Meg Benjamin's Blog, page 26

Cognitively Impaired

A couple of months ago, the DH and I decided to look into long-term care insurance. A relative of his had had a medical crisis and ended up in an assisted living facility. The costs would have been ruinous had she not had the insurance to pay for it. The insurance agent came to our house. We chose a policy with a well-known company. He told us we'd have to go through a short phone interview, but after that the policies would be issued and we'd be good to go.

A couple of weeks later, I had my twenty-minute phone interview with a very polite lady. Everything seemed to go fine. It was the holiday season, so the agent told us it would probably be a little while before we got the final okay. Then a few weeks ago, the DH got a call from the agent at work. The company had agreed to insure him, although at a higher rate because his blood pressure was two points over their limit. However, they'd rejected me because I was "cognitively impaired."

To say I was flummoxed would be putting it mildly. I didn't know what "cognitively impaired" meant exactly, but it sure didn't sound good. I checked it out on line (of course) and the news was even worse—basically, it meant I was on the way to dementia. I was simultaneously horrified and furious. Clearly, I wasn't cognitively impaired. I've published five novels over the past two years, for God's sake! How could they say that about me? On the agent's advice, I requested a copy of the report.

There it was on the front page: "Cognitively impaired." But there was no indication of what the problem was other than the fact that I couldn't remember names. I wracked my brain trying to remember my conversation with the interviewer. All I could come up with was an offhand comment about my memory being fine except for forgetting the occasional name. The thing is, though, I've never been good with names, even when I was a teenager. And I'm in good company—around fifty percent of the American public claims to have the same problem.

When the agent came over to deliver the policy to the hubs, I let him have it. He wasn't particularly sympathetic. Supposedly beyond my problem with names, I'd also scored poorly on their memory tests. But I had the results of those tests in the report; I showed them to him. They looked fine to me. Again, he shrugged it off. The tests were proprietary. There was no way to tell how they were scored. Finally, I walked out of the room and turned on the TV; to say I was distraught would be putting it mildly.

And then something amazing happened. My insurance agent went home and began to think about what I'd said. Something about the whole report bothered him. The scores looked okay to him, too. Plus my doctor's report didn't indicate any problems, and she'd seen me for a lot longer than twenty minutes. The next day he called the insurance company and asked one of the supervisors to please check my interview again to see if perhaps there'd been an error. A few hours later, the supervisor called back. He said he'd reviewed hundreds of these reports, perhaps thousands, and he very rarely found any error. But this time he had.

It turned out I'd passed everything with flying colors. I should have been given a policy and the company would be doing that ASAP. He apologized. The company apologized. My insurance agent apologized for any part he'd played in the whole thing.

So happy ending, right? Well, yeah, but… For a couple of weeks, I  was fighting the assumption that my brain was on the blink. And I also found myself fighting a tiny, niggling voice at the back of my mind that kept saying "What if they're right? What if you really are losing it and you just haven't realized it yet?" I fought that voice whenever I heard it, but I never really got rid of it.

So now I've forgiven my insurance agent because he really did go the extra mile. I've sort of forgiven the insurance company because they did finally admit their mistake. But I'm not sure I'll ever entirely forgive the fact that I spent two weeks wondering if my mind was coming unhinged.

Maybe I'll get over it eventually. Maybe it will just be a matter of time. Maybe, but I doubt it.

 

RITA and Me

This is the second year I've entered books in the RITA contest, sponsored by the Romance Writers of American. The RITA is probably the most prestigious award for romance novelists, given that we're not considered for things like the National Book Award. The number of entries is capped at 1,200, and every year some people don't get in under the deadline.

This is the first year when I've also volunteered to judge the RITA. I had to think long and hard about doing it, since it meant reading and judging six to eight complete novels in a couple of months. However, I feel strongly that if you're going to enter contests, you need to give back by agreeing to judge them too. So I entered my preferences and sat down to wait for my package.

While everyone was waiting for their books to show up, a spirited discussion started on the Professional Authors Network (PAN) list. Some of the authors wished that the RITA could become electronic. They lived in places that had had epic snowfalls, or they lived in countries other than the USA, and they knew it was going to take a while for their books to be delivered. They wanted them now.

