What Draws You Into a Story?

Just like that well-known actor I’m baaaaaccck! In January I was on vacation in Mexico and in February I was trying to reclaim my brain from all that sunshine, sand, and surf and a shot or more of very good tequila. And then came the downside which we are all dealing with in our own ways, and what better way to pass the time than read and write. So far, I must admit to more reading than writing, but here goes.

Our Round Robin topic for March is: what draws you into a story? Even though we authors are encouraged to write stunning back blurb, I am often disappointed when the blurb and the content don’t quite match up. It’s the same with covers. How many great covers have attracted you to a book and then the content in no way has lived up to it? I am a lot savvier now when buying books on Amazon as I ignore the covers and take advantage of the ‘Look inside’ feature.

First of all, does the writing grab me? Never mind the content or genre, do I want to read my way through the sample? Does the author use strong verbs and build a picture? Is there a question to be answered? Two totally different books are one of my childhood favourites, Black Beauty, and John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids. 

Anna Sewell’s Black Beauty begins: The first place that I can well remember was a large pleasant meadow with a pond of clear water in it. Some shady trees leaned over it, and rushes and waterlilies grew at the deep end.

Even as a child I remember thinking, why does Black Beauty remember this so well? And, after all these years, it says a lot for the writing and the content as to why I recall those two sentences so clearly.

John Wyndham opens The Day of the Triffids with: When a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.

OK, John, you’ve got me. What is wrong?

Strong characters will also grab and keep my attention. From my youthful bookshelf I recall Lorna Doone, Jayne Eyre, Heathcliff and Cathy, and Tess of the d’Urbervilles. There was Captain Ahab and Moby Dick, the whale being as much a strong character as the Captain, and who could forget Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler? What about Atticus Finch in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird? More recently Lee Child’s Jack Reacher has grabbed my fancy, as has Walt Longmire from the pen of Craig Johnson.

I may write historical romance but my tastes, as you may tell, stretch far and wide. If the characters are strong enough, I want to know what their motivation is. I will ride the roller coaster of their highs and lows, knowing that the tension in their stories will come to-hopefully- a satisfying conclusion. If there is a logical flow to the story, varying sentence lengths to make the reading experience easier and few, if any, clichés, then I am a happy camper.  

Visit these other authors to see what grabs their interest.

Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Helena Fairfax http://www.helenafairfax.com/blog
Judith Copek http://lynx-sis.blogspot.com/
Diane Bator http://dbator.blogspot.ca/
Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-1RR
Fiona McGier http://www.fionamcgier.com/
Marci Baun  http://www.marcibaun.com/blog/
Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/
Rhobin L Courtright http://www.rhobincourtright.com

How Do You Handle the Nasties?

This month our Round Robin blog topic is: How do you handle/use violence, or any type of danger, in your stories?

For me, being a non-violent person (read mile-wide yellow streak down my spine) I find it very difficult to write villains and villainy into my stories. Murder mysteries and thrillers with graphic content tend to make me squirm or give up reading or watching them. That’s not to say that I can’t appreciate good writing or great acting, just that I’d rather not have my sleep disturbed by bad dreams after experiencing it. Case in point – I had to stop watching Criminal Minds because of the nightmares it gave me. Yes, folks, that’s just how much it upset me.

However, conflict is a must-have to write a good story. Without conflict there really is no story. I think of the example I have given to writing classes in the past of a couple cleaning their teeth. They go into the bathroom. He takes the cap off the tube of toothpaste, squeezes the tube in the middle to get the required amount of paste on his brush, gives her the tube. She squeezes the tube in the same place and as soon as her toothbrush is loaded, she screws the cap back on. It's routine. It’s boring. Nothing happens. It does not move the story forward. Heck, it isn’t even a story.

BUT – what if they don’t go into the bathroom together? What if he goes in first, showers, shaves, cleans his teeth?

What if he squeezes the tube in the middle and she squeezed the tube from the bottom, rolling it up as each part of it becomes flattened? What if he always throws the tube on the side of the basin and leaves the cap off, allowing just a bit of toothpaste to escape and make a mess on the porcelain which causes her to yell at him? And he yells right back “it’s only frigging toothpaste!” What if this happens morning after morning until she could just shoot him? Oh, oh. Did I say, ‘shoot him’? This is not routine. It’s not boring. We have conflict. We have a story.  

When I write my own stories, I write the ‘nice’ bits first – the characters and things that come easily to me. Then I have to weave in the nefarious stuff. The nasty cousin, the thief in the night, or the blackmailer. But I work out their character lines as much as I do for my hero or heroine. I want to know what has made my characters the way they are, nice, naughty or just plain nasty. The results may never grace a page, but at least I know what makes them tick and can convey as much as is necessary through introspection or dialogue. I have to have some measure of empathy for my villains and hope my readers understand that. 

Two books that I have read a couple of times each for spine-tingling, edge-of-my-seat suspense and examples of how to build tension are Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot and Dean Koontz’s Innocence. Neither has the kind of graphic, visual hit that makes me want to peer through my fingers. Rather, it is a slow build-up of little details that draw me in. If it’s an out and out fight scene, I don’t think anyone sets that up as well as Lee Child does in his Jack Reacher books. I mostly write Regency romance, but the basics apply to any era. In my second Regency I needed to set up a sword-fight scene so went to my local sword fencing club and got so much more information than if I had just read about it or watched YouTube clips – although I have to admit I find YouTube an enormously useful tool.  

Writers are a resourceful lot and what works for one may not work for another. Let’s visit the authors listed her and see what works for them.

Dr. Bob Rich https://wp.me/p3Xihq-1i2
Victoria Chatham http://www.victoriachatham.com
Connie Vines http://mizging.blogspot.com/
Anne Stenhouse  http://annestenhousenovelist.wordpress.com/
A.J. Maguire  http://ajmaguire.wordpress.com/
Marci Baun  http://www.marcibaun.com/blog/
Skye Taylor http://www.skye-writer.com/blogging_by_the_sea
Fiona McGier http://www.fionamcgier.com/
Anne de Gruchy https://annedegruchy.co.uk/category/blog/
Rhobin L Courtright http://www.rhobinleecourtright.com