HOW TO WRITE BAD GOOD by Lena Hart

 

 

A good story needs a good villain. They’re the third important person in your story—after the hero and heroine, of course. But it takes more then a sinister grin and a traumatized past to create the right anti-hero. How do you do this? Make them human. A good villain needs a strong character profile—give them a past, an identity, a motivation!

 

The worst thing your antagonist can be called is a ―cartoon villain‖, essentially a caricature of pure evilness. You don’t want that. So the next time you’re crafting your villain, remember these fine character qualities that will turn your evildoer into the baddest bad guy your readers will love to hate.

 

Purpose: What’s their motivation? Give your villain a reason for why they kill, maim, and/or torture. For Freddy Krueger, Hollywood’s most iconic villain, it was killing the children of his persecutors as revenge for burning then killing him and ulti-mately taking him away from his daughter.

 

Power: What’s their strength? Your villain should be powerful in the sense that they are almost undefeatable. They can’t be easy to beat. If any secondary character can defeat them, we wouldn’t need the hero(ine) to fight them. Krueger’s power is his ability to kill people in their dreams. Can’t get any more powerful then that!

 

Identity: What’s their trademark? Almost every villain has a weapon of choice or some-thing about them that not only make our skin crawl but also makes us remember them. That identifiable mark or object is symbiotic to who that villain is and part of what makes them unique. Imagine a brown fedora, a red and green striped sweater, and sharp blades for hands… it’s hard not to think of whose disfigured face that conjures up.

 

Flaw: What’s their weakness? Yes, they must have power but not too much. No one can be too strong and powerful, not your hero(ine) and especially not your villain. Your antagonist needs to have a defect, something that the protagonist can use to ultimately save the day. Krueger’s Achilles’ heel? He is ―mortal‖ in the real-world. Once he leaves the dream-world, he is rendered powerless.

 

Include these core elements and you’re on your way to writing ―bad good.♥

 

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:   Lena Hart is author of two novellas with Secret Cravings Publishing, including BECAUSE YOU LOVE ME. To learn more about Lena and her work, visit www.LenaHartSite.com.

  

THANKFUL FOR EVERYDAY HEROES

 
November is the month for giving thanks.  Member Jean Joachim is thankful for Everyday Heroes.   See below for her list of these wonderful men.  Happy Reading.  Happy Thanksgiving.♥

EVERYDAY HEROES
by Jean Joachim


Although we sometimes berate men for not communicating more, most men share their love by doing, not talking. Today, I honor those men, the ones who help for the sake of helping...the men who do small unselfish acts every day.  The everyday heroes -- men I know and don't know who have touched my life in positive ways...you know who you are:


1) To the two gentlemen who stopped, briefly, to pick me up, one guy on each arm, when I slipped and fell at the bottom of the wet subway stairs on a rainy day.

2) To the man who stopped in the parking lot of Peck's grocery store in Narrowsburg. The second I put my hands under the hood of my car, he was there, asking me what was wrong and if I needed help. Then he proceeded to show me where to put in the wiper fluid, unscrewed the cap to the little tank and left before I even made eye contact!

3)  To all the men on the streets of New York who have stopped to pick up whatever I dropped before I even bent my knees. Klutz that I am, that number is huge.

4)  To my friend in the community who came down to the lake because I told him I was going there to swim by myself and he felt it was unsafe.

5)  To all the men on airplanes who, when seeing me with a large carry-on bag, stood up and put it in the overhead rack for me without even being asked. And also, to those who took it down for me when we landed.

6)  To the thousands upon thousands of men who have held doors open for me, allowing me to pass through first.

7)  To the two young men on line in the grocery store who offered their frequent buyer cards to me so I could get the discounts, too. 

8)  To the man who took the dead mouse out of my mousetrap and disposed of it for me. Yucky! 

 

9)  To all the young men in high school and college who politely took "no" for an answer and either still continued to date me or became my friend.

10) To all the men who got up to give me a seat on the bus or subway when I was pregnant.

11) To my male writer friends in NRW who encourage me every day and still flirt with me.

12) To the men I met on countless vacations who danced with me, bought me a drink at the bar and didn't hit on me.

13) To the man who came to the emergency room with me on a first date, waited forever and held my hand while I got a tetanus shot.

