Writing

One of my beta readers asked me, “Is everyone in this book handsome or beautiful?” Well, yeah, kinda. They aren’t all in the drop-dead category of handsome that most books are, but in the reasonably good-looking way that all fiction should be. Let’s face it, who wants to read about people that look like… well… us. For the most part, I try to make them a little more normal than the standard fictional hunk or beauty, but there’s a limit to being realistic. No pimples, muffin tops, wobbly thighs, bacon back, crossed eyes, or missing teeth need apply. You will not find a character who has athlete’s feet, gas, a rash, or dandruff. It’s fiction!

Truthfully, I try really hard not to over describe my people. My main character yes, but not all the ancillary people they deal with. However, I did such a poor job in one book that my favorite beta reader completely missed that one couple was black. I had said it, but I didn’t use some of the better descriptive words that would have made it completely clear for her. Part of the reason for limiting my descriptions is that I’d rather if the reader assigned certain things. I’ll give a woman auburn hair, dark blue eyes and a wonderful complexion. The reader can decide if she has an oval, round, or square face, or if her jaw is strong, and whether her nose is sharp or button. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder – or in this case, the reader.

What I do try to avoid is the use of generic terms for characters, such as “tall, dark, and handsome.” Tall is a relative term. I’m fairly short at five foot four (sorta), so I think anything over five foot eight is tall. I have a tendency to make most of my heroes between five foot ten and six foot one. Any taller than that and most of my female characters would be craning their necks. My men are not slabs of beef. They are reasonably well muscled and things only ripple when they are doing something that would realistically call for them to ripple. I’m not sure I’ve used any descriptive even close to “wash board abs.” These guys do work out, but it’s because they need to be strong for their jobs, not to enter a body building contest.

My women are fairly normal too. They worry about their “assets” and the effects of gravity, but they aren’t obsessive. I also refuse to turn them into Barbie dolls. These are women who are busy living their lives, getting into trouble, falling in love, and getting out of trouble. The fact that they are pretty is less about their actual appearance, than it is about how they are perceived by the hero in the book. The women I write about are smart and most of my men are attracted to that quality. Looks are simply a bonus.

As for my friends – I’m unlikely to judge them by their looks. I acknowledge that I have a few that are downright gorgeous (male and female) and some that are not, but I have never chosen a friend based on a picture. I choose my friends based on their brains, their sense of humor, and their willingness and ability to overlook my many flaws.

I’m still on the romance versus sex topic. Mostly, appropriate versus inappropriate words. If you put a couple of writers together this is bound to come up. My publisher Dean and his wife Arwen and I had one of these conversations during dinner at the Macaroni Grill. Both Dean and Arwen write and Arwen is also literature teacher – they are both articulate and well read. I expressed my issues with finding appropriate words to describe parts of the human anatomy. There are real problems for a writer in choosing the appropriate words to fit the tone you are setting and where you might wish to draw the line.

There are some words that just won’t cut it for me – not that I don’t say and use them – but they simply don’t work well in a particular scene. Don’t panic – I’m not going to supply a list here. I’ll work around it. But, the truth is, I don’t want to be in the middle of a love scene and see words that are commonly used in Penthouse, Hustler, or Maxim. Although some of those words are positively inspirational – most of the women I know aren’t fond of them. Nor do I wish to run into the proper name for a body part in the middle of a love scene – I’m not describing the body part in a romantic interlude at a doctor’s appointment.

Even worse than the pornographic language is some of the crap that I’ve run into in romance novels over the years. Just as I told everyone at the table that I refused to refer to a specific body part as “his turgid or throbbing manhood,” our waitress dropped off a loaf a bread. We’re regulars, so Sue simply held up her hands in surrender, shook her head, and went away.

The only time I think you should see the word throbbing is to describe a headache or a damaged body part such as a broken toe. And as for the word turgid – that one is a complete turnoff. If you look up the word in the dictionary, the first meaning is “pompous and boring.” The second meaning gets to the heart of the matter with, “swollen, bloated, or full.” What an awful word. While it may in some way be accurate – it is hardly romantic or even polite. In fact, it sounds like some kind of disease. If someone were to offer to expose me to his “turgid manhood,” I’d be inclined to shoot the poor, sick bastard and put him out of his misery. I wouldn’t want someone to suffer…

For female body parts, it’s just as bad. There are very few things to call the parts of a woman’s body that a man is paying attention to. How many words are there for that specific place that are not clinical or just a little too Penthouse for most of us? Here’s one that you would think would be easier – breast. But just how many times can you say breast in a love scene? I certainly can’t see myself referring to them as “her milky white mounds.” Really, mounds? Think about all the possible words you might use and you will quickly realize that none of them are romantic and most aren’t even polite. Look up most of those words in your one-million-word synonym finder and you will quickly find out just how crappy the options are. They go from clinical to humorous to horrific, but damn few of them work well in a love scene.

