Example 3 of writing and rewriting for clients; 2nd rewrite: Perking Up Boring Romance (Action) Writing

Example 3 of writing and rewriting for clients; 2nd rewrite:
Perking Up Boring Romance (Action) Writing

By Neale Sourna

Are your stories of sizzling love fizzling out like tired champagne; more flavored water than sparkling? Well, romance (falling in love) is an action that needs to be active; so, ruthlessly search your bland scenes to locate blah moments to reshape into tender moments that spark alive your readers’ senses, imagination, and fears, by adding little triggers that exploit, in a good way, your readers’ emotions and expectations, by...

WRITING TO OUR SENSES

The easiest way to slip deeper into your characters and readers’ minds and hearts is to take individual editing passes through your stories, concentrating on one sense at a time, to add when each lover can see, hear, touch, smell (let’s say “scent,” sounds less odious), and taste. It adds flavor and sparks sensory interest right away.

Why?

Because most of us have five senses for perceiving the world around us. We know what a fresh, crisp sweet apple or a fresh, crisp tart apple tastes like, know the scent of hot bread, floral cologne, musk on a body that attracts us, or musk from somebody who repels us.

Writing to our senses adds instant tactility and reality; luring a reader deeper into your world. We’ll feel the hug that relaxes us in a plump grandmother's arms or the sharp bite of a sadist's whip drawing blood from our backs, while making us bite our tongues against the pain to taste.....

This technique is especially useful for writers who think excessively more than allow the feeling and their story characters do too. They think, they thought, they realize…. 

Stop.

Step out of your head and your readers will follow into their sense body and emotions. Sounds and scents and touch and sight can trigger emotions, both good and bad, long-standing or passing. So, use all of your main characters' senses; it makes them more real to us, turning them into real people.

The first time I did this in a script it made everything pop and more rich. Of course, don’t use it in every sentence, till we puke, unless that's the plan; but, it helps add the sparkle of life, so do it.

BUT, DON’T FORGET SENSE #6

Depending on your genre and character types, your couple or one of them may have a sense of “knowing.” I know many close relatives or friends who actually do this in their own lives. It's when one has an unexplainable knowing, from simply being able to sense their lover's unplanned arrival or phone call, or to feel unreasonably agitated enough that they must rush to make certain their wife, husband, child, or friend is safe.

It may just be a feeling of assured faith and knowing the other will rescue them, love them forever, or hasn’t truly left them.

It can also be that “jinx” thing, when two people say or do the same thing at the same time. I do this all the time with family members and close friends. It's just two people feeling the same vibe, or recalling the same shared experience. It is weirdly fun and adds a layer of intimate bonding.

AND DON’T FORGET THE LACK OF OUR SENSES

“When I entered I couldn’t sense him, not even that gentle scent of his cologne, and not that gentle vibration that always signaled that he’s nearby.”

“Disconcertingly, although we were in the dance’s embrace, I felt, sensed, whatever, her body harden and edge away from me; the worse was holding her yet in my arms, but feeling I was abruptly alone.”

DISCOVERY & RESPONSE

Here’s more help.

Your character people experience love, suffer, die, and some are reborn as vampires or zombies in love. It's in your hands how your lovers discover and rediscover what they feel, what they understand and when, and how, when or if they respond to this stimuli.

In the novel HOBBLE, the relationship of my main couple, Day and Benn, is highly erotic, an instant bonfire, but a significant and more important and binding part of their story plays on psychological levels of dependency, on spiritual need both oppressed and heightened, and on discovering their most romantically needy and protected selves, hidden even from themselves, while their responses to having such needs met pulls each deeper into emotional involvement and investment in the other.

Example, Benn has a hidden and unspoken desire for his lovers show him PDA (public displays of affection). He's been in relationships with professional women and also one who belonged to a religious cultural background that discourages such openness; so he's never brought it up, nor truly allows himself to expect it.

Day, however, as a woman long abused and crippled (hobbled) on many levels has nearly a psychic manner in knowing what they desire. So, Day understands Benn on levels he doesn't understand himself, until his involvement with her.

In turn, he instills in her a feeling of security and love, making her discover that she needn't tolerate others' unwanted desires and that she's worthy of more than being a sexual plaything, and responds by demanding more.

Our senses are easy things to use, leading your characters and readers into more interesting levels, perking up your readers' sensory involvement in the intimate discoveries of your hero and heroine. 

Because when we better visualize and feel, it generates a response within us.

_889 wds

Client kind of liked yet not satisfied with it and asked if I minded if they would rewrite to suit themselves. No, don't mind. 

I've worked with with client a long time ago, but didn't mention it to them. It's nice to know it's just conflict of style. 

My repeat clients and most of my single clients, well, we match and complete one another. Sometimes not so much... End of this visual tale.