The response from many PAN members was immediate and (sort of) predictable. Electronic files would never work. Not everybody had e-readers and even for the ones who did, what possible format could suffice for all the different readers out there? Lots of people didn't like reading electronic files and preferred hard copy. Lots of people regarded the books themselves as a reward for judging the contest. It was already too complicated to get the printed volumes sent to the judges; electronic files would just make it worse. And wasn't this just another of those ongoing arguments where the ebook authors bitched about being unappreciated?

Well, no, it wasn't. I've been judging contests for a while now, like a lot of members of PAN. And what I've seen over the past three or four years has been the gradual transformation of most contests from printed pages to electronic files. Electronic files are easier to distribute and return, easier to comment upon, and in many ways easier to read, given the variable quality of photocopiers. Now granted, most contests are for unpublished authors and their entries run twenty to thirty pages rather than complete MSS. But what works for these contests should also work for contests like the RITA.

To take the objections in turn:

Not everybody has e-readers and even for the ones who do, what possible format could suffice for all the different readers out there? For a while many contests for unpubbed writers were both electronic and print. People who preferred electronic files could get them that way, while people who preferred print could get the entries in print. I've noticed that that option has pretty much disappeared as more and more judges have gotten used to electronic files. RITA could begin by offering the electronic option for those with ereaders and the hard copy option for those without. My guess is, the majority of judges would eventually go electronic. As for the format, Adobe has this cute little format called .pdf which can be read by virtually every ereader on the market, or failing that, on your computer. And there's a free program called Calibre that will convert formats for ereaders. Format is sort of a red herring in this argument.

Lots of people don't like reading electronic files. Lots of people regard the books themselves as a reward for judging the contest. Again, allowing people the option of choosing electronic files would take care of this, and the electronic files would serve as just as much a "reward" as the hard copy ones.

It's already too complicated to get the printed volumes sent to the judges. This is actually another argument for electronic files. Transmitting printed books requires boxes, postage, correct addresses (and there's no way to know whether the books were missent until someone complains) and a great deal of time and effort. Transmitting electronic files requires email addresses and a functioning computer. And if the files don't go through, you find out immediately. It would also be an advantage for authors: sending five copies of a book to RWA for a RITA entry is an additional expense. The reduction in labor and cost for both the organization and the authors could be substantial.

There was one more objection that was made repeatedly to the idea of electronic files—allowing electronic entries might increase the number of authors who entered the RITA. Now some might see this as a plus, but RWA really doesn't. They're already having trouble getting enough judges for those 1,200 entries. But right now there's a good chance that many electronic authors don't bother to volunteer to judge the RITA because they're not allowed to enter themselves. In fact, expecting authors to judge who can't enter is sort of like expecting somebody to decorate for a party to which she's not invited. If RWA would really like to increase the number of RITA judges, one way to do so would be to allow more people to qualify for the contest in the first place.

There's some hope for the future here. Other contests for published authors, like the Holt Medallion and the Beanpot, have found ways to allow authors to submit ebooks. When RWA finally decides to take the plunge, there will be precedents for them to follow. I'm hoping eventually that will happen. Meanwhile, if y'all will excuse me now, I gotta go read.

 

The Big Misunderstanding, Revisited

A couple of years ago I wrote a blog post about the Big Misunderstanding as a plot device and why I disliked it. Since that time, I've actually used a Big Misunderstanding in a plot of my own (see Venus In Blue Jeans), so I've sort of moderated my opinions. Yet I found myself thinking about it once again after reading a few books lately that used a familiar Big Misunderstanding plot device: the Misunderstood Conversation.

You know this one. The hero or heroine overhears her/his Significant Other in conversation with someone else, and something said in the conversation convinces him/her that his SO is a Cheating Bastard. Or has Done Something Terrible. The heroine/hero seldom hears the entire conversation, mind you, because she/he is so overcome with emotion that he/she runs away before it's over.

My tolerance for this particular plot device is somewhat slim since it requires the character to not do what most people would do in that situation, to wit, ask the SO what the hell is going on. My willingness to put up with this kind of reaction depends on just how long the misunderstanding continues. If it's a relatively short-duration thing, I'm willing to go with it for a while. But if the hero/heroine goes on being pissy for several chapters, I find myself gritting my teeth and skimming to find the chapter where the misunderstanding will actually be taken care of. And I figure setting things up so your reader ends up skimming your prose rather than reading it isn't a really good idea.

