“It's about her nanny, Rod.” Julia shook a paper clip from the holder and jabbed it through the letter she'd just finished printing. Then she held it up, looked at it, and nodded. “Yes. Now, as I was saying, Rod.” She pushed her chair back from the desk.
As this made-up example shows, adding more than one form of attribution per paragraph or speech simply gets in the way and slows the story to a crawl.
Julia Quinn is particularly gifted at creating effective dialogue, including this example from her Regency-period historical When He Was Wicked. In a society in which male — female friendships were limited and certain topics simply weren't discussed, the heroine confides her desires to the hero, a long-term friend but not a lover, with predictable results:
“I beg your pardon?”
She'd shocked him. He was sputtering, even. She hadn't made her announcement to elicit this sort of reaction, but now that he was sitting there, his mouth hanging open and slack, she couldn't help but take a small amount of pleasure from the moment.
“I want a baby,” she said with a shrug. “Is there something surprising in that?”
His lips moved before he actually made sound. “Well … no … but …”
“I'm twenty-six.”
“I know how old you are,” he said, a little testily.
“I'll be twenty-seven at the end of April. I don't think it's so odd that I might want a child.”
His eyes still held a vaguely glazed sort of quality. “No, of course not, but —”
“And I shouldn't have to explain myself to you!”
“I wasn't asking you to,” he said, staring at her as if she'd grown two heads.
“I'm sorry,” she mumbled. “I overreacted.”
He said nothing, which irritated her. At the very least, he could have contradicted her. It would have been a lie, but it was still the kind and courteous thing to do.
Finally, because the silence was simply unbearable, she muttered, “A lot of women want children.”
“Right,” he said, coughing on the word. “Of course. But … don't you think you might want a husband first?”
In this example, Quinn uses attribution (“he said,” “she mumbled”), actions (“His lips moved”), silence (“He said nothing”), adverbs (“he said, a little testily”), and paragraphing (alternating paragraphs between the two characters) to make clear who's talking at any given time. If there is any possibility for doubt about who's speaking, as in the next-to-last paragraph, which falls after a long silence, Quinn tells us who's talking.
STYLES OF DIALOGUE
Though Julia Quinn's When He Was Wicked is a historical novel, the subject and tone of the dialogue has a contemporary feeling. Move the characters to a presentday setting and they could have essentially the same conversation — and that's true of much dialogue across the range of romance novels. People talk about much the same things, whether it's the thirteenth century or the twenty-first.
In other ways, however, dialogue in various kinds of romance differs. Historical romances are more likely to use the dialect and slang of the time, and in those cases it's very important to be sure the readers can pick up the meaning of the words from the context, as in this example from Elizabeth Boyle's historical single title, set in 1801, This Rake of Mine:
“Well,” Lady Oxley huffed, “I suppose there are worst things than having some cit's daughter marry into your family, but for the life of me, I can't think of it. Our bloodlines will be tainted by this forever.”
The Duchess of Cheverton, seated next to Lady Oxley, couldn't agree more. “I fear for your standing, my dear, I do, indeed.”
“If there is some consolation, she did go to Miss Emery's,” Lady Oxley conceded, though grudgingly.
“Miss Emery's, you say?” The duchess twisted in her seat and looked at the girl in question, eyeing her from top to bottom, as if she were gauging the quality of a length of silk. “A mite young, wouldn't you say? I daresay she's fresh and innocent.”
“Oh, she looks innocent enough,” Lady Oxley declared, ignoring the hot glances from the people in the other boxes, who were actually watching the opera. “Gads, the trollops these merchants pass off as daughters is just appalling. My greatest fear is that Oxley will marry the chit and discover she's been ruined. Oh, the shame of it.”
No reader can mistake that conversation at the opera for one happening at a modern movie theater — even though the fear that a child will marry the wrong person is just as current a topic of conversation among parents today. The specific terms Boyle uses — cit, chit — may not be familiar to readers new to historical romance, but Boyle puts them in context to make the meaning clear. And using those unusual terms from the time helps to anchor the readers in the historical period of the story.
Dialogue in romance novels differs from author to author (one author will write light, witty, sparkling dialogue, while another will create slower-paced but more dramatic conversations) and among story types (romantic comedy requires a lighter, faster pace than romantic suspense). Many romance categories can include a number of different story types, so a single category won't necessarily have one identifiable style of dialogue.
IN REVIEW: Studying Romantic Dialogue
Take another look at the romance novels you've been studying, reading the dialogue. How do the characters talk to each other?
Do you always know which character is talking? How does the author tell you who's speaking?
If you have several different types of romances on hand, look for ways the dialogue differs between types. Do historical heroes and heroines talk to each other differently than contemporary heroes and heroines? Than chick-lit heroes and heroines?
