Alison Kent

Walking the dog . . .

Dictating the book while walking the dog . . .

August 19th, 2008 Alison Posted in What I'm . . ., Writing in 2008 | 5 Comments »

There will be no blog posts until the book I’m writing (a Blaze) is done. I am, however, trying out a new writing schedule / program / plan of attack, and will report back in the comments with my word count for the next twelve days, keepin’ it real, and all.

August 10th, 2008 Alison Posted in Doing, What I'm . . . | 14 Comments »

August 8th, 2008 Alison Posted in Releasing, What I'm . . . | 21 Comments »

The winner of the Mon/Tues prize pack is: Caffey! Send me your mailing info and I’ll get those books sent to you as soon as I can find a moment to spare!

And the grand prize winner of the complete set of workshop recordings from this year’s RWA conference is: Kaitlin! Kaitlin, email me and we’ll talk. The workshops aren’t available yet, so we’ll have to wait on those!

And for all you knitters out there . . .

August 7th, 2008 Alison Posted in Doing, What I'm . . . | 10 Comments »

August 5th, 2008 Alison Posted in Doing, What I'm . . . | 9 Comments »

If your dream is to write, go now and read this post. It’s long, but it is so well worth the time it will take you to read it. Even better, it will stay with you long after you are done.

August 4th, 2008 Alison Posted in Recommending, What I'm . . . | 2 Comments »

Donna Kauffman - Check it out and enter her contest!

August 4th, 2008 Alison Posted in Doing, What I'm . . . | 3 Comments »

As I mentioned last week, I had to shift my final LB&LI entry forward because life exploded around me. It exploded so forcefully, in fact, that my final LB&LI entry isn’t even going to be mine. I’m recycling with permission a post of PBW’s from Romancing The Blog. She says everything I would say, and since I don’t have time to put our shared thoughts into my own words, I’m using hers. I have posted on this topic in the past (here is a short entry from 5 years ago on men speak), and I will share a couple of antecdotes.

Before I ever put a name to it, or understood the problem of authors writing men as if they were writing women, giving men female qualities rather than embracing all the things that make men men, I ran across an entry in a contest of unpublished work, one that has stuck with me for years because of how wrong everything was about the hero.

Here’s the set-up. Two men are in an office, one at his desk, the second standing at the high rise’s window looking out over the city. The man at the window has just been dumped by his woman, and is talking to the man at the desk about his broken heart, how miserable he feels, how he can’t believe this and that and the other about what he’s going through. In other words, he’s a woman sharing his feelings with his girlfriend.

He did not sound like a man. He was not acting like a man. And with very little writing experience of my own at that time, I recognized that I was not reading about a man. I was reading an author’s wish, a fantasy, that men would explore their feelings and not lock them up inside the way men as men are wont to do.

On another occasion, I was critiquing the work of an author aspiring to sell, and commented on a scene where her hero was sitting in the stairwell of a building with a female friend, pouring out his heart in the same fashion as the hero above. I told her this wasn’t particularly believable, and even were a reader to suspend disbelief, it wasn’t the sort of behavior most romance readers wanted from a hero. Her response was to tell me that she knew men like this and was basing her character on reality.

I let it go, but that was probably a turning point for me in thinking about how we write men. There is a fine line we walk as romance authors between fantasy and reality. Most readers aren’t going to want to read about men who scratch and fart and spit and adjust the goods in public. That’s a bit too much reality. The reality of a man who’ll sit in a stairwell and pour out his heart, is a different story. For some women, that man *is* a fantasy. They want to read about men who will discuss feelings in the same way as a girlfriend. But most romance readers don’t want girlfriends for their heroes.

One of the best “man” scenes I’ve read in awhile, was in this post on Shannon Stacey’s blog. These men talk like men. Their attitudes are 100% male. You read this scene and you can hear and see them. You do not think about girlfriends. These are the guys you see on the big screen, ones in real life you would probably avoid because who wants to deal with that machismo on a regular basis, but they are perfect fantasy for romance.

Who do you think writes great fictional men?

And now that I’ve blathered on with my opinions and experience, here’s Lynn Viehl’s post with a lot more specifics on writing believable men.

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GIRL IN A MAN SUIT by PBW

I’m reading a romance novel. The heroine pops in to say Hi and give me some back story. There’s a calamity of some sort, which is the cue for the hero to enter. Here he comes, strutting down the chapter runway. He’s big-gorgeous, or dark-gorgeous, or rugged-gorgeous. Then the hero opens his mouth and says:

Forgive me for having a penis.

