now we are both published.

This blog will post on May 14th so I checked the calendar to see what is celebrated that day. According to the calendar, in 1804 Lewis and Clarke started their famous expedition. It is also National Dance like a Chicken Day.

Unable to top that, I'll simply say, HAPPY ANNIVERSARY to my fellow Genre-ista's. I've enjoyed this past year and can't wait to see what the next one will bring.

Romantic Science Fiction

by Tam Linsey

Genres have been on my mind lately. Not just genres, but subgenres. Do I write "science fantasy" or "science fiction"? "apocalyptic" or "dystopic"? "science fiction romance" (SFR) or "romantic science fiction" (RSF)?

This last pair is what I want to talk about today, because I didn't know there was a difference until recently. Why do I care? Because I've had several agents who represent science fiction request my manuscript, only to pass on representation because there was "too much science" in my story.

Too much science?

How can science fiction readers not want the science explained? In my opinion, just setting characters onto another world and throwing in a space ship or two doesn't make something science fiction. There must be verisimilitude – credibility that such a world could exist. That is where the science part of science fiction becomes important.

I was baffled by the rejections.

So I did what any good scientist would do; I researched and developed a theory about why these agents didn't like the science.

Why are readers these days okay with novels not explaining how things work? This is where the distinction between SFR and RSF becomes important. Although these agents claim to represent science fiction, they are big names in the romance industry. As romance readers, they want the story – be it paranormal, contemporary, historical, or science fiction – to be about a relationship first and foremost. Any speculative, otherworldly, or scientific elements of the story must be less important to the plot than the romance. In fact, the story they want could not exist without the romance. The science is taken for granted. Science Fiction has become part of our culture. Other writers have already done all the speculation for us. Who hasn't seen an episode of Star Trek, or a movie with aliens or space ships? The proof is already out there. Why prove it again?

Most romance readers don't care about the science. They just want a really good story about a relationship.

They want Science Fiction Romance.

I like romance. Love is what binds characters together, and binds readers to my characters. But love doesn't dominate the story in science fiction. My manuscript, Botanicaust, has a love interest relationship, but the plot could proceed without the romance. In fact, it wouldn't be too hard to rewrite the novel and remove the romance altogether.

But take out the science, and Botanicaust falls apart.

I write Romantic Science Fiction.

See the difference? It is all a matter of where the emphasis lies. The rejections are because I've been targeting the wrong readers.

Do you like to know how the world works in the book you are reading? Or do you prefer to take for granted that things are the way the author says they are?

© Tam Linsey, 2011. All rights reserved.