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Coffee & Conversation: What are some of the hidden difficulties of being a writer?

22 Monday Mar 2021

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What are some of the hidden difficulties of being a writer?

Last week I chatted about a couple of the more obvious, oft-talked about difficulties that writers have in the industry. This week I want to talk about some of the more hidden, possibly insidious difficulties that writers face.

1) Reader Retention

Reader here can reference anyone from general audience to editors and publishers to even agents.

Most people write on the side rather than as a full-time gig because of spotty payment, lack of health insurance, and inability to pay bills on that level of income. This means that writing can often take a secondary or even backseat to other priorities, which can lead to a less consistent output than in other industries. Couple this with the difficulty in actually selling stories, first to agents or editors, and then to readers, there can be some lengths of time between publications. (Both of which I talked about last week.)

One of indirect results is that readers will forget you. They’ll forget your name, forget the stories, the way those stories made them feel, etc. Editors/publishing houses will then take that into consideration when deciding to buy the next book, because why buy a book that might not make as much as someone else’s?

Example: one author I know of had started a well-selling series, but then had some life difficulties. 11 years later, he tried to sell the next book in the series to the same publisher, who turned him down because of that giant gap in time would lead to less readers.

Now, most authors don’t wait 11 years to write the next book, thus that is a more extreme example. However, in publishing, despite how slow they seem, there’s a high expectation of constant and quick publications. If you’re not publishing at least 1 book a year in traditional publishing, you’re too slow. If you’re not publishing every 3-4 months as an indie author, you’re too slow. Continue reading →

Coffee & Conversation: What are some of the obvious difficulties of being a writer?

15 Monday Mar 2021

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What are some of the obvious difficulties of being a writer?

I wanted to contrast the obvious to the hidden difficulties so I decided to write them up as two questions.

For the obvious difficulties, these are the ones that you probably suspect even if you don’t have any personal experience on your own. These are the staples of the industry, the things people talk about openly and easily and constantly.

1) Difficulty Getting Published

The industry is hard. You spend all your time upfront on a project and then throw that project into the void and cross your fingers. There’s no guarantee that when you sit down to craft a story that those words will ever sell. No guarantee of a paycheck at the end of the day. You simply invest, invest, invest more and more hours and keep crossing your fingers and hoping.

Some people get to the point where they have a contract in place, a contract that pays them an advance. You would think that the money handed over in an advance resembles a paycheck, but you’d be wrong. Firstly, publishers can and do go after authors if the author never earns out their advance, meaning that if you’ve spent that money, you could very well find yourself in a serious problem. Secondly, unless you command some serious selling power, the advance you get will be minuscule (five thousand is high for a first-time novelist with a reputable larger press/publishing house; small press is much less.)

Those advances only cover that contract and however many books were promised. Each subsequent book(s) must be negotiated and most authors have a horrible time getting their second or third or fourth books published. Many more have trouble continuing on even if they have books in their back pocket and good sales numbers to show.

This is basically a job where you’re interviewing over and over again for the same job, negotiating your salary for every single project, many of which overlap in your schedule, all while writing some new project with no real sense whether you’ll be told that it’s no good and won’t sell, thanks but no thanks.

2) Dealing With Rejection

Everyone deals with rejection since rejection is a part of life. A huge part of life. How we deal with rejection is what defines our ability to survive or thrive in our environments. Continue reading →

Coffee & Conversation: Is there anything you absolutely refuse to write?

01 Monday Mar 2021

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Is there anything you absolutely refuse to write?

One of the tropes well-known within the romance industry is called May/December relationships. This is merely a cutesy way of referring to a pairing or couple where one-half is older/more experienced (in the December of their life) and the other is still in the springtime of their youth.

In general these relationships can be depicted in adorable or serious ways that show  respect for real-life people in similar relationships.

However! There are extreme cases where this May/December type of relationship is exaggerated into more of a January/December situation, where it feels abusive or disturbing in how they depict the manipulation or grooming of young people (particularly girls, though boys are not spared.)

