Growing a Book - 3

I’ve now – sort of – caught up with most of the things that were waiting for me when I got back. And I’ve renewed acquaintance with Sicilian 1 who was feeling very neglected. So I’m back to blogging. And as I was talking about Growing a Book, I thought I’d complete that.

I did mention writing the ending the The Italian’s Forced Bride, but that’s getting a bit ahead of myself. Because before The End comes The Middle – and this is often where the book hits a problem. I’m at that stage right now with Sicilian 1 so I should know.

In The Middle, the pace naturally tends to slow down just a little. The initial conflict is out there, your characters have confronted each other, but they are still keeping a definite distance – if only emotionally – physically is a very different matter! But you can’t yet let them fall into each other’s arms . . . . Which is why, if you’re not careful, your Middle tends to sag.

This is where your conflict is important. Is it just a ‘one-hit wonder’? Or can it develop, grow, change –parts of it become better, parts worse, as you go along? What’s a O-H W? you ask. Well, that’s the sort of plot where the heroine believes the hero has been seeing that clichéd romance character Another Woman or the hero believes the heroine is a thief – and there’s nothing else in the conflict. No added complication, no extra layers of the problem that can be unfurled – it’s a problem that could/should be dealt with with one question and if it isn’t then you have to have some pretty good reasons why that question isn’t asked. A conflict that will stop your middle from sagging is one where the answer to the questions opens up another set of problems. It adds complications. When one of them finds out not just what has been happening, but why, then instead of solving things it rips open the problems in a whole new way.

As I say, I’m at that stage with Sicilian , and I’ve just got to the bit where some of the whys are coming out – and just when the action could stall, I’m hoping that they will be enough to move things right along again. I was talking to someone about The Italian’s Forced Bride at the weekend (sorry Helen – I didn’t mean to make you cry as well!) and it reminded me about the way that I planned that book so that, just as it seemed everything was planned and was heading in one direction, events would be turned on their head and my hero and heroine would have to adjust, regroup, move on in a very different way from the one it seemed they were going up to then.

The problem with writing romance – particularly the sort of romance that I write- is that the real ‘plot’ is the development of relationship between the two people and so that relationship has to have enough depth and enough room for change and growth or you get past the initial clash that sparks the conflict and it . . fizzles . . out . . .

When I set off for Reading and Julie’s book launch, I was at the reaching the middle point in this story. I knew what had started the conflict – why Guido was heading for that church – and then the next stage after that – and the next one after that . . . But I wasn’t absolutely sure what stopped the middle from sagging – what extra twists I could give the conflict, and most importantly, twists that grew from that conflict that would pick up the pace from where I am now and take it on towards the resolution and the end. But a couple of days away, leaving things in my subconscious to grow and develop, worked wonders. You see, a romance plot isn’t just a linear thing – he does this because – and she does that for this reason – and somewhere down the line, those reasons, not just the what they did, but the why, are going to come back to haunt them both – and that is what exposes another layer of that conflict. It’s not the same conflict all the way through but variations on a theme and although you start out with what might seem like the real, the most important part of the conflict, the truth is that you might not get to that until the very end and the part that’s always described in writing books as ‘The Black Moment’.

Which is what I’ll blog about tomorrow – after I’ve moved my Sicilian along the way towards his Black Moment by changing the conflict, adding in a couple of factors and so, hopefully, picking up my sagging middle and turning it into a neat, taut, honed and streamlined one.

If only I could do that with the saggy middle around my waist!