Romance Writing II MFA Lessons #4-8

Here's the final batch of MFA lessons from my Romance Writing II class!

The Antagonist and Secondary Characters

Welcome to Module Five! This week we will be discussing antagonists and secondary characters and how they relate to your thesis.

Let's take a look at one of the most well-known classic romance novels: Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. While the romance between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy is one of the most beloved in fiction, the secondary characters and the antagonist are also highlights.

Mr. Wickham is a very memorable antagonist because he starts out seeming nice and likeable as a contrast to the stuck-up Mr. Darcy. Wickham even makes it seem like Darcy has an unfair grudge against him. But at the end of the novel, everything we know is reversed. Elizabeth and the reader discover that Darcy is kind and considerate deep down, while Wickham is manipulative, greedy, unprincipled and dishonest.

Wickham is not only an antagonist, though. There are several other archetypes that apply to him. He fits the false friend archetype, seeming like someone Elizabeth can trust and rely on, but he actually just wants to poison her against Mr. Darcy and take advantage of her family. Wickham is also a foil to Mr. Darcy. Darcy is introverted, rude, and bad at expressing himself, but when it comes down to it, he has a good heart. Wickham is friendly and amiable on the outside, but on the inside he's a louse who only uses other people. While Darcy courts Elizabeth properly, Wickham nearly causes a scandal by spiriting Lydia away and does not at all care about the consequences for Lydia. 

The foil status of the two character highlights Darcy's virtues and Wickham's wickedness. Wickham causes the conflict in the climax, and Darcy is the one who resolves it, thus allowing Elizabeth to see that he's a good and reliable person. Wickham isn't just there to create problems and heighten the tension, he makes the characters reveal who they really are. That's what a good antagonist should do--they shouldn't just cause conflict, but also push forward the main characters' development. For this reason, it works really well when the antagonist is a foil to the main character or love interest.

But Wickham isn't the only memorable character in Pride and Prejudice! There's Jane, Elizabeth's sweet older sister who serves as the confidante for Elizabeth. Elizabeth shares her troubles with Jane and we also see Elizabeth's softer side in how she cares for her sister. There's also Lydia, who is a roadblock for Elizabeth. She's not an antagonist like Wickham, but the fact she's goes off with him causes trouble. She's pretty clearly the foil to Elizabeth, flighty and irresponsible in a way that highlights how sensible and responsible Elizabeth is. And of course, supporting characters can provide memorable comic relief, as the silliness of Elizabeth's mother and Mr. Collins prove.

Backstory, Foreshadowing and Flashback

 Welcome to Module Six! It's time to look at foreshadowing, backstory and flashback and how they can inform your characters and story.

Let's take a look at the contemporary romance Red, White & Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston. Alex's backstory majorly informs his character. He's the son of the first female President of the United States. Before his mother started her rise in politics, their family was poor. His father is also a Mexican immigrant. All of this contributes to him being very concerned with and protective of his family's political image, as they have to contend with racists, sexists, and people who are prejudiced against immigrants; all who want to see this family fail. This worry of ruining his political image will be the main obstacle he'll face during his romance. His backstory also includes a grudge against his (eventual) love interest, Prince Henry. The tabloids are constantly comparing him to Prince Henry, which he resents, and he sees Henry as the epitome of privilege compared to himself. Henry was also dismissive and cold to him during their first meeting when Alex was twelve.

Red White & Royal Blue contains a lot of foreshadowing that Henry and Alex's rivalry will turn to romance. In the first few pages, another character asks if Alex will ask Henry to dance, and while Alex says the thought makes him gag, the other character notes that Alex is blushing. Henry's favorite author is Jane Austen, and the reference hints that the two are going to follow the path of Elizabeth and Darcy in Pride and Prejudice. Like Elizabeth, Alex will see realize he misunderstood Henry and that his public facade is different from who he really is. Like Casey McQuiston does, you can foreshadow the attraction between two characters with small things like a blush, or symbols and references to other things.

Flashbacks are full scenes or sequences with dialogue and action that take place in the past, and are different from the a character summarizing or recounting what happened. In my my own book, In the Way of All Flesh, I needed to explain why my main character's relationship with her father was so bad. I mostly had my main character recount what happened to her when her father committed her to a mental health facility through summary. But there was one scene I let play out, which is when the main character reunited with her father after being released:

"I had to touch a bunch of people in [the mental health facility]. I'm used to it now! I can even touch you."

I held my arms out, and he approached me, hands shaking, hardly daring to believe.

I shoved him. Hard.

The reason I let this scene play out in flashback is because this was a huge turning point in the father-daughter relationship; the moment when things turned sour. So I wanted the reader to experience those emotions, see her father's hope, and feel the moment where that hope was dashed. I felt it was best for the reader to be in the moment. That's an example of one reason an author might do a flashback-- because they want to highlight some type of emotion.

