Before beginning a new writing project, even before I know the whole story (I am a total plotter…not pantsing here!)  I HAVE to sketch out my characters, so today I thought I’d share the process with you.

It starts off with an idea, for example, my latest WIP is a contemporary that just came to me:  What if an American MBA graduate travels to Paris to start a new life and falls in love with her new boss? 

So now that I had the “what if” I have to figure out who this girl is and who her boss is.  I have to pick her name, her looks, her personality, where she went to school, who he is, his name, looks, personality, his company and what he does.  I even have to look up the street where she’ll be staying and where the office building is.  I guess with character sketches I do a little world buidling too, so I can see in my mind where my story takes place when I sit down to write the synopsis and plan out the chapters.  I  might try to find pics to of what they would look like also. 

So here are some preliminary copies of my character sketches, and I apologize if its confusing… a writer’s notes usually are!

Character Sketches

Hero: Darcy Raphael Beauleux

French billionaire

Owner of Beaulieu Enterprises, a company with several divisions, telecommunications, real estate, energy commodity, vineyards

2^nd district of paris, Rue Vivienne

Hair Color:  Dark brown/ black

Hair Length: trim

Hair Texture: Full, smooth and straight, lustrous

Eye Color:  Striking dark blue - sapphire, long lashes, perfectly sculpted brows

Skin Color: Tan

Facial Hair:  Clean shaven

Height/Build:  Just over 6′ / lithe, lean, sculpted

Age:  32  (took over company seven years ago)

Additional:  square jaw, chiseled features, straight nose, straight white teeth

His mother loved Jane Austen, hence he was named Darcy.

Very arrogant and flirtatious, but also compassionate and sweet. 

Heroine:  Portia Lynn Kennedy

American

Just finished college, has moved to France to work for a time being and just maybe find love.

Sees advertisement to work as assistant to CEO of Beauleux Enterprises.  On the way into the building literally runs into a very handsome man, spilling her café-au-lait all over him.  He is very gracious, and she is mortified.  After cleaning off in the bathroom, she goes in for her interview, and its him!

She is staying at a family friends apartment in Paris near the Champs Elysees.  As a graduation gift and good luck present, her parents have rented out the place for one month, but after that she will have to pay the rent.  Fortunately the family friends, have lowered the rent for her, but only for the first six months, so she can get on her feet and find her own place.  

Avenue Des Champs Elysees

Hair Color: blonde

Hair Length: long

Hair Texture: smooth as silk

Eye Color:  Emerald with hints of blue

Skin Color:  Creamy, rosy

Height/Build:  5′5, very curvy, but slender.

Age: 23

Additional:  birthmark shaped like a heart on her buttock / Virgin

MBA in international business from Cornell Univeristy

Thinks of herself as nerdy and bookish, berates herself for having feelings for her new boss, but eventually understands that she is coming out of her shell, coming into her own.

Socially awkward only because she has spent the last 6 years in college, with her nose in textbooks and not hanging out with friends or dating.  Quickly picks up on flirting and discovers she has a very witty personality.  Likes the side of herself that her boss brings out.

Next week I’ll go into how I write the synopsis, and then the following week, how to plot out chapters.

Cheers!

Eliza

So after listening to me yammer on for two days straight, I’m going to let you all craft this blog and open it up for questions.  Ask me what you will about writing, submitting, the business, craft, whatever.  Really, ask away.  I’ll be watching the blog for the next two days ready to answer.

So after yesterday’s rant and downer on contests, let’s get to work on what I love most, creating characters. I love my characters. I love spending time with them, mulling over the problems facing them, how they are going to respond, but most importantly, how are they going to respond and why do they respond that way.

From birth, we all collect experiences that shape how we do everything. And if you want to create living, breathing characters you have to consider their experience as you the author write their story. Let me use Lady Hermione Marlowe, the heroine in my new book Tempted by the Night, as an example.

Hermione, much to her distress, is one of those Marlowes. The ramshackle family of the Earl of Walbrook, and the stigma of her missing father and her rather flamboyant mother follows her like a pair of great big, ugly traveling trunks. In the world of being perfect and being from the right family and making the perfect match, her parents, as much as she loves them, are two strikes she can do nothing about.

