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Conflict is the pulse of the story. Without conflict, your story is really boring and short. But sometimes it is really hard to come up with enough conflict or compelling conflict. There are only so many times you can throw random accidents at a person until you become The Perils of Pauline. Thankfully author Kari Lynn Dell has some great thoughts on how to make sure your characters really suffer. Check it out at Romance University.
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What have you got to lose?
by Kari Lynn Dell
This question single-handedly turned around my writing career. It has become the first thing I ask my characters as I devise new and better ways to torture them along the road to their happily-ever-after. First, though, let me give credit where credit is due.
About four years ago I was struggling mightily with the manuscript that would eventually become Reckless in Texas. In the course of three major rewrites it was getting, if anything, worse as I twisted and stretched to come up with a compelling conflict. In the depths of my despair, I turned to the place you have also arrived–blogs on the craft of writing. Specifically, the blog belonging to the incomparable Jennifer Crusie.
In one of those moments of divine circumstance that I wouldn’t believe if I read it in a book, I stumbled across the exact advice I needed at exactly the right time.
To paraphrase, if you want to write unforgettable romance, make it so the two of them can’t win at love unless one of them loses. Big. Gives up a cherished vision of who they are, or steps off the path they have laid out for themselves, brick by careful brick. Or both.
Read the full post on Romance University.