A Bit Like Opening Pandora's Box?

First, I should apologize for being absent so long. I had enough trouble keeping focused with the writing to even thing about blogging! So, I’m sorry. Totally. Mea culpa and all that jazz.

In a flurry of activity and a mad search for inspiration, I signed up for some RWA special interest chapters (shout outs to Hearts Through History, Celtic Hearts, and FF&P! Hi, guys!) and was instantly inundated with a MILLION workshops I absolutely HAD to take.

But being just one writer meant I had to weed the list down to two. And even that is probably too many. I chose “Plotting for Pansters” and “Emotion and Sexual Tension,” both of which I highly recommend, even after just one week!

In the tension workshop, however, I have unearthed Pandora’s Box per se. The instructor has laid out a very good foundation for what establishes tension (both kinds drive the book!) and how to maintain it. Do you know what the bottom line is? You need characters with different goals.

Oh, hell.

Let’s be honest, I have two characters that I really like in my medieval. I mean, I really like them. If it were up to me, they’d meet, exchange a little witty, Middle English or Gaelic banter, fall madly in love, and have lots and lots of babies and raise some of those long-haired red cattle things that I always see in Scottish postcards. But that wouldn’t make much of a romance book, would it? (It would make for a super great short story, but I don’t think Zebra is really looking to pick up any 2,500 word manuscripts. Shucks.)

So for the past two nights, I have been lying awake in bed. And instead of dreaming of ways to make my morning routine more efficient for everyone involved, or of how we’re going to manage this cross-town move at the end of the month in less than two days’ worth of time off, or how to cure hangnails or even bad breath, I’m trying to get to the bottom of Adela’s (h) motivation. What the hell does this woman want? (Other than indoor plumbing. And ponytail elastics. Just sayin’.)

I mean, honestly. I know what I want for Adela: the burly Scot I’ve got lined up for her! Hooray!

“The end.”

No?

Sadly, no. So trying to get inside a character’s head really exposes some holes in a panster’s plotting, let’s just say. One question leads to another. (What does she want, besides avoiding a forced marriage to the fat, bald guy? Well, she wants to find her missing relative.) Which leads to another. (Why? She’s hoping he’s not dead. ) And another. (What would it matter to her if her brother were alive? Well, for starters, she wouldn’t have to live with her nasty uncle. That’s enough, right?!)

It’s an evil trick the workshop author played on me. Now I’m looking at my other WIP (steampunkish romance) and I’m giving those characters the third degree. (“Who are you? Where do you come from? What do you want out of life? Do you even like wearing corsets? What’s with those brass goggles, anyway?”)

I know, I know. Necessary evils and everything. I just sorta wonder how Matrix-y my life just got—eyes opened and all. Should I have just chosen the red pill? (Or was it the blue pill? I was never able to get past how creepy Morpheus talked in that movie to pay attention to which pill was which.) Down the rabbit hole we go, I suppose.

Happy writing!

h.