This Never Happened Before

For most of my love stories, I began by imagining the couple. What makes them right for each other and how can I get them together? I usually change my mind about a lot of things in the early stages. I’ve given characters different names and different jobs and added siblings. I’ve decided that what I thought was a good idea was actually a bad, bad, horrible direction for the plot because no one would ever do such a thing in real life.

But I have never changed my mind about who was going to end up together.

My current project, which I have almost officially decided to call Collecting Zebras, was the first time I even considered it. The heroine for this one is named Angel Melling. She is my most… let’s say “aggressive” heroine to date. I’ve written several leading ladies who were not exactly looking for love and at least one actively avoiding it. This sort of limits the guys in the story. Angel, however, is on a mission. She’s pulling more guys into her story and she’s looking at every single one of them for husband potential. And so was I.

This was where my slightly hopeless nature began to get in the way. I found myself wishing I could pick more than one guy for her. It was the first time I felt bad for guys who weren’t a good match. I wrote one possible love interest out altogether because I envisioned too much awkwardness. I kept another in the storyline longer than I originally intended because I needed more time to discount his long-term potential. And I had to resist a strong urge to add another female character so things could work out well for everyone.

In the end I had to remind myself that this was Angel’s story. I only needed to make sure she got the happily ever after. I still feel bad about at least one guy though. This is me going on record to say that anyone who reads my book has permission to imagine a happy ending for anyone who doesn’t get one in the story. I may have even slipped in a hint in that direction.

Mr. Nice Guy

The character of Luke Foster was created almost as an act of defiance. I have occasionally been criticized for writing people who are “too nice.” The rationale being that the characters are unrealistic or that there isn’t enough conflict when everyone gets along. I’ve typically found these opinions easy to dismiss. And not because I’m just that stubborn.

My characters feel realistic because they remind me of people I know. I’m lucky enough to have friends and family who really would give me the shirts off their backs. I write nice because I know nice.

The criticism was on my mind though when I sat down to begin work on Jealousy & Yams. It made me consider trying something different. My original idea was to give the main characters flaws that made them initially unlikable. I thought they could be people who sort of deserved each other… that it might be a fun challenge to see if I could make them grow on the reader by the end of the book. I gave up that idea pretty quickly.

I’m simply not interested in reading a book if I don’t like the main characters and I spend a lot more time with the characters I write. I don’t want to write about people who pick fights and cause unnecessary drama. While I do believe people are entitled to second chances, I’d rather spend my time with those who don’t need a second chance. A hint of my original plan still shows up in Summer. I don’t think she starts out particularly unlikeable, but the reader is supposed to wonder what she’s up to.

For Luke, on the other hand, I completely abandoned any thoughts of making him anything other than a perfectly nice guy. I considered giving him a bad habit or a wild past. That’s when the defiance kicked in. I thought, “You know what, I happen to like nice guys and I don’t care what anyone else says. I’m going to make this guy the nicest one yet. He’s going to be so nice that even the other characters notice and comment on how nice he is.”

In Anne of Green Gables, someone asks her if she’d really want to marry a wicked man. She says, “I think I’d like it if he could be wicked and wouldn’t.” I think that’s what most of us want. Luke isn’t nice because he has no backbone or because he isn’t capable of terrible, horrible things. He’s nice simply because he chooses to be nice. And I chose to make him that way.

Fixing the Fixable

In my first proofreading pass for Jealousy & Yams, I found a sentence that read, “We put a put on the building.” Oops. Of course I fixed that as well as the many, many other errors I found. I hope that by the time my other proofers and I are done, the book will be 100% free of mistakes. I can’t guarantee that, but that’s the goal.

Very careful editing and proofreading is not about being nit-picky and it’s not about trying to prove I don’t make mistakes. I absolutely do. It’s about keeping the reader engaged in the story. The reader is kicked out of the dream world of the book when the author says something she didn’t mean to say. I know because it happens to me when I’m the reader. These are some recent examples of it happening to me. Everything in italics is a direct quote from a published work.

When her normal sparkling green eyes lit up, his heart would practically stop. Now, they were a deep, intent brown.
I think the author meant to say normally here, which means usually. Normal means ordinary. Calling someone’s eyes ordinary and sparkling in the same breath feels a little… counterproductive. And just as I’ve gotten over that, those eyes change color. I believe at this point I’m supposed to be appreciating how much the hero likes the heroine’s eyes. But I’m not. I’m wondering if they’ll be blue the next time he looks at her.

When the students handed in their test…
Now I’m wondering why all the students get to work on the same test. That’s not how it worked when I was in school.

The organist began playing. She was thankful it interrupted any further chance of continuing their discussion.
I’m thinking it’s kind of rude for the organist to be happy about interrupting people. Also, since this is the only time in the whole book that the organist is mentioned, I’m surprised that we’re suddenly inside her head.

[She] stood up and began to get her pajamas around.
Around what? The room? I don’t understand why this character is suddenly making a mess or why the narrator is so calm about it.

“This silence treatment is driving me nuts. You went to great links to ignore me today.”
Do they call it a silence treatment on the West coast, or somewhere else I’ve never lived? Even so, if she was on the golf course, how would he know he was being ignored?

…he would have spent doing nothing of great importance to kill time.
Here I simply think someone needs to look up the meaning of kill time. Or possibly the word superfluous.

…more cleavage than was already visual through her satin shirt.
Since I wasn’t reading a fantasy novel, this mention of a woman who apparently sees with her breasts really came out of left field. Yeah, I know she meant visible, but that doesn’t stop the ridiculous image from popping into my head. I’m supposed to be annoyed with this character for being flirty. Instead I’m amusing myself with the different body parts the woman might use to hear.

…she thought about the curly, red-headed, child.
This says that the child is curly, not her hair. I have to pause for a moment to imagine what a curly child would look like.

There was just something about a big, soft-haired pup licking your face that made her cave in to his sweetness.
There are too many pronouns in this sentence. I don’t know who is caving to whose sweetness and I really don’t know what a dog licking my face has to do with anything. I’m not in this story.

Three years of concealed, unadulterated love, hanging in limbo, threatened to ruin his future happiness, should he make the wrong decision.
I don’t know. Should he make the wrong decision? Normally I’d say no because wrong decisions tend to be, you know, wrong. But now that the question is out there I’m going to have to think about it.

“Now that it’s getting sickening; what’s the problem?”
I’m going to guess that the problem has to do with something getting sickening. I don’t know what that means, but it sounds like a problem. Even within the context of the book, I had no idea what this sentence was supposed to say. I can only assume that autocorrect is to blame.

I’m not naming these authors or their books because I’m trying to make a point without embarrassing anyone. (I will, however, say that it only took two books to find this many examples and that I cut a few when the post was getting too long.) My point of course is how distracting it is to try to read a book full of typos. I hope I’m careful enough to do readers the favor of telling the story I intend to tell. There will still be people who don’t enjoy my books and those people are entitled to their opinions. My hope is to have removed all the issues that are not a matter of opinion. Using enormous in place of huge is subjective; using effect in place of affect is not.