The thing is, though, there are ways of making this plot device work without making the h/h behave like a dimwit. First of all, the h/h can confront the SO immediately and the SO can refuse to explain, either in pique ("How dare you question my ethics? What kind of person do you think I am?") or because the plot demands that the SO keep it a secret. In which case the h/h has an interesting dilemma—to trust or not to trust?

Or the SO can turn the situation around, saying "Why are you so insecure that you believe this means I'm untrue to you?" Or the h/h can confront the SO and discover that the conversation is, in fact, just as incriminating as it seems to be, although, of course, the SO will eventually be cleared of any wrongdoing.

In other words, the h/h can actually behave like a normal human being without terminally crippling the plot.

What I really hate, I must admit, is the plot where the h/h does none of the above. The one where the h/h flounces off, leaving a snotty message for the SO, or where the h/h flounces off with no message whatsoever leaving the SO confused about what exactly is going on. Then there's the variation where the h/h breaks up with the SO without explaining why and we have to endure a couple of chapters where the h/h and SO both suffer terribly because they're In Love and because they've Been Betrayed.

The problem is that we, the readers, frequently find ourselves out of sympathy with that suffering. Because behaving this way is basically the action of a moron rather than a hero. And morons do not make for fun reading.

 

Romance Writing For Fun and (Mostly) Profit

I have a friend who's been trying to publish his novels for several years. He writes literary fiction, with an occasional foray into science fiction and fantasy. He's come close to publication several times—I'd get a message that he'd gotten an agent or that one of his manuscripts was under review at such-and-such publisher. He even tried screen-writing, and again, his screenplays would get positive comments from someone in the industry and he'd be on the verge of being optioned. But nothing ever worked out for him, although he's managed to produce lots of manuscripts over the years.

A few weeks ago, this friend asked me to lunch. He wanted to ask me a few questions about electronic publishing. As it turned out, he was very excited about electronic publishing in general. But more specifically, he was very excited about the possibility of electronic publishing in romance.

Now this friend has always been somewhat lukewarm about romances, including mine. In general, he seems to feel that romance is a second-rate genre, and that it didn't take much talent to write one. Now, however, he's seen that electronic publishing in romance has been growing by leaps and bounds. To make a long story short, he figured that with all the new electronic publishers around, he could knock out a few romance novels and get them published in no time at all.

As you might imagine, I did my best to disabuse him of this idea. His opinion about romance writing isn't all that uncommon, though. A lot of people who write literary fiction are convinced that popular fiction in general (and frequently romance in particular) is easy to write, and that anyone who can handle literary fiction can certainly turn out publishable pop fiction with one hand tied behind his/her back.

I think the reason this opinion keeps turning up is the fact that pop fiction genres frequently depend on conventions, while literary fiction is, at least nominally, less convention-bound. Romance has several, of course—the happy ending is the most common, but you've also got minor conventions and tropes that show up repeatedly in various romance subgenres. Romance writers (and readers) know them well and have come to rely upon them. But the mistake these literary writers make is in thinking that all a writer has to do is plug those conventions in and voila, instant bestseller.

Now I still judge contests occasionally, and I've read a lot of wannabe romances in my time. I'm here to tell you, plugging in conventions is only a small part of what it takes to write a successful romance novel. Most contest entrants can use the conventions of whatever subgenre they're working in, but only a few of them can do it in a way that makes you want to go on reading. There's a vast difference between a contest entrant who knows that a Regency heroine is supposed to dance at Almack's and a Julia Quinn who knows how to make that dance into something you're really dying to read about. Like everything else in writing, handling conventions is a matter of skill.

I wished my friend luck, but I also tried hard to nudge him in the direction of science fiction and fantasy. At least he'd already had some experience and success in those genres, and they're also areas where electronic publishing is increasingly widespread. He might actually be able to get one of his old manuscripts into shape for a publisher. But his chances of succeeding in romance writing, given that he doesn't really read romance novels and also doesn't like them much, are slim.

Electronic publishing has made it easier for more people to get their books into print, but it hasn't made it any easier to write a good romance any more than it's made it easier to write good literary fiction. And all popular wisdom to the contrary, good romances are still what publishers (electronic and otherwise) are looking for.