So, I’ll stick with certain words and try my best to make it exciting and maybe a little romantic without being too crude or clinical.

Now, I know a lot of you have some ideas, and you might even be desperate to share some of them. One of my beta readers recently referred to a particular body part in an incredibly rude and bawdy manner and truthfully – I’m still laughing. It has become a running joke for us and has made it into a book as a title for a bad porn movie. But please DO NOT post a comment to this post with your word choices – I will delete those. It’s not that I don’t want to hear them, it’s that there are actually a few polite and respectable people who read my blog. However, you should feel free to use the contact form on this site and share those word choices with me. Who knows, perhaps I can use some of them, and if nothing else, I could probably use a good laugh!

For anyone that follows this blog it is no surprise that grammar is not my strong suit. Hello! Read my posts and you should be able to tell which one was edited and which ones weren’t. That one should stand out to anyone with a clue because the tenses all agree and the comma fairy didn’t come by sprinkling a random sampling of unnecessary commas. Well, that’s a lie. The comma fairy came, but Marcia beat her into unconsciousness and tossed her out.

So, who is this comma fairy and where did she come from? The comma fairy is a woman named Lynne (me). I was raised in a military family and I moved a lot as a kid. Each year between the fourth and ninth grade, I attended a different school in a different state. Math and grammar were the real victims of the change in venue. Math proved to be less of an issue over the years. I went back to college, and starting with basic math – I simply took a class each semester until I made it through the higher functions. Easy-peasy.

Sadly, there wasn’t a basic grammar class. I’m a big reader, so when I took the placement tests for college, I was placed in higher level writing classes. I had terrific teachers who were interested enough in my stories and my thoughts that they could overlook the grammar. Looking back now, I realize that the comma fairy wasn’t doing a fly-by in those days. In fact, punctuation was optional. It became a problem when I started “thinking” about what I was doing. She moved in, and I’m still trying to get her to move the hell out.

The rotten little comma fairy usually drops them between the verb and subject or anyplace a verbal pause occurs. Take a breath and a comma comes out. Think about a pause in the rhythm of the sentence and a comma comes out. If I’m not sure how to punctuate the sentence just drop a comma in. Now I’m exercising a new policy that I refer to as “when in doubt – take it out.” I’m pretty sure that’s not really any better than the random comma dropping. However, it’s much easier for my editors to add a comma rather than try to figure out what the heck I meant when I put the comma in the wrong spot. That last sentence might be a prime example. Shouldn’t there be another comma in there somewhere?

I’ve bought the grade school workbooks for home study students and I’m working on the 6th grade book now. Honestly, I’m not sure how much good it’s doing. My punctuation seems to depart completely if I’m excited about what I’m writing. As my friend Arwen told me, “You lose your commas completely when you write sex.” That’s true. I have to add them when I rewrite and self-edit. The only way I see most of them (or the lack of them) is to read the scene backwards sentence by sentence. Otherwise, I sort of get distracted. Sadly, the same thing happens when I write something very violent.

I really am making an effort to improve. As I told my other editor, Marcia, “It’s only grammar, it can’t kill me.” Having said that, I’m not really sure I actually believe it. I think the stress of comma placement will someday cause me to collapse from a heart attack or stroke.

Of course, even if I figure out the damn comma rules, I’m still left with the nagging problem of just what the hell I’m supposed to do with those annoying semi-colons…

I am not the person who originally came up with the concept of this comparison – it’s been around for some time, but this is my take on it.

I openly admit to struggling with the editorial process. Not that I don’t know I need it – hey I’m only mostly perfect – but it can be painful. It doesn’t matter how prepared you are for criticism it’s never a fun process. Your beautiful words are being challenged, and all your hard work and effort is being abused for no good reason. Okay, okay – maybe a good reason – that third hand is definitely a problem unless your character is a mutant.

I opened the edits on a work in progress several months ago and this is how I went through the five stages.

Denial – there is nothing wrong with what I have written. These words are usually followed by a quick scroll to the next page. Nope – I am simply not looking at this!

Anger – Who do you think you are? In my case, this is always followed by a string of expletives. I am nothing if not articulate when it comes to stringing expletives together. Really, I do get mad on the first look and I do swear – right after I deny that there’s a f*$#($* problem.

Bargaining – Well, maybe a few small changes are in order, but I’m not giving up the hug and apology in Chapter Two no matter what you say. I am not a good negotiator. In fact, I’m terrible at it. My idea of negotiating is I say no, and then I pass you your straw and tell you “Suck it up, buttercup.” Then I default back to angry and string more expletives together.

