The HEA Cafe

Premise: According to Webster’s–a previous statement or assertion that serves as the basis for an argument

Now I don’t want you arguing with an editor! But I use the term premise but someone else might use, blurb. Either way it includes: the basic components: hero, heroine, setting–internal, external, romantic conflicts–and ends with story question(s)

When you choose a book in a store, you look at the cover, turn it over and read the back cover blurb and then open the book and read the first paragraph. But the editor you’ve submitted to doesn’t have cover art or back cover blurb, so they go right to the first page ABSOLUTELY COLD—no direction, no idea of what type of story or where it might be heading.

So it’s inadvisable to include your own cover art, but including two paragraphs on the basics of the story to orient the editor is a good idea.

Here’s the first page of my synopsis for DANGEROUS SEASON, out April 2007
 

Harbor Intrigue Series
Synopsis of Book One, Dangerous Season
By Lyn Cote
Bible Verse:  “Be angry and sin not…” Ephesians 4:26
“Speak the truth in love…” Ephesians 4:15
Premise:
Keir Harding, at thirty-five, finally achieves his lifelong goal.  Last fall, he’d been narrowly elected county sheriff in his hometown of Winfield, WI.  After his “wild” teen years, Keir has spent the last eighteen years working his way up the ladder from rookie, to deputy sheriff and now sheriff.  Then a rash of mean-spirited booby traps endangers the community and its tourist trade.  One man still doubts Keir was the man for the job and will use these crimes try to sway others against Keir. 
Audra Blair, a twenty-six-year old single mother, launches her own cafe, her first step toward financial independence for her and her six-year-old daughter, Evie.  As Winfield deals with the increasingly expensive and dangerous vandalism, Audra and Keir find themselves drawn more and more together.  But self-doubt and old grudges work to push them apart.  Can Keir with Audra’s help discover who is damaging property and endangering lives before someone they both love gets maimed or killed?
 

FINAL EXERCISE:Go through the excerpt above and mark the setting, the hero and heroine and their descriptions, the internal and external conflicts and the story question. Then write your own theme and premise or blurb for your manuscript—2 paragraphs ONLY. Again, post yours and ask for comments. I’ll skim and choose one.

Today is the last day of this class. But since it’s a long holiday weekend, I will stop back by on Tuesday and tie things up. Drop by Tuesday and perhaps you could win a copy of Dangerous Season and that copy of A NOVEL APPROACH. 

Also I have an egroup for readers and writers. Drop by my website and  join it. I send out monthly messages with material for both readers and writers. Happy Writing!
 

Suggested Resources:
 

Dwight Swain’s TECHNIQUES OF A SELLING WRITER

Christopher Vogler’s THE WRITER’S JOURNEY

James Scott Bell’s PLOT AND STRUCTURE

Tami Cowden’s HERO AND HEROINE ARCHETYPES

Online Workshops by Margie Lawson, PhD—Empowering Character Emotion, EDITS revision system

Kathy Jacobsen’s A NOVEL APPROACH (Conflict Grid, etc.)

www.kathyjacobsen.com $25 for PDF file (220 pages) HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!

HEA (Happily Ever After) Café for archived lessons on query, synopsis and beginnings and more!  www.rwaonlinechapter.org/pubbedauthors

Lyn Cote

www.LynCote.net

ESSENTIALS:

Voice

In Dianne Castell’s “Up Close and Personal” from March 2007 RWR featuring a Audrey LaFehr of Kensington Publishing: (on page 37)  and I quote:

“Question What aspects of a new writer’s work really catch your eye? I know it’s been said a million times before, but it is the voice that catches my eye or ear if you well.  It’s a voice that intrigues me and appeals to me, a voice I want to listen to from the start, and more and more as the pages go on.  It’s a voice that’s appropriate to the genre and matches the type of story being told, whether that’s a taut and weighty thriller, a soft and lyrical literary novel, fun and sassy contemporary fiction, or an intense and emotional romance.  It’s a consistent and insistent voice, where you feel the author’s intention quite clearly and powerfully, but you don’t “see” the author herself behind that narrative voice.  Sorry voice is intangible and very hard to describe.  I did my best!”