How do the heroes and heroines talk to each other when they're arguing? Just talking? Making love?
INTROSPECTION
Introspection is just a fancy word for thinking. When your characters talk silently to themselves, contemplate taking action, reflect on past events or worry about future ones, or otherwise share what they're thinking with the readers, they are being introspective.
Introspection is useful in romance novels because it gives the readers direct access to a character's thoughts and allows you to bring in emotions that are otherwise difficult to express on the page. Like listening to the characters' private conversations, eavesdropping on their thoughts draws the readers further into the romance.
The main advantage of fiction over screenplay is that it allows you to use introspection. That's also one of the main disadvantages, because you may be tempted to allow far too much think-time for your characters.
Showing a heroine thinking about how angry she is at the hero — and vice versa — is no substitute for placing the characters in the same room and letting them argue. When writing introspection, be careful not to allow the character to give too much information to the readers, or to give that information too early in the story, thus ruining all the suspense. If the readers know all the character's history or innermost thoughts, there's little left to surprise the readers.
Direct and Indirect Thoughts
Characters' thoughts can be shared with the readers in two ways — directly and indirectly. A direct thought is the exact words the character is thinking, while an indirect thought sums up the idea without using the exact words.
Direct: This guy is a major pain in the butt, she thought.
Indirect: She thought the man was a nuisance.
A direct thought most often uses present-tense verbs and first person — just as dialogue does — because it actually is dialogue; the words just aren't spoken aloud. If the character is thinking about past events, the thought will be expressed in past tense; a direct thought will be in the person's exact words (even if those words are unspoken).
An indirect thought uses past-tense verbs and third person — just like narrative — because it actually is narrative — it's a summary of what the character is thinking.
How thoughts are handled in the published book is often determine
d by house style — the rules and guidelines governing how a particular publisher edits and typesets text. All the books printed by the same publisher will show thoughts in the same way. In many cases, direct thought — using the character's exact words — will be shown in the finished book in italics, which makes direct thought clear to the readers even if attribution (she thought) is omitted. So the above example would probably look like this:
This guy is a major pain in the butt.
Publishers vary, however; the examples in this book show several ways of handling thoughts. In your manuscript, you can use either italics or underlining to make a direct thought stand out from the surrounding text. Indirect thought isn't set off in any special way — no italics and no underlining — because it's just part of the narrative, reporting what's going on. Some publishers still prefer authors to underline direct thoughts in the manuscript because it's easier for typesetters to see the distinction.
Avoid using quotation marks when writing a character's thoughts, because thoughts set apart in this way are easily confused with spoken dialogue.
Is direct or indirect thought better? That depends. If the actual words going through the character's mind are brief and pithy, direct thought is probably the better choice. If you're covering an extensive meditation, it's probably better to summarize with indirect thought.
Most romance authors use both direct and indirect thought, though in first-person books, such as chick-lit, any thought the viewpoint character shares is by definition a direct thought — because, like the rest of her story, it's expressed in the POV character's exact words. Since there's so much direct thought in these books, chick-lit usually doesn't use italics to indicate it.
This example from Dianne Castell's short contemporary novel A Fabulous Wedding relays both direct and indirect thoughts:
God, let me out of this and I'll change. I swear it. No more pity parties over getting dumped by Danny for that Victoria's Secret model, no more comfort junk food, no more telling everyone how to live their lives and not really living her own, and if that meant leaving Whistlers Bend, she'd suck it up and do it and quit making excuses.
The section in italics is direct thought, the character's exact thoughts phrased in first person and present tense (like dialogue). The rest of the selection is indirect thought, a summary of the character's thoughts phrased in third person and past tense (like narrative), though it's phrased in language we can easily imagine the character using.
How Characters Think
Each character should think in his own style, with images appropriate to his experience, not to yours as the author. A figure skater will think in physical images, a nanny in childlike ones.
Male characters should think in masculine language and use images appropriate to their personalities. Keep in mind, however, that the hero's thoughts about the heroine should be about more than just his physical reactions to her. It's fine for him to notice her body, but if that's all he sees or thinks about, he's not a very appealing hero.
Characters should not think in full narrative paragraphs, reliving an entire sequence of events in a neat package and a logical order. People think in snatches; they don't start from the beginning of the problem and review it all in order each time it crosses their minds. Men in particular are more likely to think in fragments, and this trait can be handy in keeping the past details of a male character's story under wraps. Portraying a character jumping into the middle of a thought allows you to pass information to the readers in an intriguing way without giving away too many secrets.
