Wednesday's Links to Writing & Marketing Blog Posts

ADDING SUSPENSE TO ROMANCE

By: J.K. Coi

When I decided that Pro­tect­ing His Assets was going to be a body­guard story, of course that meant that there needed to be a rea­son why the hero would require a body­guard, which meant adding an ele­ment of sus­pense and dan­ger to an oth­er­wise fun, light­hearted romance.

I wanted to make sure I didn’t over­shadow the romance (or the fun), but that the sus­pense also had sub­stance and believability.

Here are a few tips that I learned for blend­ing the two:

Don’t for­get what your story is really about: In a true “roman­tic sus­pense” you could say that the story is dri­ven equally by both the romance and the sus­pense, and that would mean a more equal bal­ance of the two, but in this case, my story is first and fore­most a romance. That means that the devel­op­ment of the char­ac­ters’ roman­tic jour­ney must remain at the fore­front in every scene.

Dan­ger with mean­ing: Because a com­pelling romance relies on the inner con­flicts of its main char­ac­ters, the outer con­flict is stronger if it can also be con­nected to those inner con­flicts, and the sus­pense aspect should not be sep­a­rate from this, but tie in so that all ele­ments of the story weave together.

A big­ger threat: . . .

To read the rest of the post, click here:

~*~

If you missed my latest writing and marketing tweets, here they are again:

• How to Find & Work with Beta Readers to Improve Your Book http://ow.ly/XgPHn
• Richard Walter on Static Vs. Dynamic Scene Settings | Creative Screenwriting Magazine http://ow.ly/XgUgn
• I Will Never Rest* http://ow.ly/XgV6Q "When professionals investigate a crime, they’re supposed to keep an open mind..."
• Adding Suspense to RomanceWriterspace http://ow.ly/XgVuf
• How to Write a Novel That Will Actually Be Worthy of Publishing | A Writer's Path http://ow.ly/Xh106
• Revision: Making a Mess Less Complicated | A Writer's Path http://ow.ly/Xh1b8
• Fiction University: How to Subtly Boost Your Dialogue’s Power With Body Language http://ow.ly/Xh1o9
• Print to Digital: Cleaning Up Your Word File – Tech Tools for Writers http://ow.ly/Xh1Gf
• Publishers Must Dig for the Data Beneath Their Content | Digital Book World http://ow.ly/Xh1Qr
• How To Open Widget Images In A New Window | Molly Greene: Writer http://ow.ly/Xh253
• How to Use Content Marketing to Sell Products Online http://ow.ly/Xh2g2
• How to Increase Awareness, Generate Leads and Create Advocacy With Social Media : Social Media Examiner http://ow.ly/Xh2no
• How do we define an e-reader? | The Passive Voice | http://ow.ly/Xh2u6
• Content - Content Marketing Predictions for 2016 [Infographic] : MarketingProfs Article http://ow.ly/Xh2CV

Happy writing and running, Kathy