Décor

Décor

On the average, boys becoming men choose disarray. Girls becoming women choose order.

Walk into any college dorm and be witness.

When men move into their first apartment, they decorate in what mom and dad gave them plus what they saw discarded on the street. Women need to color coordinate or it’s no thanks mom and dad.

When men move into their first condo or home, they might have a little money left at the end of a pay check to pick a recliner, card table and a huge TV.

When women move into a condo or home they build a nest.

Of course, our renaissance man has an eye for beauty.

Many men start thinking at this point, what can I do to attract a female? This is the stuff of comedy, because they think their good looks or great job will win the day. They don’t think about decorating.

Finally and somehow married a man retreats into an area he has learned is called a man cave. The wife retreats to her friends wondering what she was thinking when she married this slob. He forgets the toilet seat, leaves clothes on the floor, puts rotting food everywhere but the trash, etc. Basically, she becomes a mom without giving birth. She educates and the man who loves her listens and learns. Sometimes. Ever wonder why there’s a huge divorce rate besides infidelity?

All this doesn’t have to be in real life if the girl/woman chooses a metro-sexual or Renaissance man. In the movies and romance novels this stuff just makes us smile or laugh. It is also one more barrier to overcome before we reach a neat and tidy HEA (happily-ever-after).

The moral of the story for any author is that the descriptive details and the heroine’s reaction to them is priceless. But don’t force it. If the hero wants to be or is an architect or any other type that celebrates the beauty of all things, use it to your advantage once again in the descriptive assessment of the heroine.

Happy Holidays...

Alpha revisited

The Alpha male revisited

I have promoted Beta males for romantic leads. A Beta male is someone who is sensitive and celebrates the needs of other people. Often described as a renaissance man. The publishers often ask for Alphas, particularly Harlequin. Why? Using the Alpha formula for story often writes itself. The stakes are raised scene by scene, the internal war to become a better man is intense, because he’s in an environment that challenges his beliefs. The beliefs can be considered strange to most normal human beings. The Alpha lives in an egocentric universe in which everything he thinks and does is correct and right. There is no moral right or wrong. It’s his way or the highway.

I have accepted a challenge from myself to write the ultimate Alpha, since my heroes are typically Betas. I’m enjoying it to no end. For me, it is so easy to write into every scene a shift or change in how the hero experiences the world. His heroine is everything he hates and visa-versa. This is extreme, a baptism of fire for me. But when I’m done, I’ll feel like I accomplished a great deal. I already feel like I’m saving two (imaginary) souls. This overboard feeling is warranted when a reader feels uplifted by the story, when a reader changes his or her life because of a piece of fiction.

Flirting

Flirting

From the male POV, flirting is the first step to having sex.

When a female flirts, it means she likes the male.

These are, of course, gross generalizations, but they’re useful when writing in any genre.

Since men are more visual on the average they are primarily attracted to a female who looks good. In a flirt, if the flirt is returned, he decides how to advance, given the words and body language he observes to guide him.

A woman flirts. If the man returns the flirt, she immediately receives validation of her attractiveness, which is often enough. She is also showing the male her attraction.

I’m sure nearly all of us recognize that when the opposite sex walks by there is a difference in the way the opposites look at each other in comparison to the way the same sex look at each other. For the opposites, there’s an acknowledgement, much weaker than a flirt that what they see is attractive or at least an acknowledgement of the way God made us.

Conflict in flirts comes from the difference in the way men and women think. It is often shown in the reactions to a cute meet by an expert writer. Flirts don’t end after a cute meet or any other initial meeting. Couples often flirt with their mate to encourage or show a need for sex. Here the male and female response is closer in purpose. Realize the a female flirting with her mate might also be rewarding him for his love.

Let me finish where I started by saying that these simple rules are meant to be broken, when it serves the story and reality.

Purpose

Purpose

What do they teach us to do as writers?

Make sure to address the Who, What, Where, Why, When and How of your story.

The Why is closely linked to Purpose. The story and its characters must have a purpose. Often the hero and heroine’s purpose shifts during the story, scene by scene. This shifting purpose is similar to the arc but isn’t. An arc is change. Purpose is direction or philosophy. Humans without purpose have a diminished life. If your character(s) start out this way they had better come around to it or you have no story. If their purpose is faulty when compared to societal norms, this is okay. It depends on the story the author wants to tell. In Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe the purpose was to show us that things fall apart.

In the movie Casablanca, the purpose for both Rick and Ilsa was to show that they didn’t amount to a hill of beans when compared to the higher purpose of defeating Nazism.

In romances with a traditional happy ending, the purpose is to show that the hero and heroine have each other’s love as a purpose for living. In a Christian romance we are taught that love is the purpose for living (love thy God and neighbor).