Frankly I think she did a very good job.  Voice is the very hardest thing to learn or distinguish for the new writer because it’s just developing.  The only way you develop your voice is by writing A LOT. And sometimes we confuse it with a character voice, two very different things.  My suggestions:

·       Keep a journal and periodically read aloud from it.  Write about your life, your characters, what you are trying to write, etc.

·       Try to decide which genre or sub genre reflects or correlates to your natural voice.  I write in three sub genres of inspirational novels: romance, romantic suspense, and historical saga. Each one of them is written in my voice for that sub genre.  But evidently, my voice is strongest in the last one, historical sagas.  I realized this due to contests.  Occasionally, one of my contemporary novels will final in a contest.  But only my historicals rise to place in many contests and my 1996 Golden Heart finalist manuscript was historical and my first RITA nomination was with my historical CHLOE in 2006.

So you need to ask yourself what you want to write the most, and enjoy writing most, and what receives the most positive response from readers and contest judges. For nine years, I was unable to sell anything to anyone in NYC.  It took Wendy McCurdy. Senior Editor at Bantam, in 1994 to tell me at a conference that I was writing for the inspirational market.  She could hear it, but I was clueless!  As soon as I investigated and changed markets, I sold. That’s how important voice is.

v    Exercise for finding your voice–Rewrite your first chapter in first person.  This will bring out your voice and your characters’ distinctive voices.  The story will suddenly become much more personal, much more yours.  It will also show up any Point of View errors and clumsy constructions. Today, why don’t you try writing at least the first page of your manuscript in first person and when you’re happy with it, post it here and at the end of it, give your genre and subgenre, i.e.., “Secular romance, romantic suspense.”  (Of course, this is just an exercise. Third person subjective is the POV of choice today. But perhaps a few of you may find your voice is 1^st Person. That is the Voice of a few authors.)

And ask the other participants:

• Is my voice distinctive?
• Does my voice fit what I am writing?
• Is my sub genre clear from my first page? And do the same for them. BUT JUST FOR TUESDAY!
  

Now we’re moving away from Essential elements to form.

3-Send in a professional proposal, including an often overlooked primary element

and including a premise as an aid to the editor who will be reading the story

COLD:

v    Include: Theme—which is connected to the Black Moment, Danger and Epiphany—THEME EMPOWERS STORY AND CHARACTERS

This is another element, similar to voice.  The theme is a concept, not a physical person, not actions in a plot.  It is the elusive element which is given life by the characters and their actions.  I write for the inspirational market which is heavily tipped toward theme.  But even if you’re writing erotica for the secular market, you will still write a story that possesses a unifying theme.  All novels have themes which are made flesh by character growth through a plot of conflicts.
 

In planning a novel, I always use Kathy Jacobsen’s A Novel Approach, which teaches the use of a Conflict Grid.  This grid pits the hero and heroine’s goals and conflicts in opposition to each other.  After going through the internal, external, and romantic conflicts, the grid asks what the Danger is?

 Danger means what is the erroneous life-truth that your hero and heroine are going to have to let go of or change before they can reach the Epiphany. In Dorritt, my heroine must give up her long-held belief that for an intelligent and well-educated woman in 1821 marriage is bondage.  The hero must give up his belief that living on the frontier, he will die young like his parents and that he will die alone–as he has lived. These are deeply held beliefs that they have learned from the painful losses and lessons of their lives. Believing that they could love and have a relationship means that they must first go through the painful process of change.  This is Danger. It is always connected to the opposing internal conflicts and it always leads to the Black Moment.

