Let’s look at plot-points in our fiction and our lives.

A book may begin with an idea, but to make it grow and sing for the reader it needs characters they can empathise with, or even hate. Either way it’s necessary for our characters to evoke emotion in the reader. So how do we wring that emotion from our characters lives?

 Plot-or-turning points are what drive our stories forward. Yet, they don’t always begin with paragraph one, chapter one, about a character who has had a perfect life.

The first turning point for our character is birth and it’s all the plot-points from then, until your story actually begins that shapes our character and will help you draw on the emotions of the readers. As I thought about this blog, it occurred to me that the best exercise for writers and readers alike is to look back on our own lives and write out all the plot-points that brought us to this moment – this place.

If you decide to do this think back to your childhood and the vision you had of how your life would unroll and what happened to change that vision. I’ll start first.

When I was eleven and been told I had passed my eleven-plus – big surprise to me and I blame the composition I wrote, I can still remember most of it. The story began with dialogue and finished with the irony, which I’m told resides in most of my books. After that good news I believed I would be going to a commercial college – my mother even bought me the appropriate blazer. Brought up in a mining village I had visions of a secretary taking dictation from a handsome boss – we’ve all read that book. Turning point, my exam results were too good for a commercial college I had to go to a Senior High School, one that led to university, which you’d think ought to be a good thing, but you try wearing a blazer that was different from all the others. But then, I’m a Scorpio and my dreams had been dashed so for a while I messed around, refusing to bend to someone else’s dream. I was confused by algebra and intrigued by history and did just enough to get by in everything else until I evolved a new plan, one which didn’t include university. Without a qualification to my name, I left school at 15 and then began work with a fashion house, eventually becoming a window dresser – see I was always creative.

I learned a lot working at Graftons – how to put on make-up, how to dress in the latest fashion, and the best time to ask the manger if he would reduce the clothes you had your eye on. I worked with lots of girlfriends and we all went out dancing together – the Grafton girls. BG Next turning point, I met my husband at St Margaret’s Ballroom. We were both 18. He was in the New Zealand Navy and lets put it this way, I was 5’9” and seldom found anyone taller to dance with and he was a handsome 6’2”.  Love at first sight, bet on it. After three months my mother told me to give him up, as he would only go back to New Zealand and leave me. I remember saying, ‘If he was going to New Zealand, I was going with him.’ I was a really confident 18 year old and before I was 21, I’d been married almost a year and on my way to NZ. Now my vision was of tropical sunshine and palm trees instead of grey skies and equally grey mining villages.

NZ lived up to my dreams but the 2.4 children that young love expects to produce didn’t happen and after 5 pregnancies and only one live birth we adopted. Then while I stayed at home and looked after the children my husband spent months at sea. But the next turning point wasn’t terribly exciting, or at that time anything I expected to be life changing. Because one of my sons was having difficulty with School Certificate English, I decided to go to night school and take that subject so I could help him. I earned an A pass and my teacher said I should take creative writing next year. Though much more happened in my life after that, it was her belief in me that gave me the idea – the vision – that I could be a writer. And I am.

As you see, sometimes a big event can change your life, change that vision of the future in your head, and at other times it’s something small. So look at your own lives, seek out that moment when you had to change your vision of the future. I didn’t go into the really emotional points in my life, some things are too deep, too private to share with strangers, but that doesn’t apply to our characters. Dig into their back-stories, the events, which shaped them and wring out their emotions, their joys their fears.

Everyone has a story, even you. You may not want to share it but if you are a writer, or potential writer, studying your own plot-points may help you write one about characters that is worth sharing with readers.

By the way, those history lessons didn’t go amiss because I still love reading history books and now that is where my characters live.

 

 

WHY VALENTINE’S DAY

A day for romantics

The fourteenth of February, a day that is all about romance and love- a time of year that people can buy a card covered in hearts and flowers for the person they love without hiding it from public view.

