Technical Topic -- Narrative versus Dialog

Someone was wondering --  (I paraphrase here) -- 
"I write lots of narration and exposition.  How much dialog does a Romance genre book need?"


Or, to put it another way . . . in Romance genre, do the hero and heroine have to talk to each other?

Ever on the alert for topics of world-shaking import, I set my mind to this one.

where metatext needs metatext

One way to investigate the dialog/narration question is to . . . look.
(This is the alert-and-proactive attitude that kept your hunter-gatherer ancestors alive in a hostile world and allowed you to survive High School.)

One can go to googlebooks. Here. 

At googlebooks, type in the name of a wildly successful romance author.
Eloisa James, for instance.
Pick a book at random. Your Wicked Ways. Here.

In the 'search box' to the right,
(We'll all wait while you find the search box to the right.  You've got it?  Yes.  Good.)
type in the word,  'under'.
This will generate a variety of random pages.

Randomness is powerful.

On these random pages, we will estimate the percentage of dialog.
(which we will dictatorially assume also includes tags and trailing stuff actions and like that but not exposition or narrative.)

page -- percent dialog-ish stuff

page 334 -- has only 5% dialog-ish
223 -- 50%
126 -- 95%
290 -- 15%
281 -- 40%

Jayne Ann Krentz, Absolutely Positively

58 -- 10%
38 -- 90%
156 -- 95%
43 -- 20%
244 -- 95%
174 -- 0 %

Mary Jo Putney, Never Less Than a Lady

76 -- 0%
245 -- 90%
133 -- 70%
236 -- 15%


Nora Roberts, Vision in White

331 -- 0%
262 -- 100%
313 -- 15%
131 -- 95%
126 -- 60%

What we see from this is that successful authors use both dialog and narration and they don't mind committing a whole page to one or the other. A cursory glance at a few random pages would indicate there's a pretty even balance between pages heavy on one and heavy on the other.

Which is about as much Romance genre structural analysis as anyone can be expected to do on one cup of coffee.

The Chinese Cover

A writer's life is not necessarily one of frantic and absorbing interest to the observer.

I mean, it can be.  I do not doubt that there are writers who finish the day's work and flip down the lid of the computer and stroll out to rassle aligators --

(Crocodiles have a narrow snout and alligators are the ones with a broad snout, in case you ever find yourself rassling one.  Alligators are considered more dangerous because of that greater crushing power of those wide jaws.  But then, writers are not wimps.)                                                                                                    These are alligators                      

or toboggan down the Matterhorn --

(Did you know it's the Matterhorn only in Germany?  If you're in Italy it's Monte Cervino.  In France it's Mont Cervin.
. . .  And folks wonder why there's so much international discord.)




This is the Matternorn, 
or whatever.

or conduct a wild passionate affair with Johnny Depp.



(You thought I'd never get to the end of that sentence, didn't you?)

But mostly writers lead, as I say, dull lives.
I know I do.

Today, however, as I was walking the dog, I met a most beautiful red fox out in the fields, who kinda curled his lip as if to say,

"You're interrupting me, you know.  Do I come into your dining room when you're hunting mice?  Do I?"
and loped off into the bushes in a snit.

The second wild bonus of the day is that I ran across the cover of the Chinese Spymaster's Lady which had not previously come my way.  In fact, I didn't know Chinese Spymaster was actually out.  It's here.

The Title, according to Babelfish, is:

Spy Sea Rival in Love

which I kinda like.

ETA:  In the comment trail, Sherry Thomas points out that this title is actually Love and Hate Among Spies 
which I also like.



If you go to the site you'll see, over on the right hand side, they've given me five little pinky thingums.
I think they may be ducks.

In any case, I am so delighted with this  beautiful cover.  I really like it. 

My Lord and Spymaster will come out in Chinese next month and then they will maybe send me a copy of each.


The fox that appears above is not the actual fox I saw.  I don't cart a camera around with me, worse luck, so I do not have a copy of the actual fox.  This is an entirely different fox, attrib galen.  It is almost as pretty as the fox I saw.

Technical Topics -- The Scalpel Approach

Somebody asked:

But what about the wonderful scene in Chapter One. 
I know it's backstory,
but it's really good. "

(I'm kinda parphrasing what was said here.  He had lots more excuses, for one thing.)






       
 This giraffe is really great backstory put into Chapter One.  I mean, as a visual concept.


What I said:

I, too, hate to discard good writing.

Lookit here.

