I’m a decent cook. I can concoct a delicious pot-au-feu (beef stew, but it sounds so much better in French) or bake a chocolate cake with chocolate ganache, no problem.
But that’s the extent of my French cooking prowess.
Mostly, I rely on things like omelets, or salad, or spaghetti with marinara sauce. Sometimes I just make a big pot of pasta, drain it, and toss liberally with fresh parmesan, a knob of butter, and a good grinding of fresh-ground pepper. Heaven.
The great thing about cooking is that it’s pretty flexible. Don’t have any butter for the pasta? Use olive oil instead. No cornstarch? Flour and water will thicken your sauce just as well.
But for any dish to really succeed, it helps to read the recipe first and make sure you have the necessary ingredients on hand. You don’t just start throwing stuff into a bowl or pot to “see what happens.” If you do, you might – or more likely, might not – come up with something edible when you’ve finished.
And so it is with writing. Without the necessary ingredients – plot, character, conflict, suspense, and believability – your story will be unpalatable. Bland. Hard to swallow. Like picky kids at the dinner table, your readers might be persuaded to try it. But they won’t want to finish it.
And they won’t come back for seconds.
So before you begin, write your recipe (er… I mean, your plot) down in the form of an outline or a synopsis or whatever works for you. Know where you’re going with your story, and how you’re going to get there.
Next… make your characters interesting. Is your heroine beautiful and poised, with glossy blonde hair she constantly flips over one shoulder? Is her name ‘Tawny’? Does your hero, ‘Tango,’ have dark hair, a chiseled jaw, a Jaguar, and an unlimited cash flow?
Change them. Now. Please.
Instead, make the heroine a few pounds overweight. Give her a serious weakness for Louboutin shoes, a dead-end job, and a handbag full of maxed-out credit cards, and you have a much more interesting character than blonde, boring, perfect Tawny.
Same goes for Tango. Maybe his nose is crooked from a long-ago bar fight. Maybe he’s endearingly awkward in social situations or defensive because of his name (Tango? What the hell kind of a name is ‘Tango’?)…
Next, give your characters plenty of conflict. Not just with each other – but within themselves as well. Maybe he hates his name and has always wanted to change it – but doesn’t want to hurt his mother’s feelings. Maybe he grew up without much money, so he’s cautious with a dollar – and scornful of shopaholics like Tawny.
Maybe she’s the life of the party… but secretly despises herself for the extra ten pounds she carries with such apparent aplomb. Add in a bigger problem, something that sets her and Tango at odds with each other, or requires them to (very reluctantly) join forces – and you have the makings for a good, page-turning conflict.
Will Tango come to terms with his regrettable name? Will Tawny pay off her credit card debt before the newest red-soled shoes hit the stores? Can two such unlikely people ever find happiness – and a balanced bank account – together?
Maybe. Maybe not. But your readers will have a lot of fun finding out.
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