In some places love is always in the air. There is a bridge in Paris, the Pont de l’Archevech covered in love-locks. Couples can engrave a padlock with their initials and fasten it on to the bridge before turning the key in the lock together then tossing the key to the padlock and there love into the Seine, sealing their love forever. And yet another bridge in Rome covered in these love-locks. This one was inspired by a book entitled ‘I Want You.’ Then in Serbia there is another renowned bridge dedicated to love, and a few more in places like Dublin and Canada, all devoted to the pursuit of love – the happy ever after romance writers put on paper for there readers. Yet still, they haven’t named a day after these river crossings that I feel are more convenient than symbolic.

Bridge Day. Hmmm, it doesn’t have the same ring.

Throughout the world men have declared their love by buying heart-shaped islands and building wonderful buildings such as the Taj Mahal in India, and the Petit Trianon at Versailles Louis XV built for Madame le Pompadour to show their love.  Yet there has never been a day named after these grandiose tokens of the heart’s passion.

Palace Day…no I don’t think so.

That brings us back to St Valentine’s Day. Or should I say the saint previously known as St, Valentine. Some churches still recognise his day as a festival and to be honest over the centuries many areas have laid claim to the real saint, so I’m only going to give you my favourite.

So what exactly did Valentine do to earn beatification in the first place?

It was actually due to the efforts of a priest named Valentine that the day of February 14th got its name. The story goes that during the reign of Emperor Claudius II Rome was involved in several bloody and unpopular campaigns. Claudius found it tough to get soldiers and felt the reason was men did not join army because they did not wish to leave their wives and families. As a result Claudius cancelled all marriages and betrothals to put a stop to this. A Roman priest, and romantic at heart, St Valentine decided to defy Claudius’s order and along with Saint Marius, St Valentine secretly married couples. When his defiance was discovered, Valentine was brutally beaten and put to death on February 14, about 270 AD. After his death Valentine was named a Saint.

I like this version because it’s at the heart of the romances we write. A hero and heroine willing to dare anything, to resist taking the easy way out, ready to challenge anyone’s right to remove their right to a loving future together. And the story of a priest willing to risk death to make sure they achieve that goal – that happy ever after we all dream of achieving.

Happy Valentine’s Day, don’t forget to tell someone I love you.

Frances

The Chieftain’s Curse

No. 1. Itunes best seller – historical romance

Here’s what a reviewer says…

5.0 out of 5 stars

Atmospheric, February 8, 2013

By Jenny Schwartz (Australia) –

The Chieftain’s Curse (Kindle Edition)

Such a vivid setting. The Chieftain’s Curse was intensely emotional with a tangled plot nicely explored and all loose ends dealt with – it made for a great read. Side characters were developed more than in many romances and that added to the richness of the story.

If you enjoy a sexy historical romance, this is for you!

 

Welcome my first blog on my new website.

When I knew I had to write this, I began mulling over ideas and almost immediately I decided to write about.

 

 WHERE DO IDEAS COME FROM? 

It’s a question that is often put to writers and every one of us will probably come up with a different answer, but I’ve put my thinking cap on and this has been my experience. When I wrote my first published romantic suspense, I was still obeying the write-what-you-know rule. Living in a winegrowing area with a brother-in-law who was a viticulturist made my decision easy. Each day I’d drive by the vineyards going to and from work. For the local population, the seasons are measured by the colour of the vines. One winter’s day we drove past bare vines, stark against the horizon as if they would never be green again. I had this sudden thought that this is ‘The Dead Season’ an appropriate title for what I came to think of as my serial killer romance. The publisher had other ideas and the book reached the shelves with a pretty cover that read, THE MAN FOR MAGGI., Although it was titled ‘The Dead Season’ when it won the Clendon Award and as it was being judged, it caught the eye of the senior editor at Silhouette Intimate Moments.