Either before, during or after the climax, the hero and heroine experience Epiphany.  Suddenly through some plot catalyst, they see what they have been doing wrong. They see the truth that they have been clinging to is a roadblock to what they really want, which is to be with the other person and experience love fully. This realization leads to and tell you your theme.  Voilà!
 

But if the editor is only going to read the first page, how will she know that you have a thrilling, deeply emotional Danger, Black Moment, and Epiphany?
 

Because at the beginning of your first page or the first page of your proposal, you’re going to state your theme. Now you may not yet know what your theme is.  I never start with theme when I plan a story. I create characters and put them in a dramatic plot filled with conflict and I let them tell me what their theme is.

Now I’m going to switch for an example of this to my first Love Inspired Suspense in 2007, Dangerous Season.  Its theme is two Bible Verses:  “Be angry and sin not…” Ephesians 4:26 “Speak the truth in love…” Ephesians 4:15

My heroine has an unresolved conflict with her mother over something deeply painful in the past and this is what is holding her back from moving on with her life, so hers is speak the truth in love.  My hero is a redeemed bad boy who is living down his misspent youth and he often still reacts with anger, so his is be angry and sin not.  You can see both are about communicating, one explodes and one withdraws.  You see there’s even conflict in their themes, a really good thing if you can do it. If you’re not writing inspirational, your theme won’t be Bibles verses, but stated in more general terms, i.e., You can’t get love till you give it. You love someone not just with words but actions, etc.

Exercise for theme:  What is the emotional danger that is keeping your hero and your heroine from letting go and loving? Start with their internal conflicts and see how far you can take them into emotional danger. Then move to Epiphany, stating in words what they have to learn in order to gain love. Then put it into a theme or themes. Again, post your musings about danger, internal conflict, epiphany and theme and see if you can get some help from each other.  Again I’ll skim and choose one.  This is it for Thursday.  Tomorrow were on to the Final Tip: premise!
 

ESSENTIALS, emotion and hooks, are the topics for Wednesday. EMOTION is absolutely necessary in your submission.

·       Emotion

According to Dwight Swain, readers read for emotion.  We want to have boring and mundane lives but to read exciting, emotion-packed fiction.  If you are skimming, not delving deeply enough into the portrayal of the emotions of your characters and doing that in every scene, you will not be acquired.  If you are writing the easy scenes with your fun and undemanding secondary characters and skipping the hard, emotional, heart-wrenching scenes that nearly destroy your hero and heroine or lift them to heaven, you will not be acquired.

According to Susan Naomi Horton in her classic article “Making Them Tick: Motivation and Emotional Intensity” reprinted by many RWA chapter newsletters in the mid-90s, emotional intensity is necessary to sell and it is created by:

• thematic continuity
• strong motivation
• meaningful conflict (More about these later.)

There are five ways to portray emotion in prose, and here they are from the least effective to the most effective:

• just saying what emotion a character is feeling, (Mary was sad.)
• revealing it through dialogue,  (Hey, Mary, you look sad.)
• revealing it through interior monologue (or the character’s thoughts underlined), (I’m so sad, Mary thought. Does Bill really love me?) Note present tense.
•  through the characters actions, (Mary sat down and cried.)
• and finally the most effective, through the character’s physical reactions to some stimulus. (When Mary saw her boyfriend kiss Thelma, she realized that she’d stopped breathing. She gasped and turned away. Please don’t let them see me.) Oh sorry, I got carried away—just the first 2 sentences!

 Whole books have been written on this topic so this is all that I have to say about it—DO IT.

For more indepth instruction, I recommend highly two online workshops by Margie Lawson, PhD—Empowering Character Emotion and EDITS revision system.   

 Here is the rest of page 1 and page 2 of Dorritt.  (Add the first excerpt from Lesson 1)

Read and pick out all the words, phrases, sentences—and figure out all the ways I have portrayed emotion in this passage. No one is dying here, but there is a lot going on in that lavish parlor.  Of course, since it’s the beginning, I am just setting up the characters and their emotions.  I’m launching them and as the chapter progresses Dorritt will finally hit the high emotional point near the end of the first chapter, the chapter’s climax.

