The good news is that it has to be finished in a week. And the bad news is that it has to be finished in a week. Lol!

But the writing isn’t going too bad. Thank the FSM!

Actually, now that my wonderful CPs helped me figure out how to make my one hero more sympathetic and likable, I am writing along at a decent clip and creating scenes that are, mostly anyway, keepers.

The down side of all this — isn’t there always a down side? — is that I haven’t read anything besides my own writing in weeks and it’s making me crazy! Arg!

Now understand that for the past blah blah number of decades, since I learned how to read and discovered libraries, I have been an avid reader of all kinds of books. Thank the FSM (I seem to be doing that a lot lately) for ebooks or my TBR pile would have taken over the house by now. And we live in a big house. *g*

Because my shortage of reading time has not, in any way shape or form, curtailed my book buying. Oh no. Perish the thought.

I can think of three books that I bought in the last month that I haven’t opened let alone read. And those are just the three that come immediately to mind. I’m sure there are others.

I can’t wait till I get this story turned into my editor on the fifteenth. I’m going on a week long, at least, reading jag just to refill the well.

Because I miss my books!

I’m talking about those blood-thirsty little demons otherwise known as plot bunnies.

I was visited by one last night. Oh sure, they’re cute enough and the ideas they bring with them are all shiny and new and look like so much more fun than the two projects I’m currently working on.

But they’re evil and oh-so-good at distracting me from what I should be writing.

The one that dropped by last night brought an idea that I had come up with a few months ago, an idea that I still would love to write.

If only I didn’t have these other commitments. *glances at the little bunny still lurking in the corner*

Anyway, the idea is for a sort of best friends find love story that spans like fifteen years of friendship between the two heroes. One guy is a brainy computer nerd and the other is a rockstar. Well okay, I’m not sure how much of a rockstar he is, but he is a musician. They meet when they’re like twelve or thirteen and don’t realize they’re in love until they reach their late twenties. And after some suffering, of course. *g*

Oh man, I so want to write this one!

*takes deep breath*

Maybe I can write on it just a little every day once my writing for the day, the writing that’s already promised to my publisher, is done. Like a reward.

*Glances at the cute little bunny again*

*Pets the bunny*

See? I told you they were evil.

What got me thinking of pacing, both in my own work and in the books I read, was a book I started reading yesterday.

The story premise is good. The setting is interesting. And the characters, from what I know of them so far, are likable, in other words, they are people I can cheer for.

But the pacing is … off.

Not terrible, mind you. Not even bad, just … off.

Now, to be fair, I’ve only read the first two chapters and sometimes it takes a while for the writer to find her footing, especially in a story where the setting and time period are somewhat removed. But where was the editor?

These first few chapters, of any story, not just this one, are critical to grabbing the reader by the … ahem, throat and not letting her go. I’m not saying you have to drop a dead body through the ceiling at the close of every chapter, but you as the writer do have to give your reader a reason to keep turning those virtual pages. And nowhere is that as important as in the first chapters of your story.

A couple of big no-no’s:

DON’T frontload your story with backstory and info that’s not critical at that moment.

DON’T info dump. Give the reader only as much info as she needs not to be confused.

DON’T flashback. *

* A note here. Flashbacks, if used judiciously, can enhance the narrative and provide glimpses into a character’s past. So they’re not to be avoided at any cost. Rather use them like a strongly flavored spice. A little goes a long way.

DO know where to start the story. Timing really is everything in fiction, at least as far as effective pacing is concerned.

DO show more than tell.

In the book I refer to above, there was one particular scene, told as part of the narrative, that I remember thinking “Wow, I wish the writer had *shown* me that scene instead of just *telling* me that it happened.” Something as simple as choosing which scenes to show and which to narrate can make all the difference. In this case, if the writer had shown this particular scene she could have avoided the need for pages and pages of narrative and flashback. Showing the scene would have given me, the reader, much of the information about the protagonist and his world and done it in a more effective way than citing a littany of events from his past.

If I had critiqued this book I would have encouraged the author to be ruthless in cutting much of those first two chapters and rather choosing a scene or two that would have demonstrated, through action rather than words, who this protagonist is and where he comes from and how that shaped him.

