Jan
Craft and Nothing but Craft
Hi all! It’s great to be blogging here at Romantic Inks again. I thought since most people here are struggling authors that I would take some time to talk about craft and answer any questions you have. You might find this useful and it will keep my mind off the fact that Night of the Huntress hits the shelves this week. Eeek!
So, I’m going to begin with Goal. I’m sure all of you know about goal, motivation and conflict. If you’re anything like I was when I started out you may have little or no idea if your characters have these three vital things or not.
Goals
• All characters need to have goals, be they main or secondary players — These goals are *External* and *Internal* which basically means that one is something that is obvious, and one that is inherent to the character’s internal workings. What does your hero want? The heroine’s property? To win a bet? Those are external goals. What does he want in his heart of hearts? Love? Respect? For someone to understand him? That’s an internal goal.
• Goals are what will help establish how relatable and sympathetic your characters are. A heroine who wants to kill someone can be sympathetic if you make the reader want that same goal. This ties into motivation, which we’ll discuss tomorrow. A heroine who wants to save her child is sympathetic. A hero who wants to keep his job is relatable.
• Both long and short term goals can be used.
- Long term goals focus on dreams, aspirations, purpose in life. They are the big picture, what the character is always chasing and are omnipresent.
- Short term goals focus on the immediate and must be met to accomplish the long term. They create more conflict, can cause changes in the long term and lead to character growth.
For example, the long term goal is for the heroine to gain revenge upon the hero. What things does she need to do to achieve that goal? Does she need to get him to trust her? Then that’s a short term goal. If a hero wants to marry the heroine he might want to win her trust first, or perhaps he has darker ideas and intends to seduce her. Seduction is his short term goal, but then he’ll have more short term goals that he’ll have to achieve in order to woo her into his bed.
• Goals must be realistic in relation to the character, and presented in a way that the reader can relate. Most readers would find it difficult to believe that a woman who has a great career, a loving husband and two beautiful children would want to run away and join the circus. If you’re going to give her that goal, you’d better be able to make the reader buy into it. However, it is very easy to understand that a hero who never felt loved by his parents might long for someone to accept and love him for who he is. A heroine who was treated like an idiot by every man in her life might want respect. These are realistic.
Does this make sense? Or do you still have questions? I’d like you all to take full advantage of me and ask whatever you want. If you need goal help I’ll certainly do my best. And if any of you would like to discuss the GMC of your characters — and any problems you might be having — now is a great week to do it. Let’s call it “Craft 101 with Kate!”
Oh, and buy my new book. 
Great blog
January 28th, 2007 at 12:05 pmThat was weird. I had a much longer post and only the first sentence printed.
You asked what we needed help on. My hero is a wealthy, physically beautiful, very popular physician in 1822. He is a man preoccupied with his reputation in society. He is the ultimate player and does not want people making fun of him because he got caught in a marriage of convenience to a little country mouse and so he is driven to recreate her as the Greatest. Seductress in London. While this seems like a frivolous goal (and my heroine thinks he is just a little crazy to be so hung up on what other people think) he is a man who has deep personal knowledge of exactly how much gossip and social opinion can take away from you. Since he needs the heroine’s cooperation in carrying out his little public “play” he is trying to be extremely pleasant and easy to get along with to keep her playing along with him and makes a grand noble promise that he will not sleep with her until she asks him, but he is finding that being a gentleman with her is harder than he thought it would be. He is torn between desperately wanting her good opinion and desperately wanting to ravish her in every way known to man.
January 28th, 2007 at 12:09 pmWelcome to RI, Kate, I’m so doing the happy dance right now because - per my own personal goal sheets
- this is the week I start to work on my book in earnest. I also wanted to thank you, Kate, and all the people who sent me good vibes and gave me advice as I finally made it to my first RWA chapter meeting yesterday. In a nutshell? It was FANTASTIC! and that doesn’t even describe it, but still, I shall blog about it here when my turn comes up again.
Clarisse ~ I’m sorry your post dissapeared…as you might have noticed we have a new look. It looks like Haven is hard at work on the site and that may be one of the reasons why the comments are not showing up or are incomplete when you post them. I sincerely apologize to you and to anyone else who might be having this problem here. Please bear with us as we make the visual changes to RI. For all I know my own comment my dissapear LOL.
