I am Monday Maven, Hear Me Roar

BREAKING NEWS: Mavens Darcy Burke and Jacqueline Barbour received notice today that they both finaled in the 2007 OVRWA Summer Sizzle Contest! Whoo! Go Jacq and Darcy!!!

The first thing I'd like to roar is CONGRATULATIONS to all our winners!

The grand prize winner is COURTNEY MILAN, who's taking home the coveted multi-maven critique. Congratulations, CM!

The winners of single-maven critiques (yes, yes, we couldn't stop at three) are:
* B.E. Sanderson
* Heather (wordyheather, dunno your last name)
* Isabel Sotelo
* Lenora Bell
* Maggie Robinson
* Mary Danielson
* Mary Jensen
* Tessa Dare

And a big THANK YOU goes out to everyone who helped us reach 100 comments and beyond, making the Spectacular Launch Party Jamboree a raging success!!!

Winners, please email your chapter (and short setup, if applicable) to mavens @ manuscriptmavens.com (all one word--the spaces are to make life tricky for all the nasty spammers out there.)

The second thing I'd like to share is a heads up on our next Guest Maven. This Friday, CARRIE RYAN will be guest blogging with us, and--wait for it--there will be MORE PRIZES. Free books! Mark your calendar now!

While you're busy marking your calendar, don't forget that Diana Peterfreund's second Secret Society Girl book, Under The Rose, comes out on Tuesday. (If you read book one, holla in the comments! If you're familiar with my blog, you may recall I was lucky enough to receive an ARC [Advance Reader Copy] of book two. Yay, me!)

Now to squeeze in a little craft time...

I'd like to chat a bit about the difference between conflict and complication. (Thanks to CP Kel for the link to Linnea Sinclair's post on Kristin Nelson's blog. I can't link to Kel since she doesn't blog yet, so you'll have to take my word she exists. Oh, wait! Kel guest blogged for me a while back on Google Stalking. Funny stuff.)

Kel and I had actually discussed this before ("this" meaning the difference between conflict and complication--sorry about the long commercial break) but Linnea gives an extremely clear explanation. You should probably read her whole post, but here's a quick snippet:

The thing that keeps the story moving forward, the thing that keeps the reader turning pages is conflict happening to characters about whom the reader/agent/editor gives a damn. Impersonal conflict--which can sometimes appear as complication--doesn’t light the "give a damn" fire and get the story wheels turning as much as personal(ized) conflict.

Basically, it breaks down like this.

If your story revolves around Planet A not succumbing against the evil perpretrated by Planet B, that's boring as hell even though entire planets of life are at stake. Whose lives? We don't know, so we don't care.

If, say, a boy is ripped from his home on Planet A and must learn to use powers he never knew he had to defeat the evil perpetrated by a kingpin on Planet B, who happens to be the father he thought was long dead, now we have a story. (And that story is Star Wars.)

It's got to be a protagonist we care about (Luke) and the conflict has to be personal (I won't go into why the whole plot is personal to Luke as I'm going to assume Star Wars is basic pop culture, whether you've seen it or not. Speaking of which, sound off in the comments as to when/whether you've seen one/all--I'm curious!)

So anyway. I'm not here to regurgitate Linnea's post. You're perfectly capable of clicking on the link and reading it for yourself. The thing I want to talk about is... details.

Because what struck me as the difference between caring and not caring is details.

Take the movie Titanic for example. Half the people who saw it (I'm making that stat up, but you get me) sat through the ending credits in tears. I was not one of them. (And I call myself a romance author! Don't exile me!) I saw this movie at a drive-in theatre, and I remember looking around at all the wet-cheeked people and thinking, "Why on earth are they crying? They KNEW the boat was going to sink!"

But that's not what made people cry, was it?

People did die when the Titanic sank. Real people. That fact alone doesn't bring (most) people to tears.

But the details, the character sketches of Jack and Rose, changed the premise from a tragedy in our history to a tragedy happening NOW to people we care about. And their conflict was personal! Had the movie been about the scullery maid who went down with the ship (I actually have no clue if there are scullery maids on ships) there wouldn't have been the same punch. Jack and Rose! Destined to be together! Separated by death!

Details made it personal.

So then, in my own meandering way, I discontinued thinking about conflict altogether and started thinking about sexual tension. (Don't ask me how I made that jump.) And I decided that the difference between good sexual tension and bad (ie non-existent) sexual tension is the details.

My first completed romance novel had pl-en-ty of love scenes. Only a couple of them were consummated, as at the time I was married to the 12 Stages of Intimacy (that can be next week's blog if anyone's interested) which meant my hero and heroine got together and got naked, a little more every time, doing the sorts of things people do when they're horny and their clothes are missing.

Sexual tension? Nada.

The 12 Stages of Intimacy alone don't equal sexual tension. Buck naked doesn't equal sexual tension. Wild hotel monkey sex doesn't equal sexual tension. Even almost-not-quite scenes don't equal sexual tension. I learned this the hard way. As in, I completed two novels with little-to-no sexual tension, one novel with a smattering of sexual tension, and one novel with some sexual tension.

