This week at Diamonds Down Under, we have a Q&A with Desire editor Diana Ventimiglia. If you're interested in writing for the line, this is a don't miss opportunity to hear what the ed's are looking for AND -- special bonus! -- to go in the draw to win a critique. If you're a reader, there is a terrific book pack gioveaway instead.

Labels: giveaway, other blogs, Silhouette Desire, writing tips

Last weekend I posted at Diamonds Down Under about Australia's quintessential romantic settings, applicable to real life but also as used in romance novels. That got me thinking about how much the setting can add to a romance. In some case it defines the romance...or perhaps the characters and the tone of the romance demand a specific setting. Perhaps it's not a core ingredient like character and conflict and a resolution that leads to a happy ending, but an essential one, IMHO.

I say this despite an interesting exercise conducted on our recent writing retreat. We were asked by our discussion leader to list ten essentials we look for when reading. Setting did not appear on many lists, although items such as colour, layering, depth, atmosphere did, and in my mind these are the things created through setting.

Interesting, some of the writers/readers said things like "I don't care where it's set as long as I'm drawn to characters". Or the situation, the plot, the storyline. Or perhaps they love any story where the dialogue is funny and smart and snappy. I argue that this reader's enjoyment will also be enhanced if setting is well applied. Not with a heavy hand, but as a light veneer to compliment the rollicking adventure or the intense passion or the quirky wit of the characters.

Would Stephanie Plum be Stephanie Plum without Trenton, NJ?

Have you seen or read No Country For Old Men? Could that story have been set anywhere else?

In these and many instances the setting chooses itself, it is part of the characters or essential to the plotline or defined by the situation. My examples: Tycoon's One-Night Revenge required a remote wilderness location to allow the stranded/isolated storyline to work. Tomas Carlisle in The Rugged Loner is an outback cattleman as harsh and unforgiving as his outback home.

In category romance it can even be part of the series guidelines. Quoting from the guidelines posted on eHarlequin.com, Presents are all "set in sophisticated, glamorous, international locations" and all Harlequin Americans are set, where else, but in America. "They're set in small towns and big cities, on ranches and in the wilderness, from Texas to Alaska--everywhere people live and love."

That's the overall story setting. Equally important is the setting within scenes, which grounds the reader by showing where the action is taking place or--better still--draws her into the storyworld so she experiences the action along with the heroine. Setting creates atmosphere and can be used to add texture, depth and sensual detail. Definitely something I look for in my reading and when I examine the authors who I've loved through the ages--from Lucy Walker's outback to Ruth Wind/Barbara Samuel's south-west--I realise just how essential.

PS: I'm giving away two of my books which I feel best exemplify my own use of setting to enhance story, The Rugged Loner and Tycoon's One-Night Revenge, to one commenter on the DDD Blog. Drawn 22 March.

And if you don't win the free copy at DDU, you can buy Tycoon's One-Night Revenge in eHarlequin's Hot Men for Hot Prices promotion for just $2.66.

Labels: giveaway, setting, writing tips

This past month I've done quite a few guest blogs, spotlights and interviews talking about the Diamonds Down Under series. Today's guest spot is at Fresh Fiction where I talk about collaborating with friends, but instead of making it all about Diamonds, again, I asked another group of friends who've collaborated for their thoughts on writing with friends.

The group: the awesome foursome who concocted the Crocodile Creek series for M&B Medicals. Alison Roberts, Marion Lennox, Meredith Webber and Lilian Darcy have published hundreds of books between them, collected RITA and R*BY nominations by the truckload, while remaining fast friends and all-round top people. At present they've sold three four-book series under the CC banner and, who knows, if the readers keep pleading there may be more to come. :-)

Alison Roberts was the first to respond to my request for a quote about writing with friends, and she answered so expansively and eloquently that I had a hard time choosing one grab for the Fresh Fiction article. I asked if she minded me using the whole response as a special guest blog here. Alison, as I mentioned, is an all-round champion person and so she said feel free and Marion, Meredith and Lilian added their responses and here it is: a very special guest blog about writing with friends by the fabulous Croc Creekers.

Bron: How did the Crocodile Creek collaboration come about?

Alison: This series came about due to the first ever writer's retreat I went on, which was just me and Marion having a few days on South Stradbroke Island before the first Gold Coast conference. [Romance Writers of Australia conf, 2003.] We roped in Meredith once we got to the conference and got Lilian on board via telephone conferencing and there was this buzz even talking about it. We missed all the scheduled conference things we were going to do and sat round bouncing ideas and making notes and it was really exciting!

I think Harlequin was a bit gobsmacked at being given an author-generated idea for a series and it actually took a long time and quite a bit of modification before we got the green light, but then we started work on the first series and it was amazing. As Marion ( I think) put it at one point, "It's like having three extra brains". Emails flew back and forth as we discussed characters, backgrounds and plots.

I think the first series was easier because we worked more in sequence so had the book prior to ours to work from (or I did, anyway) but later -- especially this last series -- we were working at the same time which made timelines and things trickier. Also, we linked each set of four books with a story arc so we had to write a book that would stand alone but also fit into the overall story line.

To sum it up, I'd say it's challenging but fabulous. And so much fun, working in little bits and pieces of the other books, like snatches of conversations overheard or even just the expression on someone's face. For example, I have a wedding scene for my characters but two characters from the next book were having a snog in a side room. My characters can't go out the main door because the cyclone is ripping slates off the roof. They go to go out the side door and hey, there's this couple locked in a passionate embrace.

