Characters In A Romance Novel

Before you even begin writing your novel, you need to know who your characters will be. Minimally, you would want two major characters, the hero and the heroine. They will interact mostly with each other throughout the novel. How they interact with each other will determine the outcome of the story. Will they resist each other in the beginning of the story and by the end, fall in love? Or will they fall in love in the beginning of the story and then be driven apart by conflict? Once you’ve chosen them, then you need to decide what age they are, their personality traits, and their names.

AGE

Age-appropriate actions are paramount to development of the character. If the heroine is in her teens, she will react differently to situations than if she is in her late twenties. The same goes with the hero. In a romance novel, the typical heroine is in her early twenties, while the hero is older. If he is in his twenties, he shouldn’t be shown as a tycoon, unless of course, he inherited the wealth. If he is in his thirties, he shouldn’t be shown doing activities that are immature for his age.

PERSONALITY TRAITS

A character in your novel needs to have distinct personality traits that make them unique. By distinguishing them from the other persons in the novel, you can create all kinds of situations based on those traits. Personality traits are typically revealed in the story through actions, dialogue with other people in the story, and sometimes through flashbacks that may reveal how that person became the way they are.

If you are not familiar with personality traits, you can begin by studying the psychology books that describe them. Some examples of personality traits are introvert/extrovert, obsessive-compulsive, Type “A”/Type “B” personalities, etc. For example, an introverted person would appear shy, doesn’t speak much, and shuns being in social situations, whereas an extroverted person would be gregarious, out-going, and usually a partygoer.

There are many types of personalities that you can choose from for your heroine, but typically, a “romantic” female would include the following: kind, young, nurturing, loving, warm, single, sensual, doesn’t fool around, and attractive. For your hero, the characteristics could vary even more, and usually include being: older, decisive, powerful, kind, caring, single, gentle, and handsome.

Typically, you should have well-rounded characters. However, beware of making them too perfect. Readers prefer reading about realistic people, and yet at the same time, want to escape a little. Leave some room for improvement to allow character development to take place. As a writer, you will have to do some mental gymnastics to allow this to happen. Maybe she is stubborn and headstrong, and doesn’t listen to other people’s advice. Maybe he doesn’t trust anyone, so he is wary and cautious. That’s fine. Once you decide on the traits of each character, then the next step would be to envision how they would react to certain situations. For example, an impulsive person would probably react differently than a cautious person to the same situation. Be prepared to get into the shoes of your character and feel what they would feel. When a hero and heroine get together, they may help each other overcome their character flaws by the end of the story. Through their love for each other, they help each other grow as human beings, and at the same time, accept each other’s flaws and imperfections. Of course, there will be some type of conflict in attaining their love. What story exists without conflict? But by the end of the story, they realize the importance of each other in their life and cannot live without the other, no matter what the price. Ahhh, true love!

NAMES

Once you have the age and personality trait of each character, then you need to give them a name that fits them. If the male character is a warrior or has a tough-minded personality, you wouldn't want to give him a name that sounds feminine, like Jean or Francis. Also, be sensitive to the setting, locale, and the time period, when deciding upon names. In addition, the names of your other characters should not overpower the hero/heroine’s names.

OTHER CHARACTERS

Once you have your main characters, then think about whom else will be in the novel. What role will these other players maintain to help the hero or heroine go forth? If you just add someone in the novel because you like him or her, but they don’t help the story, then rethink on how they could be useful to the story. Maybe they know something that might be useful to the hero or heroine, then add that into the story.

Cardboard characters are a result of focusing on one dimension of a character. The cardboard character can be either totally evil, good, funny, sad, etc. They don’t waver much from that description. Sometimes they are added in the novel to prove someone's character. For example, an evil cardboard character makes the hero look good by battling with him. That's the only purpose the evil character has, to show the hero's good side. We don't try to develop the evil person's character so that he/she is less evil. However, in recent literature, one sees more sympathetic looking evil people doing their bad deeds, yet somehow managing to make the reader feel sorry about them. Those complex types are not considered cardboard characters.