These are cases when you have a teen (barely adult or almost adult) with a person (usually male) who is extremely older. Think of age ranges such as: 16/100 or 16/500 or 16/timeless. [A few examples of these types of relationship can be found in books such as Twilight, An Enchantment of Ravens, or Spin the Dawn.]

These depictions are a byproduct of the misogynistic tendencies of older men to want young women (or literal girls) in place of someone their own age. Because gay romance started within the romance industry, which was heavily dominated by women writers at the time (still is, but there are certain trends that look encouraging to see more diversity), this same concerning extremist age gap has strayed into gay romance slightly. Continue reading →

Coffee & Conversation: What’s the quickest way to make you crazy in a romance?

22 Monday Feb 2021

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What’s the quickest way to make you crazy in a romance story?

Most of my stories, particularly the novels, have multiple plot threads: a romantic one intertwined with an adventure or mystery. Some lean more on the romance arc; some lean more on the adventure arc; some are pretty even-handed. One of the great advantages to having a second arc intertwined with the romance is that I can use outside forces that might push the characters together/apart and craft interpersonal conflict via the adventure or mystery aspect of the story. This is something that romance writers who have sole romance plot arcs aren’t able to do.

When you can’t use outer journeys or adventurous conflicts to interact with the interpersonal conflict of the romance, there’s a serious limit when crafting the necessary interpersonal conflicts. This can mean that a lot of the interpersonal romantic plots can feel over-used and rehashed and trope-reliant rather than fresh and fun. This limiting number of conflicts can also mean that some authors reach for whatever is easiest, no matter that it might be completely nonsensical and that something far and away better might exist if they’d bothered to push themselves.

One of my least favorite romance “conflicts” is the ridiculous reliance on a silly misunderstanding. You know the type—the kind that could be cleared up with ONE SINGLE ADULT CONVERSION.

That, to me, isn’t conflict. Or, if you call it conflict, it’s the weakest, frailest, lamest conflict ever to exist in the entire adult fiction world. A misunderstanding should not be the backbone of an entire romantic plot. A misunderstanding should never be the catalyst for a story.

Misunderstandings should be used sparingly and only for tiny threads within the entire plot. If they are even used at all. The best use of misunderstandings (imo) is comedic beats, to elicit a momentary smile from the reader.

The second best use is to indicate something larger at play. A good example of this is the lemon scene in the movie The Breakup, where the male lead only gets a couple lemons when the female lead wanted a lot more—this is a great example of using a misunderstanding to represent a much larger, difficult problem that exists rather than having the lemons themselves be the problem. (Also, using a sour fruit in the scene was an epic choice for symbolism.)

But yes, the quickest way (or at least one of them at any rate) to make me crazy is to have the entire plot of a romance be completely centered on a fake conflict that could be easily solved within a single chapter. Making the rest of the novel utterly eye-rolly.

~Emmi

Coffee & Conversation: What is the most romantic way to propose?

15 Monday Feb 2021

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What is the most romantic way to propose?

Proposals don’t happen often in my books, or if they do, they aren’t exactly typical proposals in the same way we think of them in the Western world. Though they would be some variation of asking to spend the rest of one’s life with a person.

Because most of my stories take place in secondary world settings where culture might be slightly different, the definition of romantic might change as well. Now, most of the time, I lean toward familiarity because there’s such thing as a strangeness budget, which just means there’s only so much strange a reader can take before they frustrated. If I’m going to demanding a reader learn about a new world with new rules and different fantastical, magical elements, I might not push too hard on cultural differences. But I’d try to do small changes.

this means that what might be the most romantic way to prose in one story might not equate to the most romantic way in another.

Another element that needs to be addressed is the personality differences in characters. This is more basic and familiar because not everyone likes the same things even in our modern world; so while one person might think a proposal in Paris at the Eiffel Tower or in a gondola in Venice is the most romantic, another might think the summit of a hike or during sunset at the beach might be the most romantic.