Kate ~ Back to you here, so you’re telling us we need a GMC for ALL our characters? At the very least the ones that matter including, of course H/H, because up until now I only have GMCs for the H/H, but the father of the Heroine is an important character to the story. Even though, I’m still deciding whether he’ll have a chance to have his on POV somewhere in the book. You know what I mean?
January 28th, 2007 at 12:45 pmBring on those craft lessons, Kate, I have a book to write, LOL!
Clarisse, my question is this: if he’s hung up on reputation, why does he want her to be a seductress? Why not have him want her to be the epitome of feminine grace and manners — a true lady? Maybe I have a different view of seductress, but if she’s sexy and alluring, that might make other men think they can have her as well, which goes against the doc’s wanting to be socially accepted. And having *her* be socially accepted.
What is the convenience of their marriage, does she have money?
And why the offer not to sleep with her? First, that simply makes him a gentleman if he’s not going to force her. What are his reasons for not wanting to sleep with her? And what if his little mouse of a wife agrees to become a lady because she *wants* to seduce him into her bed? You could really have a great turn-about here if you had her tell him that she’ll agree to his plan if he starts treating her as a husband should.
But okay, his goal is to 1. Be a social darling and 2. Make his wife into a social darling? Is that it? But she’s anything but. So, is your book going to be him being like a Henry Higgins to her? Maybe instead of having him promise not to bed her, he can simply think that sex would complicate things? But then you have the classic conflict of who is he falling in love with — his wife, or his creation?
Is any of this helping or sparking ideas for you? Cause I think I’m rambling. lol.
January 28th, 2007 at 12:52 pmIsabel, it is a very good idea to have GMC for all characters — at least ones that you plan to give page time to. Obviously you have to have it for the H & H, but the villian should have it too. Any character that you are going to give voice to should want something — even if you never really plan to address it. You’ll find this so amazingly helpful in grounding the character and giving them realism. Trust me. lol. I could sit here right now and tell you the GMC for every character in Be Mine Tonight, even though you don’t see it for half of them. It helped me keep the characters real.
So give your heroine’s father a GMC — even if he never gets POV time. If you have scenes with him in it, then you should know what drives him. I’m cracking my whip now! LOL!
January 28th, 2007 at 12:56 pmYes sir! I mean Kate. LOL Thanks this helps me. I’ll come back later to comment some more.
January 28th, 2007 at 1:04 pmYou weren’t ranting a bit, Kathryn, and I think I wasn’t clear. He is a total dog, has been bedding nothing but widows and other men’s wives since he was 14. His reputation is that he is totally about the sex. No one would ever believe he fell in love, and the last thing he would logically want is a lady. He just doesn’t want anyone to think he was stupid enough to get trapped in a compromising situation and the only logical reason he can think of to explain his having married her is that he was bedazzled by her seductive powers. He has always deliberately picked women who were only in it for the casual sex, no danger of attachment. He had a disasterous experience years ago with a woman who did fall in love with him and he is not taking any chances on having that happen again. The woman he has just married is a widow who he erroneously assumes loved her husband and he is not about to take any chances that she will confuse sex with love so he is keeping his hands off, not just to get her cooperation but because he does not want to hurt anyone. He is a better man than he knows he is.
January 28th, 2007 at 1:11 pmOkay, so he wants to set her up to be a seductress and then is actually seduced by her? And not only seduced, but she makes him do the one thing he swore he never would and he falls in love. Sounds good to me!
January 28th, 2007 at 1:41 pmThe fascinating thing here is that I haven’t actually talked through this until now. I knew this but laying it out to someone else was incredibly helpful. My mind is spinning like a top now. God, I need a critique partner
Thasnks, Kathryn. You rock and I cannot wait for Tuesday.
January 28th, 2007 at 1:48 pmClarisse, it sounds really good to me too!
I’m sorry your comment went poof…but I stopped working on the site early this morning, like at 4am. I haven’t a clue where it went either. I checked the spam holder and it wasn’t there. So I’m assuming it’s lost is cyber-space somewhere.
Kate! Great topic!! Call me totally lacking in the head or maybe just blame the lack of sleep, but what is GMC? I’m sure I know what it is, but right now my mind is NOT working.
Now on to your topic: I’ve began reworking my story and have just about finished chapter two. In the original story I had a married woman who had been dumped by her husband who also stole her children. And the hero was a vampire who had to help her get her children back and make her understand that love isn’t always a bad thing.