Depression – This is the part where I sit around in the funk that comes when people simply don’t understand me. This is also where I forget that out of 85,000 words, the editor has issues with only about 1,000 of them. All I can see is the 1,000 and it’s crushing. It doesn’t matter that fixing those 1,000 will make this a better book. This is the stage where I’m sure that I should go find something else to obsess about. Maybe I’ll just string some more expletives together as I cry in the corner…

Acceptance – By the next day, I am able to approach these notes in a more rational manner. I’m able to say yay or nay based on something more reasonable than emotion, and I can communicate with my editor in a way that doesn’t make me sound like an inmate in the state asylum.

Almost all of these things happen in private. Almost. I have been known to call Dean and “vent.” Hey, he’s more than just my publisher, he’s my friend, and it comes with the territory. He listens, sympathizes, and in general tries to help me come to a better place. Then, because he’s my friend and my damn publisher, and because he knows me so well, he hands me my straw. I make the needed changes and it’s a better book.

I soooo do not write romance. I’ve never once had my characters hearts stopped by the sight of breathtaking beauty or rippling muscles. My men don’t glower and my women don’t flirt from under lowered lashes. My guys don’t wear silk shirts, with tailored slacks that show off their “assets” and most of my gals wouldn’t recognize a Jimmy Choo if you poked her eye out with the stiletto heel of one.

My goal is to write stories about people who are more realistic – people that I might actually meet and would like to be around. I write fiction about two people (both human and vampire) with some type of military connection, who are in some sort of predicament, have to form a partnership to survive, fall in love, there’s some hot fooling around, and then they face the threat together, usually with a couple of cool friends. The sex isn’t the point of the story, it’s just part of the story.

Last year as I was writing Protecting Parker, I wrote myself into a corner and had to write an intimate scene from the hero’s point of view. There are a lot of things that I can imagine, but a man’s point of view during sex isn’t something I’d ever tried before. When I’d done the best I could with it, I called Dean to ask him if he’d read it and see if I got it even close to right. Dean writes – he should be able to help. It was then that I had one of the more unusual conversations in my life.

Me: “I’m not sure I have it right. Would you mind reading it for me?”
Dean: “Well, how long is it?”
Me: “About sixteen pages or so.”
Dean: “Too long.”
Me: “What?”
Dean: “Is he thinking a lot about what’s going on?”
Me: “Well, we’re in his point of view.”
Dean: “No. Is he thinking about how everything feels and comparing it to something else. You know, like about her skin being like silk type stuff?”
Me: “Sure. There’s some of that.”
Dean: “Get rid of all that. Men don’t really think about that kinda stuff when they’re in the moment.”
Me: “What?”
Dean: “Let me give you an example. You buy a new teddy and spend an hour getting ready. Bathing, primping, worrying about whether the color works or if the lace makes you look too fat, and all that other stuff. You walk into the bedroom and the very most a man thinks is, ‘Ooohhh, lace… boobs… lucky.’ Mostly the blood rushes from our brain and we just sorta go into reaction mode.”

The conversation went on for some time as Dean explained that men really don’t think the way we do. He said when it came to thinking, men thought a lot about sex, right up until it happened and then there wasn’t a lot of thinking going on. While we ladies might be evaluating the moment, men have a tendency to be sticking with the basics. A week later, I told him I’d rewritten it and taken out all the emotional content and compound sentences, thereby cutting it by more than half. Then he agreed to read it.

When one of my male beta readers finally read the whole book, he was appreciative that I’d kept things fairly simple. You’ll understand why I’m hiding his identity when you read this. I want you to have respect for my beta readers and this won’t help.

Him: “Thank God, it wasn’t all anniversary sex.”
Me: “What?” (I always ask such concise questions.)
Him: “You know most of the time sex is sorta basic. You really only go for all the fancy stuff on birthdays and anniversaries.”
Me: “Who does?”
Him: “Guys. All the extras aren’t really an everyday thing after the first year or so. You guys don’t show up in the fancy underwear every night and we don’t trot out our best moves. You know, everyday sex is sorta basic, birthday sex is better, and anniversary sex requires your best moves.”
Me: “Um, okay.”
Him: “Too much romance in books just sets men up for failure. We aren’t that sensitive or energetic on a daily basis.”

I’m reminded of the old adage: Never ask a question that you don’t want to know the answer to. So, I’ll ask Dean about computer stuff, Dave about specific weapons, Del about tactics and structure, my other Dave about military and tactical equipment, Gunny about bodyguard stuff, and my cops about cop stuff.

But, now you know why I don’t write romance.