This means for these types of questions, if indeed, a story deals with this moment, I have to consider the character and the culture and the world. Not to mention the circumstances (i.e., characters are about to die and thus one proposes in case they don’t make it or to give incentive to survive).

My favorite thing to do is to make the setting and situation meaningful to the characters. Whatever might evoke the most emotion in them, the most connection—and in doing so, hopefully the reader.

~Emmi

Coffee & Conversation: What do you daydream about?

08 Monday Feb 2021

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What do you daydream about?

A lot of writers are daydreamers, in the sense that sometimes they will stare off into space, crafting sequences and scenes with characters of their own making. It took a long time for me to realize that not everyone did this, that it was specific to certain types of creators and readers.

I’d often get the “Are you okay?” or “Is something wrong?” types of questions. Sometimes the person would add (after I said “Yes, I’m good” in some fashion) “No, something is obviously wrong because you’re not talking to anyone and you’ve got an annoyed look on your face.” When the annoyed look came from having my personal movie sequence playing in my mind interrupted by silly questions. I’m sure many of you can relate :)

As for the daydreams themselves, they are often ways to figure out plot points or character arcs, the characters pushed through different scenarios until one suddenly pops into place perfectly. Daydreams are also ways to pinpoint good emotional beats, so when the emotions resonate with the daydreamer powerfully enough, they know they’ve found a good one.

This tends to mean that the heightened moments in a story get daydreamed the most clearly. Maybe the final showdown in an action sequence. Or the moment of deepest despair. Or the settling of a romantic conflict. It’s like having the crux points of a story without the transitional information.

Which means that the transitions and the lead-up scenes are usually more difficult to write because they haven’t been as clearly daydreamed. The ultimate goal is to craft stories where everything feels important, even if a particular scene is a relaxing from an emotional high or a lessening of tension in order to slow the pace or give the reader a chance to catch their breath.

But ultimately, it’s the pivotal moments that we replay in our minds most often, whether as writers or readers or dreamers.

~Emmi

Coffee & Conversation: Where do you like to set first dates?

01 Monday Feb 2021

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Where do you like to set first dates?

First dates in novels don’t generally operate under the same rules as in real life.

There should still be the nerves, the anticipation, the tension during, but because in normal, everyday life two strangers aren’t usually that invested in one another immediately, there’s often precious little in the way of emotional stakes. This means that a novel has to work extra hard because there already needs to be stakes at hand (emotional or otherwise). In real life, a bad first date merely means there isn’t a second one. [Except in more extreme cases of stalking, rape, etc., but let’s say for sake of explanation that people are by and large not shitty.] In a novel, a bad first date needs to have more going on.

Which means that first dates in romance novels don’t tend to be right at the very beginning of the book. Some will have the characters slowly falling in love first through either random or arranged encounters. Some will have the first date as the first scene that operates to show a completely different set of stakes rather than romantic or emotional ones (i.e, guy keeps getting calls from boss and could lose his job if he doesn’t answer leading to a horrible first date—the reader is invested in the guy becoming a better person/getting a better, less-awful job, but not yet fully invested in the character’s romance). Some will have a secondary stake that is associated with the date (i.e., the characters are vying for the same goal, are roommates, or discover that they are connected in some fashion that may put them at odds, etc.) Continue reading →

Coffee & Conversation: Do you believe characters should kiss on the first date?

25 Monday Jan 2021

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For starters, most of my characters don’t generally have anything resembling a “first date.” I tend to put them in harrowing or stressful situations first that force them into working together. (Sorry, my beloved characters, for the many layers of hell I put you through!) (Not sorry!)

Which means a part of this question is a little more abstract for many of my stories. Maybe it should be “Do my characters kiss within the first day?” or “Do my characters kiss the first chance they get alone?” or “Do my characters think more about kissing than they do about whatever dangerous situation I’ve put them in?”

I actually had an editor once tell me that I needed more sexy thoughts in one of my novels. Like, there’s a WHOLE FEW CHAPTERS HE DOESN’T THINK ABOUT SEX! Must change that… In my defense, the poor guy was beat-up and suffering from a poisoning, so I didn’t think it was fair to ask me to put more sexy in that part of the story. [I did my best though.]