BALANCING ACT

No matter how well you think you are writing, always go back and double check your work for consistency. Make sure that if your hero has blue eyes in the beginning of the story, that he still has blue eyes by the end of the story, etc. Also, make sure you know your characters before you write. If you don’t, it will show up in your writing. Throughout the story, you have to carefully describe the real person in all their glory, as well as their character flaws. When I went back and read the first draft of my romance novel “Lipsi’s Daughter, I found that I tended to lean more towards making my characters too good. I then went in and deliberately inserted a fault or two. Those faults also help with the conflict. Conflict drives the story forward.

The final balancing act will come at the end, where you will have created, or synthesized a whole new person that has evolved into a better human being from the lessons they learned in the story. So now that you've read this section, go ahead, write your characters. Make them come alive!

About The Author

Patty Apostolides is the author of the novel Lipsi's Daughter. She is in the process of writing a poetry book and a second novel. For more information, visit her website: http://www.geocities.com/10500bc/index.html
liendou@Writing.Com

Making The Time To Write That Novel

Finding the time to write a novel is one of the major issues confronting writers, particularly those who haven’t been published yet. How does one justify to themselves, or to their loved ones, that they need time to write if they have demands on their time, like a job, or a house to be cleaned, a family to be fed, or shopping to do? They make the time.

To make time, one would have to sit down and plan it. If this is not done, then writing will become a haphazard event, dictated by a whim, or a passing urge, rather than a scheduled time. This often results in the book never really being finished. You do want to finish that book, don’t you? Below, I have my own suggestions as to how to make time.

1. Think about your daily schedule, just like when you do a budget, only instead of money, you’ll be budgeting time.

2. Then get a nice large desktop calendar, the ones that cost about two dollars. Begin filling in the mandatory slots for the week. Do you have a work schedule, or a doctor’s appointment, a meeting to go to, etc.? Then write these times down.

3. Next, fill in the times for meals, showers, shopping, socials, etc.

4. Now look at the times that you are free. Please don’t say there isn’t any time left! There will probably be some time available somewhere. Maybe it’ll be at lunchtime, if you are working, or after dinner, or even during the day if you’re a stay-at home parent (when junior is napping).

5. If you are a new writer, start slow. Maybe find one hour a day and reserve that for your writing. Go ahead and write the date in the calendar. You just made an appointment with yourself. Now do it for every day of the week. You decide if you want to work the weekend or not.

6. If you are a more seasoned writer, you will probably need more time. I find that I need a minimum of three hours a day to write. Sometimes I may also use this time doing research for my book.

Once you make that appointment with yourself, that’s the easy part. Next, you have to keep that appointment. There are so many instances when something else interferes with your designated time. I know, I’ve been there. Therefore, you need to have some flexibility. Always have a reserve time slot handy in case you don’t make your date. Although I was pretty regular and rarely strayed from my afternoon schedule, there were times that I just couldn’t stay on track. I learned to be flexible and wrote in the evenings. The important thing to remember is to not stray too far from your schedule, because it defeats the purpose.

Once you’ve scheduled your writing dates, then prepare your work area. Try and have it ready before your designated time. If you have a computer, make sure the printer has enough paper, and there’s a floppy disk available to save your Word files in. If you use a pen and paper instead, make sure you have them handy. Also, make sure you have enough lighting in the room. You wouldn’t want to strain your eyes. Make your writing area as comfortable as you can.

Now try writing for a week. How did it feel? If you’re like me, it felt great. Not only did it feel great writing, but I quickly found out it wasn’t enough time! One does need time to get into the story, to think about the dialogue, to write that chapter. Sometimes you'll be so absorbed in your writing, that you may surpass the hour you designated, and that’s fine if you go beyond your scheduled time (unless it affects your other activities). There will be other times when you’ll sit there doodling, trying to write something, and it won’t be easy, so you’ll probably finish quicker than the allotted time.