“Dorritt’s tambour embroidery frame and stand sat in front of her at hand level. Placing tiny artful stitches helped her conceal how her heart skipped and jumped. How would it all play out today? Dorritt looked up at Jewell. “Don’t you think love is necessary to marry well?” 

Jewell made a sound of dismissal. “These odd humors, your peculiar comments all come from books. You read too much, Dorritt.  Father always says so and mother agrees.”  Jewell’s high-waisted white dress swayed with her wandering.

“Then it must be so.” The heat of the afternoon was squeezing Dorritt like a sodden tourniquet. She put down her needle and pinched the bridge of her nose.  Over the past months, she had stood back and read the signs of her stepfather’s devious manipulation of facts and circumstances. Did Jewell have any idea what might end? Begin today?

With a handkerchief, Mother blotted her perspiring face. “Please, Jewell, you must sit down and relax, compose yourself.”
“Why hasn’t André come yet?”  Jewell attacked the lush Boston fern which sat on the stand by the French doors. She pulled off a frond and began stripping it.  “He told me he would be asking my father’s permission today.”

There is many a slip between the cup and lip. “Perhaps he has been delayed.” Dorritt set another tiny stitch with the rigid concentration.Would her stepfather manage to work his conjuring once more, bend reality to his selfish and greedy will? And more important, could Dorritt use it in her favor? Her hands stuttered and she had to pull the needle back out.

The sound of an approaching horse drew Jewell to the French doors that led to the garden.  “I can’t see the rider.  He has already dismounted under the porte-cochere.  That doesn’t look like André’s horse,” she added fretfully and tossed the mangled fern frond back into the pot.
 

On to our second point for Wednesday.

·       Hooks—

Readers keep reading for only one reason.  They keep turning pages to find the answer to some question or to find out what the character is hinting at, what is going to happen next. They won’t read on because you write beautiful prose.  And the most discriminating reader of all is the editor you’re hoping will acquire you. Every chapter has a hook at the beginning and a hook at the end.  And so does every scene.  Many people take a lot of time working on their first sentences in an attempt to hook the reader immediately.  Sometimes we can come up with a winning first sentence and sometimes we can’t.  But you will do just as well if you can plant a hook in the first paragraph or two.  An editor will at least read the first couple of paragraphs, so just get a good one in there and then keep it going. Plant little hints that someone has a hidden agenda, something big’s coming, that secrets will be revealed–some time in the upcoming page.  That’s a way to keep the reader (editor) stuck to your pages.

Exercise for emotions and hooks

Go through my first two pages of Dorritt and highlight all the emotions portrayed and all the hooks I’ve planted.  Then look at your first two paragraphs, highlight them for both hooks and emotion, improve them and then post them for comments here. Again, tomorrow I will skim and post one which is well done.  If you would like comments about your posting, be sure to ask for them in your posting.  But only post these on Wednesday. Tomorrow we will be going through two techniques of a professional proposal.

Remember make them laugh, make them cry, make them wonder.

Hi,

My life seems to get more complicated with each day. So I forgot to let the world of HEA know that my latest Love Inspired Suspense DANGEROUS GAME was released on May 8th, last Tuesday.

I particularly love this book because I love the hero and heroine. They are an unlikely pair to fall in love. Grey Lawson has just gotten out of prison after seven years and Trish Franklin is the first female deputy sheriff in the hometown he returns to. It also doesn’t help that Grey killed Trish’s father’s twin brother and that someone is recreating over and over the tragic drunk-driving accident that sent Grey to prison.

Readers must like this intriguing unlikely romance since it sold out in 2 days on the eharlequin.com site. Don’t worry– they sold out but it’s still available at your local Walmart or online.

 Sorry to be so tardy!

Lyn