See Joanna discard good writing.  See Joanna suffer.
Sometime there's a scene you have to write and you can't use because it don't fit in the action of the book.
Live with it.

We don't add scenes because they are interesting, beautiful and cool. We set scenes in place because their action, tone, pacing, emotional content, and movement through the character arc
TELL THE STORY.


[/shouting]

If the reader has to edge his way around a kitchen sink in the front hall, we take the sink out. It doesn't matter that it's a beautiful kitchen sink.

Be ruthless. Does that scene drive the narrative forward . . . or slow it to a grinding halt?

Which is all very fine and philosophical, but how do we actually DO this?


1) Finish Draft One.

2) Set the ms in front of you and take out a sharp knife.

3) You are going to cut out everything that is not essential to the action.
If you remove a scene and the story still works, it is not an essential scene.

Especially take out
dream sequences,
flashbacks,
old men reciting prophesy,
descriptions of sunrise over the steppes,
scenes of somebody thinking about things,
talking heads explaining what somebody's grandfather did.

4) You now have two piles
(a) the working action of the manuscript, and
(b) literary kudzu.

This is where you can indulge yourself.
You get to take an amount of kudzu no greater than 5% of the total mass of the ms and fold it back in.


This is a WeightWatchers indulging of oneself --
i.e. you get a piece of chocolate cake the size of a postage stamp --
but it is better than nothing at all.



5) Reread this new, sleek Draft One. It's better, isn't it?

An interview at Romantic Crush Junkies

Interview with me here at Romantic Crush Junkies.


They have reviews of books by Anna Campbell, Julia Quinn and a whole raft of Nicola Cornick goodness.  Cool stuff.

Romance genre -- The forbidden tropes

Elsewhere, discussing what is forbidden in genre Romance, I came up with a short, tentative list.

I bring this bright and bouncy back to show everybody.
Or at least, everybody who's writing straight genre Romance.  I can't imagine this particular blog has a wider audience.




So.  These are some 'Romance genre rules' I came up with.
This is in random order, not running from more forbidden to less or something. And I'm talking about standard mass market Romance genre.

Which is all very specific and technical and also behind the cut:

Regency Bling

Regency Bling

The Regency gentleman's code might be summed up as, "no perfumes, exquisitely fine linen and plenty of it, country washing . . ."
and bling. 

I went in search of Regency bling, hoping for a gold ring in the ear of at least some Regency fops. 
Alas, not so much. 

The robust and adventurous Tudors wore earrings.  The courtier Buckingham sported major rubies.  That man of action, Sir Walter Raleigh, a gold hoop.  (This picture here shows him with a remarkably fine pearl earring.)


A half century later, Charles I wore a great pearl in his ear when he mounted the block to face the axe. 
By the Eighteenth Century, however, earrings had become the province of buccaneers, exotic foreigners, and the most foppish of macaronis.

See the rest at Word Wenches  here.

Technical Topic - Pronunciation

I put this together because the Penguin Audio people wanted to get the pronunciation right.  Or at least, get it the way the author wanted it, which is not quite the same thing.  It's very conscientious of them, isn't it? 

This is part of what authors do, I guess, when they are tearing their hair out and not writing the JUSTINE manuscript because her voice just won't come to them.

 So maybe you're interested in how it's all pronounced.
Or maybe you're not . . .  That's good too.

I've put the looong chart with the pronunciation below the fold

 

A Basketful of RITA Recommendations

Every year RWA honors outstanding Romance books. These are some of the best of 2009  Here.

I don't get to do as much reading as I'd like, so I haven't read most of the RITA winners and finalists.
But I've read and loved these here below.
I recommend them.
They are wonderful books.  
     

Laura Lee Gurke, With Seduction in Mind
Elizabeth Hoyt, To Beguile a Beast
* Sherry Thomas, Not Quite a Husband   A 2009 RITA WIINNAH !!
Liz Carlyle, Wicked All Day
Deanna Raybourn, Silent on the Moor
Susan Wiggs, Lakeshore Christmas
Carolyn Jewel, My Forbidden Desire and Scandal
Tessa Dare, Surrender of a Siren
Alissa Johnson, Tempting Fate
Kate Noble, Revealed 
* Julia Quinn, What Happens in London  A 2009 RITA WIINNAH !!
Courtney Milan, This Wicked Gift 
* Molly O'Keefe, Christmas Eve Promise  A 2009 RITA WIINNAH !!
J.D. Robb, Promises in Death