As I created Hermione, first in His Mistress by Morning as Charlotte’s best friend and the hero’s sister, and then by writing her story, I was struck by how deeply her insecurities ran. And therein lay the character flaw that I mined like gold. She is the daughter of an earl and therefore should be quite secure and lofty, and yet she is as lost in Society as the greenest country lass. But this flaw works because it strikes a chord in all of us. It will resonate with every reader because everyone has been tied up by their own insecurities at one time or another. And because she tries so hard to overcome them, we as the reader root for her to succeed. Because her success on a very deep level is ours as well.

So once I had discovered how deep her insecurities ran, especially when it came to her feelings for Rockhurst (to the point of throwing up when he comes near her), I then had to give her the tools and the power to overcome her fears. Because Hermione wanted everyone, especially the Earl of Rockhurst, to see her as an elegant young lady of Society, I therefore did the complete opposite and made her invisible. Unseen. Nadda. Nothing. And slowly Hermione discovers that outside her self-imposed limits, the strictures of a Society where she will never be just another member of the herd, she can come into her own.

So take your hero and heroine in your story, and dig around inside them and ask yourself:

1) What are their greatest fears? Try to discover something that most everyone can identify with.

2) How can you take your character right up to the dragon’s lair and have them face that fear?

3) What lessons, tools, and help will they need to win the battle?

4) What can we as readers learn from our character’s lesson?

This exercise helps outline your character’s development, steps in your plotting and the story arc. And one last note: make your heroine likeable. Nothing tanks a book faster than a bitchy heroine. Would you want her for your cubical mate in an office? If the answer is no, then why are you spending 6 to 9 to 12 months telling her story?

Likeable sells. So does a depth to character that tugs at the heart. Find what tugs at your heart and then write.

You all know that I am going to give you three days of my usually brutally straightforward advice about writing. Warm milk, singing Kumbaya together, and nodding agreement that your Roman Vampire time travel contemporary erotic, yet traditional romance is going to be a blockbuster is not what you are going to get from me. Shocking, but there it is. So put on your seatbelt and hold on. It’s going to get bumpy for the next three days. Love and hugs, EB

What Contests Can and Can’t Do For Your Writing

By Elizabeth Boyle

I have a contest to thank for my career. The Dell Diamond Debut, that long defunct contest, plucked me out of the slush pile and launched my writing career. It was the moment dreams are made of and one I am sure every writer looking to be published fantasizes about.

Now you would think I would be the poster child for saying “enter those contests, folks.” But I am here to say that I am not. Decidedly so. Quite frankly, I think most of the contests out there, including the GH, are a huge waste of money, time and talent. Nor did it shock me when someone at the Historical workshop I paneled at Nationals asked Avon editor May Chen if being a finalist or having won a contest held any weight with her on how she evaluated a submission. “No. Absolutely not,” she said without any hesitation. There was sort of a collective gasp from the room, as if she had just pronounced some great social heresy, and I suppose in RWA circles she had. But she’s dead on right, and here’s why:

1) The only thing that matters to an editor (who should always be the final judge you have in mind as you write) is what is between Page 1 and The End and the effort you have put into writing a complete and finished book. Not those shiny perfect 30 pages, or the synopsis that is so polished and clean you could eat off it. But the entire manuscript. From the first meet, to the first kiss, to that achingly perfect love scene, to the black moment and the wonderful resolution. Write a great commercial, saleable book first. Then if you want to collect some 1^st place certificates, a GH ribbon before you sell the darn thing, go for it. Getting published should always be your first and foremost priority.

2) Getting published means pushing envelopes, writing characters who stand out, coloring outside the lines. Three things contest judges seem to hate. There is, or at least urban legend has led me to believe, a romance writing contest rule book out there that certain judges adhere to as if their life depended on it. They will want to shove your creative genius into a standard white business envelope and close it neatly. They will slap your characters into a cliché-the spunky Regency heroine and the Noble alpha hero, because that is how it is supposed to be. Worse yet, they will draw big red lines through the places where you colored, deliberately I might add, outside those lines. There are rules, they will tell you, and you are breaking them. If I had listened to the naysayers, the rule mongers, the GH judges who in their collective expertise gave Brazen Angel (a book that in the very same form won the Dell Diamond Debut and a freakin’ RITA) a 4, a 5 and a 6, I might have taken my French heroine made her English and set the book entirely in London, not in, oh, gasp, Revolutionary France. Because that just isn’t done.