The (Phony) Strong Heroine

Everybody loves a strong heroine these days. Nobody wants to write about a wimp who needs to be rescued by the big, strong hero. In fact, in most books that are being written now, the heroine stands up and at least attempts to rescue herself when she gets into difficulties. Only if she's tried to untie herself from the railroad tracks and failed is the hero allowed to come in and get her loose. And in a lot of books, the hero is only allowed to show up when the heroine is already off the tracks and planning her revenge.

I have no problem with this at all. In fact, I'm absolutely in favor of it. But along with these strong heroines, I've begun to see heroines who seem to be strong but who are, in fact, phony. The present a counterfeit version of strength that actually allows the hero to go back to being a good ol' alpha who takes care of the silly little woman and saves the day. Plus, of course, they're really annoying.

You can spot this heroine pretty quickly because she's almost always what the Old Folks used to call a "career girl." She does something high-powered that provides a fat salary and fancy clothes. Consequently, she's also a bitch on wheels (apparently high-powered women can be nothing else). She also spouts a sort of pop culture version of feminism, accusing the hero of belittling her or not valuing her skills because of her gender while showing that those skills are in fact pretty worthless in a pinch.

The phony strong heroine gets her comeuppance when she's up against the villain. She gets into some kind of difficulty from which only the hero can extricate her. She is, of course, not grateful for being extricated. In fact, she frequently bitches at the hero again for his Neanderthal attitudes. The hero responds by becoming even more Troglodytic, but when push comes to shove, he once again extricates her from some other difficulty. This goes on until the hero finally vanquishes the villain. Eventually, the heroine, worn out and defeated, acknowledges that the hero's version of femininity is actually the correct one.

This annoys me on a whole lot of different levels. First of all, as a feminist (yeah, sister!), I resent seeing an honorable philosophy reduced to a cartoon. And let me tell you—the Neanderthals I've run into in real life haven't been all that endearing. Considering women to be basically inferior really doesn't constitute much of a turn-on for most of us. But more than that, when you consider the strong heroines popping up all around us who really can at least make a stab at taking care of themselves (see anything recent from Nora Roberts or Linda Howard or Elizabeth Lowell), it's doubly annoying to see what is basically an eighties heroine showing up at this late date and being held up as some kind of ideal.

So rah, rah for strong heroines. And boo, hiss for the phony kind. When it comes to female strength, let's accept no substitutes.

 

Contest Winners

The winners of the free copies of Brand New Me were Yadira, Fedora, and Loretta. Thanks to everybody who commented. I loved hearing from you!

Blog Tour and Contest

All this week and next, I'll be touring around the web, celebrating the December 7 release of Brand New Me, my fifth Konigsburg novel. And since it's Christmas time, I'm also giving away three copies of Brand New Me to people who comment on my blog tour. Just stop by and say howdy, and you'll be entered into a random drawing. My blog tour schedule: Friday: Savvy Authors; Monday: Tina Donahue; Tuesday: Romance Lives Forever; Wednesday: Nine Naughty Novelists and Romance Junkies; Thursday: Naughty In the Backseat; Friday: C.J. England.

And today, of course, I'm here! So without further ado…

Honky Tonkin'

My newest Konigsburg book, Brand New Me, takes place in a bar, or actually a honky tonk. Now a honky tonk, according to Wikipedia, that font of all knowledge, is a bar with live music, and that's certainly true. But it's also not the whole story. I've been in bars that had live music that weren't close to being honky tonks, and I've also been in the genuine article so yes, I do know the difference.

The bar in Brand New Me is based, physically at least, on a honky tonk called Hondo's in Fredericksburg, Texas. Although Hondo's is relatively new (at least in this incarnation), it's named for the legendary Hondo Crouch, owner of the honky tonk in Luckenbach, Texas, that was celebrated in the Waylon Jennings song, so it's got the right pedigree.

San Antonio, where I used to live, is located in Honky Tonk Central. Along with a multitude of small venues scattered around the hills and countryside outside the city, San Antonians are within an hour's drive of two of the most legendary honky tonks in the state: Gruene Hall and John T. Floore's Country Store.