This story got stuck because I kept going back to the part of her cheating on her husband and I didn’t want readers everywhere to throw the book against the wall because the heroine was a cheater, despite the fact that her loathsome husband has left her.
So I began work on a new plot, set several years back. Robert *the bad guy* is trying his best to trap Lindsey into a marriage, because he is worthless, truly he’s broke! Lindsey is both a diamond of the first, but she also doesn’t want to be loved just for her beauty. Nor does she want some lapdog, aka what she thinks Robert is or will be. Along comes Ashton who sets her world a flutter and her heart.
His issue is he views himself a monster and doesn’t wish that on anyone. But he can’t help himself when faced with Lindsey’s charm.
The idea of the story is evil isn’t always where you think it. It will prove one guy who seems nice enough to be truly the devil and a would-be monster to be the most heavenly thing on earth, at least in Lindsey’s eyes.
So far my favorite line is from Lindsey: “I’m afraid I don’t care much for kissing toads, even if I could win a prince.”
January 28th, 2007 at 2:17 pmKate, welcome back to RI! We’re so glad to have you with us this week.
And boy oh boy, do I need “Craft 101 with Kate”! I’m currently working on GMC for my characters, so this is perfect timing. Absolutely perfect. Thanks Kate.
And you already know that Tuesday can’t come soon enough for me!
January 28th, 2007 at 2:19 pmHaven, the site looks fantastic! You are awesome!
Clarisse, your story sounds like one I’d definitely like to read.
January 28th, 2007 at 2:23 pmHaven, the new design is lovely and I just thought it was funny that the first time it only took part of my post. None, I can get, but part just struck me as funny. It is obviously working beautifully now.
January 28th, 2007 at 2:23 pmKathryn, welcome back to RI! It’s so great to have you!
I’m actually struggling with the GMC for my next project. I know my heroine’s which is (to put it simply) to have the hero. She wants him at any price. I just haven’t quite figured out how I can have the hero withstand her long enough, he needs a good enough reason never to want to marry, or at least not marrying her (he’s to inherit a title so eventually he’d have to marry no matter what), and I can’t think of one *lol*
So, anyone have any ideas for reasons why a man would not want to marry a woman he’s definitely attracted to? It’ll have to be a good enough reason to keep him away even if he’d rather just give in. She’s of a good family, with an inheritance, she’s not ugly… So he’s not really got any complaints other than that he thinks she’s a bit too young for him. He’s got a bit of a secret identity which I don’t know if it could be part of the reason, but she already knows about it, so that can’t be the actual reason.
I seriously need someone to bang my head against the wall until the ideas start popping out…
January 28th, 2007 at 5:10 pmEmily, why not make your hero already married — or at least think he is? lol. Pull a Rochester with him and find a way to get him divorced or have the marriage annulled. Better yet, kill the wife off. lol.
Haven, I think if you do what Lizzie Bennett said, “one has all the goodness and the other all the appearance of it.” Make your vamp wonderful, but broody and sharp and give the villian a wonderful charming air. You’re all set! The heroine wants to be loved for what she is, but can’t really see the forest through the trees.
Okay, oven timer just went off. Be back later!!
January 28th, 2007 at 5:19 pmGreat blog Kathryn! Makes perfect sense.
Haven, the new look is awesome!
January 28th, 2007 at 5:34 pmKathryn Smith, you are a virtual Oracle of Delphi when it comes to solving plot problems. Those are fabulously clear thinking ideas.
And Emily, the image of someone whacking your head against the wall to get the ideas to pop out was soda-snorting funny. If only head banging would actually work sometimes . . .
January 28th, 2007 at 5:36 pmThis is SOoooooooooooooooooooooooooooo fabulous!!!!!! I was away all day at a party out of town… I am so printing this out and re-reading it! Posting more soon~!
January 28th, 2007 at 7:45 pmHi Kathryn!
This is a very basic question, but with giving the characters goals.. does this sometimes flesh out the plot, and provide twists and turns? Do the goals come before the plot and help shape it? Or can one think of a plot then try to fit characters in it? I kind of like making the characters and seeing what kind of situation they get into…
I have tried the plot first before… It seems that the best is to try and get the plot and characters fleshed out at the same time?
Or is there any number of ways to get rolling?
I hope my questions made sense. Thanks~!
January 29th, 2007 at 11:39 am