The art of hinting

Subtile information in stories is good. That’s how I like giving information in fact. I hate telling the reader flat out that such-and-such is going on. It’s much more fun to make the reader guess and think that it’s happening.

However, just because I like doing it doesn’t mean I’m good at it.

Especially with it comes to romance.

In my mermaid novel, I have two possible romances. Okay. Forget possible. I have two real romances.

Romance one is between Nessa’s bad/evil/corrupt brother, Sagi, and a woman who helps him win the election, Chava. Somehow, I need to make it seem perfectly understandable both why Sagi likes Chava, when he’s avoided all other possible romances for the last twenty years, and even more importantly, why Chava likes Sagi, all by the halfway point of the book. The Sagi one is going to be particularly hard considering that he has been basically breaking the law, been a jerk to his sister, cheated on the election and poisoned his dad. (Though I don’t think the reader will know for sure that the dad is poisoned until after they get together, and Chava knows none of this.)

All this when I haven’t really had any real relationship ever. I can’t imagine it’ll seem that realistic.

Yet, that’s the easy romance.

The harder romance is between Nessa’s half sister, Avi, and a lawyer, Ronen. if you haven’t read Just Trust Me, you should, but besides that, you would know that Avi is considered a huge shame upon her family because her mother had an affair with an Adamah, what would be pretty equal with the blacks of the South in the 1950s. (Keep in mind, Nessa’s family is royal.) Ronen, on the other hand, hates Adamahs because they killed his best friend when he was younger and then basically got off the hook.

However, he starts to like Avi.  He doesn’t want to like Avi so he promptly tries to be curt with her. (In the mean time, Eyal starts to woo Avi but that’s for a completely other problem I’m having, also involving hinting, but I won’t put it here so I don’t give out too many hints.) So, I need him to somehow be mean without being too mean and I don’t know what to do about that!

*sigh*

This all comes because I’m working on fixing up this chapter that invovles an argument with Avi and Ronen but I don’t have any basis for the argument. As such, it seems awkward and uncertain in my mind. I’m not even sure if it is needed. But if I can properly set the scene, perhaps I can make it needed.

Which sounds horrible. But I don’t think that I can just drop it. Otherwise, I do this huge jump from a debate and Sagi’s reaction to the debate to Nessa’s seating. Okay, maybe I could jump that much. But I really want to get some Avi/Ronen action.

This is why I should have properly listened to myself and sworn off love stories. Because then I wouldn’t have this issue at all.

Then again, I still would, because I have the problem with Eyal’s background, Sagi remember Gilah, Itamar changing against Nessa, and hundreds of other little things to sneak into the story.

And did I say before that I like writing novels? Maybe I should change my mind on that one. :)

one idea, many stories

So, on Sunday I wrote about my love story plot that I’d love to write. Much to my dismay, I’ve been toying with this idea ever since Sunday. I had an almost breakthrough that made me consider actually writing it, in spite of my swearing off of love stories. The idea is that I should just set it in a sci-fi setting, which I need practice writing in anyway,

Now, I have two ideas.

Just so you know the background: Arranged married goes wrong when the guy, who was rumored to be the guy, because he’s handsome, athletic and nice, has been in a very bad accident and is in some sense deformed, although it is not completely obvious. Girl is unaware of this initially, although would eventually find out as much.

So now, my two plots. Plot one from that is basically that idea. Guy was hurt, guy is slowly getting better so the girl doesn’t know. Girl finds out, freaks out and decides that she can’t marry him no matter what and blahblahblah. Well, as it turns out the other girl who has been caring for him since the accident has secretly fallen in love with him and somehow he finds out and he loves her and tada! Doesn’t end happy for the first girl but it ends happy for everyone else. (If I wrote this, it would be in the maid’s POV, just because anything else would be too difficult, and the other girl not as much fun.)

Story two: Guy’s a soldier; he got hurt; he comes home. Parents say while you’re covering, now is a great time for you to get married. And forget about all that silly soldier stuff anyway. It’s not like that was good for you.  Girl shows up, and it’s okay, although no one tells her what happened. (oooh, maybe he didn’t tell his family how badly hurt he was.) Problem is guy doesn’t want to marry girl because guy wants to still be a soldier and do good things like that. Girl doesn’t want to marry guy because by some twisted fate thing, girl has fallen in love with guy’s brother over the past year that they have been sending letters. Obviously, neither of them know the other’s dilemma, but if either of them decide not to get married, then it is worse than if they were found with a bunch of illegal drugs in their possession. Eventually, they find out everything and the guy breaks it off and runs off to be a soldier again, girl marries guy’s brother, and everyone is happy.