Gruene Hall

If you've seen the movie Michael, you've seen Gruene Hall—it's the setting for the dance scene. It's located in Gruene (which, all evidence to the contrary, is pronounced "green") and it's billed as the oldest continually operating dancehall in Texas. The hubs and I used to hit Gruene regularly for people like Joe Ely and Steve Earle, as well as lesser known but no less talented musicians like the Band of Heathens, the Bellevillle Outfit, Audrey Auld, and Guy Forsyth. The accommodations are pretty rudimentary: long, scarred tables with benches that fill up pretty fast for acts like Joe Ely. The hall isn't really closed in, either. The walls are made up of screened windows that stretch from one end of the room to the other, letting the people strolling the streets of Gruene peer in and listen to the sounds of the bands as they walk by. Much of the time you end up standing in elbow-to-elbow crowds, trying not to go deaf from the nearby amps and hanging on to your longneck (beer is the drink of choice at a honky tonk). Dancing is encouraged and occasionally even possible, assuming people can get out of the way of the flying feet. It shouldn't be fun, but believe me, it is.

John T. Floore's Country Store

Floore's Country Store is less well known, but no less celebrated. It has the distinction of having been one of Willie Nelson's first steady gigs back in the seventies when he moved back to Austin from Nashville, and they still display the "Willie Nelson every Wednesday Night" poster. At Floore's it's a little easier to find a seat on the benches to listen to people like James McMurtry, and they actually had the temerity to set out chairs for the audience at a Steve Earle/Alison Moorer show (they also sold tickets, which meant they could control the number of people who showed up). On the other hand, Willie does still play there on occasion and if you go to see him, prepare to stand shoulder to shoulder with three or four hundred other dedicated fans.

The honky tonk in Brand New Me is called the Faro, owned by one Tom Ames, a relative newcomer to Konigsburg. Like a lot of honky tonks, it's replete with colorful characters, pool tables, and the occasional live band. My heroine, Deirdre Brandenburg, takes a barmaid job there so that she can earn enough money to rent the ideal location for her coffee roaster right next door. The Faro's staff teaches her the in's and out's of honky tonk etiquette. Needless to say, hi-jinks ensue.

So what's the attraction of honky tonks? It's hard to explain if you haven't been to one. For me it's the fact that they're the opposite of slick. They're usually old buildings, beat-up, lived-in. The stages are sort of basic, without a lot of special effects. You're usually close enough to the performers to see the sweat and the grins. They're the antithesis of the arena show. They're what live music is supposed to be about.

My favorite memory of honky tonk life comes from a Joe Ely show at Gruene Hall. It had been one of those nights where everything that could go wrong did. The sound system went out. One of his band members was late. Joe forgot the lyrics to some of the songs. Most of us didn't care—we were dedicated fans, and the dilettantes had already left long before. At the end of the evening, Joe decided to do "Gimme a Ride To Heaven, Boy" rather than the usual Buddy Holly encore (nobody does Buddy Holly like Joe Ely, believe me). "Gimme a Ride to Heaven" is one of those weirdly hilarious songs you hear on Americana radio late at night and in honky tonks when the band gets really loose—it's a Terry Allen number about a tipsy honky tonk patron who picks up a hitchhiker he believes is Jesus, an assumption the hitchhiker cheerfully encourages until the point where he steals the guy's car. The last line is a classic: "The Lord moves in mysterious ways, and tonight he's gonna use your car." That night Joe and the band launched in, clearly relieved to finally be done with the show. When he got to the last line, Joe delivered the first part "The Lord moves in mysterious ways, and tonight my son…" pausing as the singer is supposed to do before hitting the punchline. Suddenly, from the streets of Gruene there arose the most godawful unified chorus of Harleys I've every heard, a veritable menagerie of roaring bikes. Joe stopped, dumbfounded, looked at the crowd (all of us, of course, helpless with laughter), looked at the heavens, and finally delivered the punchline with the thunder of the bikes as accompaniment.

Ah, honky tonks.

 

 

Books As Spinach

I've talked a lot here and elsewhere about the critics of romance, who are, of course, legion. Their objections to romance novels fall into several categories—romances are poorly written, romances are unrealistic, romances create naïve expectations about male-female relationships, romances reflect the structure of patriarchy by holding up marriage as the be-all and end-all of women's lives. Now most of these criticisms can be chipped away fairly easily (and sometimes entertainingly) because they're made by people who never read romances themselves. Take the idea that romances are unrealistic. This criticism seems to imply as a corollary that all (mysteries, thrillers, westerns, mainstream fiction, you choose) are realistic, a proposition that's manifestly untrue. And, of course, there's the related idea that only realistic literature is acceptable, which would seem to rule out everybody from Gabriel Garcia Márquez to Chaucer.

