Jennifer Crusie's Blog, page 316

Good Ideas: Read Later

I realize I'm probably the last person here to find this, but in case there are more of you like me, have you seen Instapaper? It's genius. You do have to sign up but no salesmen will call. Once you've logged in, you can drag a bookmark called "Read Later" to your browser bar. Then when you're running around on the net and you find something you'd like to spend more time with but don't really have the time right then, you click that button and it saves the page to a list on Instapaper. Such a simple thing, but boy howdy has it cleaned up my bookmarks.

And if you're looking for a good place to find a variety of long non-fiction, try Longform. And then bookmark what you've found with Instapaper's "Read Later" button.

Because you really needed more stuff to read.

The Three-Goddesses Chat: Supernatural Romance

This is the second in a series of Three Goddess Chats, brought to you by Krissie (aka Anne Stuart and Kristina Douglas), Lucy (Lucy March aka Lani Diane Rich), and Jenny (Jenny Crusie), who meet in a chat-room called ThreeGoddesses to talk about everything. Krissie has been writing supernatural romances for a long time, and now as Kristina Douglas she's started a new series about fallen angels, The Fallen (Raziel, Demon, and Warrior, out in April 2012). Jenny came to the supernatural late with The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes (written with Krissie and Eileen Dreyer) and Dogs and Goddesses (written with Krissie and Lucy) and Wild Ride (written with Bob Mayer). Lucy's newest book is also a supernatural romance: A Little Night Magic, in stores on January 31. This time, we got together in our Three Goddesses chat room to talk about what we've learned writing the things that go bump in the night. The chat has been heavily edited to cut out excursions into TV criticism, moaning about the business, and a short argument we had about French Kiss, but otherwise, this is what we said:

[Lucy and Jenny got to the chat first, so we started without Krissie]

Jenny:. So, Lucy March, what made you decide to write supernatural in A Little Night Magic?

Lucy: I wanted to stretch out, work in that fantasy space. I felt like I was treading the same water writing what I was writing. I wanted to write a first person series, with Liv as the protagonist, do some long form storytelling, but that's not what the publisher wanted. So, I caved, because they said, "We'll pay you," and at heart, I'm a whore. Eventually, I want to do a long form first person series, though.

Jenny: I like what's happening with your series, though. I LOVE Stacy Easter. [Note to readers: Stacy is a supporting character in A Little Night Magic which is Liv's book, but she gets her own story in the book Lucy's writing now.]

Lucy: Stacy's great. I don't have the hero down so well, but Stacy's very fun. It all comes down to character, no matter what you're writing, though. Magic, werewolves, vampires, ghosts. In the end, it's the same dance. Character, character, character.

Jenny: I agree. But still, the supernatural is vastly different from the ordinary world, which I really like. I felt like I should put a post-it on the computer that said, "Swing Wide" because I was getting trapped in my own inch of Ohio ivory. The supernatural conflict seems so much juicier to me right now.

Lucy: Well, the conflict is in that elevated space. You get to work with metaphor and heightened circumstances, and it's really fun.

Jenny: It's hard to get good juicy conflict in modern romance story-telling. You can do it, but you have to work at it. Ghosts, that's good conflict. Demons were good, too. I miss the demons.

Lucy: There's lots of great stuff to be found in the paranormal. You get into metaphor and mythology, and it's rich psychologically.

Jenny: Great metaphors, but they have to work as character, too, as you said. So what's the hardest thing about writing the supernatural for you?

Lucy: I think figuring out the rules. I'm not sure I did a great job of explaining that in A Little Night Magic because I hate explaining things. So, for a writer who hates explaining, I think it can be a challenge.

Jenny: I don't think you should explain. I think you show the reader the world and let her figure it out. Otherwise it's there's-gonna-be-a-quiz exposition. I think it's like talking to kids about sex. They really don't want to know everything, they just want to know enough to get them through whatever made the question arise. Explaining the whole mythology is just tedious for a reader.

Lucy: Yes, which I hate. But it's a tough line to ride. You want to give the reader a solid base to stand on, but I HATE those scenes where they sit and 'splain.

[Krissie enters the chat room]

Jenny: KRISSIE!

Lucy: KRISSIE! Yay!

Kristina: Jesus!

Jenny: No, just Jenny and Lucy.

Lucy: But we're close.

Kristina: lemme catch up. Keep tlaking

Jenny: No problem, I'm good at tlaking. Sometimes I tlak for hours.

Lucy: It's good for the soul.

Jenny: Which reminds me, I got you both vibrators for Christmas.

Lucy: LOL! What a segue!

Jenny: For your necks. Neck strain from typing. Really. I don't think they'd work other places.

Lucy:. Heh heh heh…

Jenny: Seriously. Where were we? Right, the supernatural.

Lucy: Yes, the explaining of the supernatural.

Jenny: So I'm against explaining. It's one of the reasons I like a protagonist who doesn't know what's going on. Because she's going to ask the questions the readers have.

Lucy: Yeah, but then you still have those hell scenes where she sits down and someone tells her what's going on. I did my best to make it a part of the story, but I found it challenging.

Jenny: Yes, but nobody wanted to tell Andie in Maybe This Time anything, she had to dig for it. Conflict scenes.

Lucy: What do you think is the hardest part of writing supernatural?

Jenny: Oh, I'm with you: working out the rules. I had a reviewer on Amazon bitch at me for making up my own ghost rules. Evidently there's a set of ghost rules already in place. Which is odd because I researched that and that's where I got my rules.

Kristina: I think that is the hardest part of writing paranormal. 'Splaining the rules without info dump.

Jenny: May told Andie things, but she only gave her part of the rules. Alice gave her some, but Alice was 8. I think. Andie had to dig and discover for herself. Oh, wait, I did do some explanation: there was that scene where Dennis told Andie the six kinds of ghosts. But I think that was an interaction not infodump because Andie was arguing with him. I figure if there's a different inexperienced protagonist in each book, the reader can learn along with her.

Lucy: I didn't feel like there were hell scenes in MTT. You did a good job with that. You can make the explanation part of the story, but you have to work at that. I tried in A Little Night Magic, but I didn't want to bog things down, and I may have erred on the side of "let 'em figure it out for themselves."

Kristina: It's even worse in a series. Because you have to do it every fucking time for people who haven't read earlier books, and you have to keep in mind what you said in the earlier books — the rules you make. For instance, in WARRIOR, which comes out in April, my hero lies to the heroine. He's the Archangel Michael, but I get to make up my own rules, and he lies to her. Unfortunately I set up in an earlier book that the Fallen Angels who make up the world can't easily lie. Can you imagine writing an entire book with an honest hero? Fortunately I skimmed back and I didn't come right out and say they can't lie. One of the earlier heroes says he can't, but of course he was lying.

Jenny: Krissie, was that the hardest part about writing the supernatural for you? I know you've done supernatural before.

Lucy:You've written everything, baby.

Kristina: Remembering world building. (I had ghosts in Night of the Phantom and time travel and selkies in series romances). It's the rules.

Jenny: Rules?

Kristina: Not tough designing the world, tough remembering. Making things consistent. You know, can you go out in sunlight, whose blood can you drink, where do the wings go, etc.

Jenny: That's one of my fears with the Liz series (not supernatural): what if I get to the fourth book and something I said in the first book boxes me in?

Kristina: You can't make one rule and then break it later on because the plot calls for it. You get trapped. I tried to write a bible but lost it in my office.

Lucy: People do wikis; little cross-referencing wikipedias that keep everything straight. I haven't figured out how to do that, but with a series, it seems like a good idea. A story bible.

Kristina: Yup, that's what I need.

Jenny: Ooooh, good, something else I can do instead of writing. I'm there.

Kristina: How do they organize it?

Lucy: You know how in Wikipedia, if one article mentions something else that's in Wikipedia, it links? It's like that. I don't know; I've tried a couple of times but never been able to wrap my mind around it.

Jenny: So we need a wiki for the fairy tale book we're going to do together. Cool.

Lucy: Yes, that would be great. I think Alastair understands them; maybe he can explain to us.

Jenny: I'm only going to do three ghost books, so I don't need a wiki. I think. Maybe This Time, You Again, and Haunting Alice. But I could use a wiki for the Liz books.

Kristina: What I love about writing supernatural is that you can write anything you damned please. The sky's the limit. You're always tapping into fairytales, even if it's not as obvious as Grimm, etc.

Jenny: That scares me. I like limits. That's why I liked using Henry James's ghosts. I like riffing off of what's gone before.