My latest book (number five if you're counting, not that you should since there's no quiz) has sexual tension galore. The Mavens (who are privy to each scene virtually as I write them) have of late said things to me like, "If these two don't get it on soon, I'm gonna throw my laptop against the wall."

I just broke 60k words this morning, and so far the h/h have kissed. Twice.

There are a multitude of potential reasons why a book with two kisses would have more sexual tension than a book with like two pages without kisses (okay, novel #1 wasn't that porn-ish, but you get what I mean) but in my case the difference was the details.

In book one, hero would look at heroine and think, "OMG, I want you naked. Now." and proceed to make that happen. No details except hero=horndog and heroine=slut. Uninteresting.

In this book, hero might stand next to heroine. She's not sure if he meant to or not, but his knuckles just brushed against the back of her hand, and--oh!--he did it again. Maybe she should scoot closer, too. Share his space. Rub him back. (Have you ever had a similar does-it-mean-what-I-think experience?)

Or perhaps hero swings heroine out of danger's way and holds onto her a moment too long, eye to eye, body to body, breath to breath. By detailing what she smells like, how she's trembling, the warmth of her skin beneath his callused palms, etc, reader will actually get where hero is coming from. (Minor disclaimer: both of these examples are huge paraphrases of various scenes, not actual prose. I thought copying and pasting 4,000 words might be overkill, considering how long-winded I'm managing to be all on my own.)

So then after I had fun picking apart my favorite sexual tension scenes in my CPs stories--all of which worked because the POV character noticed and was affected by concrete, unique details--my mind wandered yet again.

This time, to comedy.

Unlike writing sexual tension, being funny is something I do naturally. I don't mean I'm always funny, or that I go around spouting canned jokes or doing accents (not that I'm above either), but that I tend to see the funny side of life and have a knack for making quick comebacks. My whole family is like that--we're loud, we're snarky, we're teasers--but to translate that to the written page, guess what I think we need? (10 points if you guessed, "specific details.")

Rather than quote from myself here ('cause--gulp--what if you didn't think I was funny?) let's look at movies again. In There's Something About Mary, Cameron Diaz sports a very singular hairdo. What's funny isn't that her bangs are sticking straight up into the air and she looks absolutely ridiculous. What's funny is why, the specific detail of what is making her hair look so crazy. Just walking on screen with a bad hairstyle wouldn't cause the same effect.

Remember when I said sexual tension works when the POV character notices and is affected by concrete, unique details? I think that applies to comedy, too. Even though I giggled when Cameron slapped a handful of impromptu styling gel onto her bangs, I giggled even harder when the scene cut to Ben Stiller across a romantic dinner table for two, valiantly trying to focus on Cameron's face and not the wad of--well, let's just stick with "wad"--in her hair. In fact, I haven't seen that movie in years, but that scene is fresh (and hilarious) in my mind.

Any number of other shows and actors--Mr. Bean, The Three Stooges, Jim Carrey in the majority of his roles, characters in any given sitcom--make us laugh not when they do whatever silly thing they do, but when they react to something. Yanno, noticing and being affected by specific details.

Around about this point in my mental shenanigans, I had to stop thinking about conflict/sexual tension/humor and start thinking about breakfast, but I'd be willing to bet the same thing is true for almost any emotional effect you're aiming for as a writer.

I don't write horror these days (I did as a teenager, but let's not go there) but let's see if this is scary: SOMEONE is coming to KILL YOU.

No? Boring?

How about, someone is coming to kill you who's already dead himself, and he'll attack you in your dreams and with the long knives he has for fingers? (Nightmare on Elm Street)

Concrete, specific, unique.

For such a "duh" concept, it can be so easy to forget and so hard to implement effectively. If you have a section that isn't working, I suggest one of the things you check be your choice of details (or lack thereof).

Maven Darcy recently shot back one of my scenes with comments along the lines of "boring" and "pointless". (Not her exact words, but close.) I *knew* that scene needed to be there, so I chatted her up a bit on instant messenger and then took a good hard look at my details.

There weren't any. I added some.

A faltering smile, a responsive crowd, a turning point in the internal dialogue of the heroine. Maven Darcy re-reads and likes the scene after all! Yay!

Well, yay until Maven Lacey got a hold of it. "Where is she?" she asks (paraphrased b/c I'm too lazy to dig up the email). "You mention 'stadium' but nothing about wind or temperature or background noise, so I totally didn't get she was outside until the end."

Oh. Oops. Guess I need to go add some more details.

Catch you next Monday!

YOUR TURN: Thanks again for coming out to party with us this weekend! Let's keep the comments rolling. I mentioned Under The Rose--what other June new releases are you looking forward to reading (or have read)? Please share your thoughts on my "details" rant. What craft elements do you think create evocative scenes?