Six Sentence Sunday

    I'm trying something new. It's called Six Sentence Sunday. Basically, the Six Sentence project is a bunch of writers who, on Sunday, post six sentences from something they've written. Six sentences aren't much so it's a bit challenging finding six sentences that are sufficient enough to convey something significant.

What I've picked out for my first venture is six sentences from my story of Maddie and Zac,  A Knight in Cowboy Boots (now contracted to Pink Petal Publishing) and it occurs shortly after they meet in a hotel bar in Galveston where Maddie is considering applying for work as a bartender. From the first moment, they flirt heavily.

      His lips brushed hers lightly. 

      “My daddy says sometimes it’s better to ask for forgiveness than for permission.”

      “Does he?” Maddie forced out.

      “Oh, yeah.” His tone was heartfelt. “And I think I may need a passel of forgivin’,” he said just before he kissed her again.

 


Did I mention this is a romance? (Like you couldn't figure that out.) 

It was interesting, looking for six sentences to post. I kept thinking, "Oh, this is a fun scene. I'll pull something from this," only to realize as I read it that any sample that would interest readers would be considerably longer than six sentences. 

This might be a result of my voice. I like understatement. Once the story progresses enough that the reader knows my characters, I like to have them make subtle gestures that signify emotion. Having read from the start, the reader will know how to interpret the gesture (if I've done my job right). Of necessity, a six sentence sampler doesn't have the advantage of that history. It's like walking in on the middle of a conversation.

I'll try this for a few weeks . . . or until I can't find six sentences that have a hope of giving you a picture of what my writing promises. Or until you tell me it's too painful and ask me to stop.

Other six sentence excerpts of mine can be found here.  

If you want to see more Six Sentence samples, go here for the list of this week's participants.

 If you want to participate in the future, here's a FAQ.

Is Your Heroine Too "Nice"?

In one of his books, Syd Field says that heroes are often the dullest characters in the story. In support of this theory, he points to Luke Skywalker of the Star Wars movies. His example is hard to argue with. Luke is a nice guy. Han is a scoundrel and far more interesting. In comparison, Luke’s bland.

This observation about heroes was a revelation to me. Not a revelation as in it had never occurred to me, but a revelation in that I didn’t know it was so common. It was certainly something I’d struggled with in my own writing, and now that it's come to my attention, I wonder if it isn't why I see other writers mentioning that they have secondary characters that enamor them more than their main characters.

Since I write romance and the audience is mainly women, the main characters of my stories are my heroines, which made me consider what qualities a good romance heroine should have. The reader should find her accessible. Someone they can relate to. Someone they’ll root for. Attractive, I thought. Smart. Nice. (Because don't most people think they're nice?) So that’s what I tried to write.

Let me tell you about nice. It’s boring.

“Nice” people tend to not voice strong opinions because they don’t want to offend others. When you’re mean to them, they don’t fight back. They're perky and chipper (two qualities that annoy the hell out of me.) They’re peacemakers and usually have a positive outlook on life. It’s hard as hell to make such characters feel unique. I want the reader to see my characters as one-of-a-kind, which is the one quality all really great characters share.

I couldn't figure out how to have "nice" yet interesting characters who didn't bore the crap out of me.

Then I wrote a story with a “nice” heroine. Or at least she was nice most of the time. Poor girl had a lot going on her life, so when circumstances got extreme, I let her be a little less nice. I figured that was okay. No one could criticize her for being a little bit of a hard ass when her life teetered on the edge, could they? I never imagined that she’d be the first stepping stone on the path to envisioning (and writing) a different sort of heroine.

In the same story, the hero’s sister is a secondary character. She’s not so nice. As the oldest girl in a large family, she tends toward bossiness. She’s also capable of being outright bitchy. She gives my nice heroine a significant amount of grief. I liked her a lot.

And then she got her own story.

I didn’t pull back on the bossiness or the bitchiness. She doesn’t worry about whether people think she’s “nice.” She doesn’t whine; if someone hurts her feelings, she goes into attack mode. She battles the hero for control of their situation, creating lots of lovely conflict. She was SO much fun to write. 

Do I worry about readers liking her? Not really, because underneath that prickly exterior, I buried a softer, more vulnerable side in her. She may not appeal to everyone, but she’s anything but dull.

Because she's got what I call a "strong" personality, I never wondered what she would do in any circumstance I put her in. I always knew. I still feel like I channeled her story. If you've never written a "bitchy" heroine, I recommend it highly. It's incredibly liberating.

So tell me: What kind of heroines do you write? Or what kind do you like to read? Have you ever read a story that featured a heroine who wasn't "nice"?

Mistakes You Don't Want to Make or How to Alienate Fans

      I'm a fan of country music, but I've been on the fence about Taylor Swift.

On one hand, she young and she's cute and it's kind of fun watching her live the dream. She wasn't even 20 when she hit the big time, and if the lyrics of the songs she writes reflect her age, you can forgive that because she is, well, young. In spite of her age, her achievements rival artists who've been in the industry for decades. At 20, she was named Artist of the Year and recently it was announced that she's sold over 20 million albums. If that's not living the dream, I don't know what is.

So while I'm not her biggest fan, I was willing to sit back and cheer her on as she matured. That all changed with her newest release called Mean. The song is a rant about how some people are just, well, mean. The verse that really chokes me is:

And I can see you years from now in a bar, talking over a football game
With that same big loud opinion but nobody's listening
Washed up and ranting about the same old bitter things
Drunk and grumbling on about how I can't sing.

The first time I heard those lyrics, my emotional response was the equivalent of  my mouth dropping open in shock and I thought, "What? Artist of the Year isn't enough for you? You're not satisfied that every last person on the planet isn't groveling at your feet?"

Swift admits that her songs are autobiographical and my understanding is that she was a bit of an outsider in school, so I can understand where the song comes from, and if it weren't for the line criticizing her singing, I'd think it was a good song to encourage kids who are subject to bullies, but that one line makes it personal and changes the tone of the song for me. As a writer, I know that all writing is personal, but you have to be careful to make it not look like it's all about you.

Here's the facts, Taylor. You're a very talented song writer, but as a singer, you're at best so-so. Deal with it. If you can't learn to shake it off when someone thinks you're not the best thing since sliced bread, you're never going to be happy. A thick skin is a requirement for survival in any artistic field because there will always be someone who thinks you're not the sun, moon, and stars all rolled into one.

So now I'm going to put on my Miranda Lambert CDs and listen to someone who writes mature lyrics and who can actually sing.

Have you ever run across something from an artist (singer, writer, actor) that seriously alienated you?