3) It isn’t to say that contests don’t have their value. Here is the one reason I can say to enter contests. When you are just starting out and want some other opinions outside of your critique group on a story that you think might be risky, or you have an area of concern, such as plotting, characterization, POV, enter your pages in a barrage of contests and then when you get all the judged entries back, (and not a moment before) line them all up in front of you and go through them page by page. Do you see any similarities in the critiques and comments? Points that multiple judges are making? Then consider the advice offered and determine if it is a problem you need to fix. And then fix it.

Oh, and there is one other things that contests can do. They can get your back up, push an Irish temper into overdrive and give you the sort of resolve that has you shaking your dirty, ink-stained fist at the sky and saying, “I’ll publish dammit, as God is my witness, I will publish.” Because you see in one of the first contests I entered the very much published judge wrote in red Sharpie across the front of my entry:

Your writing is unprofessional and you will never sell.

On the day I sold in Dallas, at the RWA luncheon where the Dell Diamond Debut winner was announced, I had to change seats giving up my comfortable safe spot with my critique group to go sit in the front with the other finalists. I’ll give you one guesses who came along and sat down in my now empty seat. Oh, yeah, it was her.

So my final bit of advice is if you can’t resist entering and you are a glutton for punishment, please take judges’ comments with a grain of salt and learn to discern what is useful and what is just plain stinky horse pucky. Consider it good practice for when you are published and reading your Amazon comments.

Tomorrow: Digging Deep into Your Characters

I have been lucky enough to have been able to attend three conferences in the last month. In fact, as you read this, I am in Melbourne, Australia, attending the Romance Writers of Australia’s annual conference. I have also been to San Francisco for RWA National, and Auckland, New Zealand, for Romance Writers of New Zealand’s conference. I have now attended workshops on everything from how to write on demand, writing a compelling synopsis, adding emotional punch, and techniques for deep editing, to how to hook an agent, what editors want to see, how to promote myself and marketing that book once it’s sold. 

I have had a fantastic time at each of the conferences I have attended and I have met some wonderful people, including fellow RomanticInks blogger, Sandra. However, I can’t help wondering now whether I should have stopped at one conference and been back at my desk and my computer and, more importantly, my writing a bit sooner.

When I booked all three conferences, about 6 months ago, I was very excited and looking forward to a great couple of weeks full of writing inspiration. Admittedly, I hadn’t originally planned to attend RWA National in San Francisco, but I was lucky enough to win the conference fees so how could I say no?! As RWA National was first, I did come back to NZ very inspired and keen to put into practice all that I had learned there. After the NZ conference, I have to admit my level of inspiration had dropped a little. To be fair, this might also have been a result of the fact that I have recently changed jobs and I have been away from home in relation to my job in the period between going to the USA and Auckland, and again between Auckland and Melbourne. I have had absolutely no time in which to write anything, let alone actually putting into practice anything I have learned about recently. The speakers here in Melbourne are also very inspirational, but I think my brain has finally hit overload. Again, to be fair, it might simply be that I have been away from home and my family for 25 of the last 32 days, and I am sick of the sight of planes and hotel rooms. To be honest, though, I think it is something more than that. I think I have tried to do too much.

How much is too much? Would I have been better to attend one conference and then let my mind process what I had learned and how I could use the information? I don’t think my mind has slowed down long enough to process anything and, rather than feeling inspired to write, I am feeling swamped by information overload. Perhaps once I get home and back into my ordinary routine, I will feel differently. I can certainly go back over the materials I have received from each of the conferences at a later date and maybe that will be enough to inspire me once again. I certainly don’t regret going to any of the conferences, if only for the wonderful people I met, and perhaps that’s what I should really take from all of this.

What do you think? How much is too much? Is your time better spent writing than attending workshops and conferences? Or is it just that I need to find a bit more of a balance?

I can see the Summer-can’t-end-soon-enough rant has already been covered, so I can’t do that one. It would basically be a repeat, sans the schedule and no cool pictures. No schedule here, just a lot of free time to drive me batty with. Darling child that he is, I’m still the only “entertainment center” available.