In general though, during my romances, I will often look at the story and find where and when makes sense for my characters to get together, which usually puts them needing to do all their kissing before and after the climactic scenes. Since my longer stories tend to have a strong adventure, action or mystery arc, that means that the resolution to those arcs happen first using a fast-paced climax.

It’s about opening and closing arcs in the proper order. For example:

{open romance arc [open mystery arc (open/close action arc) close mystery arc] close romance arc}

Or: Continue reading →

Coffee & Conversation: Have you ever written fan fiction?

18 Monday Jan 2021

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When I was a child I absolutely loved Brian Jacques’ Redwall books. For those of you who don’t know what those are, his books detail action adventure stories featuring small European animals, many of whom live in a large abbey called, you guessed it, Redwall.

So there are animals such as mice and badgers and squirrels on the good side and others such as rats and weasels and snakes on the bad side. (Some people talk about how awful it is that there isn’t more distinction, that how dare Jacques divide creatures into “good” and “bad” [even though there are many exceptions to this rule] but I find that obnoxious because it’s a CHILDREN’S SERIES—you want adult-level discussion and nuance, then READ ADULT FICTION. [I would also like to point out that many adult books, including ones touted as being transcendent in some fashion, are incredibly simplistic in their definitions of good and evil as well.]

With that tangent out of the way, my very first forays into writing were fan fiction based on Jacque’s books. Particularly poetry. I would craft snippets about the bits of story that didn’t get full accounting in the books. I would wonder about what happened after the adventure or war ended. I would draw pictures of my favorite characters and sob over the ones who died.

One particular couple in the stories I fell in love with was a mouse pair who, after their story, go out adventuring and exploring rather than settle into a quiet life at Redwall. I LOVED this. I wanted to be like them, specifically the female mouse who used a rope like a whip and took down creatures twice her size.

But we never got a story about them on their adventures after they left, so their future was left ambiguous. So I wrote a poem about them :) Talked about how they were out there, fighting and having adventures together. And, of course, had fallen even more completely in love with one another, because even when I was in elementary school that was part of my happily ever after.

I feel as if we all have those things that we grasped at during our youngest years, even if we didn’t know or understand them then. Things that come back and show us who we were meant to be, what we were meant to do. For me, those old, yellowing pages of mice and their poems are one of mine.

~Emmi

Coffee & Conversation: How important are looks to your characters’ relationships?

11 Monday Jan 2021

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This is a loaded question because of course there’s going to be some level of lust that occurs between two sexual beings based on their physical appearance.

[Were the story using asexual beings a la Good Omens this would be different, but still incredibly valid as a romance.]

That being said, looks don’t define attraction; they are merely one sliver of it, and an ethereal sliver at that since looks change as we age.

[Again, this would be different were I to write about a society where aging doesn’t occur the same way.]

I think it’s a cop-out to say “it depends” though that is the most real answer to the question. Some characters are going to be more hyper-focused on physical features—with each being attracted to different types of people—and others are going to lean more toward the non-physical, the actions a person takes, the personality under the skin, etc.

It’s more fun to have a range of different types of characters when writing novels, otherwise they begin to feel like the same story told over and over again. This extends to how the romance is sparked—whether it’s a first-sight lust that drives the characters originally, or whether the characters need time to come to appreciate one another.

There are two important things I think need to be touched on in a romance story:

One: There needs to be at least some level of physical attraction, unless the character is asexual. [However, I will likely keep asexual characters to my short stories as of now rather than my novels.]

Two: The relationship needs to grow beyond physical attraction so that the characters have a reason to remain together once the story is over.

Those are the not-very-hard-and-fast guidelines I think about when crafting a new romantic relationship. So, on a scale of 1-10 of how important a character’s looks are, it starts slightly higher at the beginning of most romances and scales down as the characters learn to love each other, faults and all.

~Emmi