Making Steam: Writing For Blaze

It is pretty cool, isn't it? I like how easy it is to get around, all the ways of finding threads and adding blogs, reviews... pretty cool. I did a blog today since Pick Me Up was listed as #1 on the Tope eBooks of 2007! Pretty pleased to see that...

Glad to see the Blaze boards up and running... 

Sam 

The room is back! The question is, why have I appeared on my own Friends list multiple times? Self-esteem is good, but...

~Avery (yes, changed my user name, couldn't wait for a contract to stop being the "other" Melissa James! Seriously, what are the odds?? )

Yes, like always, it takes a little while to get used to moving around.  Looking forward to figuring out the Dream Team blogging so I can start posting my reads.  Am I the only one who has it in big letters at the right of my screen?  That's kinda cool!

Lots of fun features to play around with!  Great job, webmasters!

Wow!  I love this stuff.  Now I can confess that I used to get lost in the Blaze 1, Blaze 2, Blaze 3 stuff, but today I made Blaze a "favourite" (gotta love that British-Canadian spelling!), so hopefully I won't get lost anymore.

Now on to discover how I can make "friends"....   (doesn't this guy look like Mr. Bill?) 

Congratulations on placing #1, Sam!

Jeanette
eHarlequin.com Community Host
ehqnhost_jr@hotmail.com

Here I am, safe from the vampires that lurk in the night. Just kidding, although it did feel like that for a while. I just got back on day shift at work and it feels wonderful to be a real person again!

So that means, I'll be able to make it here more often. YAY! Now I have been doing some writing, but I"m not finished yet. About half way through actually. Maybe now that I have more time, I"ll be able to finish it.

Congrats Sam on making it to number 1! I did so love that book!

Hugs, Liv

Thanks, and thanks Jeannette, too. :) It's always fun to get a surprise like that. :) Congrats on the new schedule, Liv. :)

Nice to see everyone around in the new digs. :)

Sam

If you go to your profile and click "edit", I think there is a small explanation in the middle of the page that links to your account info, which is where you change your user name. Or something like that.

I'm going to see if I can figure it out...

either way...you'll always be the ORIGINAL Melissa James to me

I had to ask, because you all are obviously posting pics with no problem... 

 I posted a pic for my icon and it cuts my head off, which tells me I need to crop a pic to a square.  But even though I've cropped umpteen photos appropriately that fall into the size and KB parameters on the edit profile page, no matter how many times I upload them, the first photo I ever posted reappears. I keep deleting it (and it's gone for a minute!) and then when I try to reupload something new, the old pic returns. 

 Anyone know what I'm doing wrong? 

Joanne-- wanting to join the party but quite helpless, it seems

Joanne, I did the same thing--cropped my picture then tried to replace it.  Deleted the old, it kept coming back.  I finally gave up and just left the cut off head, but when I left eHarlequin and came back, my new picture was there.

Upload your revised picture again.  Ignore what the box in your profile shows.  Eventually, it will "take".

 (An I imagine even with half a head, you still look fabulous!  lol!)

We may just have to get use to the pink shirt. I keep trying...still, I have no forehead. I am starting to despise this photo.

Hello Sam:

                  Your book, ‘Talking in Your Sleep” was my 100th book in last year’s challenge.  It was a great story.  I really enjoyed your style and finesse in writing rather hot lovemaking scenes. I just read another Blaze title (not one of yours) in which descriptions were quite different and it brought up a question you might be able to help with.

                If you were set to write a lovemaking scene and the process went through the steps A, B, C, D, and E and the hero and heroine were professional people, for example, college professors, would the words you selected to describe the action be any different than if the exact same steps took place, (A, B, C, D, and E), but the hero and heroine were farm workers.  In other words, would you actually change your word selection to reflect the more “earthly” personalities of the farm workers?  That is, with the farm workers, would you use less finesse and more direct anatomical terms? I don’t know if authors do this as it might affect their “voice”. 

 This is meaningful because it is the author/narrator who is describing the (A, B, C, D, and E) and not the characters themselves in an interior monologue.

                I hope this makes sense.

              Thanks,

                           Vince

I don't know that I would assume farmers would have less finesse. ;) I would think they might use language closer to the earth, that they might be more frank or more profound, if in straightforward ways, because they understand so much about cycles, life, death, sacrifice, and hard living. Barbara Kingsolver, by the way, provides a fantastic example of just this in Prodigal Summer, one of my favorite books ever.