Lucy: I love the richness of it; the layers that the paranormal gives you.

Kristina: And it sort of brings you back to literal campfires from the beginning of man all the way to Girl Scouts and telling stories.

Jenny: Which is what all storytelling is, really.

Kristina: I love limits, because you can go wild within those limits. It's why I write genre. Cracks me up that someone on Amazon said "no, that's not what real ghosts do."

Jenny: Everybody's a critic. And I researched it. I read half a dozen books and had dinner with Katherine Ramsland. I'd have had dinner with Katherine anyway, I like her, but we talked ghosts the whole time. She's the Court TV ghost expert. She's on television. Jeez.

Lucy: Well, yeah, but it's GHOSTS. No one knows how ghosts work. They're ghosts. Not microwaves.

Jenny: I don't know how microwaves work.

Kristina: I don't want to know how microwaves work.

Lucy:. Yes, but SOMEONE does. And if you wrote how microwaves worked and were wrong, someone could call you on it.

Jenny: I'm good with microwaves being part of the supernatural. Explains that damn demon potato that almost burned the house down.

Lucy: There's no scientific consensus on ghosts, and it's fiction, so no one can tell you you're wrong, unless they're crazy, in which case… whatever.

Kristina: Here's a question. Why do you think people are so into paranormal/supernatural right now? There's a real hunger for it.

Lucy:I think it's because paranormal accesses a part of human psychology that you can't get into as easily in a realistic setting. Plus, super-powerful sex gods who want YOU. That, too.

Kristina: But why do readers want it now?

Jenny: I called this twenty years ago. It's the same reaction to an age of science and reason that happened at the end of the nineteenth. Romanticism as a reaction to the Enlightenment. Paranormal as a reaction to the computer age.

Lucy: I can see that, definitely.

Jenny: I was an academic then. I thought like that. But it's true: literature goes in cycles.

Lucy: The more scientific we get in our approach to the world, the more we crave something that speaks to the ethereal.

Jenny: Yep. When all the mysteries are solved we look for new mysteries.

Kristina: I think you've got a point. But I think it's something more visceral as well. I think it's a reaction to how overwhelming life is. How big. A lot of which comes from the internet, etc.

Jenny: The thing that goes bump in the night? Yeah. I think the thing that goes bump is always there. Horror fiction is always there. It's the popularity that shifts.

Lucy: But that balance makes sense. When the worldview gets too focused in one area, our ideals in fiction reach for the opposite.

Jenny: That and we want epic heroes.

Kristina: And life is hard. And not fair. If life is hard and not fair then changing the rules i.e. supernatural stuff gives us hope.

Lucy: Something to believe in.

Jenny: What we really need is intelligent congress-people, but what we want in our fiction is Indiana Jones facing down the Nazis and capturing the Ark. Plus there really are some things out there that we can't explain.

Lucy: Well, fiction in all its forms, paranormal or not, has that element of restoring justice to the world.

Kristina: Intelligent congress-people is speculative fiction.

Jenny: Depends on the fiction, but the kind of fiction I like does that. I just meant that what we really need does not make for great storytelling, it's what we want that has the juice.

Lucy: Real life is frustrating. The bad guys win and the good guys lose; fiction fixes that for us. Paranormal fiction fixes that in a big way.

Jenny: Although I lie: The West Wing was excellent. My point was that larger-than-life villains—Spike, the Mayor, Voldemort–make for larger-than-life heroes. One of the reasons I loved doing The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes was Xan. She chewed the scenery, but she could do that because she was larger than the scenery.

Kristina: Yup.

Lucy: I think the appeal of paranormal is cyclical, like the appeal of every genre, but I also think there's something bigger underneath. I think we feel the pull that the readers feel; the need to tell those big stories as well as read them. In the end, we're readers, too, and we tell the stories we want to read, but can't find.

Jenny: Right, we didn't decide to write the supernatural because it was popular, we did it because we were drawn to it. Or somebody else drew us to it. We all came to it in different ways for different reasons.

Kristina: Yup.

Jenny: I started when Krissie and Eileen and I did The Unfortunate Miss Fortunes. It wasn't a natural for me. I actually had to go back and put in the supernatural stuff. I had to keep telling myself, "She's a witch. She's going to do things differently." Same with the goddesses when we did Dogs and Goddesses. I could never remember what Shar's power was. Actually, I don't remember now. Oh, finishing things because she was the Mesopotamian Atropos. That was a fun power. Wish I had it.

Kristina: I think I started waaay back just throwing in stuff because the book called for it. Not centering the book around the supernatural, but bringing some in.

Jenny: What was your first supernatural book?

Kristina: I think Night of the Phantom. The hero's father was a ghost. At least, I think it was his father.

Lucy: I started by working magical realism into the books; the kinds of things that, in the end, the reader could choose to believe was psychic or magical or fate, but another reader seeing things a different way could see it as coincidence, and still the story would work in both worlds. Then I just decided to cross into real paranormal.

Jenny: Oh, I love magical realism. I tried to put it into Bet Me, but Jen had me take most of it out. She was right; I went too far and it unbalanced the book. But it was fun.

Lucy: Well, you had that lovely sense of Fate in Bet Me. I thought it was magical. Magical realism is really fun, but it's hard to ride that line.

Jenny: Fate was the antagonist in Bet Me. That was fun.

Kristina: I love magical realism as well. I actually read 100 Years of Solitude when it came out, loong ago. Probably had an influence.

Jenny: Like Water for Chocolate had a big influence on Bet Me. Especially the middle drafts. So writing the supernatural felt natural for both of you?

Kristina: I only write what feels natural. I'm a very instinctive writer.

Lucy: It was a natural move for me. I've always been fascinated with the spiritual/magical side of life. I think there are lots of things out there we can't quite explain, and I find that really interesting.

Jenny: The first three times I wrote the supernatural, it didn't feel natural but I was either collaborating or copying Henry James so I didn't have any choice. Which was good.

Lucy: I love the role of belief in magic.

Jenny: I love the role of belief, period.

Kristina: yup

Jenny: That whole if-you-build-it-they-will-come thing. Jump and the net will be there.

Lucy: Absolutely.

Jenny: That's so important in romance. You can't be safe, you just have to fling yourself into it.

Kristina: Absolutely. Which is why writers who play it safe make me crazy.

Jenny: None of my heroines ever want to fling themselves anywhere.

Kristina: No, of course, they don't. If they did there wouldn't be tension.

Jenny: Well, they're all such control freaks. Playing it safe in fiction is the worst thing you can do.

Kristina: It's a mortal sin.

Jenny: So here's a question about writing the supernatural: You have to let people know up front that the book is supernatural even if the protagonist doesn't know it. That's tough. I ended up having North tell Andie that the last nanny said the house was haunted. That was at least a hint, even if the reader thinks the last nanny was an idiot.

Kristina: Sunshine was interesting that way. You get the first chapter before you realize this is an alternative universe.

Jenny: You Again is the same way. Rose invites a medium to stay and she arrives in the first scene, but the ghost doesn't show up for awhile. I'm hoping that's going to be enough of a clue. Of course, when anybody's who's read MTT sees Isolde and Alice, that's going to be a tip-off, but I can't assume that's all readers. So how did you guys do it?

Kristina: In general I think I tend to have an ordinary woman suddenly noticing extraordinary circumstances. Sort of a play on the Hitchcock thing, of an ordinary person thrust into extraordinary circumstances. My heroines are just living their own lives when they realize that person was a ghost. Or that she's dead.

Jenny: I love that. "Oh, my god, I'm dead." That's a hook. It has to be in the first scene, right?

Kristina: Depends on how central the magic is. If it's just a touch of magic then it doesn't have to show up right away. I like hints and then suddenly, oh, my god, vampires are real kind of thing.

Lucy: I think you need to set up the promise of the book in the first scene; it's tough to suddenly pull someone into an alternate universe without even a clue. In A Little Night Magic, Davina tells Liv in the first scene: "You're magic." Liv doesn't believe it, but it's right there, and you know something's up.

Jenny: I agree. The reader has to know right off that bat that there's something hinky going on.

Kristina: Plus, the title. That's kind of a hint

Jenny: You could read "A Little Night Magic" as sexual. And I'm amazed that you didn't, Krissie.

Lucy: LOL, I hadn't really thought of it as sexual. I was just playing off A Little Night Music.

Jenny: So I'm the slut in the trio now?