Okay, he doesn’t say that. He says and/or does something nice and PC, to facilitate bonding. Something the author thought was sweet. Something no man alive would say or do during such a calamity unless you were holding a .44 pressed against his head. Or someplace further south. Something like:

“I’m so sorry, Miss,” said Luke as he stepped out of the Corvette and knelt to pick up Bethany’s crushed groceries. He gazed up at her. “I didn’t see you, so please let me pay for everything I’ve ruined. Were these Shitake mushrooms? I should have gotten some for the stir-fry I’m making tonight.” He gave her a gentle smile. “Do you like Japanese?”

This doesn’t stop here. Throughout the book, the minute this guy opens his mouth or does something, he’s wrong. He sounds exactly like the heroine, or her mother, sister, aunt, or best girlfriend. That’s because our hero is a girl in a man suit.

No offense to any lesbians reading this, but I’m hetero, and two ladies don’t do it for me. I like man/woman romances. It actually doesn’t matter to me what the man looks like; tall, dark, short, blond, white, black, alpha, omega, whatever, I’m there. I like men, period. I also like men to sound and behave like men. Which they can’t do if they’re only wearing a man suit.

As writers, we women need to be aware of the differences between the genders, and get them on the page. Men and women are biologically programmed to look, act and speak differently, and that’s made our species successful. This is not something to mourn or homogenize; I think we should celebrate our differences.

This is how I’d write the fender bender scene: “You okay?” Luke said as he got out and looked at Bethany. He reached down to grab a crushed bag and saw the Corvette’s dented bumper. “Oh, great.”

Having your hero swagger around, adjust his package and swear in every other sentence won’t solve the problem of a girl in a man suit. True, some men are loud, aggressive, and blunt, but others are quiet, soft-spoken, and sensitive. There are all sorts of men in between, too. I live with a strong, silent type guy. While he is quiet and has yet to swagger, everything about him is undeniably masculine.

If you’re not sure how you’re depicting character gender, try this exercise: remove all the names, dialogue tags and gender giveaway words from a scene with the hero and heroine (for best results, don’t use a love scene.)

First, read the dialogue out loud. Can you hear the gender difference between the two characters, or do they sound like twins? Now, look at your action in the scene. Can you tell their gender from their physical behavior? If you’re not sure, do this exercise with another person and ask them to identify the genders of the characters.

If you find your heroes are sheroes, then you need to do some research into writing more realistic male characters. My advice is to go to the source:

1. Hang out with some real live men. Note their body language, speech, and mannerisms. Observe how their behavior changes, and what triggers those shifts.

2. Talk to men. If you want to know what men would say, do or feel in any given situation, ask one.

3. Go to places where men congregate, and watch them in action. Listen to how they talk and act with each other as opposed to women.

4. Ask a man to critique your work. It’s tough to find guys willing to read romance, but men are great at spotting and flagging sheroes.

More Research Sources:

Doreen Kimura’s Biological Constraints on Parity Between the Sexes and Sex Differences in the Brain

Judy Siennicki Gender Differences in Nonverbal Communication

Hara Estroff Marano’s The New Sex Scorecard

Laura Pope’s editorial Gender Differences Make Life Interesting

Edith Weiner & Arnold Brown’s What’s the Difference?
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As part of shifting things forward, I’ll draw a winner for the Mon/Tues discussion prize pack on Tuesday night, August 5th, 2008, at 8:00 p.m.ish CDT, then draw the grand prize winner of the RWA conference workshop CD’s on Wednesday night, August 6th, 2008, at 8:00 p.m.ish CDT.

August 4th, 2008 Alison Posted in Craft, Writing | 13 Comments »

From Access Romance’s All A Blog:

We’re in the planning stages of a complete site overhaul of AccessRomance and want your advice! Are there any features that you’d like us to add to the site? Anything we already have but you’d like to see more of? Please share any advice you might have to help us make AccessRomance more fun, informational, and user friendly!

(Click the link for more info.)

August 1st, 2008 Alison Posted in What I'm . . ., Wondering | No Comments »

The winner of the Wed/Thurs prize pack is: Kristi! Email me your mailing info, Kristi, and I’ll get those books sent out to you.

We are writing men, but we’re going to have a delay in talking about doing so. It’s the end of the month, er, the beginning, meaning my non-writing business side has a lot of stuff to get done NOW. I hope to get the post up sometime on Friday, but it might be Saturday - or even Monday at this rate. Never fear, I’ll just be shifting everything forward.

August 1st, 2008 Alison Posted in Doing, What I'm . . . | 9 Comments »