14)  To my writing partner, Ben, who encourages me every day, never tells me my ideas are dumb or gives me a hard time about my typos or lack of punctuation…and listens, patiently, to me rant about life.

15) To the man who took two hours out of his day to show me how to do my website for the price of a bagel.

16) To the two men who took my pictures and designed book covers for me just because they are my friends.

17) To the man who walked me home after dark when I ducked into a bar because someone was following me...and took "no" for an answer with charm and grace.

18) To the man who drove me through a blinding snowstorm and back so I could bring a stray cat with an infected paw to the vet.

19) To Doug, our guest, who surprised me with a Tiramisu cake just because I had admired it in the bakery window.

20) To the man who jumped into a Facebook group to defend me when several people attacked my opinion.

21) To all the men who let me go first...from the checkout counter at the grocery store to the bread counter at Zabar's... simply because I'm a woman.

22) To the unknown young man who gave me a lift 60 blocks up Madison Avenue to Mt. Sinai Hospital when the subway wasn't running and my father was in surgery.

23) To the men in IRM who are never stingy with hugs or encouragement.

24) To DH who sometimes fixes things before I ask.


To all you everyday heroes, thank you. Thank you for all you've done and continue to do quietly without fanfare...and for the shy smile you give me when I acknowledge your help.♥

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Jean Joachim, wife and mother of two sons, is owned by a rescued pug, named Homer. She’d been writing non-fiction for what seemed like forever until she got up the nerve to try fiction. It was love. Now she spends her days in New York City in the company of her characters, with a cup of tea and a secret stash of black licorice.  Her recent romance series include Hollywood Hearts, Now and Forever, New York Nights, Moonlight and Lost & Found.  To learn more about Jean and her books, visit her at http://www.jeanjoachimbooks.com.

  
 

FAST DRAFTING FOR FUN AND PROFIT --OR AT LEAST FOR NANOWRIMO by Isabo Kelly

National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) is here!  The challenge -- writing 50,000 words of a single novel in the 30 days of November.  This annual challenge has helped a lot of people jump start a new project or finish one that’s been languishing. To meet the challenge, authors have to force themselves to draft their story quickly.

 

In honor of it being 2013, here are 13 tips to help with fast drafting:

 

 

 

1.      Have a place to start. It’s okay if this changes later on. The point is to get the bones of the story down. So if halfway through you realize the story will have to start earlier or later, that’s fine. Don’t worry about it for the moment. The most important thing is to get started and having a place to begin will keep you from staring at a blank screen for a week

2.      Have a place to end. It helps immensely having a vague idea of how the story is going to finish. For us Romance authors, we know the book will end with the couple together, but developing an idea of how they might do that is good. It gives you something to write toward.

3.      Have some general idea of how you might get from 1 to 2. If you’re a plotter, you’ll have these first three steps sorted with your outline—something you should do in October in preparation for NaNo. But even if you’re a pantser, it’s im-portant to have at least some idea of how you’d like the story to develop. You don’t need to be exact or even very specific if you like to go with the flow of the writing, but you do need a general place to start, a place to finish, and some vague plan for how to get from 1 to 2 to keep from getting side-tracked. But whether you’re a pantser or plotter…

4.      Don’t fear deviations. If the story takes you on an unexpected path, that’s okay, just make sure you can see your ending from that path. Some of those detours are your muse giving you a nudge in a really cool direction. Along with this point…

5.      Don’t worry if the ending changes. Sometimes, as you write and get to know your characters, you realize the ending has to be different from the idea you originally had. That’s okay too! Just write toward that new ending. Don’t panic or try to force yourself to stay true to the original path. In the end, everything can be fixed or changed.

6.      Don’t fuss over the details. Fast drafting is about getting the story from your head to the page as quickly as possible. You can fill in the details later. But if a detail slips in that you didn’t anticipate, leave it. Again, your muse could be telling you something. If it doesn’t work, it can be edited out.

7.     Do NOT edit. This is the hardest part of fast drafting, the thing that catches people out more often than anything else when it comes to finishing a story. Do NOT go back and edit if you can at all help it. If you’ve forgotten something, make a note of where it needs to be and keep writing. If you’ve missed an entire scene, and you know where it belongs, you can go back and add it, but don’t edit around it! You can smooth transi-tions later.