Kristina: Yeah, I was thinking of A Little Night Music, too. You slut.

Lucy: Well, I didn't want to say anything, but you're the one buying everyone vibrators for Christmas…

Kristina: I wrote a book where the heroine is terrified that the hero is a vampire. He's not, but she spends most of the book trying to catch him. Then he bites her. Great book.

Jenny: Instead of "And then he kissed me," it's "And then he bit me."

Kristina: Yup. It's a hoot. Or course then she gets royally porked.

Jenny: Porked?

Lucy: LOL, royally porked. Which book, Krissie?

Kristina: The Demon Count. I think that and its sequel will be out as an e-book in late February.

Lucy: I'm assuming you mean fucked?

Kristina: Yeah, don't you know the word porked?

Lucy: I don't think I've heard it used in that context before, but I figured it out.

Jenny: I got that part, it was the usage that threw me. Royally porked. I saw the King Pig from Angry Birds. I need some brain bleach.

Lucy: Some things can't be unseen.

Kristina: You know, I never could envision the beast with two backs.

Jenny: I'm sure I can find a picture somewhere. It's actually two people . . .

Kristina: Yeah, but one back is usually on the mattress. Unless they're sitting astride. But that's not common

Lucy: Or against the wall.

Jenny: Or up against the wall.

Kristina: Ah, yes. Or on the kitchen counter.

Jenny: We're supposed to be talking about the supernatural.

Kristina: I went through a big phase of kitchen counters.

Lucy: Unless they're in a pool…

Jenny: The Supernatural. Jesus.

Kristina: Pools. Yum

Jenny: THE SUPERNATURAL. It's like herding ducks.

Lucy: LOL, okay. THE SUPERNATURAL.

Jenny: Let's regroup. We've talked about why we write supernatural, and the importance of tipping the reader off, and world building, right? Anything else about THE SUPERNATURAL?

Kristina: I'm loving my angels.. My brain is full of tangles of stories.

Jenny: My brain is full of people making smartass remarks to each other.

Kristina: With masses of sexual tension while they make smart ass remarks.

Jenny: Not so much since menopause. Now all they want to do is crafts.

Kristina: Plays are nothing but people talking to each other, basically. and plays that are comedies are people making smart ass comments. Nothing wrong with that.

Jenny: No, there has to be more. There has to be Stuff under it all.

Kristina: Shakespeare is people making smart ass comments (in some of them).

Lucy:. Dialogue is action. As long as they want something and they're using dialogue to try to get it, you're good.

Kristina: Of course. And you have stuff under it. Don't you think Shakespeare does?

Jenny: Shakespeare always has Stuff. Which brings me back to THE SUPERNATURAL. It's not enough just to have things that go bump in the night, there has to be Stuff underneath. Right?

Kristina: Yes. It has to speak to a basic human need/fear/something.

Lucy: Shakespeare wrote supernatural. How's that for keeping it on topic, Crusie? I'm here for you.

Jenny: You're fabulous, Lani. Good girl.

Kristina: Teacher's pet

Jenny: I love you, too, Krissie.

Kristina: sniff.

Lucy: Of course. Everyone loves Krissie.

Jenny: I think the way the characters react to the supernatural has to reveal something about who they are, too. And what they believe. Once you start messing around with reality, you'd better have a belief system in place.

Kristina: Beneath the supernatural it has to answer questions like life after death or why things are scary and how love is bigger than death.

Jenny: Right. You can't just say, "You know what's cool? Vampires," and run with that. I thought the Buffy and Angel series did that part well. These myths and legends have powers because they've been around so long. Attention must be paid to that.

Kristina: You betcha. Part of the great conscious/unconscious Joseph Campbell shit. They play out over and over again.

Lucy: Well, the myths and legends speak to something much deeper in human nature, and human psychology. You're tapping into something real and very powerful when you use those myths in the writing.

Jenny: I mean, vampires drink blood. That's not a socially acceptable thing to do. So they can go against their natures and hit the local Red Cross and drink from bottles, but it's not who they are. You can't slap a band aid on the vampire myth and say, "And now they're nice people." It emasculates the myth. Neuters the myth? Although the vampire myth is pretty male.

Lucy: That's the whole point of writing vampires, to access that deeper mythology, and draw on that power for your story. So if you neuter the vampire–unless you're doing a Spike-style story about how it doesn't make him less dangerous in the end anyway–you take away the value of telling that story to begin with.

Kristina: Vampires take the life essence of the one they love. They suck it down, draining them, and the mythology is what do they give back? How does it make a bond and not a predator? Of course, I like predators.

Jenny: And mimes.

Kristina: Bitch. He was the villain, you know.

Jenny: Oh, I thought he was the hero. Never mind, carry on.

Lucy: Even Krissie can't make a hero out of a mime. The myth exists to talk about vampires metaphorically, not realistically. If you take away the danger, you take away the resonance.

Kristina: I explained a few years ago that I wrote emotional vampires. That my killer heroes were a kind of vampire.

Jenny:Absolutely on the emotional vampires. Metaphorical vampires. But if you're going to write the real thing, there's gonna be blood.

Kristina: It's like the glittery hoo-ha. Having the perfect blood. Did either of you see or read Twilight?

Jenny: I think I'm too old for Twilight.

Kristina: The whole point was it was "her" blood. He smelled it and couldn't resist. It was the perfect blood for him.

Jenny: Pheromones. Or however you spell that.

Kristina: I like stalker vampires.

Jenny: The stalker isn't romantic. Although John Cusack with that boombox was technically stalking. I like my vampires smart-mouthed and laid back. Which is why I don't write vampires. Whatever else you're gonna say about vampires, they're intense.

Kristina: When you say stalker, it throws everything into a nasty mode. I like predatory. Coming after you. Hot and gorgeous. Yum.

Jenny: Predatory isn't nasty?

Kristina: It is, but not if you tap into the myth part of it. Like the rape fantasy. You play around with it. Maybe because there's a real fear and if you turn it into a fantasy it takes the fear away? I don't know. I just know I like a lot of politically incorrect fantasies. It's part of a basic myth that works for me.

Jenny: Oh, right, the rape metaphor, being overwhelmed, ravished, so it's not your fault or responsibility. By George Clooney.

Kristina: Or Brad Pitt. Or Spike. Spike is predatory. Deliciously so. That kind of predatory.

Jenny: Yeah, he is. But he's also stalking the Slayer, not Willow.

Lucy: Well, stalking is in the eye of the beholder. In Twilight, she loved him, so it wasn't stalking to her – it was him being protective. Actually, stalking is in the eye of the stalked, I mean.

Kristina: Yup. Stalking definitely is in the eye of the stalked. If there's an icky feeling it won't work. And yes, stalking the Slayer, not Willow.

Jenny: I did that in Crazy For You. The hero and the bad guy did essentially the same thing; the difference was that she wanted the hero. That's another problem with the supernatural: it upsets the balance of power. You have to make a heroine who's really strong and smart because she's up against things who have powers she doesn't.

Kristina: She has to find her own powers. Create her own powers. To fight these larger than life powers.

Jenny: I mean, it makes for great antagonists, but your heroine can't just go all limp and be swept away. She has to fight as an equal, even if it takes her awhile to get there. She has to be Buffy-esque.

Kristina: Yes.

Lucy: She has to have power, it may not be the same power, but she has to be able to stand up to what she's around.

Jenny: I agree. I also may be babbling at this point. Is there anything else about the supernatural you guys wanted to talk about?

Kristina: Nope. I think I'll go back to sleep.

Jenny: LOL. Lani?

Lucy: I'm good. And Krissie needs sleep.

Kristina: Love you guys. Nighty-night!

Lucy:. Love you, too! Night!

Jenny: Thank you all for playing and good night!

Coming up in January in Three Goddess Chats: Brainstorming with Collage and Soundtracks, Heroes and Heroines, Writing First Chapters, and analyzing Book Covers.

Lucy March's A Little Night Magic will be out from St. Martin's Press on January 31, 2012.



Kristina Douglas's Raziel and Demon are out now;Warrior will be out in April 2012.



Jenny Crusie's You Again and Lavender's Blue will be out from St. Martin's Press a year after she finishes them; when is anybody's guess.