However, I'd argue that many of these criticisms boil down to one main idea: romances aren't good for you. They make readers soft headed and impractical. Instead, the critics imply, you should be reading more sturdy stuff, literature with fiber as it were. Novels about alcoholic womanizers, for example. Or broken marriages. Or dying children. Or the misery of life without purpose.

What's being urged upon readers in this case is a sort of literary spinach, or to be more specific, overcooked, slimy literary spinach. It tastes bad. You don't enjoy it. But it's good for you. You should consume it, no matter how hard it is to get down.

Now here's the thing, I spent several years teaching English, and several years before that getting graduate degrees in English. Believe me, I know all about reading spinach. I waded through Pope and Dryden, Wordsworth and Shelley, Pound and Eliot. My graduate school believed that English students needed to be able to read Old English in the original, so I took courses in Anglo Saxon. I translated Beowulf, for Pete's sake! In other words, I've read enough spinach for several lifetimes.

Now not all of it was bad—spinach doesn't have to be overcooked and slimy, after all, it can actually be pretty tasty. I got a kick out of a lot of Anglo Saxon literature, including the beautiful Wanderer and Seafarer. I still love The Great Gatsby and Bleak House. I can even recite some Emily Dickinson years after first encountering her.

But a lot of it was the kind of stuff I wouldn't have read if I hadn't had to. I have slogged through more essays on aesthetics than I ever want to see again. I went on reading spinach for a lot of years because, as an English teacher, I had to keep up. But when I switched to teaching technical writing and document design, I stopped. I figured I'd more than paid my dues. I wanted to read something I enjoyed, not something I was reading because I was supposed to read it.

Now I have a simple rule of thumb—if I don't like something, I don't read it. If I start something and don't enjoy it, I don't finish it. I no longer let other people tell me what I should read. I read what I want to read. After all, reading shouldn't be slimy spinach. Reading should be a good Bordeaux, something to be sipped and savored and enjoyed.

So the next time somebody tells you that you should read something because it's good for you, tell them you'll pass because you hate slimy spinach. They'll think you're nuts, but you'll know you're not!

He Loves Me, She Loves Me Not

I just finished a historical by a well-known author. I finished it rather quickly, in fact, since I ended up skimming the last third. The hero and heroine were in love, you see, and he'd asked her to marry him, and she wouldn't. Why? Well, that part wasn't entirely clear, or rather her reasons kept shifting. She wasn't good enough for him. She didn't want to give up her freedom. She didn't think he loved her. Etc.

Now mind you, these two had already hit the sheets repeatedly. And this was in Victorian England, meaning the woman was basically SOL when it came to marrying anybody else, having been besmirched by sex. And the heroine wasn't one of those nineteenth century "wild and crazy girls" who disregard all social strictures. She was, in fact, a stickler for social propriety. And, of course, she loved him desperately, and had loved him for some time.

You're beginning to see the problem here, I trust. None of the reasons for the heroine's reluctance to marry made sense. The situation seemed to boil down to this: the heroine couldn't agree to marry the hero because the author needed to string that conflict out as long as she could. So she kept coming up with reasons for the heroine not to give in, and those reasons became increasingly lame as the novel limped to its close.

Most romance novels have both internal and external conflict, or they're supposed to have it anyway. The external conflict is the plot complication—the villain with the deed to the heroine's farm, the international spy ring closing in on the hero, the big pie baking competition the heroine needs to win to save her restaurant from foreclosure. The internal conflict is the romantic one—whatever is keeping the hero and heroine from achieving HEA. Clearly internal and external can be related, and frequently they become the same thing. In Long Time Gone, for example, my external conflict was the battle between the crooked mayor and my hero, the new chief of police. The fact that the mayor was on the verge of having the chief fired, which would mean he'd be leaving both the area and the heroine, is both the external crux and the roadblock to HEA.

As a reader (and to some extent as a writer), I'm partial to this kind of combination of external and internal because plots that feature an internal or psychological conflict to keep hero and heroine apart are frequently so, well, dumb. Think about it. What are the most common tropes? He won't say I love you. She needs to feel free. One or the other has had bad experiences with men/women. One or the other grew up in a broken home. He (or sometimes she) has commitment issues. Etc.