The important thing is to write on a consistent basis. It’s similar to exercise. In order to see results, you have to do it persistently and over a long period of time. A novel can never be written in one sitting! Over the course of your writing, you’ll be learning valuable skills that can only come from experience. Also, you’ll notice that the more you write, the easier it’ll become.

As you follow your daily writing schedule, you will show your loved ones that you are serious about your work, and more importantly, prove to yourself that you can write that novel!

I wrote my first novel in 1-½ years. Being a stay-at-home mother gave me the opportunity to write during my baby’s naps, which averaged about 2-3 hours each afternoon. It is very rewarding to see your novel taking shape. If I could do it, then so can you!

About The Author

Patty Apostolides is author of Lipsi's Daughter. She has published several articles and poems. Her website showcases her works: http://www.geocities.com/10500bc/index.html
Liendou@Writing.com

Writing Twenty Novels (In Ten Easy Steps!)

During a recent telephone conversation, I mentioned having sent off the last revisions for my twentieth novel, “Great Sky Woman.” There was a silence on the other side of the phone, followed by the question “How in the world do you do that? Twenty novels!”

The truth is that I know many writers who have written far more than twenty novels. It is not that unusual. In fact, if you are a working writer, the “perfect” output is very close to a book a year. Less often than this, and the readers stop anticipating your next book, and wander to another writer’s literary pasture.

There is a commonality to the behavior patterns of successful writers, and a commonality to the behavior patterns of writers who just can’t get started, can’t get finished, or stall out at their first or third book.

Successful, prolific writers:

1) Write every day. That’s EVERY day. They sit down, open their veins, and bleed into their computers. Yes, it can be painful, but if you don’t maintain this kind of regularity, rust creeps in. The connection between heart, mind and fingers is broken. And we mistake the struggle for our natural state.

2) Read every day. Reading is priming the pump. It is modeling successful behavior. It is increasing vocabulary, studying plot and characterization, and entertaining the little subconscious demons and angels who actually do the deep work. Never neglect this.

3) Set deadlines and quotas. There is a certain amount of work to be done, on a daily basis. It need not be some huge amount—a page a day will create a book a year!

4) Create a writing space, a place that feels comfortable to them. This is both a physical space (a desk) and a psychological space (created with music, posters, familiar objects, etc.) It may also be a temporal space—a specific time of day or night that they write.

5) Have specific goals. They have committed to being professional writers. This is how they define themselves, and they never forget it. If you accept this definition, then you MUST behave as a professional writer, on a daily basis, or it causes emotional discomfort. They are willing to accept this friendly prod.

6) Don't listen to the negative voices in their heads. Everyone has them. The voices tell you you can’t, you mustn’t, it isn’t good enough. You must find a way to tell the voices to shut up, to ignore them, or to quiet them. Any flow-based activity will help here: meditation, Tai Chi, yoga, running, Sufi breathing exercises, martial arts…the list is endless. Find one.

7) Are committed to the long-term. They know that if they spend an hour or three a day, every day, for a decade, they will build their career.

8) Expose themselves to criticism and rejection. In other words, they FINISH their projects, and then SUBMIT those finished projects to editors and agents.

9) Involve other people in their “master mind” group. Successful writers know other writers. And readers. And editors. And agents. They befriend them, recruit them, get feedback from them, and listen to the feedback. This is their “brain trust.” Unsuccessful writers hide in their offices, never finish their work, never send it out to risk rejection.

10) Have W.I.T.---they will do Whatever It Takes to ethically reach their dreams, to become the best they can be. They never quit. They know that success is based less on talent or “who you know” than persistence, hard work, and honesty.

There are more distinctions, but I’m out of time—got to start working on book twenty-one!

About The Author

Steven Barnes

NY Times Bestselling writer Steven Barnes has lectured on storytelling and creativity at USC, UCLA, Seattle University, and the Smithsonian Institute. Creator of the first whole-mind high performance system for writers, he can be reached at: http://www.lifewrite.com and http://www.lifewriting.biz.