The Three-Goddesses Chat: Romantic Comedy

This is the first in a series of Three Goddess Chats, brought to you by Krissie (Anne Stuart), Lucy (Lucy March aka Lani Diane Rich), and Jenny (Jenny Crusie), who meet every now and then in a chat-room called ThreeGoddesses to talk about everything. Krissie doesn't write romantic comedy so this is actually a Two-Goddess post, but she'll be here tomorrow for the supernatural romance chat. This one is Lucy and Jenny trying to synthesize everything they learned watching romantic comedy movies for nine months for their Popcorn Dialogues podcasts, although they tend to veer off into talking about writing romance in general.

Jenny: So what have we learned from nine months of PopD, Lucy? First: character. Character, character, character.

Lucy: Character is sacred. Always.

Jenny: In a rom com, it's because it sells why we should want these two characters to be together, and why we care desperately if they're not. In It Happened One Night, you really want them together, especially after the scene in the motel where they pretend to be married. I think that's key, making the reader really need for these two people to be together.

Lucy: Absolutely. And how is the humor handled. It should come from character, not from jokes. That's a comedy with a romance tacked on.

Jenny: A shared sense of humor is one way to show they're in sync. They're laughing at the same things. Think It Happened One Night, Desk Set, Two Weeks Notice. That's one way to keep the reader wanting them together: they're not just working together, they're fun to be with, both for each other and for the reader.

Lucy: Laughing at the same things – not at each other. No humiliation (Two Weeks Notice, I'm looking at you.)

Jenny: Yes, but HE didn't humiliate her.

Lucy: You're right; he didn't humiliate her, the writers did. Grrrr. If you're talking about writing romantic comedy, I think you need to have an awareness of where the humor comes from.

Jenny: If we're talking about the relationship, that was a good one. They understood each other. And not just the sense of humor. They had a short hand when they talked. The whole beets-beets-beets thing. So what have we learned from this, Dorothy? We have to care about the people. Which means the people have to be human (Allegra and Albert, not Hitch and Whosis from Hitch)

Lucy: Sara. Hitch and Sara. Not that we cared. Anyway, one of the big oh-my-god moments while we were doing PopD for me was that the characters had to work well together. It wasn't enough to have I'm hot-you're-hot-let's-be-hot-together. I wanted to see them working together and enjoying each other, being good apart but better together.

Jenny:Yes. That's one way the relationship develops: working together, shared sense of humor, establishment of in-jokes/private language.

Lucy: It Happened One Night was the first time I consciously realized that, but we saw it in a lot of other movies as well, and it was always great. It's important to have obstacles, have antagonists and things getting in the way, but if two people default to a positive, strong and competent working relationship, it's wonderful.

Jenny:If they stick together when they hit the bumps, that's great.

Lucy: Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy in Desk Set. When they went on the roof to talk business and eat their sandwiches, it was a thing of beauty.

Jenny: I think that's why the Big Misunderstanding never works. If they were really in sync, they'd solve the Big Misunderstanding right away.

Lucy: Yeah, when obstacles make the relationship stronger, it's wonderful. When they pull together instead of apart.

Jenny: Desk Set is a shining example of that Working Together Rule.

Lucy: That's exactly why the Big Misunderstanding—along with The Big Lie—drives me crazy. I don't want them together in that case.

Jenny:Oh, lies are off the table. I hate liars. So let's get practical. How did you use that in A Little Night Magic. No spoilers.

Lucy: It's funny, because I was writing A Little Night Magic while we were doing PopD, so I was constantly looking at that relationship with Liv and Tobias. They actually worked together, so they had a nice rapport, even in the first scene when an unexpected customer comes in and sets off the events of the book. He's a short-order cook, and she's a waitress. But when the magic hits, they work well with that, too, and the understood each other. There's a moment in the climax that I just love, which I won't talk about because it's in the climax and SPOILERS, but they read each other without words and it's that working together that saves the day.

Jenny: That was a great relationship right from the start. I was always rooting for Tobias, even when you were going to have Liv end up with somebody else. I just loved the way they worked and joked together in that first scene.

Lucy: Yeah, I went through a lot of variations on that book! But Tobias won out; everyone was rooting for him!

Jenny: Talk about that first scene, how you established that relationship through work.

Lucy: The opening scene starts with Liv and Tobias closing up together. They do their work quietly, while having an intense discussion about something else entirely… actually, about Liv's feelings for Tobias, which she acknowledges to him right from the start. It's because she's crazy about him and thinks he'll never feel the same about her that she's leaving town, which has him upset. And that, of course, moves us into the "Always Honest" part of the discussion…

Jenny: I loved how comfortable they were with each other, right from the start. And the working together thing, serving people food, which is nurturing and not the way romance heroes are usually introduced. Tobias is just a great guy and a great match for Liv. I can't believe you though she was going to end up with somebody else.

Lucy: They also work really well together when it comes to the magic; he knows a lot more about it than she does, has more experience with it, so that's where they do really well. So, your characters in You Again, how are they working together? It's Zelda and Sam, right?

Jenny: Well, it's Zelda and somebody. The name "Sam" isn't working, possibly because I already wrote a Sam. But yes, Zelda and her Significant Other work together in You Again. It's a three part structure, and in the first part, Zelda doesn't want anything to do with him, but they have to go grocery shopping together, and the way they work that is a good foreshadowing, I think. They're shopping for a family dinner, and the family is nuts, so they have to figure out what's going to make everybody happy plus please a very fussy cook. It was fun, mostly because I could move them from not-in-sync–neither one of them wants to grocery shop–to catching each other's rhythms and laughing. Then in the second and third acts they're working together to find out who Zelda's father is and who's trying to kill her while also working out a relationship that's become sexual and compelling. So it's an escalating work relationship that echoes the sexual relationship. I love work relationships: they're really fun to do because it's such a great structure to build the romance on, beyond the damn-you're-hot method which doesn't really work without that emotional component.

Lucy: Yeah, you see so much of the "I'm hot, you're hot, let's be hot together," thing that I wonder who that works for. It has to be about who they are; being hot doesn't make a good couple. Something so simple like grocery shopping—or the beets-beets-beets thing in Two Weeks Notice—can give you so much insight into how two people work together. It doesn't even have to be the focus of the scene, it's just how they work together, how you show the relationship growing.

Jenny:Well, being hot works in real life for Friday night. And in reality, we are first attracted to the physical. But that lasts about two seconds once the other person speaks or acts. Mel Gibson is still technically good-looking, but he makes my skin crawl. William Macy is not handsome, but I'll watch him in anything. Personality. And when you have two people with very attractive personalities, then you have fun watching them connect.

Lucy: Yeah, which is why I can't get behind a whole relationship that's based on pretty. And it's also why, I think, the Beauty and the Beast trope works so well, because it's about what's underneath. Of course, in the end, he's hot, but… what are you gonna do?

Jenny: I loved Liv because she was so positive without being a Pollyanna. She was just a good person, taking care of her customers. And then Tobias was another really good person, working hard, looking out for Liv. They were relaxed together, and it was just lovely to be with them on the page.

Lucy: And in a book, what we really see are the personalities together. A reader can make them look however they want in her head; when you're reading and getting into someone's deep thoughts, the personality has to be there.

Jenny: Well, the thing is, in the end, the loved one is hot even if he doesn't transform into a prince. He's hot or she's hot because you're in love.

Lucy: Absolutely; it's the love that makes them hot. Which is why it's fun to work with female characters who have, like most of us, body image issues. When he loves her not despite her looks, but because it's part of the whole package that is her, it's wonderful.

Jenny: Exactly. "She's really cute" on the page is not the same as watching Emma Stone shut down Justin Timberlake with "It's not you, it's me. I don't like you anymore." Although come to think of it, that's speech again. If she'd been a humorless bitch, I wouldn't have liked her even though she's beautiful. Speech and action. The whole looks thing is a non-starter in fiction anyway because readers imagine their own character images. I can say a hero is not that good-looking, but they'll imagine him handsome anyway because he's got a great personality.

Lucy: So, you have an advantage; you've read A Little Night Magic, and I haven't read any of the new You Again. Sam and Zelda are great characters; how are their personalities coming out on the page?

Jenny: Do you realize I started that book in 2003?

Lucy: I know, and I adored the stuff you wrote then. I still remember it; Zelda and James (he was James then) sitting on a roof with their backs against each other. After eight years, I remember that. That's good writing.

Jenny: Oh, the backs thing was when they were teenagers; it was a memory. Wow, you're good.

Lucy: No, you're good. I don't remember just anything. So, how are Zelda and Sam different now?

