Bring the reader along for the ride
Feb. 7th, 2015 10:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethso if you're writing a romance, you want the reader to fall in love along with the character.
show us this character through their lovers eyes. Make us see how uniquely awesome they are. Especially if this is some kind of late life surprise, show how that one person, out of every human on the planet, is the one and only to catch their lovers attention. Don't just say he's hot, for goodness sake, there's a million of that, whatever your tastes are there is no such thing as a uniquely hot person. don't rely on it being fanfic and everyone reading it already liking these people, of such assumptions are plastic flimsy disposable stories made. don't get hung up on the thing where everyone else is writing about these exact people. You're writing a story, you have something unique to say in that you are the one saying it so it will come out from your particular perspective. Woo the reader, and do it by describing this one perfect person out of all the world.
There is something about this one person that makes you want to spend a few thousand words with them. Show us. What about them should have our full attention on this particular page?
Don't just say they're kind and trustworthy because all the world says so. That's a sentence, not a story. Show how they look after people! Yes, this is where the bringing people food thing comes from, everyone likes the food thing, the ability to carry a tray up from the canteen is indeed a nice start. but remember the thing about how if your date is nice to you but ignores the wait staff then they're not really nice? wooing behaviour has a particular goal, and might be narrowly motivated. show how he's nice to people he's not expecting anything back from. help the old lady, carry the shopping, pet the dog, whatever, if he's kind then have him do kind things all over the place.
if your selling point for this story is they get to play with horses, great, there's a ton of good stuff to do with horses. they need looked after, there's brushes and making them pretty or keeping them neat, you can show off bits of his character by what kind of tack he puts on them and how well he looks after them compared to himself. and feeding the horses doesn't have the awkward overtones of feeding your partner. Like, you never get left wondering how this adult managed for the first 40 years when they apparently can't feed themselves. Horses actually need looked after even when grown. Tada, caring! And then there's all the things you do on horses. ... I don't mean sex, I've only once read sex on a horse, it struck me as very rude to not ask the horse first. If you have intelligent horses with an opinion then that's not my thing but, you know, fair enough. But other things you do on horses, like road trip and adventure and fight and show off for the circus and race and pull heavy things and do that pretty dancing stuff that looks all frilly and then meets armoured fighters and oh, hey, flying heads. And if there's several people with horses, they can all be good at different bits of it, and perhaps in the middle think poorly of how the other does things, but then discover how they complement each other's skills.
There should, at some point, be a paragraph or two about your paragon and their beast moving as one. It may or may not be secretly about sex, but it's definitely about ability to cooperate with a free willed entity that has opinions if you try to bully it. And you can compare contrast against someone who tries using sharp things to control their beast, and treats them beastly, and at some crucial point will have the thing buck them off and run away. Instead of loyally coming back to rescue them. There is basically a ton of mileage in hanging out with horses, and all of it can show someone in a nice light. And that's me saying, who only reads too many of these fantasy books. Someone who has actually met a horse obviously has advantages in this area, as would someone who had that phase of being all horses all the time. I was more all dinosaurs and seige engines.
... I'm pretty sure I could illustrate the admirable traits of a man by how they treated their seige engines, but it's not quite the same.
If you have horses, indeed super special psychic horses, who are life bonded to their super special psychic partners, and then throughout the story they... talk? Like... a talking person? And that's pretty much what they do?
... why are they a horse?
I know it's the rider you want to focus on. But if you just describe how they look, you run out of stuff. If you describe how they interact, you're golden for a great many pages. So hey, animal partners, awesome, there's a ton of stuff there. Use it to highlight their many excellences. By definition your point of view guy is noticing these things as your reader does. They can fall in love with them together.