Subplots and Complications

 Welcome to Module Seven! This week, we'll be discussing subplots and complications!

Subplots are especially important for romance stories. The developing romantic relationship should be the focus, but subplots are needed to make that romance happen. Subplots will often inform how the characters meet and the conflicts between them. The characters need to have more to them than just their feelings for each other, or else they won't feel like people. Subplots should interact with the main plot and push the romance forward. Let's look at Late Bloomer by Mazey Eddings. The story's focus is about the main characters, Pepper and Opal, being forced to cohabitate and slowly developing feelings for each other, but there are some distinct subplots that incite and push that romance forward.

One subplot is about Pepper's neglectful mother who abandons her and uses her, and how Pepper struggles with that abandonment. When Pepper's grandmother dies and the will isn't found, her mother inherits the flower farm Pepper lives on and sells it to Opal without even informing Pepper. It's the subplot about Pepper's mother that leads to the inciting incident of the story, where Pepper and Opal meet when Opal comes to live on the flower farm, not knowing somebody already lives there. Because of Pepper's mother, the two women have to negotiate a living situation together. As the book goes on, Pepper's abandonment issues often complicate the romance. For example, Pepper has a hard time believing Opal will actually stick with her and not abandon her, and she pushes Opal away a lot. Pepper also must struggle with whether to cut her mother off for good.

A second subplot is the recent death of Pepper's grandmother and Pepper struggling with her grief over this. This death of the grandmother is another thing that leads to the inciting incident of the story, and Pepper struggling with the loss of the grandmother causes many complications to the romance. The resolution where she finally comes to terms with the loss of her grandmother also incites the romantic climax.

As you can see, subplots and the main plot are often deeply connected and subplots can push the main plot forward, cause conflict, and develop the characters. Comparing a story to a machine, every moving piece is needed to make the main gear (the central plot) turn.

Voice, Style and Point of View 

 A strong voice is a great way to draw the reader in and express who the characters in. Let's look at an example from Once Ghosted, Twice Shy by Alyssa Cole, from the point of view of the main character, Likotsi. 

A train delay was fine. A train delay was delightful. Anything she encountered this weekend would be delightful because she was tired of the dejection that had nagged at her for months. Dejection was inefficient, and worse, it was pedestrian. Moping and wallowing had left a green tinge on the memories of her few perfect days in New York the previous spring, like the band of a fake gold ring. It was time to leave the shoes she had outgrown behind. It was time to create new memories.

As far as interminable train delays went, being stuck on the Manhattan Bridge on a Saturday morning was about as good as one could get.

Immediately, this character has a distinctive voice, and her personality clearly comes through from her narration. You can tell Likotsi is well-read from her use of words like "pedestrian" and "interminable". You can also tell she's a very no-nonsense, practical character who prefers to box her emotions up rather than confront her feelings. You get the feeling just from these sentences that she's probably a workaholic even though she doesn't mention anything about work. It's also from the clipped tone of her narration that she's very stressed and sad, even if she hadn't explained that to reader directly. Despite her saying the train delay is delightful, her repetition about it comes off as it actually isn't, and she's just telling herself that to tamp down on her stress.

This is how a strong voice and deep point of view can tell you a lot about a character. It can be breezy or formal, funny or severe, flowery or plain, and that alone can communicate the character's personality. As we saw in the setting exercise, it can even extend to how they interact with places or objects.

However, not every book is written in deep point-of-view. While a deep point-of-view is very locked on one character's perspective and personality, there's also the omniscient point of view, which is more distant, and allows the reader to see what's going on in everyone's head, not just the main character's. There are several types of omniscient narrators such as third person, shifting, and first person. The article "Omniscient Narrator, Examples, Types and Purpose" by Kate Miller-Wilson has some great literary examples of this.

Editing And Polishing

This week is all about editing and polishing the scenes in for your final project. You can find a lot of tips on editing in your class resources! One helpful thing you might do is look for crutch words and eliminate them. These are words that don't really add much to the scene and function mostly as filler. Examples are just, maybe, kind of, really, or actually. Of course, sometimes these words are needed. For example, "maybe" is sometimes really needed to reflect a character's uncertainty. "Maybe we should?" expresses a different sentiment that just "we should." But there's a lot of times you'll find your sentences are snappier after eliminating these words. One I often have to eliminate is "felt like". I'll write something like "I felt like he wasn't listening to me" when "He wasn't listening to me" expresses the character's point of view more directly. 

Other examples of crutch words can be found in the article "40 Crutch Words to Eliminate from Your Writing" by Hannah Bauman.

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And that's the end! I have some other ones I can post, so more are coming in the future.