Jenny:Well, Sam is getting a name change again. You know it's tough coming up with names after twenty-some books. I don't know how Krissie does now that she's well over a hundred stories. Anyway, the hero used to be long-suffering James, a lawyer. Then he was smart-mouthed Sam, a hostage negotiator because, as he said, with his family he got his training early. Now, I don't know, I just can't seem to get him. I can see him, I just can't quite get him. The good thing is, he's loosened up, much more relaxed. Zelda, on the other hand, has tightened up: before she didn't want things. She didn't want to go to Rosemore, she didn't want to stay, she didn't want . . . Negative goals. So I had a Schmoo for a hero and a negative heroine. Surprisingly, they didn't really connect on the page. Also, not funny. And now, no name.

Lucy: Names are critical. I think people who aren't writers can be surprised by that. I once had a character I couldn't write until I changed her name from Emma to Flynn. And you had that with Maybe This Time, you had to change Emmeline to Andie, right?

Jenny: Yes. I really had to wrestle that character to the ground, but the name made all the difference. Character again.

Lucy: Zelda and Sam knew each other before, when they were kids, right? I love a story with history. Does that familiarity help them work well together?

Jenny:Well, the whole I-loved-you-once is really powerful because it means they connected before so their connection this time is going to have a path to follow. But you still have to show it on the page, show why they connect. In this case, it's because they're both fixers, they take care of things. That's a really lonely job if there's one of you, but if there's two, it becomes a power structure, a bond, and the work brings you closer. It's that working together thing again.

Lucy: Which brings us to another topic for building great romcom characters – competence. Zelda and Sam are both good at what they do, and that matters. Seeing how people conduct themselves in their arenas is really important.

Jenny: I agree: what characters do makes a difference. (Mimes, anyone?) I love that Tobias and Liv work to feed people. I usually pay attention to what my characters do, but the whole PopD thing made me pay attention to how their careers work off of each other.

Lucy: Well, it feeds in to who they are. Hildy and Walter from His Girl Friday are a great example of that.

Jenny: Oh, absolutely, their working relationship is key. I love that way of evolving a relationship in rom com. You nailed it coming out of the gate in A Little Night Magic: Liv and Tobias feed people and take care of the town. That's so powerful.

Lucy: With Tobias and Liv, their jobs are about being part of the community. They both live at the heartbeat of the community, and when the community is in trouble, that's when they come out together to save it. It was fun having them in that role.

Jenny: I loved the fact that the pancake house is the center of the town. People go there to eat and to talk to Liv and Tobias. So it's my two favorite things in romance plots: community and working together.

Lucy: So what else do we know about romantic comedy? I think where the humor comes from is a big thing. It has to come from character, I think. Like your line from Sam: He got his hostage negotiator training in early from his family. That says so much about him, and it's so funny, but it's not a joke.

Jenny: Absolutely, humor has to come from the characters' sense of humor. Humor can be dangerous. You can't have your romcom protagonists making fun of anybody unless he or she REALLY deserves it. Makes them too mean. But humor as a defense works just fine; they don't get mad, they crack jokes. The big thing about that in rom com, I think, is that shared sense of humor.

Lucy: One of my favorite scenes in A Little Night Magic is when Tobias is trying to feed waffles to Liv. She keeps eating, because they're delicious, but arguing with herself the whole way about the calories and how much she'll have to work out to make up for it, and he just looks at her and says, "Is this the way women really think?" and she informs him that it's varsity-level self-loathing, and Tobias just makes her eat. It was really fun, because it was so Liv, and it's fun to have that banter which isn't based on mutual antagonism.

Jenny: I love that. Well, men feeding women is always great, but that caretaking role. "Someone to watch over me," but not in a controlling way, somebody who laughs with the heroine. It's that shared moment that's not sex but love. Sometimes I look at what I'm writing and think, "This isn't funny. I'm supposed to be funny." But you can't add humor to a story, it's either in there, in the characters, or it's not.

Lucy: Humor is so tied to how you see the world. If they don't find the same things funny, they won't make it. It's fun to have those moments where they're getting to know each other, and they fall into the banter honestly, in sync. I can't connect with the banter where people snipe at each other; it's more fun when it's done with affection.

Jenny: Absolutely. Banter is a co-operative thing, not a battle. It's a game.

Lucy: You can't focus on the jokes, and you can't try to be funny. When you're trying to be funny, you run the risk of sacrificing character for the joke–making them do something they'd never do, which breaks the book–and that isn't funny in the end, anyway. Humor grows organically. Like mold.

Jenny: Don't say mold. Mold is expensive. Say "like kudzu". Or something. But I like the humor in conversations where they're discussing/arguing, too. I think using humor while you're trying to understand somebody is another way to communicate. "I don't understand a damn thing you've told me, but I'm trying."

Lucy: Oh, sorry. I touched on a soft spot for the new homeowner. Poor baby. I think having humor is great, but when you think, "I need to be funny!" you get in trouble. Or, at least, I do. I don't try to be funny; my characters amuse me, and I catch it on the page sometimes. That's the best I can do.

Jenny: There's a scene in You Again where Sam hits on Zelda for the first time. And she explains to him that she finds him very attractive but the whole sex thing is such a hassle and she has enough problems right now, plus they're not going to see each other again because she's leaving tomorrow, so what's the point? And Sam says, "What's the point? Really?"

Lucy: See THAT'S funny, because it says so much about both of them.

Jenny: And they go from there and because of the conversation and the way it goes, Zelda really does weaken because he's funny and he's listening to her. She still says no, but it's a good clue for the reader that Sam's going to get to the point.

Lucy: And it also shows that Zelda has not had really good sex. Because I'm with Sam on that one.

Jenny: It's not that Zelda hasn't had good sex. It's that she's trapped in a house where people are trying to use her, and she's fighting with her best friend, and she's trying to find out who her dad is because she has a blood disease, and twenty people want her to fix something, and now this guy she hasn't seen in fifteen years wants to have sex and that's another damn thing she'd have to deal with. And she's leaving the next day, so what's the point? She just doesn't have the time or the energy. Priorities.

Lucy: Still with Sam.

Jenny: I think they're both right, but I like it that they end up seeing each other's point, and that it moves them closer together than having a quickie in the pantry would.

Lucy: This is true, and it's fun to be in on the ride from A to B. So, here's another thing we got from the Romantic Comedy Store – the Big Declaration. What do you think about that?

Jenny: Well, I think there has to be a Big Declaration because that's the climax. Not as sure about the Public Declaration. We had a discussion here on Argh about that, and I'm actually torn. I think some of the declarations in movies are stupid because they're out of character, but I do think there's value in stating your intentions before the community. That pretty much burns any break-up bridges.

Lucy: Here's the thing about the Big Declaration and I'm not sure if this is legit, but it's a thought I had. The man has to make the Big Declaration because unless he's willing to say it big and say it in public (after a Rom Com Run, of course) it doesn't mean anything. It's just words, and a guy can say 'I love you,' but in order to be really believed, he has to show it. Again, not sure I agree with that entirely, but it's a theory I'm playing with to explain why it's so prevalent. What do you think?

Jenny: I agree. When Sam stands up at a family dinner and announces that he's spending the rest of his life with Zelda, it complicates my plot nicely but it also says he's serious. I like that in a guy. Of course, Zelda wishes he'd asked her first but it's in character for him. The ones I object to are the ones that make no sense or that violate character. The ones that work, work because the story and the character demands it.

Lucy: Yes, many of them are out of character, or ridiculous, but I do think there's a place for the Big Gesture/Public Declaration.

Jenny: Like the press conference declaration in Notting Hill. It's the only way he can get to her, plus he's hurt her badly, so even though he's a very reticent guy, he's going to have to put it out there to get her back. That one works for me. I'm not sure it's always the man, though. There's that thing from Crazy Time by Abigail Trafford about in every relationship, there is one who kisses and one who is kissed. And I think it's powerful if it's the one who is kissed who makes the declaration. It balances all the chasing.

Lucy: Seems like it's usually the guy, isn't it?

Jenny: Yeah, I think it is usually the guy, although there have been some awful Girl Declarations.

Lucy: Interesting. I always thought it had to be the guy because he wants sex, and he's getting sex, and saying he loves her gets him the sex, so he'll say it whether he means it or not. He needs the Public Declaration because that's the proof. Again, not certain about it yet… just chewing it over.

Jenny: That whole I'll-do-anything-to-get-sex is interesting; I've watched two TV shows in the past week that had that: an episode of The Big Bang Theory and an episode of The Unusuals. And in both cases, when the guy confessed he'd done something so she'd like him and go to bed with him, the girl said, "You'd have gotten sex anyway." Although in The Big Bang Theory, Leonard goes on to say, "You'd have had sex with me after I made you watch a documentary on dams?" and Penny says, "No. No woman would." I love that show.