If your beloved has a signature weapon, and they're super best at it, great! ... and that makes us love him for why? Personally I have a thing for archers, because shoulders and precision. And with Hawkeye there's sees better at a distance -> likes to watch -> going to notice all the important things. It's like those joke Avengers sex toy ads where the Hawkeye hits the spot every time. If you're describing their excellence as a living weapon then their target shooting scores are a nice start, but if you're trying to explain why it's hot then hitting a bit of the innuendo has to help. Coulson is developing a martial arts style based on grappling, thanks to his actor's choice of martial arts, so that's pretty much innuendo gold. Like Natasha with the thighs. Sparring, any kind of sparring, is back to the moving together as one bit. There's a total focus on their partner, action and reaction, breathing heavy and trying to hide your reactions. And yeah, competence is also great, but why?
Trust and loyalty are golden. Someone to have your back, especially after a lifetime of waiting for the knife, it's the best stuff. And to demonstrate it you have to put your characters through hell. Start with something small and funny, sure, but then repeat it with the stakes raised, and then go all in. if you've got the word count long enough then throw in something for them to argue about in the middle so one or both can feel betrayed because they had different priorities or thought something was in confidence or had to choose sides. Make it clear how much they have to lose. Maybe you think it's the hottest if they're willing to throw away the kingdom for love. That's cool. Personally I love the sort where they love each other, they've declared all the feelings, but the kingdom is at stake so they'll do what they must. Especially if the karma pays off and they win a happy ending by doing what they thought would lose all the personal stuff. And a compare/contrast with the selfish-for-love style couple, or the losing-for-duty, kind of underlines your chosen position.
You can't just state 'this guy is trustworthy' and have everyone roll with it. It means nothing, if it's that simple. It has to cost something to be worth the reading.
And then, true love. Their many excellences displayed and admired, the admiration returned, it's romance time for reals. But what does that even mean? It could just be the end of plot porn time, that's always popular, but it could also be the smile when they smile, cry when they cry, do everything better with them. Building something together is nifty, be it literal home making or something a bit bigger like a kingdom's peace. also, for me, a general sense the happy couple would get along out of bed with no duty for a week or two kind of helps sell the thing as romantic.
If I'm sitting down to read tens of thousands of words about a couple of fanfic characters, then yes, I'm already kind of enamoured of them. But I want the story to show me a new angle on why, illuminated by this particular author. To do that, they have to show me these people through eyes that are falling in love with them all over again.
do that and it's golden.
show us this character through their lovers eyes. Make us see how uniquely awesome they are. Especially if this is some kind of late life surprise, show how that one person, out of every human on the planet, is the one and only to catch their lovers attention. Don't just say he's hot, for goodness sake, there's a million of that, whatever your tastes are there is no such thing as a uniquely hot person. don't rely on it being fanfic and everyone reading it already liking these people, of such assumptions are plastic flimsy disposable stories made. don't get hung up on the thing where everyone else is writing about these exact people. You're writing a story, you have something unique to say in that you are the one saying it so it will come out from your particular perspective. Woo the reader, and do it by describing this one perfect person out of all the world.
There is something about this one person that makes you want to spend a few thousand words with them. Show us. What about them should have our full attention on this particular page?
Don't just say they're kind and trustworthy because all the world says so. That's a sentence, not a story. Show how they look after people! Yes, this is where the bringing people food thing comes from, everyone likes the food thing, the ability to carry a tray up from the canteen is indeed a nice start. but remember the thing about how if your date is nice to you but ignores the wait staff then they're not really nice? wooing behaviour has a particular goal, and might be narrowly motivated. show how he's nice to people he's not expecting anything back from. help the old lady, carry the shopping, pet the dog, whatever, if he's kind then have him do kind things all over the place.
if your selling point for this story is they get to play with horses, great, there's a ton of good stuff to do with horses. they need looked after, there's brushes and making them pretty or keeping them neat, you can show off bits of his character by what kind of tack he puts on them and how well he looks after them compared to himself. and feeding the horses doesn't have the awkward overtones of feeding your partner. Like, you never get left wondering how this adult managed for the first 40 years when they apparently can't feed themselves. Horses actually need looked after even when grown. Tada, caring! And then there's all the things you do on horses. ... I don't mean sex, I've only once read sex on a horse, it struck me as very rude to not ask the horse first. If you have intelligent horses with an opinion then that's not my thing but, you know, fair enough. But other things you do on horses, like road trip and adventure and fight and show off for the circus and race and pull heavy things and do that pretty dancing stuff that looks all frilly and then meets armoured fighters and oh, hey, flying heads. And if there's several people with horses, they can all be good at different bits of it, and perhaps in the middle think poorly of how the other does things, but then discover how they complement each other's skills.