Clearly, the author has good instincts for what makes an interesting and dramatic story. And, to be fair, this is her first novel and sometimes it takes a while to find your voice. But she needs to work on her pacing or she won’t keep her readers, not even if her story is interesting because it will be too easy for them to put down her book.

I hope she finds her way because she has a lot of potential and I’d like to see more from her.

And what non-writer hasn’t at least wondered, if not asked outright, this question?

Well, this morning’s blog post is my version of the answer.

And that answer is that ideas are everywhere. They surround me, pressing in on all sides, fighting for a chance to pitch themselves and perhaps spark my creativity. Though if they do get that chance, and even if there is a spark strong enough to grab my attention away from whatever project has me in its grip, there’s no guarantee that the idea will ever set down roots.

When I say the ideas are everywhere I literally mean everywhere. They lurk in the newspaper articles I read, the music I listen to, in the ads that interrupt me when I watch TV, and, perhaps most interestingly, in conversations I overhearon the street or the train or standing in line in Starbucks.

I have a friend who is constantly tossing ideas my way. I’m sure she thinks she’s doing me a favor sending these little plot bunnies over to camp out by my computer, and some of her ideas aren’t bad.

But they’re also not mine. And that means they have even less of a chance to ignite that spark.

I don’t even know what it is that makes one idea bloom and another die any more than I know why the African violets on my window-sill suddenly flower after months of dormancy. Is it the sun? The amount of water? The food I bought them or the number of times I feed them in a month?

I have no clue.

It’s the same with the ideas, those lovely, elusive butterflies constantly flitting over and around my head.

If only someone would invent an idea net so I could easily capture the brightest and most beautiful of them before they disappear forever. 

The flashes are short, no more than 750 words, on a variety of subjects and genres and seem to bring a lot of traffic to her blog.

And this got me thinking …

Wouldn’t it be kind of fun and interesting to write an entire novel in the form of flash fictions?

And to post it, one flash at a time, here on my blog where people could read and comment …

It would be a sort of ongoing, serialization presented for free to my blog readers.

The serialization would run for as long as it takes me to write the book, probably consisting of around 50 to 75 flashes of no more than 1,000 words each. So that would be one year or so of flashes, provided I stick to the one per week model.

Then at the end, when the novel is complete, I could pull together all the flashes and create a document that my readers could download for free. A sort of thank you gift for supporting me throughout the project.

The more I think about it the better I like the idea. I have even started already by writing the first of the flashes.

Here are the first two lines:

On his fifteenth birthday, Dennis McNeil fell in love. Right there in the brilliant September sunshine, on the sidewalk in front of his father’s art gallery in Chestnut Hill, Dennis lost his heart to a man who never even glanced his way….

So what do you think? Interested? 

http://www.fictionwithfriction.com/2008/02/24/snowday-reading-or-what-i-learned-this-week/

http://www.fictionwithfriction.com/2008/02/17/was-it-good-for-you/#more-278

I had what I thought was a pretty decent idea of what I wanted to happen, how I wanted to get my boys together. So I sat down at the keyboard and I started writing.

It took me only 1,500 words or so to realize that the tone of the scene was totally wrong and that Zach was not putting his best foot forward for me. (Just as an interesting, to me anyway, side note, because I never plot any story beyond the vaguest notion of what will happen in the next scene or two, it often takes me thousands of words, numerous scenes and chapters, to figure when a story isn’t working. If I’m lucky, like with Gift of Eros, some of that early writing can be tweaked and reworked and may actually turn out to be usable. Sometimes not. This time is one of the *not times.)

Then this morning I began again with the same first meet scene, except this time I wrote it from the pov of the other hero, an adorable little blond named Keith.

I can already tell that Keith (last name still unknown) is going to be one of my sweeties, an agreeable character who shares his thoughts with me and tries to do what I need him to do in order to make a scene work. These boys, if they were real, would be worth their weight in gold especially when you compare them with the annoying characters who just turn their backs and clam up. Tempramental little suckers. *g*

It’s characters like these, my sweet boys,  that make the writing fun, that keep the words flowing and my spirits high. There’s one in every story. Val was my sweetie when I was writing GOE. In my as yet unpublished novel, Phoenix Rising, it was Adam. In this story, tentatively titled Sugar in the Raw, I have high hopes for Keith.