Lucy: LOL. I need to watch that.

Jenny: So does Liv declare at the end or does Tobias? It's no spoiler that they're going to get together; it would be too cruel if they didn't.

Lucy: Well, obviously they get together. And throughout the story, she's in love with him and they both know it. What they don't know is that he's in love with her. There's nothing terribly public, but he makes a big gesture at the end, which would be spoilery if I told you, and once he does that, there's no question that he loves her. And she ends up declaring herself to him at the end, so they sort of share it. But he's not big on talking, so it's his actions that speak. He says he loves her, too, but that's just words. I like for my characters to show it in their actions; that's more important to me.

Jenny: Ah, Public Declaration Through Action. Much better.

Lucy: Action is really where the truth is. People lie with words, but actions don't lie.

Jenny: Especially for guys.

Lucy: Right.

Jenny: So you mentioned the Rom Com Run awhile back. The big action finish. I never do those in fiction. Do you? The run to tell the other person he or she is loved?

Lucy: Yes, the Rom Com Run. At midnight. Extra points for New Year's Eve. I can't think of a time I've done that, no. But maybe it's more in film than books? It's a visual thing.

Jenny: You're a Harry-Met-Sally slut, aren't you? I still say that was stupid.

Lucy: But there's that sudden realization, and I must tell you now!

Jenny: But we're talking about action. I think it's because the run is basically stupid.

Lucy: Yes, I love When Harry Met Sally. No, I would not classify myself as a slut. Yes, it was kinda dumb. I love it anyway. Plblblblbbbt.

Jenny: The actions that matter are those that have meaning, not just running to tell somebody something. Catch a cab, for god's sake.

Lucy: Honestly. You think she's going to want to kiss you when you're all sweaty? Please.

Jenny: They can be really exciting on film but they die on paper.

Lucy: They do.

Jenny: Or the run in Morning Glory where it's 10AM and she's running through NYC in a prom dress and heels. I love that movie but that was a stupid Rom Com Run.

Lucy: I think it's a movie thing. The visual urgency of it.

Jenny: But there is a scene in that movie that I think might be comparable, when she realizes what an idiot she's been walking out on Patrick Wilson. You don't see her running to the apartment, you just see him opening the door, and she hits him full tilt and knocks him back against the wall, kissing him. That's the kind of rom com run you can put on paper. But I don't think I ever have.

Lucy: Yeah, and that was fun. I liked that. I don't think I have, either.

Jenny: At the end of the first Liz book, Liz is in physical danger and Vince comes running in to save her, but it's to save her, not to tell her he loves her.

Lucy: Rushing to save her is different. That's the action of the book. I've had a couple running to rescues, but not running to declare. My guys are a little more laid back about that. They declare in their own good time.

Jenny: But at the end of the book, in the resolution, Liz is leaving town, and he pulls her over (he's a cop) because she was leaving without saying good-bye, and he gives her something she'd asked for at the beginning of the book. She still leaves, but his actions make her realize she's going to have to come back to him. So that's a kind of rom com run. With sirens. Sirens are always good, I think.

Lucy: Sirens are excellent. Oh, I did have a midnight run on New Year's Eve! In The Fortune Quilt. But she took a cab. I guess that counts.

Jenny: That counts. The Run part is symbolic.

Lucy: Oh, good! I get the extra points!

Jenny: Yes, Lucy, you get the extra points.

Lucy: Yay!

Jenny: Jeez.

Lucy: What? I'm competitive. I like points.

Jenny: So let's talk about how we learned to avoid shopping at The Rom Com Store, buying into the cliches that make rom com readers scream. There's The Rom Com Run, The Big Misunderstanding, The Cute Dorky Heroine We Like To Make Fun Of . . .

Lucy: You mean the Manic Pixie Dream Girl? Played in everyone's heads by Zooey Deschanel?

Jenny: No, I'm okay with the MPDG because sometimes she works. I mean the heroine who's Too Dumb Too Live with a Side Order of Klutz so that the reader laughs at her.

Lucy: Oh, yeah. She's bad.

Jenny: Perfect example: The dinner scene in The Ugly Truth where she's wearing the vibrator panties and loses the remote and the kid at the next table picks it up . . . I just threw up in my mouth a little typing that. Don't make fun of your heroine. Stupid is not funny, it's sad.

Lucy: Absolutely. I think using anyone as the butt of a joke is bad – mean-spirited humor reveals a mean spirit in the book, and that's no fun – but humiliating your heroine undercuts her as the protagonist.

Jenny: And it's also demeaning to women. I'm talking heroines. You can have all the stupid supporting character you want. Well, the hero and heroine can't make fun of stupid people. Other people in the book can. We're not writing The Book of Saints here.

Lucy: You absolutely can, although I have a hard time with making fun of people in general. I mean, if you have an ass for a supporting character, and they make their own problems, that's one thing. But I hate mean-spirited humor; the fat jokes, the ugly jokes, the stupid jokes. They bug me.

Jenny: Sam's youngest cousin in You Again, Ruby, is one of those people who was born without a filter: she thinks it, she says it. The rest of the family get exasperated with her, but Sam and Zelda both just accept that that's Ruby.

Lucy: I think bad people bring their karma on themselves, and they get what they deserve. I don't like it when someone's vulnerable, and they're used as the butt of jokes. Like the fat cheerleader scene in Dodgeball. That's what I'm talking about.

Jenny: Right, but having a character make the fat jokes can characterize that character. You want a bad guy, have him make a fat joke. Although I had a bad guy make a mean joke in Welcome to Temptation and a lot of people thought it was funny. Of course the person he made the joke about deserved it. Hmmmm. Just can't be the protagonists.

Lucy: Yes, exactly. But in that case, it's supposed to be bad. When the POV characters do stuff like that, for the sake of a joke, I think it undercuts them. I'm not about writing saints; they annoy me. But mean-spirited humor will make me not respect them anymore.

Jenny: Oh, the Dodgeball cheerleader. One of two flaws in an otherwise perfect movie. Dodgeball is a good example because it violated the spirit of the movie. A movie about the underdog was making fun of the underdog. So you have to make sure that if you're making a fat joke or whatever, that it's clear that it's from a character the world of the book doesn't approve of, that that character violates the worldview of the story/protagonists.

Lucy: Exactly; that's why you have to be careful about where your humor comes from. When you're trying for jokes, you can fall prey to that kind of humor. Humor grows organically. Like… kudzu.

Jenny: But you know, you're right. You have to be careful even then.

Lucy: Did you see how I didn't mention the mold? See how sensitive I'm being?

Jenny:You're trying hard. STOP SAYING "MOLD."

Lucy: Okay. I'll stop saying mold. Whoops.

Jenny: Fortunately, I have learned patience rooming with you. How about The Big Misunderstanding? I hate that one. By the end, if these two people haven't learned to communicate, they're never going to.

Lucy: The Big Misunderstanding/The Lie. Let's talk about that. About NOT doing that. That drives me crazy.

Jenny: Well, lies are off the table. Anybody who lies in a relationship is stabbing it in the heart.

Lucy: I had so much fun in A Little Night Magic making Liv completely straightforward about everything. She never lies to Tobias, or to anyone. She lays everything out, and I really enjoyed writing her that way.

Jenny: I know. Liz never lies. Ever. I didn't realize how hard that was going to be until I started writing it because she doesn't even do the white lies, but it's one of the things that fascinates Vince. She never ever lies.

Lucy: The Big Misunderstanding is also a false form of conflict. If the conflict between two people can be cleared up by a conversation, it's bad conflict. "That woman I had my arm around? That's what you were so upset about? That was my SISTER!" Argh. Friends played really nicely with that once. A guy Rachel was dating had a woman in his apartment, and it was cleared up right away that she was his sister, but then he was REALLY creepily inappropriate with her. That was funny.

Jenny: I remember that. It was. It was funnier because it played with that stupid trope, turned it on its head. There was a scene in an episode of The Unusuals where the protagonist is told that somebody saw her guy out with another woman the night before. And the next scene is her meeting said guy at a restaurant and saying, "Who were you out with last night?" I love that protagonist.

Lucy: I loved The Unusuals. I'm still heartbroken about that getting cancelled.

