Archive | May 2012

Writing Retreat Much?

May15

Mount Shasta

 The benefits of writing retreats.

  

Recently, I had the privilege of spending 6 days with Nina Bruhns. She’s the Editorial Director and Senior Editor for Entangled Publishing’s DEAD SEXY books. She’s also a Bestselling romantic thriller author. She writes as both Nina Bruhns and Nikita Black and her books are absolutely sexy-thrilling.

From right: Nina Bruhns, Virna DePaul, Grace Callaway, Susan Hatler, Cyndi Faria, Rochelle French

A benefit of the small retreat setting was that I got to know the writer behind the book cover. Nina’s love of travel, not to mention that she’s also an archeologist (an Egyptologist), was inspiring as she has lived and worked all over the world.

During the Mt. Shasta retreat, in California, Nina talked about the ten types of movies and how romance writers often find themselves writing the same types of books over and over again.

Movie types include:

  • Monster in The House
  • Golden Fleece: Road movie.
  • Out of the Bottle: Wish plus magic.
  • Dude/Dudette with a Problem: Ordinary guy/extraordinary circumstances
  • Rites of Passage
  • Buddy Love
  • Whydoneit? Villain plus why?
  • The Fool Triumphant: Outsider triumphs by luck.
  • Institutionalized: Band together for common cause.
  • Superhero: Extraordinary guy/ordinary circumstances

She also presented her twist on Blake Snyder’s “Beats” for screenwriters (as detailed in Blake Snyder’s book, Save the Cat), which she has tweaked for romance writers and teaches her method at various retreats and conferences.

So if you’re a writer who wants to improve your writing craft and networking in a big way, I encourage you to check out your local RWA chapters for writing workshops and retreats. You’ll not only deepen your relationship with fellow authors, but, who knows, maybe you’ll bring home a new critique partner or a friend for life.

From Right: Cyndi Faria, Virna DePaul, Rochelle French, Susan Hatler, Poppy Reiffin

Check out some of this year’s writing retreat attendants’ talents, books, and websites below:

Published Authors:

Pre-Published Authors:

  • Poppy Reiffin—Web Developer and E-book Designer, Contemporary Romance
  • Vanessa Kier—Urban Fantasy and Romantic Thriller
  • Maris Bennett—Columnist for Contra Costa Times
  • Linda Livingston—Women’s Fiction with Romantic Elements
  • Kristina Mathews
  • Sam Bradley—Women’s Fiction with Romantic Elements
  • Laura McCann—Contemporary Romance

Describing Emotion

May1

Don’t let your emotional descriptions be cliche.

As writers, we can bring freshness to our scenes by using our internal responses to events to describe our character’s (MC’s) body’s reactions to emotional stimuli? According to Humintell, there are approximately six primary emotions: anger, contempt, fear, disgust, happiness, sadness, and surprise. Each of these emotions evokes a unique combination of physiological (body) responses, especially facial features as shown and detailed in Humintell’s article.

As a reader, I’ve read descriptions of how a MC reacts to loss that include the tightening throat and stinging eyes… The challenge is to make the description less cliché.

To do this, give your writing a twist, and pull information from your own experiences.

Below I’ve captured two events from my life. The first sparks sadness and the second surprise. So if I need to write a sad or surprised scene, I focus on my body’s physiological reactions to those events.

Sadness Example:

My uncle sat in his blue corduroy recliner. His eyes had pinched down so only a hint of blue wept through his lids. His breath, though labored from pain, seemed strong. How wrong, I thought, that his life approached the end. I held his thin-skinned hand and allowed myself to feel the strength and warmth that fought to exist. That warmth embodied the friendship and love he had shown toward me. My jaw line ached in a way a lime will pull pain from your mouth without a taste, but only sight. My pursed lips quivered into a forced smile he’d expect from me. But my eyes… My eyes brimmed with unshed tears I’d only allow to fall when I left his room.

Note: My reaction to my uncle’s pending death was due to his expectation of me to remain stoic. He wouldn’t have wanted to know that he’d caused me, or anyone else, pain. He brought joy to the world and not the other. And that’s exactly what I gave him: a joyful face though my heart was breaking.

This example is not cliché. I doubt anyone has written the rawness of loss of a loved one in this way, but the physiological experience is similar in all of us. That’s what we need to capture internally when we write our MC’s internal dialogue, even though your MC’s external reaction may be completely the out-of-place, laughing perhaps. That coping mechanism is formed early on by our parents and culture as an example is detailed below.

Surprise Example:

My father came home from work around five o’clock every day. On one uneventful after-school day, he walked through the door and said, “Cyndi, I thought I told you to clean out the truck…”

I never argued with my father or questioned him in any way. Upsetting our Italian family balance was my sibling’s forte. Instead, I jumped to my feet and went outside to clean the truck, grumbling under my fifth grade breath, why I had to do the dirty work on such a balmy day. I peeked through the open window and assessed the task.

On the front seat of our green Chevy sat the most beautiful tri-colored Collie puppy I’d ever seen. The white fur collar circled his neck and his deep brown eyes gazed up at me as if I were an angel.

My eyes widened and my fingers gripped the chrome door handle, but I didn’t move my hand or arms or feet. I couldn’t. What if I dropped him with my trembling hands? All I could do was stare down at the quiet fur ball and inhale his puppy essence until it calmed my racing heart.

Note:  I didn’t jump up and down or scream or run in circles. I didn’t jerk the puppy out of the car and squeeze him like children will do. I didn’t because my family culture had taught me to be reserved and emotionally silent, even though fireworks of joy and surprise and fear were exploding inside my body.

And that’s the challenge as a writer. You must understand your MC’s backstory in a way that you capture the unique response to each situation. A MC’s external reaction may be different from your reaction to the same stimulus, but internally the body’s reaction is the same. Understanding the Enneagram Institutes (personality traits) can help understand specific personality traits. See my previous blogs too.

I hope this method inspires you to detail emotions in a way that is less cliché.

How do you evoke emotion in your characters? Do you pull from your experiences or not? How do you stay true to character? I would love to hear from you.

Happy Writing,

Cynid Faria