So what does that leave? Not much for the summer, but we’re moving into the next school year with enthusiasm. We did the Greet-N-Meet at his school and I got to meet his teacher. A lovely lady that I had the opportunity to meet last year when he was in Kindergarten. She’s the kind of teacher I wish I’d had, or maybe I did and just don’t recall. (I seriously doubt it. Happiness for your job wasn’t a requirement then.)

She’s energetic, enthusiastic and knows how to work with the children and it’s not faked. Amazing, I tell you. I got to watch some of this last year during the school’s Field day, how she reacted with the kids, and my thought was “I want Johnny to have her next year.” And he does.

Johnny is 6 and a half, and reading 2-3 years ahead of his age. I needed a teacher who understood this. He’s also getting the grasp of basic math.

So summer is almost over and that’s a blessing in so many ways. Namely so I can keep the last threads of my sanity and try to weave them back into some form that resembles a brain by the end of the year to start all over again.

I’m very proud of him, and I’m so glad he’s enthusiastic about going. I think meeting the new teacher helped a lot. I hope he stays enthusiastic for years to come. I am so grateful he likes school.

Is anyone else’s ready to return or to start?

It’s been quite a three days. Tuesday, while heading to a meeting in DC after a trip to the library, my agent called to tell me an editor wants a full of the proposal she couldn’t have received sooner than the day before. Yikes. I thought I had at least another month or two. Write fingers to the bone. Nearly 10,000 words written in three days. Then I got my first royalty check from my book releaed in April. Wow. What a pleasurable surprise. And an interview, and I’m guest blogging at http://www.kellymortimer.com. Kelly is an agent. My blog posts are on using the five senses in our writing.

So pleae forgive me for being so late here.

Let me start off first by saying that I LOVE my children, LOVE LOVE LOVE…  They are little miracles that have enraptured me, enchanted me, and tortured me for the last 7 years… Now that I have that disclaimer out of the way, I need to RANT!

I can’t WAIT for summer to END!  Not because I don’t love the little monsters, but they are driving me crazy!  The beginning of the summer was fabulous, but now they’ve run out of games to play, they’re bored with playing in the baby pool, they hate the park, all of their toys can go to the devil and I am apparently not taking them to amusement parks enough…  Last night at cheerleading practice, I had to snicker when I heard some other mothers complaining about it would never end…  It also seems to be the topic of conversation on writing loops too, so maybe I’m not the only one going insane?

I love the little angels, really, but there is only so much I can do!

Stay-at-home moms that also write as a career, are not really stay-at-home moms.  I put in between 40-60 hours a week on the computer.  Thats writing, reviewing, critiquing, judging, blogging, researching, presenting workshops, networking, etc…  Its a full time job.  

Now don’t get me wrong, I feel awful when they start whining about how bored they are and I usually make them get their shoes on and we go to the park or something, BUT it isn’t like I haven’t given them plenty of activities during week…

Here is our schedule:

Monday:  Kids Club @ the gym for 1.5 hours / water play day

Tuesday: Kids Club @ the gym for 1.5 hours / Library 1.5 hours / Cheerleading practice 2 hours

Wednesday:Kids Club @ the gym for 1.5 hours / Park day

Thursday:Kids Club @ the gym for 1.5 hours / Farm day / Cheerleading practice 2 hours

Friday:Kids Club @ the gym for 1.5 hours / Outing day (take them out to lunch and someplace fun to play) / cheerleading practice 2 hours

Now also in there are playdates with friends, mini-vacations camping and going to the beach, visiting grandma and grandpa on the weekends, going to the zoo, throwing their water toys off the deck, shopping, arts and crafts, reading time, torturing the dog, play time, walking in the neighborhood and picking flowers, destroying the house one room at a time, breaking ALL of my small plates (yes I’m serious, they just magically got knocked off the table… I use paper plates now for these two angels,  I know smack me for letting them have ceramic but they were really good about it until now…)

So anyways, why do I feel so guilty?  Is it the age old mother’s syndrome where you never feel like you’re doing enough?  I think it is…  It may also be that I’m not getting as much done as I thought I would.  I planned on completely organizing and de-cluttering my house this summer…well lets just say I’m struggling with the main chores.

