Long-Time-Together Tango – A Personal Post

Stories of my Life, ,

On Sunday, my husband Jonathan and I will have been married forty-six years, which doesn’t count our half-year courtship before the wedding happened. We met in March and spent the next month in tentative mode, circling one another from afar. Our Long-Time-Together Tango had begun.

The rhythm was sort of twitchy-jittery-nervous then. I detected signals from his side of the floor and expected an approach at any moment, but he was shy. Twitchy-jittery-nervous continued long after the band should have packed up and gone home. Until my patience wore characteristically thin, and I made the first unmistakable move.

We’ve stepped through a World of Dance style catalog since then, including the Bickering Bossa Nova. Which brings me to the six arguments. I have a theory that every long-term relationship features six signature arguments. Three serious, and better suited to the boxing ring than the dance floor. Three silly, but still good for many a whirl.

20th Anniversary Roses

The specifics vary from couple to couple. Sometimes we strut. Other times we glide deliberately out of reach. Always we engage in a choreography uniquely our own. Let’s confine the serious stomping to private dances. The three frivolous fights Jon and I favor step out as follows.

The Full Moon Minuet. Whatever particular geography we may currently inhabit, our heckle over the heavens remains the same. He says, “The moon is full tonight.” I look up and shake my head. “Not quite,” I say, pointing out a flatness at the lower edge, usually to the left. We’ve carried on in that vein, month after month, year after year, even when the sky was mostly overcast.

The Tuning the TV Tarantella. The notes of this number shift a bit with each technological advance. Our present debate quick steps back and forth between to surf or not to surf, whether the venue is network or Netflix, on demand or of the moment. He takes the former position, I take the latter.

The Time and Distance Drag. Which is a drag because, trivial or not, these disagreements can take on heat. In the city, subway options are the issue. Uptown, downtown, crosstown. We each have pet preferences for getting wherever whenever. As for out of town, thank heaven for GPS or murderous mayhem might ensue.

We could easily settle our signature silly arguments. By checking the calendar phases of the moon. Googling our stream or non-stream options ahead of screening. Clocking actual travel times from one station stop to the next. Riding together to avoid suspicion of misreads where miles per hour are concerned.

Simple as that, decades of atonal music would fall silent. We could leave the dance floor and sit down. On the other foot, as our long time together grows longer, I suspect we should hang onto every form of available movement, including exercise of the small bones we pick with each other, one gradually slowing toe tap at a time.  Alice Orr – https://www.aliceorrbooks.com.

–R|R–

A Time of Fear & LovingIt is Amanda and Mike’s second time on the dance floor, and every step takes them deeper into danger. Don’t miss Alice’s latest novel, A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 5. Available HERE. Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

What readers say about A Time of Fear & Loving. “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.” “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.”
“A budding romance that sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.”
“The best one yet, Alice!”

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Do Be Cruel – Create Characters that Intensify Your Plot

Storytelling, ,

Do Be Cruel. Put your character in hot water from the start. In the most powerful stories, an intensely conflicted situation starts on page one, or even before page one. Your main character is smack dab at the center of that situation, in hot water that will become hotter and hotter, then hotter still. But first, you must set up this situation and second, you must set her up to be smacked down hard by the consequences that follow.

Do Be Cruel. A story that shows you how. Please forgive me for taking you back to Tara when we all know it’s a politically incorrect place to be. But Scarlett O’Hara’s doings and undoings will never be Gone with the Wind when it comes to great storytelling technique and that’s what we’re focusing on here.

Do Be Cruel. Margaret Mitchell knew how to twist and turn a yarn. She tangled us into her plot, tying us more tightly to her main character with every scene. Scarlett herself adds knots to that tangle by making choices that raise the temperature of the hot water she’s in to boiling and beyond.

Do Be Cruel. Set your character up for a long fall. For your character’s downfall to be significant, we must see and, more important, we must feel her topple from a great height. Scarlett is the perfect protagonist for such a plummet. She’s the southern belle of the southern ball at the start of her story, confident to the point of unabashed arrogance. “Fiddledy-dee,” she says to any suggestion that life could go anywhere but her own totally self-centered way. She and her hooped skirt are bouncing toward a precipice for sure.

Do Be Cruel. Set your reader up for a fall also. In order to “give a damn,” a phrase that will figure in Scarlett’s downfall, your readers must sympathize with your character’s motivation. We must understand what she wants and why she wants it. We must want it for her too. No matter how ruthless and manipulative Scarlett may become, we must be on her side, at least in the beginning. We are on her side because what she cares most about is Tara. What she wants more than anything is to preserve her home and, deep down at heart level, we get that.

Do Be Cruel. Create a catastrophic story environment in general. What could fit that bill better than a war? Not just any war, but the war that split a country in two and sent Scarlett’s future fantasy crashing to smithereens at her satin-clad feet. Your story may not involve a civil war, but it needs a bloody battleground all the same. A catastrophe that embroils your characters in fiery controversy, the more fire, the better. A cataclysm that leaves casualties in its wake, with your character only barely escaping the flames.

Do Be Cruel. Create a catastrophic personal obstacle as well. What could fit that bill better than doomed love? It worked for Romeo and Juliet. It works for Scarlett and Ashley Wilkes too. She makes a bad choice while he, being a fairly weak fellow, makes it worse. Can you think of a couple less temperamentally suited for one another? Not to mention Melanie and the whole aristocratic arranged marriage thing. Plus some additional disastrous choices on Scarlett’s part, with a bit of Rhett Butler in the mix. Catastrophe, here she comes.