There should, at some point, be a paragraph or two about your paragon and their beast moving as one. It may or may not be secretly about sex, but it's definitely about ability to cooperate with a free willed entity that has opinions if you try to bully it. And you can compare contrast against someone who tries using sharp things to control their beast, and treats them beastly, and at some crucial point will have the thing buck them off and run away. Instead of loyally coming back to rescue them. There is basically a ton of mileage in hanging out with horses, and all of it can show someone in a nice light. And that's me saying, who only reads too many of these fantasy books. Someone who has actually met a horse obviously has advantages in this area, as would someone who had that phase of being all horses all the time. I was more all dinosaurs and seige engines.
... I'm pretty sure I could illustrate the admirable traits of a man by how they treated their seige engines, but it's not quite the same.
If you have horses, indeed super special psychic horses, who are life bonded to their super special psychic partners, and then throughout the story they... talk? Like... a talking person? And that's pretty much what they do?
... why are they a horse?
I know it's the rider you want to focus on. But if you just describe how they look, you run out of stuff. If you describe how they interact, you're golden for a great many pages. So hey, animal partners, awesome, there's a ton of stuff there. Use it to highlight their many excellences. By definition your point of view guy is noticing these things as your reader does. They can fall in love with them together.
If your beloved has a signature weapon, and they're super best at it, great! ... and that makes us love him for why? Personally I have a thing for archers, because shoulders and precision. And with Hawkeye there's sees better at a distance -> likes to watch -> going to notice all the important things. It's like those joke Avengers sex toy ads where the Hawkeye hits the spot every time. If you're describing their excellence as a living weapon then their target shooting scores are a nice start, but if you're trying to explain why it's hot then hitting a bit of the innuendo has to help. Coulson is developing a martial arts style based on grappling, thanks to his actor's choice of martial arts, so that's pretty much innuendo gold. Like Natasha with the thighs. Sparring, any kind of sparring, is back to the moving together as one bit. There's a total focus on their partner, action and reaction, breathing heavy and trying to hide your reactions. And yeah, competence is also great, but why?
Trust and loyalty are golden. Someone to have your back, especially after a lifetime of waiting for the knife, it's the best stuff. And to demonstrate it you have to put your characters through hell. Start with something small and funny, sure, but then repeat it with the stakes raised, and then go all in. if you've got the word count long enough then throw in something for them to argue about in the middle so one or both can feel betrayed because they had different priorities or thought something was in confidence or had to choose sides. Make it clear how much they have to lose. Maybe you think it's the hottest if they're willing to throw away the kingdom for love. That's cool. Personally I love the sort where they love each other, they've declared all the feelings, but the kingdom is at stake so they'll do what they must. Especially if the karma pays off and they win a happy ending by doing what they thought would lose all the personal stuff. And a compare/contrast with the selfish-for-love style couple, or the losing-for-duty, kind of underlines your chosen position.
You can't just state 'this guy is trustworthy' and have everyone roll with it. It means nothing, if it's that simple. It has to cost something to be worth the reading.
And then, true love. Their many excellences displayed and admired, the admiration returned, it's romance time for reals. But what does that even mean? It could just be the end of plot porn time, that's always popular, but it could also be the smile when they smile, cry when they cry, do everything better with them. Building something together is nifty, be it literal home making or something a bit bigger like a kingdom's peace. also, for me, a general sense the happy couple would get along out of bed with no duty for a week or two kind of helps sell the thing as romantic.
If I'm sitting down to read tens of thousands of words about a couple of fanfic characters, then yes, I'm already kind of enamoured of them. But I want the story to show me a new angle on why, illuminated by this particular author. To do that, they have to show me these people through eyes that are falling in love with them all over again.
do that and it's golden.