Both these stories could be written in a well-crafted science fiction society, so I would steer clear of the fantasy stuff I’ve been writing recently. It would actually be even more of a challenge to myself to make a believable reason as to why the society has arranged marriages and what their rules are. (Such as, if we are going to allow arranged marriages, we need to have a rule that there can only be a three year difference between the couple and so forth.)

I would like to write both these stories and I think, especially the first one, might be boring for me by the end. It’s not like Giant’s Wife where it ends with a BANG! Bu the second one might be a good thing to write because the second one I can incorporate into mindskill later on, as one of the characters. It would give background, society and so forth and might make for a much better story for me.

So, maybe I will write it. I’m not allowed to write anything else until I finish editing Dragon Slayers, which I have not done any of yet. Bad Abigail I know. But at least I can plot.

I WANT TO WRITE A LOVE STORY!

After finishing Giant’s Wife, I said that I swore off love stories until I’m at least engaged. Why? To summarize, because I haven’t even dated yet, so I don’t know how to exactly write about it.

This morning I came up with a brilliant plot  though.

Guy, we’ll say a lord, gets maimed in an accident. Very badly maimed where his whole side is at best useless. He lost part of his arm and can barely walk. But he doesn’t want anyone to know because he’s slightly ashamed and he used to be really athletic and now he’s lucky if he can make it from his room to his office. He’s getting better but it’s slow. This is a recent accident though

Girl was married earlier to him by proxy, had been postponed in coming to him for some unexplained reason on his part, and then finally arrives. That’s all I know. They get married shortly afterwards.

They get married.

But guy acts weird. Things like, he doesn’t ever rise or walk much in her presence. He always has a cane with him, which could be an ornament but it’s still weird for normal, everyday life. He also doesn’t show his hand/arm much (because he wears a prothesis) or uses it.  He also keeps to himself and never once sleeps with her.

Now, I don’t know where this would go much. My obvious solution would be that the girl starts to love the guy and then finds out and then is like, “Oh well,” but that’s so cliché.

The next idea was something along the lines of a servant of some kind who has been helping him recover for the last six months has basically fallen in love with him. He wouldn’t notice because he’s a nice, strong, lord, she’s just a common, and they are technically already married.

Then, the girl finds out, declares that she didn’t bargain to marry a maimed husband and wants out and he, because he’s feel all miserable, agrees and lets her go back.  At some point in time, the servant girl comes out that she loves him and he finds out that he loves her and–tada!–everything’s happy.

The only problem is I can’t write it because I refuse to write a love story like this. I would like to pursue this idea more or less and see where it goes, because it sounds interesting. (It actually sounds like something that my friend and I would roleplay if we still did.) It would be a blast. But I can’t because I am not going to write a love story.

Why does love have to be such a difficult topic anyway?

Maybe I’ll try to convince my friend to roleplay this summer.

On a different note, I’m trying to think of short stories to write for the characters in mindskill (besides Isaiah) because then I would get to know the characters better and I like that idea.

love stories–ick!

I swore off love stories. Not reading them, because to swear them off I suppose I have to read one first. But I swore off writing them.

This happened a long time ago when I discovered how much I failed at setting up two characters to fall in love in Hope. It didn’t work, not well enough to be convincing. So when I wrote Shad, I determined that I would never have two characters get close enough to be engaged. I might elude to the fact, but I could not write a decent story with the characters actually in love.

Why not? Well, I suppose it goes back to the fact that not only have I never been close to being in love, I’ve never been on a date. I’ve never even be asked on a date. I don’t know how romance works, (excluding those annoying people who constantly post on facebook about how they love [girlfriend/boyfriend] and how they can’t live without [girlfriend/boyfriend], or how they are so mad at [girlfriend/boyfriend].)

Now, I might be able to get enough of an idea about a good many topics with a combination of reading, watching TV, and imagining. But I don’t even want to risk imagining what it would be like to fall in love.

I broke that with Giant’s Wife. I just wrote Giant’s Wife off of a dream and never really expected much of anything to come out of it. After editing it, I realized that I had to, most certainly, swear off love stories forever, or, at least until I’m married. I just don’t know anything.

In a way, it’s hard, because I role played with a friend for five years and oftentimes, we did create love stories. Some of our favorite stories together involved setting up the most unlikely people. (I actually think Giant’s Wife would have been an awesome one for us to role play together.) So even now, I think occasionally that, “Maybe so-and-so should like so-and-so.” and I stop myself really quick because I will not go that far.

I broke that rule today. I just wrote something random and spontaneous just because I wanted to. It’s only about five pages. But I suppose eventually, we have to break our own rules. I just won’t do it for something larger.