Do Be Cruel. Don’t forget that romance is a battleground. If you’ve read my previous posts on character creation and taken them to heart, your main character already has way too much trouble on her plate. The last thing she needs is to fall in love, either wisely or unwisely, at this point in her story. But your author job is to hot the pot under this person you want us to care about, even love. The heat of a relationship she doesn’t need but can’t resist is kindling waiting for a spark. So light that match and let it flare.

Do Be Kind to your storytelling career. The name of this game is Hook the Reader, and your most powerful playing piece is a powerful protagonist. The heroine we love from beginning to end. Or, if you make it work the way Margaret Mitchell does, the character we simply can’t let go of, even when the deluge she wades us into burns our own satin slippers straight off our toes. Either way, she makes us say, “Frankly, Scarlett, we can’t help but give a damn.”  Alice Orr – https://www.aliceorrbooks.com.

– R|R –

A Time of Fear & LovingAmanda Miller is in steamy hot water and just might drown. Join her there for a great read in Alice’s latest novel, A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 5. Available HERE. Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

 What readers say about A Time of Fear & Loving. “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.” “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.”
“A budding romance that sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.”
“The best one yet, Alice!”

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Peeps and Predicaments – What’s Happened to Your Character with Whom

Storytelling, ,

Peeps and Predicaments. What’s happened to Your Character with Whom. A couple of posts ago, I wrote “Create Captivating Characters.” The post before that was about how to write a great main character. I keep harping on character creation because characters are the heart of strong storytelling. If you make your characters come to life on the page, they will make that heart beat with a rhythm that captivates your reader.First, we discovered why your main character is so important.  Your main character’s story is what connects you with the reader, the avenue by which you draw her in and make her care. Once you have made her care, she is hooked, and that narrative hook is essential to writing a successful story. The reader must become emotionally involved with your character, not just a little, but intensely.

Next, we examined how to make your readers care so much about your character. Then, we dug deeper to make your reader care even more. How to tie us emotionally to her fate, until we long for only good things to happen to her. Which means that you, as a storyteller, must frustrate our hopes for her by making bad things happen to this character you’ve seduced us into loving. I never said your job as a writer was to be kind to your characters, or to your readers either.

Now, we move not only deep, but closer in to the individual person your character will be. You accomplish that by conjuring a context for your character. Peeps and Predicaments. What has happened to your character in her life, especially her Predicaments, physical, emotional, psychological. Plus, the people who had the first, huge effect on her life, her most pivotal Peeps, those who loved her and wished her well, as we do, or may have failed to do so.You need a single, specific main character to do this work, and you must give her a name. Naming your character gives her substance and reality, especially in your own consciousness as her creator. Crafting the very specific substance and reality of your character’s context is your goal at this stage of character creation. The context of your character as a person, the details of which may or may not appear in your story but will immerse you in her humanity.

You must delve into the central self of your character by becoming her. Here’s how. Respond to each of the following questions in the first person, using “I.” Respond as your character, not telling us about her but being her and speaking in her voice. Concentrate on how you, your character, feel about each question. Answer more from your character’s gut than from her head. Be specific, avoiding theories and abstractions altoge­ther if possible.

This is where the fun happens, the magical mystery tour of yourself as your character.

  • What family member do you consider yourself closest to, and what would you say is the deepest, most true reason for that closeness?
  • What member of your family are you most distant from? How did this distance begin, and why does it persist to this day?
  • What was the most memorable experience of your childhood? Recreate the scene if you can.
  • What is the most important memento you have saved from your growing-up years? Why have you saved it for so long, and where do you keep it?
  • What incident in your life made you most angry?
  • When in your life were you most frightened?
  • What is the single thing you most yearn for in life?
  • What is the saddest thing that has ever happened to you?
  • When in your life were you most happy?

Please, respond at length, in writing, of course. Once you have done so, you will find yourself somewhere very special, under the skin and among some of the most inner secrets of your character. Your character has opened herself to you. She has done so because you cared enough about her to become her and ask her most crucial questions. She has spoken from the deepest part of her heart into the deepest part of yours, and you have listened.You and your character have become one being. Your souls have melded to become the place from which you will share her secrets, speak her truth, and write the very best story of her you have in you, perhaps the very best story you have ever told. I, for one, can’t wait to read it.

Bonus Exercise. Become one with the famous characters in the above pictures. Ask yourself, as each character, “What do I want?” Celie in The Color Purple? Jay Gatsby in The Great Gatsby? Scout Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird?
Alice Orr – https://www.aliceorrbooks.com

– R|R –

Amanda Miller’s life is full of Peeps and Predicaments. Experience them yourself in Alice’s latest novel, A Time of Fear & Loving – Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 5. Available HERE. Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.

 What readers are saying about A Time of Fear & Loving: “I never want an Alice Orr book to end.” “Alice Orr is the queen of ramped-up stakes and page-turning suspense.” “Warning. Don’t read before bed. You won’t want to sleep.” “The tension in this novel is through the roof.” “A budding romance that sizzles in the background until it ignites with passion.” “The best one yet, Alice!”

http://facebook.com/aliceorrwriter/
http://twitter.com/AliceOrrBooks/
http://goodreads.com/aliceorr/
http://pinterest.com/aliceorrwriter/