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What I Learned From Writing Romance

By Louise Titchener (romance written under pen name Maude Wood)

No matter what the genre, a bit of sexual tension can perk up your storytelling. Years ago I wrote romance novels. This is what that experience taught me. Love is a lot more interesting when it’s all about the conflict.

Readers are surprised when I tell them that a romance is a love story. But not all love stories are romances. Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet is a love story. The conflict in that...

Fishing for a story

What is creativity? The ancient Greeks believed that artists channeled their music, dance, poetry etc. from the gods. Sometimes it feels that way. Sometimes it feels more like going fishing in an empty pool.

I don’t know the process that musicians, dancers and poets go through to do their work. I do know that writing a novel, at least in the beginning, can be a struggle. Facing that blank first page is daunting.

As I picture the vacant computer screen after I’ve...

To Prologue or not to Prologue

By Louise Titchener

Writing first chapters makes me think of wallpapering a room. If you don’t get that initial strip of gingham checks on right, every new addition will be askew. The finished project will be totally off kilter. I have a novel I’ve been revising for years. The first chapter never quite worked but instead of fixing it I kept on writing. What was wrong about the first chapter bled into the second and things just got worse and worse. Big mistake.

The...

The Outsider Protagonist

Are you a mystery writer? If so, do you write “Hard Boiled” or “Cozy?” Since I write in the genre, it’s important for me to know where my stories fit on the mystery spectrum. Yet these days that gradient is crowded and murky. It’s confusing, but I think my protagonist is the key to the answer.

In what was arguably “mystery’s golden age” when Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Mickey Spillane and Ross Macdonald were making their marks, a clear partition separated the...

Plotting an Adventure

I am in the process of plotting my fifth Oliver Redcastle historical mystery. This means I’m setting off on an adventure into an unknown land. Where will I go with Oliver? What will happen to us? What will we discover? How will it all end?

I start knowing a few things. I know my protagonist, Oliver Redcastle—ex union army sharpshooter, ex Pinkerton investigator. A conflicted man struggling to survive the 1880’s in a troubled America. I know what his situation was when I...

The Perfect Protagonist

Well, there’s no such thing and there shouldn’t be. A protagonist should always be imperfect. Here’s why I think that’s true.

Perfection is fine in a saint. But most people aren’t saints and don’t want to read about them. They want heroes and heroines they can relate to, identify with, worry about, root for. That doesn’t mean your protagonist must be irredeemably inadequate. In fact, I think a good protagonist needs a special skill. My most recent hero is a...

More Reflections on Revising Romance

In my last blog, I talked about going back time to re-write a series of romance novels that I authored years ago. It was a trip down memory lane. It was also a shock to realize how much has changed since those books were written. And it’s not just that cell phones have radically transformed our lifestyles and forced me to re-think plot points.

The romantic suspense trilogy I’ve just finished revising (High Stakes, Dark Waters, and Bright Secrets) is called...

How long is my chapter?

By Louise Titchener

Chapters of twenty to thirty pages used to be the adult fiction norm. When I started attempting to write novels, I crafted long chapters—and proud of it.

Guess what—nowadays I’m cutting those long chapters by half, thirds, and sometimes even by quarters.

What changed? I think technology transformed reading habits. When I was learning to write, transitions were a big deal. Writers were advised never to change a scene, setting, or time period without...

First Chapter Blues

By Louise Titchener

Here’s me staring at a blank computer screen. You guessed it. I’m starting the first chapter of a new novel. Since I write historical mystery and this will be the 5th in the series, I know my protagonist well. That puts me a step ahead.

However, since this novel is set in a new locale, I’ll need to do research. The advantage of writing historical fiction is that you get the fun of imagining yourself in a different time and place. The disadvantage—you...

Author For the People

After years of struggle with plot, I’ve concluded that it’s all about people. I know, I know. That sounds simple-minded. But it’s not so simple. Stories that interest human readers spring from two elements: events and personalities. We humans spend our years coping with events and their consequences. Our lives are a series of challenges. Some are small. Some are big. How we cope and why different people cope in such different ways—or have a meltdown and don’t cope at...

A Special Protagonist

Question: Why does your protagonist need to be special? Answer: Because that’s what your reader needs.

Identifying with the struggles of a sympathetic protagonist’ is a prime part of the reading experience. Why do little girls love the story of Cinderella? Why have versions of that story about a vulnerable girl’s triumph been around since ancient Egypt and maybe before? Overcoming adversity is what a lot of life is about. Stories tell us how others do it and teach us...

My Trip Down Memory Lane

These days I write mystery. Years ago, however,(when my kids were small and I wanted to make some money while being a stay-at-home-mom) I wrote romance under a variety of pseudonyms. Most of my romance books were romantic suspense. For me, a good adventure with an element of danger just always seems to make a story more fun to read.

Now I write mystery, with a special partiality for historical mystery. I thought I’d said goodbye forever to all those romance novels....