The problem with all of these internal conflicts is that they're blindingly predictable. You know eventually he'll bring himself to say he loves her as she's getting ready to leave him. She discovers she can still feel free even in his arms. He/she realizes his/her SO is different from all the others. She/he realizes their home will be different than the one she/he grew up in. He/she discovers that committing to the SO is actually easy when you're In Love. Sigh.

If there's a bomb under the park bench that has to be defused, that's a conflict that can create some suspense, even though you know it's going to be okay. But getting the hero to say I love you? Not so much.

Now I know the problem here too. Those of us who write contemporary have been known to complain that the genre is slowly becoming more like suspense, with a sudden infusion of serial killers and other dastardly villains. But it's still possible to have external conflict in a contemporary that doesn't rely on the hero or heroine having some kind of existential crisis. Susan Elizabeth Phillips's heroes and heroines frequently have to grow up and accept responsibility. Jennifer Crusie's h/h's get involved in serpentine plots that have nothing to do with the hero's inability to say I love you.

This is not to say that these internal conflicts can't exist along with the more compelling external ones. But I'd argue they can't really carry the whole weight of the plot. If the only thing keeping the plot spinning along is the heroine's reluctance to accept the proposal of the hero because she's a) not good enough, b) feeling restricted, or c) afraid he doesn't really love her, I'm afraid I'm going to shift to skimming mode. And perhaps think twice about the author's other books in the future.

 

Red Herrings

I just finished reading a 370-page novel in which the nasty banker was revealed as a double murderer in the end. The thing is, I knew the banker was the baddie after the first fifty pages. Why? Because nobody else in the book had been set up as a possibility. So unless the writer wanted to break with romance tradition and pick a likeable character as the villain, the banker was it. QED.

Now to me, this ranks as a serious flaw in the book's plot, but that may be because I began reading romances after long experience reading mysteries. One of the cardinal rules of mystery writing is that you have to have more than a single suspect. There must be at least two or, preferably, three or four people who could have done whatever nasty thing has been done. That means constructing multiple red herrings.

A "red herring" is a false scent that supposedly diverts a hound from the true scent of its quarry (although this meaning has been challenged, according to Wikipedia). Creating alternative solutions to a mystery depending on alternative villains is standard for mystery writers. Agatha Christie is probably the past master of this—in Murder On the Orient Express she provides an entire trainload of suspects, all of whom had motive, means, and opportunity.

Romance writers don't need to go to that extreme because we're usually more interested in the romance than the mystery, but we do need to at least suggest alternatives so that the reader doesn't lose interest in the other parts of the plot. In Be My Baby, I spent a lot of time figuring out how I could conceal the identity of the nasty kidnapper. I wanted my readers to feel concerned about what was going to happen, and that meant leaving them in the dark about exactly which person they needed to fear.

If only one person in a book could have performed a particular nefarious action, I'm likely to assume that person is innocent, based on my long experience as a mystery reader. In mysteries, the bad guy is never the one you initially suspect. If it later turns out that that person is, in fact, guilty, and no doubt has ever been cast upon his guilt in the course of the novel, I'm going to be more than slightly annoyed.

Now it's possible to have the villain clearly identified from the beginning. He's the serial killer you know is on the loose or the international criminal whom the hero has been tracking for years (although in that case the identity of said criminal may, again, be the mystery). This is the usual MO for thrillers and here the plot hinge comes with how the heroine/hero is finally going to come face-to-face with the villain. This means a skillful writer is going to set up several opportunities that don't pan out in order to build suspense for the one that does (think of Clarice Starling knocking on Buffalo Bill's door in Silence Of the Lambs after all the scary preliminaries).

But whatever the plot hinge is, the reader shouldn't see it coming a mile away. The greater the surprise, the more deeply the reader is immersed in the story. And that brings me back to that nasty banker. Because I figured out the mystery so quickly, I lost interest in the plot soon thereafter. It didn't help that the romance was also pretty routine. I found myself skimming through the pages, trying to get the gist without having to read everything. And I had no problem skipping to the ending. I already knew what it was, and all I had to do was confirm my guess.

That's not the way you want your readers to feel, believe me. You want those readers to avoid looking at the ending at all costs because they don't want to spoil the suspense. And without red herrings, there's simply no suspense to spoil