In any case, just because the character knows something doesn't mean he'll be eager to share it with the readers. In this example from my sweet traditional romance The Daddy Trap, I wanted to share the feelings my hero had over meeting the heroine, his ex-wife, after a nine-year separation — without going into detail about the reasons they split up:
With the soft strains of a Mozart symphony filling the air, [Gibb] was just settling into his chair when he heard a car door bang down in the square. He glanced out and saw a small shadow crossing the sidewalk to look in the door at Potpourri.
The lights in the gift shop were still on, but it was obviously closed, for he saw Lindsay unlock the door to let the child in. Was it his imagination, or was the square really so quiet that he could hear the warm murmur of her voice? …
How little she had changed in nine years. She'd been pretty at nineteen, with her golden-blond hair and wide-set brown eyes. Now that the girlish roundness was gone from her face, letting the exquisite bone structure show to advantage, she was beautiful. But he had no doubt she could still be a fire-spitting hellcat when someone got in her way. … Maturity and responsibility had provided a veneer, but underneath the surface Lindsay Armentrout was the same unpredictably bubbling cauldron of hot lava that he'd fallen in love with so long ago — and that had burned him so badly.
But of course there was one very important difference in her life — the child she had craved as a little girl wants a doll. The child Gibb couldn't give her.
Her son had just turned eight, she'd said. Gibb's mental calendar told him that she had waited only three or four months after he'd left Elmwood before she'd taken up with her child's father.
Or maybe she hadn't waited at all.
Gibb's musings on his failed marriage are intentionally far from complete. Had he been considering a business problem instead, he'd have been a great deal more linear and thorough in his thinking. Even more important is the way his thoughts light on and then skitter away from the subject of Lindsay's son. Only a masochist would think in detail about such a painful subject.
When Not to Use Introspection
If it's necessary to do more than hint at a character's experiences or emotions, consider using dialogue instead of thoughts. It's livelier and more natural to have someone explain a situation to another person, especially if it's a complicated situation, than to think about it step-by-step. Keep the characters' thoughts to a minimum, and use introspection only when other ways of relaying the information don't work as well.
IN REVIEW: Studying Characters' Thoughts
Look through the romance novels you've been studying. How much of the story is told through the characters' thoughts?
How are the thoughts shared?
Find examples of direct and indirect thoughts. Is one style more common than the other?
How does what the character says and does compare to what the character thinks?
Can you find differences in how the various authors handle thoughts? Differences between different kinds of romance novels?
Writing a Romantic Dialogue
Write a dialogue, including body language, gestures, words, and the thoughts of the POV character, between a man and a woman as they:
Are on their way home from an office party where one of them was offended by the other's behavior.
Stroll through a park.
Talk about a friend who has fallen in love.
Discuss whether they should have a large wedding or a small one.
Reminisce about how they met.
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Building a Believable Plot
The plot of your romance novel is the sequence of events that keep the characters together until they've learned to love each other and until they've grown and changed enough to resolve their long-term problems — the character flaws or past experiences that have kept them from forming a permanent commitment.
A story's plot can't simply be a series of random events — the kind of thing we experience day after day. Real life sprawls and wanders; it doesn't have neat beginnings and endings; and the loose ends are almost never completely tied up. A story that does the same thing — that wanders from one event to the next — will quickly lose the readers' attention.
Simply falling in love isn't a plot, either. There isn't enough action to keep the readers involved if you simply show two people dating, going out for dinner or to the movies, and talking about their childhoods, pet
s, jobs, or dreams.
So the plot of your romance novel must be a meaningful and logical series of events, not just a bunch of things that happen to your characters. Those events must cause the hero and heroine to become more involved with each other. Each occurrence or decision or episode should lead to the next, creating a surprising yet believable pattern of events that carry the characters from beginning to end.
In a romance novel, the events of the plot are closely related to the developing romance. Most of the plot events will involve both the hero and heroine, drawing them closer together — forcing them to spend time together and learn about each other — rather than separating them.
BUILDING YOUR PLOT ONE PROBLEM AT A TIME
You can build a plot by using the principles of cause and effect. Things don't happen in isolation; every decision you make and everything you do has consequences. In real life, most of those consequences are minimal and easily overlooked, but they're there. And sometimes they're not minimal at all.
Your kid's soccer uniform is dirty and he needs it for practice tonight, so you stop on your way out the door to throw in a load of laundry, which makes you five minutes late to work. You aren't there yet when the phone rings, so your boss answers it instead and he finds out you've applied for another job, so when you come in he starts to yell at you for arranging a job interview on company time, so you yell back and quit. … One event leads to another, which leads to another. Every event in your plot should be both an effect of what came before and a cause of (or at least an influence on) what will come next. Thinking about cause and effect can help you create a plot that builds, rather than a series of unrelated events.
Using What if? to Enrich Your Problems
On Writing Romance Page 25