H Is For Hidden

Jennifer talks about subtext…

A few weeks ago, I attended a workshop on subtext. It’s a subject one of my critique partners constantly talks about and I decided it might be good for me to get a better understanding of what she’s talking about.

Basically, subtext is content that is not explicitly stated, but is understood or hinted at. Subtext is hidden (see, I got my “H” in there!), but the readers still understands it.

There are several drivers of subtext: conflict, character history, symbolism & motif, dialog, and “everything else.”

We all use subtext in our writing, even if we’re not aware we’re doing it. One way we do this is with a look or the body language of our hero or heroine. Those looks or body language convey anger, disbelief, attraction, etc., without our having to say “he was attracted to her” or “she was angry at him.” It’s a way of showing, rather than telling.

In my first book, A Heart of Little Faith, I even used subtext in my characters’ names. Even though the hero is in a wheelchair, I wanted to show his strength, so I gave him the name of Gideon, which means mighty warrior. I then furthered that impression by continuing to put him in situations where he could demonstrate his strength. The heroine, on the other hand, is named Lily. I didn’t want her to be weak—I hate weak heroines—but I did want something that opposed the hero.

In Skin Deep, I used symbolism in the opening of the prologue and the first chapter to contrast two very different situations. My heroine comes from an abusive first marriage. In the prologue, her husband is about to come after her. In the first chapter, she has gained her independence from him and has come into her own to start her new life:

PROLOGUE

Los Angeles, Four Years Ago

            The glass bottle rolled off the Formica table, splattered the last of the gin onto the linoleum floor, and released its pungent odor into the shadowy kitchen. Billy swept his meaty hand across the table, sending his empty glass against the imitation-oak cabinet, where it broke on impact and sent shards of glass skittering across the sticky kitchen floor. The glass mixed with the gin and made the pool of liquid sparkle as moonlight glinted off of it.

CHAPTER 1

Los Angeles, Four Years Later

            The square, plastic bottle crashed to the floor, the white cap skittered under a cabinet and bisque-colored foundation splattered across the tile floor, where it made a Rorschach pattern within the large white squares. With a groan and a roll of her eyes, Valerie searched under the makeup table, found the errant cap, replaced it on the bottle, and returned the foundation to the tray. She grabbed a damp rag and wiped up the mess.

In my Women of Valor* series, the two books deal with Jewish holidays. One, the holiday of Purim; the other is Passover. Both holidays have themes that worked well in romance novels—hiding one’s past and freedom. There were lots of opportunities to weave those themes throughout the stories using subtext, making for a much richer storytelling.

*For the entire month of August, the first book in my Women of Valor series, The Seduction of Esther, is on sale for $.99 on Amazon.

A is for Aviva

Jennifer talks about the heroine of Book 3...

The third book in my Women of Valor series is called Selecting Aviva. I’ve written the first draft and my critique partner who focuses on plot has seen it. She didn’t hate it! So, now I’m starting on first round edits. It needs a lot of work—there are plot holes large enough to fit me into them, Aviva’s profession changes about a quarter of the way through and I need to layer in the Jewish stuff, among other things. But it’s a completed draft, so I’m optimistic.

Aviva was a fun character to write. She’s younger than most of my other heroines—she’s just out of college and working in her first job. Although I started off having her be a museum curator, I couldn’t make that work, so she’s in public relations and is planning a fundraising gala at an art museum. I really wanted to get the museum in somehow, and this worked. She’s got spunk and confidence.

The story takes place in New York City, and she’s tired of the guys she’s been meeting. They all want to be high-powered professionals and try to impress her with their stock portfolio or big plans for the future. Aviva’s not into that. She doesn’t want to compete with a job. She wants to be the most important thing in someone’s life. Thus, the title, Selecting Aviva. The title also works, because Aviva meets the hero at a speed dating event.

Although I expect much of the story to change, here are the opening lines. What do you think?

“Mom, he didn’t stop talking about himself the entire time.”

Aviva Shulman sank onto her bed, phone to her ear, and kicked off her shoes. The fluffy down comforter enveloped her and, for the first time all evening, she heaved a sigh of relief.

   “Oh, honey, maybe he was just nervous.”

   Aviva snorted. “Him? According to his credentials, which he presented to me, in writing no less when we sat down at the table, he closes multi-million dollar real-estate deals with the uber-wealthy of Manhattan on a regular basis. There was no way he was nervous about having dinner with little ole museum curator me.”