The second book was a no brainer as it flowed naturally from the first. I had two characters who were made for each other, I just needed to prove that to them. Jo Jellic played a secondary role in book one, almost the other woman but not quite. She loved the hero, but to him she was a friend, the DC to his Detective Sergeant. The end of book one left her in a very bad light. Of course I needed to redeem her and in her backstory I discovered she had four brothers. I just love when that happens. Rowan McQuaid. Now he has to be my favourite hero. I could slip into his persona without thinking, which is probably why he appeared in almost all my ‘Intimate Moments’. A wounded hero, Rowan was the one who paid for Jo’s moment of madness. In my next book he becomes the lover who paves Jo’s path to redemption. Add all that to a true-life incident that happened a few years earlier and I had the perfect idea for LOVE UNDER FIRE.

Talking about those brothers…well since I was writing romantic suspense at least a few of them had to be engaged in protecting the world. HEARTBREAK HERO began in Sydney then San Francisco – I love that city – where the heroine lived, and then moved back to New Zealand. Hey, these are international intelligence agents. But the heart of the story that drove the plot, I found in a tiny book on the history of New Zealand greenstone. A greenstone legend that, pointed me in the direction my plot needed to take, an awesome trip fraught with danger. One of the other tropes of romance writing is keep-the-hero-and-heroine-together as much as possible. That’s why I sent Kel Jellic and Ngaire Two Feathers McKay on a bus tour of New Zealand.

The year before I won the Clendon Award, I came third with another book that never saw the light of day, and the best thing about computers, nothing you write need be wasted. The one thing that really stood out for the judges that first time was the hero’s family. So in ‘SHADOWS OF THE PAST’ I gave that family to the heroine. Franc Jellic was a businessman, one with a lot to prove to both himself and his family. Yet the protective instincts honed by rest of the Jellic family hadn’t bypassed him. And when he discovers the woman he’s falling for is being stalked, these instincts immediately come to the fore.

It was the fiftieth anniversary of Edmond Hilary conquering Everest and there was a ton of research around for the taking. Surprisingly, when I wrote ‘Heartbreak Hero’ I gave Kel a twin, Kurt Jellic who just happened to be a guide and mountain climber based on Everest. The heroine, Chelsea, wanted Kurt to guide her to the spot where her sister and brother-in-law had been killed – murdered she believed – the season before. Unlike my other books in STRANDED WITH A STRANGER the heroine works for an international intelligence agency in Paris. I wrote this book with a map of Everest on my knee, so it was very flattering to be asked when I’d visited the mountain.

The fact that Mac, the agent who flew Chelsea back to Paris from Nepal turned out to be a half-brother of the Jellic siblings, by now shouldn’t come as any surprise – after all he was such a hunk. That’s the way my mind works when I’m writing suspense. HONEYMOON WITH A STRANGER is filled with intrigue, both past and present. Yet I can say that all these books originated from the same idea and the linking facts I discovered from their backstories. And though I did start out writing what I knew I ended up using facts I could find through research. Small ideas that grow, like the plot in Heartbreak Hero and all that enticing information hiding in a tiny little book.

chieftian-largeNow I couldn’t finish this blog without writing about how I discovered the idea for THE CHIEFTAIN’S CURSE – my latest book released by Harlequin Escape Publishing. You might find this hard to believe, but the idea came to me in dream. And I admit this isn’t the first time this has happened to me. I went to bed one night and wakened in the morning with a complete short story, beginning, middle and end waiting to be written and it won the competition. Even so, Chieftain was different. I was lying in bed one Sunday morning – half asleep – waiting for my husband to get out the shower and wondering what to write next. Wondering if it was time to write my first Scottish book. All at once, as if he was in the same room, I saw and heard this tall, long-haired man shouting at the top of his lungs. Broad shouldered and completely naked, he shimmered with energy in a room lined with grey stone walls. Arms held high he shook his blood-stained fists and roared like a bull, ‘Will this bluidy curse never end…’ Oh yes he was Scottish, I recognised the accent.

Of course, my first task was to discover the identity of this tall handsome Scotsman, who had cursed him and why. These three questions took me on one of the more interesting journeys in my writing career. And I discovered that it doesn’t matter where an idea comes from, it’s what you do with it.

Frances Housden.

Copyright © Frances Housden