Wednesday 9 November 2011

There has to be something at stake.......

Charles Dance looking suave, moody and troubled (I love tortured heroes!)  in the TV adaptation of Rebecca


I recently attended the London Chapter meeting of the Romantic Novelists Association. They have a New Writers Scheme where published authors provide an in depth critique to those who submit manuscripts and who are not yet published.


The meeting was an opportunity for three of us readers to meet some of those who had submitted and I found it fascinating. One of the things that struck me most was something that one of the other readers pointed out that mirrored my own experience of critiquing unpublished manuscripts. By the end of chapter one she said the reader must know that there is something at stake. This is so important, and worth any new writer taking note. It is also an easy mistake to write a whole novel where too little is at stake. Something has to be of major importance to your characters to make it interesting. This is one of the things I have noticed about unpublished manuscripts which may lead to rejection. Often manuscripts are well constructed, the dialogue is good, the characterisations are spot on. But if the main players don't have something major at stake for them to desire, hanker after, want to hold on to - all that hard work can be hung on something which is just too weak to hold a reader's interest. Also there have to be reasons for those very human needs which is why it is important to create fully rounded characters with in depth histories.


To demonstrate, I’ll take a couple of popular works, one recent and one a classic which has been remade so many times it will be very familiar. Firstly Downton Abbey which has been hugely successful. It also perfectly illustrates my point. The storyline hinges on the Downton estate which means everything to the honourable Earl of Grantham and his three daughters. It is their home, their fortune, their considerable legacy. Because the estate is entailed and can pass only to sons there is immediately something at stake because the Earl unfortunately only has daughters. What’s more, we know how hard the Earl has fought to keep the estate, by firstly marrying an American heiress (which wasn’t a love match although he now loves her dearly – he’s a great character, fair and honourable who you want to see succeed) and secondly by engineering the marriage between his eldest daughter Mary and the heir to the Downton estate. Huge things are at stake here, not just property but wealth and most importantly the Earl’s heartfelt desire to preserve the family estate - it’s in his bones and he sees himself as its protector. Instantly as viewers we were hooked. We may never know what it is like to have that weight of responsibility but we can imagine….


My second example is Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier. From the start we know that the heroine is poor, plain and put upon by the rich, snobbish lady to whom she is acting as companion. Then into her life comes the fabulously wealthy, gorgeously taciturn Maxim de Winter, the sort of man she feels she could never capture. But he sees something in her that others don’t, her good nature, a sweet naievety that he hankers after as he now despises the flamboyant worldliness of his first wife (for very good reasons which I won’t lay out here for fear of spoiling it for anyone who hasn’t read Rebecca). Instantly there is something major at stake for both hero and heroine. For the heroine it is a classic Cinderella story, the chance to escape. For Maxim it is the chance to make good a life which has gone disastrously wrong.   


So there you have it. For a story to have dramatic impact there has to be something at stake. Something major, for those characters at that time in their lives. Once you set that scenario up you’ll hopefully have readers hooked until the end. So many different people have played Maxim de Winter but my personal favourite is Charles Dance hence the gratuitous photo above of him being moody and troubled. Wonderful!

14 comments:

  1. Excellent point, Cara. This is something I tried to impress on those who attended my workshop. If the only thing that keeps the hero and heroine apart is something trivial, such as a minor prang with a car or a stolen parking space, then the reader is just going to think that the characters have other issues that can't be sorted in a 50k romance. It goes back to my post about internal and external conflict, and how they have to work together to create that distance until all is resolved.

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  2. Absolutely Sally, the BIG issues (big at least to those individuals) and the internal conflicts are the lifeblood of romance. Things have to matter and one can be so busy getting all the other stuff right, the characterisation, the setting etc that the 'thing that matters' somehow gets lost.

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  3. That is such a good point about something needing to be at stake! I'm a NWS reader, and I know that's the first thing that puts me off a manuscript, however hard I try to be fair. And even though I know I make the same mistake myself!

    Life is a serious business and women's lives are particularly serious with all the things we have to juggle. We might want an escape for a little while with a book, but we still need our hearts to be touched. And like Sally says, if it's a minor prang - well then who are these people and why should we give a monkey's? It feels like the tantrum of a spoiled child rather than someone we can identify with and care for.

    Great stuff!

    Juliet

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  4. Thanks for that insight, Cara. Very well put, I'll bear it in mind for novel number 2!
    Yes, and Charles Dance looks the perfect Maxim de Winter too.
    Ha, ha, perhaps the perfect maxim for a first chapter is to show 'something at stake'!
    Jean

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  6. Excellent point, sounds like the talk was very useful. Thank you for sharing x

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  7. Nice to hear from another reader Juliet. I hesitated about this posting because it seems so obvious and yet I've done the same thing myself! Hi Jean, good luck by the way with Gipsy Moth. Thanks Catherine, it was useful and always nice to get together with other RNA'ers.

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  8. PS Catherine, just looked at your profile. I hope you're trying medicals with Mills and Boon, they're so popular and M&B are always looking for writers. They've got a competition on at the moment.....

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  9. The New Voices comp is coming to an end now, Cara. They're on the last round so it's too late for Catherine to enter. But there's always next year. Mind you, Catherine knows what I went through when I entered last year. Never again (even if I was eligible!)

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  10. Hi Sally - you're right about New Voices, I have some reservations about that. I was thinking more of Harlequin's SYTYCW (so you think you can write) comp. I haven't in any way got to grips with it but I think it's going on at present. If you haven't already you might want to check it out, I think you do a competitions diary don't you? Anyhow, as I say I'm not sure what they're asking for but I think it's a yearly event and even if you don't enter there are useful tips from the editors etc.

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  11. Thanks Cara. I'll check it out. I seem to remember them asking for medicals last year now I come to think of it. It coincided with the NV comp.

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  12. Hi Cara!

    I'm glad you posted it. I've found that it's really obvious things that I can spot a mile off in someone else's work that I miss in my own. Duh. Which, of course, is what editors are for!

    I love being a reader for the NWS. I find I learn so much from the manuscripts I'm critiquing because it makes me look at my own work as well. Writing is continuous learning!

    I write pocket books as well, although I haven't done one for a while. I do them under my 'Heather Pardoe' hat, and have great fun.

    Juliet

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  13. A most interesting post, Cara. As one of the NWS readers at that RNA Chapter meeting, I'd like to comment on the importance of something being at stake. What you really need are several things at stake in Chapter 1. A major one, of course, but a couple of minor ones as well are immensely useful. The major one won't be sorted until the end of the book but a minor problem can help to keep up the dramatic tension (something every writer should be looking to do) and can provide a cliff-hanger at the end of a chapter!

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  14. Excellent advice Elizabeth, and one well worth bearing in mind. Thank you so much for posting!

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