In the same way, I would not assume a college professor would necessarily be erudite in the sack, LOL. While profession is important, I think the way characters see the world figures in more things than that, what kind of people they are, their lives, etc... You could have very literate farmers, and very crass college professors (I've known examples of both.) ;)

Sam

Hello Sam:

              Thank you for your comments.  I enjoy your insights and they are very helpful.

However, my question was more technical and it might better be stated as:  

“When writing the passage, as the omniscient 3rd person narrator, would you change the words describing the “same exact event”  as mentioned in my example simply because of the characters’ professions”?  

So, in this case the college professors and the farm workers performed exactly the same: they were 100% equal lovers. Indeed, if you saw a video of the two couples, it would look like the same exact video. (The couples even look exactly alike.)  The author “sees” the act in her “mind’s eye” but then she must choose the words to describe the act. Would you select those descriptive words to make the language apropos to the characters and not just the objective scene being described?

               It might actually help to use this example:

               A farmer goes into the social security building on a sunny Monday morning.

                A college professor goes into the same social security building on a sunny Monday morning.

                 Would you change the description of the social security building simply because of the character’s profession?

              I mention this because I never thought of this being done before. I just assumed that the third person narrator would keep the same voice throughout the book. Thus leaving it to the characters’ POV.s and dialogue to set the tone. I don’t know if anyone does this or if no one does it.  But it seems like an option with some literary possibilities.

               Your comments are important because I don’t think a non-writer can answer this question.

             Thanks,

                      Vince

Julie - You just pointed out what I was going to add. That even though it's third person, it's still one of the characters doing the thinking and talking (the limited omniscient) rather than a narrator looking down on the action, so everything thought and said will be filtered through that character's view on life, etc.

Hello All: 

Writing is like philosophy, it seems you can never get to the bottom of it.  

I will try to be more concrete.

I like “limited” 3rd person POV as long is it is very clear when the POV changes. But what I was describing was not that.  To show what I mean, I will give a prose example. Please be kind, however, I am a non-fiction writer.

Social Security Building with Professor entering it. 

Professor James stopped his car in front of the Social Security building and hopped out ready to do battle.

     The stately social security building was built like an ancient Greek temple to convey the impression it would last forever. Four stories high and almost eight decades old it was a focal point of the town square. It was the only town building that would be right at home on an Ivy League college campus.

Social Security Building with Farmer entering it.

Farmer Jones stopped his pickup truck in front of the Social Security building and hopped out ready to do battle.

     Build as a latter day WPA project, the four story Social Security building dwarfed the City Hall directly across the town square. The Greek classic design clashed with the All American image the town square projected with its gazebo and old women walking their little dogs.

In both these cases the POV is only the author’s. The descriptions are not seen through the eyes of the characters. 

 Also very important is the fact that both the college professor and the farmer are major characters in the same story. So it was possible, in the same story, that both the farmer and professor would be going into the same Social Security building to do “battle” on different issues.  Therefore, the change in the author’s description of the SS building is done because of the character that is going into the building and not because the novel as a whole demands it.

 A LOVEMAKING EXAMPLE:

Here is a better example of what I was asking in particular and in which this question was generated:

Farm Workers’ Love scene

As the heroine climaxes the author writes; “with his final movement, he could feel her spasm, and clamp, and shake the very earth beneath them as she became one with the very life force of nature herself. (also in the text imagine a few four letter words for anatomical parts that I really don’t want to write here myself..)

Professors’ Love scene

Given the exact same physical actions as the farm workers, the author writes as the heroine climaxes:  “with his final movement, he took her over the edge into a supernova of emotions – to a frontier she had never been before.”  (No four letter words for anatomical parts are used here because the characters are not as “earthy” as the farm workers.)

Please I’m not saying this is good copy. But an observer to the lovemaking in both cases would have seen exactly that same actions. It was the author who wrote the descriptions of the actions. The descriptions are not given in a “limited” 3rd  person POV in this example.

In all the above cases of my examples, the author changed the wording of an “objective reality” simply because of who the characters were and this had nothing to do with the “objective” reality that was being observed. (I know there are good arguments that there is no such thing as “objective” reality but I am not using the term here in a philosophical sense. I am only using it in an every day ordinary language way.)

 As a writer it would never have occurred to me that I would describe a building differently depending on the character involved in the scene. . I would just describe the building as I saw it and would not have even considered describing it in a way to match the characters involved. Of course, I listened to many operas before I even knew what a leitmotif was. Discovery makes learning fun at any age.

I think this is a good as I can describe the question.  I think all the posts have been fascinating.

Thanks,

Vince

But Vince, the prose examples you gave ARE limited omniscient.

It's an omniscient description, but colored by the character's personality and background. True omniscience would reflect only the author's voice.

