Last weekend, I locked my kittens in the bathroom (with plenty of food, water, and toys, yes!) and headed to Oklahoma City for the first-ever RomanceLahoma writers’ conference. Hosted by the Oklahoma Romance Writers’ Guild, this two-day conference brought together more than a hundred romance writers (and those of us who are working on that!) with successful novelists for a total immersion in the craft.
For me, the highlight of the conference was meeting Jodi Thomas, New York Times best-selling novelist and RITA-award winner (and author of more than 60 bestsellers – dare to dream!). She was unfortunately booked at the same time as a session on social media, which most of the writers went to – but about a dozen of us had her to ourselves for an informal round-table discussion of her career and writing advice. It was pretty cool. More than pretty cool, really. 🙂
But I think the best session I attended was one on character development. To be honest, I had qualms about returning on Saturday – a huge storm had blown through our area right after I left home that morning – but this session made it worthwhile. I thought I’d read every book out there about character development, and I think my characters are pretty well-rounded, but this session offered us some additional ways to think about not just our characters, but also their conflicts. And if you’ve ever experienced that Act 3 Slump, the emphasis on conflict was extremely helpful.
We started with the basics – your character can’t be totally good or totally bad; they must have heroic and not-so-heroic traits; they need special skills that will help them obtain their objectives in the end, etc. But then the question arose: who is the most interesting person for your plot? And more to the point, in a romance novel (or even if you have a romantic element in another genre) who is the best foil for your main character? In other words – if you think about the least likely person for your character to fall for, who would that be? That provides built-in tension from the start.
The presenter suggested using Enneagrams to figure out your characters’ personality traits, and how they work, or don’t work, with other personality types. For more about this, you can read this article from Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/health/mind/enneagram-types/
Obviously, your characters have to have problems. But especially in a a genre romance, this is a problem that is ruining their life. Bonus points if it ruins others’ lives as well! This life-ruining problem is that elusive internal issue or internal conflict all characters need. This is the Big One, the one they MUST fix by the end of the novel.
To think about this differently, this problem is The Lie Your Character Tells Themselves. Think about the lies we all tell ourselves, rooted in our childhoods, our middle school or high school experiences, our major break-ups, our family dynamics. I’m a disappointment. I’m not good enough. I’m helpless or powerless. I will always be left by those who are supposed to love me. I am not lovable. I will never be enough for anyone. Everything is my fault. I can’t be forgiven for the things I’ve done. Are these things true? No. Well. Probably not. Do we tell ourselves these things? Of course. Why? Because at some point, we internalized them. At some point, our life-ruining problem, our Lie, was made so crystal-clear to us that it became our truth.
For an example: in a book I just read, Yours Truly by Abby Jimenez, one of the main characters, Briana, has been devastated by two major losses – her father walked out on the family when she was young, and her husband walked out on her after ten years of marriage. The lie she told herself was that men will always leave her. Men don’t want her. Those two things combined became what the presenter called the Dark Moment Story.
The Dark Moment Story is that moment when the hero becomes adamantly, totally convinced that their Lie is the truth. It’s a very specific event that causes them to feel this way. (I suppose the flip side of this is the Villain Origin Story?) This moment occurs. The hero internalizes the Lie. And because of that, everything else occurs.
Take, for example, a boy who comes from a family in which his parents are divorced, and hate each other. The Dark Moment Story might be the moment he overhears them fighting and hears one parent tell the other that they never wanted a child. That child is suddenly faced with the fact that one of his parents never wanted him. Is it true? Maybe. What matters is that the hero believes it. He internalizes it. I will never been good enough; the people who are supposed to love me, don’t. There must be something wrong with me. “I will never be good enough” becomes the lie they tell themselves, and when they embark on a relationship, it’s the thing they continue to tell themselves. “This person can never really love me, because I’m not good enough.” Because of that, they will sabotage the relationship is some way.
The Lie becomes The Fear.
Use the fear, Luke!
Your character’s fears need to be evident from the very start. And they need to affect their behavior from the very start. And they will be evident throughout the story. This Fear is what determines the Dark Night of the Soul/All Is Lost beat (if you’re familiar with “Save the Cat!”). This fear, in a romance novel, is what drives the lovers apart. They see their greatest fear is coming true, and they pull back, run away. Your characters have been wounded by the Dark Moment. Think about a time when you were seriously hurt – maybe you burned your hand, or broke your arm. Think about how hard you worked to protect that wound. We do the same thing with our internal/emotional wounds, too. What will your hero do, to protect themselves? To what lengths will they go to, to protect themselves?
Now, of course, your character has to have a Secret Desire. This is often something they’re not consciously aware they want – but they want it more than anything. They’ve seen it, or they once experienced it, and now they want it. Let’s return to our hero with the divorced parents. During a visitation with one parent, they saw a kid their own age having a huge birthday party at McDonald’s, with both parents and the whole family and dozens of friends – and the normalcy of that, the happiness they saw, the rightness of it, struck a chord deep inside them. They can never have it. But they want it. They want the kind of family that does things like that. The kind of family that’s stable enough for things like that. Who loves their kid enough to do things like that. Instead, they have parents who hate each other too much to ever be in the same room, and their greatest fear is that every relationship they have will be just as dysfunctional. Therefore, there’s no point in having a relationship, is there?
The rest of the session focused on conflict – which I’ll talk about next week. 🙂
KS Writer & Teacher 