Jenny: Me, too. Plus then you get to real conflict. In that Unusuals episode, the guy said, "Look, we never said we were exclusive, and you hate going out to expensive restaurants. You hate my life. That's not good for me." And he was right. Real problems trump fake problems.

Lucy: Have your characters be direct; there's so much more opportunity for fun there.

Jenny: Absolutely.

Lucy: Oh! And that terrible scene in Friends with Benefits where she overhears him saying things he doesn't mean to his sister, and then leaves and doesn't tell him she heard, all the while hiding in his nephew's saw-the-woman-in-half box. And then we had to sit through a bunch of stupid magic tricks to set it up. Blech.

Jenny: Oh, dear god, that was awful. Terrible start to that move, great middle, terrible ending. Of course, without the Big M, you have to come up with real conflict. In You Again, Sam and Zelda are really up front with each other and therefore have no problems. Thank God somebody's trying to kill her.

Lucy: Which is why you need an antagonist.

Jenny: Exactly. Come to think of it, somebody's trying to kill Liz, too. And isn't somebody trying to kill Liv? Take something from her that will kill her? What every rom com needs: a homicidal maniac.

Lucy: Absolutely. Threat of imminent death does a lot to move a romance along. We don't have all day here. The Big Bads in A Little Night Magic aren't really trying to kill Liv, so much as Liv dying is a consequence of what they're trying to do. So she needs Tobias's protection, and he's trying to stay level-headed without getting involved. But he loves her. He can't help it.

Jenny: But does he know she's going to die if he doesn't stop them?

Lucy: He can't stop them; only she can. He can help her. Which is another thing I like; no one rescues Liv. She rescues herself. But Tobias needs to help her, and he always lets her find her own strength. I love that about him.

Jenny: And real conflict tends to blot out Big Misunderstandings anyway. "Somebody's trying to kill me and you're saving me: I don't give a rat's ass who you might have had dinner with last night." The Big Misunderstanding is almost always a patch to cover the There's-No-Conflict hole.

Lucy: Right. It's a relative scale. If your biggest problem is that your boyfriend had dinner with a woman who may or may not have been his sister last night, you don't have big problems.

Jenny: It really goes back to that working together thing. If you've worked with somebody and you know them, you're less likely to be dumb about misunderstandings.

Lucy: The Big Misunderstanding is jazz hands. There's no conflict here. Ta-daaaaaaaaa.

Jenny: LOL. I thought snappy patter was jazz hands.

Lucy: Well, if there's any trust in the relationship, you don't have Big Misunderstandings. You ask. "Hey, who'd you have dinner with last night?" Boom. Done. On to bigger things. Like the crazy person who wants me dead.

Jenny: It's more of "This is not the conflict you were looking for."

Lucy: Yes, the Jedi mind trick of RomCom.

Jenny: Exactly. Can you think of anything else?

Lucy: Respecting each other is a huge thing.

Jenny: Absolutely. And trusting each other. Oh, light bulb moment. The Big Misunderstanding doesn't work because it shows a lack of trust and respect.

Lucy: If she thinks he's an oaf, it's done. If he thinks she's an idiot, it's done. Absolutely. It's all connected together. Like that big mushroom.

Jenny: If either one thinks the other would cheat, they're done. What big mushroom? There's a mushroom?

Lucy: The big mushroom. The one that goes for miles and it looks like a bunch of different mushrooms, but it's really one big organism under the earth. Trust, respect, and no misunderstandings; one big mushroom. And hey, I didn't say mold.

Jenny: I was not previously aware of this mushroom.

Lucy: Dude. Scientific American.

Jenny: You read Scientific American?

Lucy: No. But I read blogs by people who read Scientific American.

Jenny: Ah.

Lucy: You know six degrees of separation? I'm two degrees of smart.

Jenny: Excellent.

Lucy: I find a low bar benefits everyone.

Jenny: Well, the internet is a low bar. Especially the way I use it.

Lucy: Hey, you subscribe to Psychology Today. I've seen it in the kitchen.

Jenny: That's for fiction. You can get some pretty fine character ideas in that sucker.

Lucy: Still. Smart. You have to be. You're most of my one degree.

Jenny: We never see anybody else. We're most of both of our degrees. We should get out more.

Lucy: We really should.

Jenny: So what we learned from PopD: Character first. Working together. Shares senses of humor. Trust. No Big Misunderstandings. RomCom Runs only if absolutely necessary and in character. Humor from character. Public declarations from character. Banter as a game, not a battle. Is that it?

Lucy: Well, that and remember: It's all one big mushroom.

Lucy March's A Little Night Magic will be out from St. Martin's Press on January 31, 2012.



Jenny Crusie's You Again and Lavender's Blue will be out from St. Martin's Press a year after she finishes them; when is anybody's guess.

Rules for a Classic Mystery

We're starting the new Popcorn Dialogues mystery series with The Thin Man, and I'm still discovering my way through Liz's first murder mystery, so now is a good time to go back to the roots of Golden Age Mystery Fiction, classic mystery fiction, and see what the rules were. (We'll be doing other forms of mystery–noir, romantic suspense, supernatural, etc–but to begin with, we're looking at the classic form.) There are two classic rules lists, one by Ronald Knox in 1929 and the other by S.S. Van Dyne in 1928, and although times have changed and so has the mystery, there are still some keepers on there. From those lists I came up with five basic classic mystery rules:

Rule One: The protagonist of the classic mystery is the detective.

Rule Two: The antagonist of the classic mystery is the murderer.

Rule Three: The crime in the classic mystery is murder, and the conflict in the story is created by the detective's need to find the murderer and the murderer's need to escape; this conflict is played out in a puzzle plot.

Rule Four: The classic mystery plays fair, giving the reader all the information she or he needs to solve the puzzle.

Rule Five: The classic mystery is solved using intellect (not luck) at the end of the story (no loose ends).

To go into more detail . . .

Rule One: The protagonist of a classic mystery is the detective, who is present from the beginning.

Or as S. S. Van Dine put it:

6. The detective novel must have a detective in it; and a detective is not a detective unless he detects. His function is to gather clues that will eventually lead to the person who did the dirty work in the first chapter; and if the detective does not reach his conclusions through an analysis of those clues, he has no more solved his problem than the schoolboy who gets his answer out of the back of the arithmetic.

He also goes on to say that

9. There must be but one detective — that is, but one protagonist of deduction — one deus ex machina. To bring the minds of three or four, or sometimes a gang of detectives to bear on a problem, is not only to disperse the interest and break the direct thread of logic, but to take an unfair advantage of the reader. If there is more than one detective the reader doesn't know who his codeductor is. It's like making the reader run a race with a relay team.

This is basic protagonist stuff. The character that the story centers on must be the driver of the plot, and his or her struggle with the antagonist creates the conflict or the fuel that drives the story. One protagonist, pushing back against the antagonist, for strong motives of his or her own.

Rule Two: The antagonist of the classic murder mystery is the murderer, who is present from the beginning.

Knox makes that point clear:

1. The criminal must be mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to know.

Van Dine goes even farther:

10. The culprit must turn out to be a person who has played a more or less prominent part in the story — that is, a person with whom the reader is familiar and in whom he takes an interest.

And of course, no teams of criminals; there can be minions, but only one Big Bad:

12. There must be but one culprit, no matter how many murders are committed. The culprit may, of course, have a minor helper or co-plotter; but the entire onus must rest on one pair of shoulders: the entire indignation of the reader must be permitted to concentrate on a single black nature.

This is basic antagonist stuff. The character who opposes the protagonist shapes the plot; his or her struggle with the protagonist creates the conflict or the fuel that drives the story. One antagonist (plus possible minions), pushing back against the protagonist, for strong motives of his or her own, which Van Dine also covered:

19. The motives for all crimes in detective stories should be personal. International plottings and war politics belong in a different category of fiction — in secret-service tales, for instance. But a murder story must be kept gemütlich, so to speak. It must reflect the reader's everyday experiences, and give him a certain outlet for his own repressed desires and emotions.

Once again, it's always personal.

Rule Three: The crime in the classic mystery is murder, and the conflict in the story is created by the detective's need to find the murderer and the murderer's need to escape; this conflict is played out in a puzzle plot.

Van Dine puts it well:

7. There simply must be a corpse in a detective novel, and the deader the corpse the better. No lesser crime than murder will suffice. Three hundred pages is far too much pother for a crime other than murder. After all, the reader's trouble and expenditure of energy must be rewarded.

Rule Four: The classic murder mystery plays fair, giving the reader all the information she or he needs to solve the puzzle.