8.      Don’t worry about craft. Like the previous two points, this will keep you moving when you’re tempted to slow down and fiddle with things. Don’t worry about clichéd writing, missing dialogue tags, bad dialogue, silly descriptions, whatever. The crafting of the prose happens during the edits.

9.      Focus on your characters. Knowing your characters and how they might react in a given situation will keep you going when all else fails. You’ll get to know them more as the story progresses too, and this might mean you’ll have to fix things in the begin-ning, but DON’T go back and do that until the story is finished. At ―The End‖ you’ll know your characters so well it’ll be easier to fix the opening anyway.

10.  When you’re not writing, mull over the next scene. Take advantage of non-writing time to think about what will happen next so that when you come to the page, you can jump right back into the story without staring in frustration at the screen for half your writing time. Also, keep a notebook (or notebook app) handy in case you have inspira-tion while you’re away from your book.

11.  Just keep typing/writing. Even if you think what you’re writing is rubbish and you’ll have to cut it later, you never know what might come out of that rubbish. Keep your hands on the keyboard or your pen on the page and just keep slogging through. Eventually, your brain will click into the story and the writing will start to flow.

12.  Only re-read enough to get back into the story for fresh writing. Don’t go back and re-read most of the book. There is too much temptation to edit when you do that. Just go back a page or a few paragraphs, enough to get you back into the flow. Then start writing again.

13.  And finally HAVE FUN!! The more fun you’re having, the faster you’ll write. The story will get away from you and before you know it, you’ll have a finished book. You’ll be excited every time you sit down to write. And if you’re more interested in working on your own book than losing yourself in anyone else’s fiction, you are on the right track!

 

Good luck to everyone who’s taking the NaNoWriMo challenge! Happy Writing. May your muse cooperate to make it an exciting and fun month of fast drafting. With a little effort, you’ll have a book—or most of a book—finished come December 1st.♥

 

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:  Isabo Kelly fast drafts all her stories. This does mean she has to go back and edit a lot, but in the meantime, she has a lot of fun. Isabo’s latest story is a paranormal hockey romance novella called "Casting the Die" in the anthology GOING ALL IN. And yes, she wrote the first draft of the story very quickly. For more on Isabo and her books, visit her at www.isabokelly.com, follow her on Twitter @IsaboKelly or friend her on Facebook www.facebook.com/IsaboKelly.

 

 

CHARACTER INTERVIEW: CALEB COOPER FROM THE BULL RIDER AND THE BABY

  
RWA/NYC is pleased to welcome Caleb Cooper, the hero of Jeanine McAdam’s THE BULL RIDER AND THE BABY.  Today, he’s doing all the talking.  But first a little background:  Carrie Wang is a concussion researcher and Caleb is a bull rider who keeps falling off his bull and hitting his head.  Carrie is attracted to Caleb, her research subject, except Carrie is pregnant with Charles Winston’s baby.  Charles wants Carrie to give the baby up for adoption while Carrie’s mother Rose Wang wants Carrie to make the situation respectable and get married.  But Charles doesn’t want Carrie so she needs to find someone else...maybe Caleb? 

Hey, Caleb here.  You first meet me in THE BULL RIDER AND THE BARE BOYCOTTER where I consider myself a villain but others would probably call me a pain in the ass.  But in my own quirky and loveable way I redeem myself in THE BULL RIDER AND THE BABY because I’m the hero of that book.  Not a knight in shining armor sort of hero, but a good guy, who saves the day, nonetheless. 


Q:  How did you come to your author’s attention?
My brother Logan Cooper is the hero in THE BULL RIDER AND THE BARE BOYCOTTER.  Many, many times in that book I told my brother he was an asshole and an idiot plus all sorts of other rude stuff.  I think the brutal honesty of my words caught Jeanine’s attention.  I don’t think she completely agrees with how I treated Logan but it does create one hell of a story with interesting characters.


Q:  Did you give your author a hard time when she was writing your story?
No, not at all.  I’m not that type of guy.  Unlike my brother, I have lots of potential as a human being.  It just took a little bit of finessing on Jeanine’s part to turn me from a loudmouth idiot into a sensitive man.  But I’m here to tell you, it happened in THE BULL RIDER AND THE BABY.