Marion: It was indeed fun. It felt a bit like a free book cos there were four plotters rather than one. I think the fact that we totally respected each other as writers and we knew each other's characters would be treated sympathetically was the key.

Meredith: What I loved was the intricacy of it. Yes, it was like a free book because we'd plotted together but weaving the stories together so bits of one fitted seamlessly with bits of another was the best fun. We even wrote little passages for each other's books so the stories melded. This might not have happened if we'd known each other less well or not been friends -- don't know -- but it worked well for us.

Bron: any words of wisdom to writers thinking of working with friends in some form of collaboration?

Alison: I'd say don't do it unless you have the utmost respect for each other's work and a solid base of friendship where ego is put aside. Ours was a collaboration in more than just a professional sense and we tried to write the best books we could because we wanted them to be as good as we knew the others would be. The "x" factor that came from our friendship gave these books an edge that made them special.

Lilian: We did make the initial mistake with our first continuity idea of trying to put too many eggs in our basket -- tons of murder and suspense and international intrigue as well as medicine and romance -- way too many bells and whistles. Various editors hosed us down with blasts of cold water and cured us of all that.

I think we all felt that the second of our three sets of four books flowed the most smoothly (interestingly and rarely, not one of the four of us had any revision requests on those books) and I think that's because a) we were experienced at working together by that stage and b) we came up with an idea that was outwardly simple yet allowed for a whole lot of complexity and emotion within each individual story. We could basically sum it up in three words "weddings and cyclone," and the juxtaposition of the romance of the weddings and the drama of the cyclone gave us the basis for everything that the Medical Romance line thrives on.

This would be my advice to anyone attempting an author-generated continuity: give yourselves a simple over-arching continuity thread that hits the centre of your line's promise to the reader so that the complexity and uniqueness can develop within each story without you all getting tangled up and treading on each other's toes.

Series two of Crocodile Creek -- the "weddings and cyclone" one -- was out in late 2007 in the UK and Australia and in Nth America through eHarlequin.

The titles in this series:
The Playboy Doctor's Proposal, Alison Roberts
The Nurse He's Been Waiting For, Meredith Webber
Their Lost-and-Found Family, Marion Lennox
Long-Lost Son: Brand-New Family, Lilian Darcy

My February giveaway: comment on any blog post this month and you'll be entered in the draw to receive a four-pack of books by some of my favourite Aussie authors, including the fab Croc Creekers.

Labels: giveaway, Guest blogger, writing tips

Have you ever tested your writing's readability statistics? I remember doing so many moons ago, when the topic came up in a writers' loop. To be honest I can't recall the results from that initial test, which means they must have been in the acceptible range for easy-to-read fiction without being TOO basic. Otherwise I would have stressed and I would remember.

The topic came to mind again when I saw a test for blog readability. As well as doing that test, I decided to check what Word had to say about my latest writing. I checked the opening scene from Vows & A Vengeful Groom and the Flesch reasing ease is 67.3 and the Flesch-Kincaid grade level is 7.5. Meaning, about the same reading ease as Readers' Digest and easy to read for the average 7th-8th grader. The tests are based on stat's such as average word length and sentence length.

I also tested this blog and here's the result. I'm nothing if not consistent.

Labels: reading level, writing tips

I've decided to trial a new blogging system, with regular postings on themed days. Tuesday will be the day for writing tips, and these may well include links to off-site articles. Today my tip is about dialogue, seeing as I have just posted a new article on dialogue basics. The article was inspired by the number of contest entries I have judged this year where the dialogue flow suffered due to overuse of attribution tags.

My tip: attributing dialogue with tags such as he said, she replied, he responded, she asked is only necessary for clarity -- so the reader knows who is doing the saying, the asking, the responding, the replying. If this is obvious due to the character's voice or the use of an action tag, then skip the dialogue tag.

Example (from Back In Fortune's Bed, Silhouette Desire, Feb. 2007):

"Is this snowing?" Max asked.

"Almost."

He heard the smile in Diana's voice and felt the brush of body contact as she craned her neck to look past him. He also felt her deep-seated shiver as the wall of cold hit.

"Isn't it pretty?" Her voice held an abstracted note of wonder. "I wish I had my camera!"

"You're shivering too hard to hold it steady."

"No. I'm not."

Amused by her indignation, Max shook his head. "Come on. Let's get you to your car or Alberto will have my hide for not keeping you warm."

"I'm parked a couple of blocks--" she pointed off to their right "--down there."

"A couple of blocks?"

"It's not far."

"Speak for yourself, snow-babe." He hunched deeper into his jacket. "I'd have to walk it two ways."

10 lines of dialogue; only one he asked attribution, yet it is clear who is speaking. Same piece of dialogue, with every line attributed:

"Is this snowing?" he asked.

"Almost," Diana replied.

He heard the smile in her voice and felt the brush of body contact as she craned her neck to look past him. He also felt her deep-seated shiver as the wall of cold hit.

"Isn't it pretty," she said, her voice abstracted with wonder. "I wish I had my camera!"

"You're shivering too hard to hold it steady," Max said.

"No," she responded. "I'm not."

Amused by her indignation, Max shook his head. "Come on," he said. "Let's get you to your car or Alberto will have my hide for not keeping you warm."

"I'm parked a couple of blocks down there," she said, pointing off to their right.

"A couple of blocks?" Max asked.

"It's not far," she fired back.

"Speak for yourself, snow-babe," Max retorted. He hunched deeper into his jacket. "I'd have to walk it two ways."

Can you see how the flow is smoother and pacier in the first example? Without any loss of clarity?

Labels: Back In Fortune's Bed, writing tips