   “Don’t disparage yourself, Aviva. You’ve studied hard for your position and you’re good at it. You bring beauty to people and the world needs beauty.”

   Aviva’s chest swelled and her eyes filled with tears. “Oh, mom, I love you.”

   “I love you too.”

   “I think I need a break from dating, though. I haven’t met anyone even halfway decent in months. I’d be better off alone than with these over-inflated, peacock men.”

   “Then take a break, honey. Just don’t get a cat.”

What Are You Working On?

Jennifer talks about her WIP...

I’m at the stage in my current manuscript where I can see and almost taste the ending. My hero and heroine have gone through the black moment, they’re in the abyss and now they need to climb out in order to reach their happily ever after so that I can type, “The End.”

I procrastinated writing the black moment. I like my characters. I’ve spent the book rooting for them and I didn’t want them to suffer. But they have to, because the entire story has been leading up to that moment of suffering, and to avoid it would let down the reader. So they’re apart right now, and suffering mightily. With a hero who doesn’t express his feelings easily, this is going to be tricky. Add in a heroine who refuses to repeat the mistakes of her past and it’s going to be doubly tricky. But like I said, I’m almost at the end and I’m chugging along.

Additionally, I have a great idea for Book 4. I have my characters and I have their black moment. I still need a lot of other details before I can write, but the characters are nudging me and even if I wanted to slow down on Book 3, they won’t let me.

So what are you working on?

Who Are Your Characters’ Helpers?

Jennifer talks about secondary characters...

Unless your characters are either a) living in a bubble or b) the most enlightened minds in the world, your characters need some sort of a helper in order to understand how and why they’re doing something.

Our characters don’t live in a bubble. As Ana mentioned yesterday, they have a history that affects their today and their tomorrow. They interact with people and they react to events.

If our characters were the most enlightened minds in the world, chances are, we wouldn’t be writing about them, since there wouldn’t be a story there. We wouldn’t need to see the trials and tribulations they go through in order to reach true love. They’d snap their fingers and live happily ever after.

Therefore, they need helpers. In my books, those helpers are family, friends and children. In the manuscript that’s out with my agent currently, my character, Cassie, has close friends in whom she confides her fears and her feelings. They help her work through things and sometimes even push her toward the hero. They also meddle a little in her affairs by going directly to the hero and warning him to be careful, telling a little about her backstory and providing hints to the reader.

In my current WIP, Book 3 of my Women of Valor series, both the hero and heroine have family who help the reader understand their psyche. By seeing them react with their mother’s (especially the one mother who never lets anyone forget ANYTHING), the reader gets to see what makes them tick. The heroine also has a nephew, who’s seven. He helps explain things in a childlike way and is a great tool when something has to be explained step by step, but I don’t want to make the reader feel like an idiot.

These secondary characters are fun to write and develop and sometimes, it’s like laying out the pieces of a treasure map. They’re the reader’s guide to finding the X (and the O) on the journey to happily ever after.

Who are your helpers?

Dating Woes

I have a difficult time coming up with plausible dating scenarios for my hero and heroine. Most of them involve eating, and some people complain that there’s too much food in my books.

I think part of the reason is that my husband and I never really “dated.” We met in college. When I graduated, he still had a year to go, and most of our dating was long distance. We’d get together when he was home or if I was able to fly out to him. But dating? As in, him picking me up, taking me somewhere and bringing me home? Not so much.

For Book 3 of my Women of Valor series, I decided to take a completely different take on the dating scene. I had my hero and heroine meet while speed dating. Now, in addition to not really dating my husband, speed dating didn’t exist when I was single. So, as I do for most of my research, I went online. There I found websites that explained how the concept worked. The problem was, I could only find out so much about it without actually signing up to participate. And, while my husband is very supportive of my writing, and is willing to help me research certain things, I’m pretty confident he’d put his foot down if I asked him if I could start dating.

So I contacted a friend of a friend, who has participated in speed dating events, and she answered lots of my questions and entertained me with stories from her own experiences. Still, something was missing.

One evening, my husband, daughter and I went out to dinner with a friend who lives in New York City. He took us to an Irish pub and guess what? In the back, they were getting ready to host a speed-dating event. My daughter and I figured out ways to observe what was going on, and even to record the host discussing the rules. As a result, I was able to portray it well in my story (I think).

Aviva and Jason not only meet at their speed dating event, which both of them were coerced into participating, but they figure out a way to escape together from it. I’m pretty confident that by doing so, they’ve put themselves on the “banned for life” list, but if the story continues to shape up as it is, they won’t have to worry about dating again.