I’m very excited that school starts next Tuesday, and the following week, my youngest will go to preschool for 2 hours, 2 days a week.   I don’t think I will come home when I take her.  I think I’ll go to the local coffee shop and just write.

I love my children, I really do

My goal by next year will be to convince the hubby to hire me a cleaning lady, at least someone to come once every couple of weeks.

And I will be saving up until next summer to pay for summer camp…  Can 3 year olds go to summer camp? My other daughter will be 8, so she will definitely be going.

In case you can’t tell, I’m at my wits end, pulling my hair out, and maxing out on the caffeine.  Even working out at the gym isn’t working.  I need a vacation… without the little loves of my life.

You may look at their pictures and think aww, how could these angelic creatures be anything but sweet?  I think the same thing until they do a poltergeist head twisting and the screaming starts, lol.

So how have you been holding up?  Are you ready for school to start?

Cheers!

Eliza

PS.  I apologize but for some reason, I could not get the pictures to wrap around the text today…

PPS.  Check out the forum, I’ve been presenting Henry VIII for the past couple days under the workshop tab.

Ok. I think in most historicals I’ve read, at one point either one or both the hero or heroine have an injury at some time. We all know pain, so writing pain isn’t difficult.  So it is in a moderate amount of pain that I thought I’d type today’s post.

Sure, one could convey the tightening spasms of muscle and ligament, how the sharp quickening takes away your breath and causes the limb to jerk, without having experienced it first hand.  But going through this just allows me, in my opinion, for a bit more realistic writing as I can most assuredly use my senses for that.

Now, does that mean that if you are a virgin, you can’t write love scenes. Of course not. Had I not had an injection of cortisone in my hip this morning I could have still described the quick pinch and then full pressure as the doctors thumb pressed the plunger.

Perhaps, what makes these scenes more valid is not that we experienced it so we can write it, but the readers know what is pain, love, et cetera. Because the readers have experienced it, and our work is to evoke those familiar feelings, we use what we know and the tools of oour craft to pull those emotions and senses from each other.

What do you think, or feel?

What gets your writing juices flowing? Mine can vary. Can of Dr. Pepper and bag popcorn works wonders, aside from the greasy fingers I have to continually wipe so I can write. And the pounds that pack on. I recently discovered a cold can of Sprite Zero can do the trick. And it comes with a bonus—nothing in it to add pounds. I like to have animal crackers or pretzels or any other kind of non-messy, munching snack on hand should I need to think over food. A mug of hot chocolate filled with marshmallows is nice.

Air HAS to be comfortable. Too hot or too cold is too distracting. Though I can do cold with a blanket and be okay. I can work with music. It keeps me going when I would rather lie down and nap. I like to use the TV music since it’s convenient, but nothing pulls me out of a sexy scene quicker than the overly excited Billy Mays advertising his wide assortment of products.

No talking please and if anyone has any spare time, could you please explain this to my husband? I’ve tried. He’s not understanding that his comment over a TV show I’m dearly trying to block out while writing is massively sucking my mojo. I know, I know. Why don’t you go to another room, you say. I have, and you know what happens? The TV is so darn loud, that I can hear it in another room. And I want to know what’s going on, even if I’m tuning it out. 

I like mornings best, but can do a mean writing session in the evening if the energy strikes. On occasion I’ve been known to get out of bed at midnight or later if something hits me. I’ve actually gotten out of bed at 1:00 AM because I thought of some rewrites and worked until 6:00 AM. I only stopped because my son would be waking up soon and needed to catch at least an hour of sleep. Good boy, he slept in late that morning!

I can’t read books while I write. I’ve heard other people can do this, not me. I want to keep reading the book and not work on my own. I save my reading for that time when you should let a manuscript rest before the final revision—unless I’m stuck, then I’ll pick up a book.

No spinning in circles or blessing my chair for me. P.j.’s or jeans with heels, no difference. I guess I’m fairly flexible, or I should say my muse is. It looks like I just need to feed her.

Is there anything you do? Any MUST-HAVE’s to write? What about writing fresh vs. editing, does your process vary? My son dragged me out of bed early this morning so I could really use some tips to get going!