The HEA Cafe

The sun is shining, the daffodils are spearing out of the ground, the birds are chirping.  It’s springtime.  What am I thinking about?  Cleaning.  This time of year I get the urge to clean out closets, scoot out the refrigerator and vacuumn the coils, dust off the picture frames.  It’s a sickness.  Really.

But this year I’m going to try a new type of cleaning and I’m going to suggest you do the same.  This year I’m wiping my mind of all the rules of writing.  You know the ones.  The hero and heroine must meet in the first twenty pages.  Head hopping is a big no-no (anyone hear of Nora Roberts?).  Prologues and epilogues are wasted space.

Don’t get me wrong - some of the “rules” were created for a very good reason but I think we as writers get too bogged down in how we’re writing and forget why we’re writing.

Writers and readers love a good story.  If you have fleshed out characters with strong conflict and interesting plot, then the rules don’t matter so much.  So write.  Turn off the internal editor and sit at the computer and tell your story.  Then take a break.  When you come back and reread your work, you’ll be able to tell if that switch in POV during the love scene worked.  If you’re still unsure, get someone else to read it.  Here at RWA Online, we’ve got a great forum called Critters where you can post a scene or chapter and get multiple objective reactions.

Be true to yourself, true to your story, and forget the rules.  After all, spring is a time of rebirth and celebration of life and love.  Celebrate HEA for you and your characters!