Creating warmth in your ms

If you are writing series romance or really commercial women's fiction in general, one of your most important tasks is to create warmth. You want the readers to love your characters as much as you do. Remember these are comfort reads or escapist reads for people. It is not about making readers feel uncomfortable.
My senior editor sometimes says to me that often I have the warmth in my head and not down on the page until after the revisions.Apparently I talk about my characters with great warmth and humanity but sometimes it is not translated on to the page. It is a lesson I learnt well when I had that ms rejected (asked to put aside) last December. Part of the problem was a lack of warmth, particularly in the early chapters.
So how do you go about it?
First love your characters. Sympathise with them. Understand where they are coming from.
Second, make sure you give the readers early on a reason to like your characters. Writers often write lists of points of conflicts but you also need to know why they will get on. What is there to like about this character? And why? Why should the reader like this character and feel sympathy. A small note; Depressed heroes or heroines can be hard to like. If you are writing a redemption story, show possibly via a prologue that character is capable of being redeemed.
Show a small act of kindness. Give an insight into why the character is angry with the other. If you are doing a revenge story, show the reasons why the person feels driven towards the revenge? Why are they doing it? The other character doesn't have to know but the reader should.  Have a *Save the Cat* moment for each character in the opening chapter. The heroine doesn't have to fall for the hero straight away but the reader does. Why is the reader going to love this hero?  Why will she want to walk in the heroine's shoes?
You are the character's best friend. What little thing do you notice about your friend and how can you show that in the first few pages? How is the reader going to identify with that character? As Orson Scott Card says in his book Characters and Viewpoint  we like what is like us. First impressions in books as well in real life matter.  It is hard in a series romance to overcome a bad first impression. In longer books, yes you might, but it takes a lot of work.  To create that moment look to the character's dreams and hungers. What is their motivation? Why is that dream important?  Where is the integrity? What about courage? Dependability? Creating warmth and likability starts with the very first time the character walks into the story.
Above all make sure that warmth is on the page and not in your head!
Donald Maass did a brilliant blog last week on warmth on Writer Unboxed. It is well worth a read.

Beat sheets

Someone, I forget who, asked about beat sheets and what they were. They are part of Blake Snyder's toolkit for plotting the story of a screenplay.
One of Blake Snyder's thesis is that all films share certain beats/points. You could say that it is a slight refinement on Vogler's theory. Certainly, it makes sense. Fifteen turning points that all commercial movies share: from the opening image to final image. From the theme stated to the fun and games of the premise realised. It is all about structure and really making sure they are there. You can find a sample of the beat sheet under the tools section on his website.
His blog is excellent btw. For example, he does a good explanation of why Indiana Jones 1 & 3 work a bit better than 2 &4. He loved them all by the way, but in terms of Story, 1 & 3 have more going for them.
Actually the more I thought about, the more I realised that my books also share the fifteen points. And if I can say what the points are, then I stand a better of chance of having a solid structure.
Note: the current Viking does meet the beat sheet test, but I keep wondering IF I chose the wrong B story and IF it would have worked better another way. can you tell I am sitting on my hands waiting for my editors' thoughts and the Crows of Doubt are circling?
It is one of those things. Some times, just a different point of view about craft can send your thoughts in a different direction.

revising my opinion

The bookcase is now in and looks good. It has opened up the room no end. However, I still want to hang on to my Ikea bookcase...

Yes, STC may be didactic, BUT it makes you think.Because the joiner put the bookcase in my study yesterday, I decided to a beat sheet for my wip. I continued to work on it when I was waiting for my dd's performance to begin. Suddenly I realised that chapter 3 ended in the wrong place. It had to end on a turning point. It is sort of why parts have felt a bit awkward aand missing a beat.
Thus I will now work through the various parts of the STC. I am not entirely convinced about the story board though. It is more the thought of using index cards...
We will not go into the Index Card Incident and why I gave them up...Suffice it say they constrain me far more than liberate. I like my Moleskine notebooks.

In case anyone is not aware, Francesco de Mosta is back on BBC 2. on both Tuesdays and Wednesdays. That voice. The passion he brings to his subject. I thought it was just Tuesdays and luckily had set Sky box up to record the series or otherwise I would have missed yesterday's episode. They are always so well done. We will not mention the leather log book. Or the beauty of the boat. Or the captain's potential as a hero. It is just wonderful entertainment. I would hate to miss an episode...

Blame McAllister

Right, if you want to blame someone, blame Anne McAllister. When she blogged about Save the Cat by Blake Snyder, I knew I would want to read it. I also bought the companion piece --Save the Cat Goes to the Movies. And actually STC 2 is good and does help explain more about the needs of various genres and the why behind it.


The book is a quick and easy read but details the aspects of story telling, rather than character creation. It has a beat sheet which can easily be transformed into a synopsis. I suspect that it is worthwhile to make sure it can be filled out before you send in your ms and that you are happy with the book's structure.


The book has helped me come up with a new working title and therefore, it is useful. It also reminded me of several things. Again useful. And possibly not what he intended, but I will take inspiration when it strikes.


The style is far more breezy than McKee's Story. Story remains the bible in many ways for me, but I know many people find it ponderous and hard to follow.
The reason why such books work for commercial novelists is that like screenwriters, commercial novelists are concerned with storytelling. It is the driving motivator. It is what makes people keep turning the pages. Or buying the tickets or what have you.In other words, it is an arch plot close ended scenario. And whatever medium you use for the telling, the basic structure does remain the same. Equally because the archetype genres are the same, his break down of genres can be useful.
But it is a good book and has lots of helpful exhortations. It is not ground breaking or earth shattering. Swain covered the lot in his Techniques of a Selling Writer back in the 1960s.
Some people are simply more at home with one set of examples than others. If you find it easier to dissect movies, then you will get a lot out of this book.

One quibble I would have with Snyder is he is a bit too didactic and prescriptive. On page 21, this must happen. As my old editor explained, this sort of thing goes back to Russian Soviet type of thinking. At this point, the peasant must have a cow. Without explaining the why. But he is mainly talking about form and his obersvations can be extrapolated out.
McKee makes the point that the tools need to be brought out only when things feel flat and are not working. Snyder likes to start with his tools and his story board. Although he says that a screenwriter needs to be bullheaded, there is not the same exhortation to master the forms that I felt with McKee or Tywla Tharp. However, I suspect that the intent is there. It is only through mastery that one learns. And unless one understands the form, one can not understand the why. The only reason to deviate is to put something better in its place.
And equally that sometimes, you just need to write. And if it is not broke do not fix it. Form not formula. There is a subtle difference. Beat sheets , story boards etc are tools that assist and not straight jackets that confine.

I suspect in many ways Save the Cat is of more use to editors and those studio executives. In other words, for that time when you are looking for holes and reasons reasons why certain things are not working. But it is more of a fixing a bad page than filling the blank page sort of book. And therefore, authors need to rely on their imagination to create the first draft. The first draft could be a story board btw. Or it could be the actual writing. But at some point the writer needs to create.
I found it interesting that Snyder rarely refers back to his story board when he is writing his script.
Equally script writing is far more of a group exercise than novel writing. So there is more of a need for a central bible.
Also sometimes, it can be useful to know why you are writing certain types of scenes or what the vague missing element is.
I understand he is speaking at the RWA Nationals. It will be interesting to see what people make of him. I suspect he is fantastic in person.
But McKee, Swain and Maass remain my favourite books.