Thanks to the Romaniacs for an invite to their blog

That super group of writers, the Romaniacs who love all things romance invited me on their blog this week for their Tuesday chit-chat. Do go over and say 'hello' if you have any comments as it's always lovely to chat to people about writing. As my serial, The Lemon Grove is still running in the People's Friend magazine, they asked me about my route to publication in serial writing. This week is part 6 of 8, where 'the other man' appears. This is a device I've used often in my stories as I think it adds a perfect element of internal conflict. Internal conflict is a difficult thing for us as writers to tackle. It's easy to think up an external goal and it's always better if you can make that external goal clear and plain even so far as making it something you can see. Examples of external goals might be finding the treasure, killing the enemy or escaping from the baddy. However it's the internal conflict which really grabs a reader. For my heroine in the serial, her external goal could be summed up thus: girl takes up overseeing redecoration of a beach house for her brother in order to put her life together after broken engagement. That's simple. The internal conflict though is less simple to define but often in a romance is so central it must not be ignored because it is in tackling internal conflicts that people change. With my heroine Caroline she's still in two minds about whether in leaving her fiance, she did the right thing. Her internal conflict is to decide whether the things she saw in her old lover Peter are the things she really needs emotionally or whether she should risk allowing herself to fall in love with a new man, Antonio. We all have internal conflicts, sometimes we don't even admit them to ourselves. But the two journeys the main protagonist of your story makes, the external goal that can be seen and easily identified and the internal goal which cannot be seen but which forms the main change in character provides the main conflict and is therefore essential in keeping your reader turning the pages.