Yes, the author chooses the words and decides what details will be shared. But the choices are made according to what fits the charcter, and as Sam said, they're true to the author's unique voice. Sam's farmer will sound different than my farmer. But her farmer will also sound different than her professor.

Julie Miller

Hello Julie:

                 I have to agree with the points in your post. I think I need to read at least 4 or 5 books by the same author and compare the love scenes to see how the wording changes based on the characters’ personalities and situations in life. Then I could tell how  similar situations compare with each other. There may be nothing to this but it could lead to something interesting.

                 What I would like to see is if it is possible to have a love scene written so that it cannot be lifted and placed in another romance by simply changing the names of the characters.  If I  wrote love scenes (and I intend to only write sweet romances) I am afraid they would very quickly all seem alike. So I am exploring ways to individualize the output. This is not for me to write fiction but to mention in a non-fiction book on the genre.

                   I did the challenge last year for the first time and I made 100 books on my last day. The biggest surprise I had all year was how well Blaze authors can write. The work is excellent.  I am very interested in how the authors do it.  I know one thing for certain, it is way too hard for me to do it. The less likely I feel I can do something, the more I admire those who can.

                  I want to thank everyone for their comments.

                   Vince  

I think authors work overtime to make sure that their love scenes aren't interchangeable, and it comes down to knowing character personalities and quirks. I mean, sure, at some level, sex is sex, but the people involved are individuals, all coming at each other from different places. Some will be more adventurous, some will have different inhibitions, etc. I think the writing style of love scenes will be similar from book to book, but love scenes should be fairly unique to character, which is why they are so darned hard to write!

Sam 

I hadn't thought of it, because short or general, or closed-door love scenes mainly just annoy me *G*, but you're right -- I think they would tend to be more generic, because, well, not much is going on that would make them unique. Unique comes through in the details.

And it's also interesting that an author who's uncomfortable with love scenes would be more general -- makes sense -- they don't want to get into the nitty gritty.

I always find it interesting to find detailed love scenes in lines where you don't expect them. While not the norm, Supers have some books with love scenes that are easily Blaze worthy, for instance. Ellen Hartman's Wanted Man is a recent example, and while there was only one really detailed scene in the book, I would also suggest Jeannie Watt's The Horseman's Secret -- finding hot love scenes in these books is almost a treat, because you don't necessarily expect it. Kay Stockham writes with some heat as well, in case you are looking across lines.

And yes, though Blaze is hot, it can't be at the expense of emotion or romance, which is really the point, isn't it?

Thanks for thought-provoking discussion...

Sam

Please stop by and check out the new discussion hosted by Blaze author Tawny Weber.  Click on the link below to get join the discussion:

http://community.eharlequin.com/forums/simply-series/ultimate-man-plan

I hope to see you there!

I love her books, and sexy Supers are among my favorites. Hoping to write one or two of my own one of these days, fingers crossed! ;)

Sam 

 Hi Julie:

It occurred to me that when you wrote...

“But Vince, the prose examples you gave ARE limited omniscient.

“It's an omniscient description, but colored by the character's personality and background. True omniscience would reflect only the author's voice”

...that this may have actually validated what I was trying to say. The author could use external descriptions to create a “mood” that would “surround” a given character throughout the book. . This mood could always be the same, say optimistic or hopeful, even when the character was feeling depressed. It would not have to mirror the internal state of the character. This would take a great deal of skill. For example, the author might have to descript trees and wheel barrows in cheerful or optimistic terms – all without being obvious.

 In the above quote, you interpreted my description as “limited omniscient” because it seemed like the view was from the POV of the character. But the description was not what the character was seeing --  it was what the author was seeing.  In this case the outside world description mirrored the nature of the character. In the same passage it would have been possible to also described what the farmer is seeing as he enters the Social Security building. And what the farmer sees could be very different from what the author described.  In other words, the copy could say what the character was seeing – or chose to focus on—and this could be very different and independent from the outside description just conveyed by the author.

Changing outer descriptions to correspond to a given character would provide another writing tool to add a greater dimension to the reading experience. This would probably be subliminal but it might help create a more distinctive voice.

Thanks,

Vince

Oh, that's right -- I was on We Call it Research for the first 6 months, and it was a lot of fun, and then the fall deadlines and a kitchen remodel caught up with me. While I kept reading, I didn't log any of my books. I'm not even attempting this year, though I think I will log reviews of books I'm reading just when I have time, spur of the moment thing. I'm reading a fanastic book now by Wendy Roberts whom I was thrilled to find her, over on Nancy Warren's list. She's awesome. :)

Sam