Now if he’ll just tell me his last name …

Then the other day I was day-dreaming — Er, I mean, working on my idea, brainstorming a few possibilities, and my first hero for the new story popped into my head.

For me the best stories always begin with an intriguing character. So not wanting to loose this thread, I dashed off a paragraph describing who he is and a little about his background. Here’s what I came up with:

“Zach Jensen is a cop. That is he used to be a cop until the night he had to shoot a perpetrator who was pointing a gun at him. Now he’s a retired cop on disability who owns a bookstore that he bought with his life partner who died two years ago. Ever since Jay’s death Zach has mostly neglected the store, doing only the essentials and leaving it to mostly run itself. Luckily Zach and Jay had lots of friends and the community has been incredibly supportive or the place would have gone under by now and Zach would have left.

But something keeps him there. Maybe it’s the memories of when he and Jay were there and happy. Maybe it’s the friends he’s made. Or maybe it’s that he’s determined not to sell out to that huge chain bookstore that’s been trying to drive him out of business. Whatever it is that kepes him there, he’s trying to make a go of it, bring the place back to what it was before Jay died. Except some days, like this one, Zach is sure he’s not up to the challenge.”

Not bad for something straight out of my head.

But then as I began to think about who Zach’s hero would be and brainstorm possible scenes, I felt the first frisson of doubt.

Would this story be any good? Would it work for the anthology for which I intended it? Would the characters jump up and dance for me? Or would they turn their backs and refuse to play the game I’d set up for them?

I call this the fear factor. It’s that sometimes niggling, sometimes overwhelming, feeling that this time I’m not going to be able to finish the book, that this time the idea is too weak to hold together.

It happens to me every time I begin something new. That isn’t the only time, of course. I get that doubt in the middle of the book as well, usually when I’ve painted myself into a particularly tricky plot corner or tried to push the characters to do something that isn’t in keeping with who they are.

Other writers go through it too. All my crit partners say they feel it at least once during the growing of a new project. So at least I know it’s not just me. *g*

And every writer seems to have his or her own method for crashing through that fear and getting the job done.

For me the trick is to tell myself that I’m writing this story just for me, that no one will read this draft but me so it doesn’t matter how awful it is.

It’s a lie of course, but it usually works and frees me up enough to at least write the draft. And after all, you gotta start somewhere, right? 

It’s that undefinable something that happens in a well-crafted romance, the thing that makes my heart go pitty-pat as I read, the thing that keeps me turning the ‘pages’ well past my bedtime.

That’s the best definition I can come up with and, yeah, I realize, that’s not a definition at all. Suffice to say that even though my defining skills are not up to the challenge of saying exactly what romantic chemistry is or how to create it when writing, I know it when I see it.

And I know when it’s just not there too.

Now, I would never publicly bash another writer’s work. So I’m not going to mention the titles or authors of the last two books I’ve read where the chemistry was sorely lacking. What I will do is try to figure out why and what those authors might have done to turn up the heat.

Both stories are contemporary, m/m romances with blurbs interesting enough to make me shell out around $7. Both had characters that could have been yummy in situations that could have been yummy. Both were explicit in the detailed descriptions of intimate scenes.

But even given all that, there was zero spark. I couldn’t have cared less if these couples ever got it on or found their HEA. And that’s just wrong.

In the first case, a romantic suspense, there were a ton of plot devices that I just didn’t believe that continually had me going “Huh?” In other words I wasn’t able to suspend my disbelief long enough to get caught up in this couple’s attempt at finding love.

In the second, a strict contemp, I just didn’t believe the pov character’s attraction for the other hero. Yeah, the author kept going on about how gorgeous and classy and all-around nice the guy was, but she didn’t make me feel that thrill low in my belly that comes with true attraction. And again, I couldn’t have cared less when/if they ever got it on.

I didn’t finish either book though there may still be hope for the second. Although if I can so easily put a book down even after the first kiss …

So, yeah, chemistry. How do you know if your story has it? And if it doesn’t, is it possible to fix such a basic flaw?

Any thoughts? From writers? Or from readers?