Q:  What do you do for a living?
Next question. Holy hell, did you read the title of the book?


Q:  Who is the love of your life?
If I told you that THE BULL RIDER AND THE BABY would be ruined.  It’s called a spoiler.  Look it up.


Q:  If there is a ‘love of your life’, what was the first thing you noticed about her?
She was pregnant.  Hugely pregnant. 


Q:  What’s your greatest fear?
Falling off a bull, hitting my head and turning into an imbecilic.  Then again maybe that’s an old fear.  If I were to update my fears, it would be Carrie Wang leaving me.  Jesus H. Christ, I can’t believe I just said that.  I hope Carrie doesn’t read this interview, she’ll think I’m whipped.


Q:  How do the other characters in your book view you?
Carrie thinks I’m (coughs into his hand) HOT.  Then again, she probably won’t admit it because I don’t wear a helmet when I climb onto a bull.  You see she’s a concussion researcher and she’s studying my brain.  Carrie’s traditional Chinese mother (in some circles known as a Tiger Mom) thinks I’m not educated enough to marry her daughter but I’m up for the challenge of proving her wrong.

 
Q:  What do you think the reader will find interesting about you?
My good looks, award-winning personality and ability to get along with people.  Ha, ha you almost fell for that I could tell.  You know these questions are unfair.  It’s tough for a guy to talk about himself.


Q:  What is the kinkiest thing you’ve ever done?
Now, you’re really pushing it (rolls shoulders).  Have sex with a woman that I didn’t impregnate.  By the way, Carrie was seven months along at the time we got together but I was gentle.  That’s all I’m saying about her, don’t ask me anymore.

Q:  Will we be seeing you in future books?
You betcha.  There’s THE BULL RIDER IS A BABE coming out in February 2014.  It’s about my sister Cassidy. She wants to compete against the men.  You didn’t hear this from me but she’s probably a better rider than Logan and I combined.  Her problem is, she’s a lousy Mom.  Then again, she’s planning to work on that and I guess she gets involved with Pastor John.  Talk about opposites attracting, I don’t know what Jeanine was thinking bringing those two together.♥



ABOUT THE AUTHOR:   Jeanine McAdam lives in New York City, but is fascinated by the American West.  She writes about cowboys and the urban women who love them.  She’s curious about the clash in culture, goals and values that happen between a hero and heroine raised in different environments.  For example Big Timber, Montana and Brooklyn, New York. “The Skirts and the Spurs” trilogy is about opposites attracting and finding commonality even though the main characters are worlds apart.  Learn more about Jeanine and her books at www.jeaninemcadam.com.  You can also friend and follow her at: Facebook: www.facebook.com/jeaninemcadambooks; Twitter: www.twitter.com/jeaninemcadam.
  
  

NaNoWriMo Day 1 -- EVERY WORD COUNTS!

  

 

It's Day 1 of National Novel Writing Month aka NaNoWriMo.  The goal is 50,000 words in 30 days.

Yes, it can be done.  I've done it twice and I'm going for my third victory.

The secret -- keep writing.

Every word counts so don't delete anything... ANYTHING.  

If you have to write six words before you find the right one, you keep those six words.  If you have to rewrite the beginning three times, you keep those three beginnings.  If you write 20 pages and get a better idea and want to run with that you still keep those 20 pages.

Every word counts!

Be creative.  Take off on tangents.  Be verbose.  Include all the data you have ever researched.  Write out those song lyrics.  Write out those family histories.

Every word counts!

And, remember NO EDITING.   You can edit later....much later.

Right now, the goal is to write, write, write.

The formula says that if you write 1666 words per day you will hit the 50,000 in 30 days.  It doesn't matter if you write 1666 words today or 66, just write and continue to write.  Try to write every day when and where you can.  It all adds up.

And, every word counts!

Good luck to us all.###




ABOUT THE AUTHOR:   Maria Ferrer is President of the Romance Writers of America / New York City, Inc.  She has won NaNoWriMo twice and is going for her third victory.  Her best advice -- don't delete anything.  Visit her at www.marializaferrer.blogspot.com and her alter ego at www.mydelcarmen.com.