Both Knox and Van Dine are firm about this: no playing tricks on the reader.

From Van Dine:

1. The reader must have equal opportunity with the detective for solving the mystery. All clues must be plainly stated and described.

2. No willful tricks or deceptions may be placed on the reader other than those played legitimately by the criminal on the detective himself.

8. The problem of the crime must he solved by strictly naturalistic means. Such methods for learning the truth as slate-writing, ouija-boards, mind-reading, spiritualistic se'ances, crystal-gazing, and the like, are taboo. A reader has a chance when matching his wits with a rationalistic detective, but if he must compete with the world of spirits and go chasing about the fourth dimension of metaphysics, he is defeated ab initio.

From Knox:

8. The detective is bound to declare any clues which he may discover.

Rule Five: The classic murder mystery is solved using intellect (not luck) at the end of the story (no loose ends).

From Van Dine:

5. The culprit must be determined by logical deductions — not by accident or coincidence or unmotivated confession. To solve a criminal problem in this latter fashion is like sending the reader on a deliberate wild-goose chase, and then telling him, after he has failed, that you had the object of his search up your sleeve all the time. Such an author is no better than a practical joker

14. The method of murder, and the means of detecting it, must be be rational and scientific. That is to say, pseudo-science and purely imaginative and speculative devices are not to be tolerated in the roman policier. Once an author soars into the realm of fantasy, in the Jules Verne manner, he is outside the bounds of detective fiction, cavorting in the uncharted reaches of adventure.

15. The truth of the problem must at all times be apparent — provided the reader is shrewd enough to see it. By this I mean that if the reader, after learning the explanation for the crime, should reread the book, he would see that the solution had, in a sense, been staring him in the face-that all the clues really pointed to the culprit — and that, if he had been as clever as the detective, he could have solved the mystery himself without going on to the final chapter. That the clever reader does often thus solve the problem goes without saying.

And Knox agrees:

6. No accident must ever help the detective, nor must he ever have an unaccountable intuition which proves to be right.

It's also worth pointing out that the murder is solved no sooner than the end of the story, in the climactic scene, because the central question in a classic mystery is "Who murdered whom and why?" and when that's answered, the conflict is over, and your story is done.

I'd argue that Rules One, Two, Four, and Five are good for all storytelling:

One protagonist pursuing a goal.

One antagonist pursuing a goal that blocks the protagonist.

All the information that the protagonist knows on the page when she or he knows it.

A solution arrived at by hard work and harder thinking.

The original lists can be found at The Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction and a dozen other places on the net.

Bonus: The Oath of the British Detection Club as written by G. K. Chesterton:

"Do you promise that your detectives shall well and truly detect the crimes presented to them using those wits which it may please you to bestow upon them and not placing reliance on nor making use of Divine Revelation, Feminine Intuition, Mumbo Jumbo, Jiggery-Pokery, Coincidence, or Act of God?"

January's Classic Mysteries:

Jan. 4: The Thin Man

Jan 11: Evil Under the Sun

Jan 18: Sherlock Holmes

Jan 25: Sherlock Holmes: A Study in Pink

Go to PopD for posts, podcasts, and comments.

ReFabbing in 2012

Yay, it's a new year. Because the old one sucked.

So what are my New Year's Resolutions? I don't do resolutions. The last thing I need is something else to feel guilty about. But I do have Plans. One of them is actually Krissie's Plan. She e-mailed me on the 29th and said:

I want to do a blog like Lani's, though only for a year, and I want it to be about personal transformation. Losing weight, getting healthy, changing my reality. I want a place where I can post daily, get support, keep myself honest, and I think a community and feedback would help me in the process.

I need another blog like I need another dog, but the idea of journaling change appealed to me. Also, I whined WAY too much here on Argh last year. Honest to God, there should have been a cheese plate, there was so much whine. So I figure if I check in once a week over there and say, "Here's what's working, here's what's not," I can keep the self-absorption away from here and not look like such a solipsistic bore.

Of course, I immediately began to design the other blog while brainstorming titles with Krissie. I like making things. Making things is my chief pleasure in life. So Krissie and I decided to call the blog Reinventing Fabulous (because we were already Fabulous to begin with) and I came up with a design and showed Lani. Lani said, "Uh no," and redid my design. I said, "Uh no," and came back at her with changes. Well, we both knew that was coming.

So for two days, Lani and I e-mailed back and forth (yes, we live in the same house, what's your point?), hammering out this blog design with poor Alastair in the background making changes and tearing his non-existent hair out. At one point, I kept making changes to the design and then seeing them change back; it took me a good two minutes to realize that Lani and I were working on the site at the same time. The thing is, Lani likes making things, too, so we were both enthralled, while Krissie kept saying, "I like that. I like that, too. That's good. Whatever you guys want." All she wanted was a place to journal, but Lani and I were obsessed. And since our tastes are the exact opposite in everything but pajamas, it took some negotiating.

But the blog is done and up and now I have a place to whine while being an adult here. Okay, not an adult, but not a self-obsessed, high-maintenance, too-lucky-to-be-complaining spoiled brat. That'll be over on Reinventing Fabulous. Or ReFab as we like to call it. Like re-habbing a derelict cottage, we're Re-Fabbing our derelict lives.

Lani and Alastair and I are re-fabbing Pop D, too: we're going to start doing the mystery podcasts this year, theoretically every Monday. The first one is The Thin Man, the podcast for which should go up on the 9th. So PopD is back and newly fabulous, too.

And I have two books that have over 60,000 words each, and I should finish them. So I'm going to be blogging a lot more here about both of them, which means you get to see the seamy underbelly of writing Crusie fiction once more. Really, I don't know why anybody reads this stuff. I should be more empowering but it's just not in my wheelhouse. (What the hell does that mean anyway?)

I think I want to do more interviews, too. I owe the Fabulous Laura one from about two months ago, so that'll probably be the first one. Oh, and Lani and Krissie and I did some chats and we might keep doing those. So more Playing Well With Others, coming right up.

You will notice that none of this stuff is resolutions. I resolve to never make another resolution again. There are enough people in the world willing to beat me up for falling short, I don't have to join the queue. But I have Plans because Plans are infinitely better than resolutions because Plans contain both promise and flexibility. You can change Plans. And in 2012, I'm all about Change.

So what are your plans?

Happy New Year!

Thank you all for spending another year here at Argh. I have to admit, 2011 kind of sucked, but I am CONVINCED that there's nothing but good times ahead in 2012. Hope you party hard tonight and get home safe because tomorrow is another year.

Happy New Year!

Good Gifts

Man, I don't know what rock hit me and buried me the last couple of months, but I could not get out from under it. And then Christmas was over and suddenly, I'm fine. No depression, no pain, no bitching aside from the short discussion I had with Mona after she barfed on the bed. I am dedicating myself to being cheerful and productive from now on, with brief recesses for snark when the occasion demands it. Okay, maybe not productive, but at least cheerful.

So in that vein, I'd like to say that I love buying gifts for people. I know that old "it's better to give than to receive" thing is a chestnut, but it's true. Makes me feel warm all over. These are some of the places I got Christmas presents that make me happy, and since I feel that every day is a reason to give presents, I'm sharing with you. Because good stuff is good stuff year round.

Cedar Pocket on Etsy. Melissa's chunky, matte white birds on thick ceramic bowls cheer me up every time (that's a blue recycled glass puddle in the bottom there).

Happy Holidays, Argh People

We just did Christmas here; tomorrow I go home to the family. For all that season is fraught with tension, it really is nice to take the time to sit down and reconnect with the people you inherited or chose to be family, even if you want to beat them like gongs by the time the day is done. For whatever holiday you celebrate, I hope you're all surrounded by love and laughter and dogs (personal preference). So glad you're all here and part of the Argh family. Nothing but good times ahead.

Amuse Yourselves, Please

In my continuing quest to make 2011 a year to forget, I have done something to my ankle and am now reclining with painkillers and Diet Coke. (I know, if I was classy, it'd be ecstasy and champagne, but at least its not meth and Mad Dog 20/20.) I was going to blog again, but really, you don't want to read what I'd write in this state. Yes, I got X-rays. It's not broken and it appears to be an aggravation of an old injury (really old, Mollie was three) so I just need ice, elevation, and uh, drugs.

I will be very happy when 2012 gets here. I'm quite sure I'll have my act together by then. How about you?

Calvin Says Happy Holidays

From 1o9

I miss Calvin and Hobbes.