Friday, September 3, 2010

Welcome to Cliche-land

I've now reread all 25,000 words of the romance book I started writing this spring. The bad news is it needs a lot of work. The good news is that it's actually almost done--most of the work it needs is padding so that the first few chapters don't feel so rushed, and once I do that and write the last few chapters (where the poisoner is revealed and the main characters declare their love for one another, very physically), I should be right at the wordcount goal.

It's kind of amazing how many cliches I've stuffed into 25k words, though. I don't know how much of a drawback that is in category romance; presumably the plots don't need to be terribly fresh since it's the characters that are the real focus. Then again, there are so many cliches: the heroine's ex-boyfriend who wants to pick up their old relationship where it left off, the conniving other woman who's after the newly monied hero, the heroine's struggle to choose between the ex-boyfriend and the hero, the attempted rape of the heroine and her rescue by the hero (I'm particularly embarrassed about that one), the hero's dark secret that he dares not reveal to the heroine.

Still, I said I'd do this and I will. I'll do my damnedest to make it a good book--and I do really like the characters, and the writing is better than I remembered. If it sells to Harlequin, great. If it doesn't sell to Harlequin, there are a billion online romance publishers and I'm sure I can sell it to one of them.

(I vaguely remember writing a very similar post to this one months ago. What the hell, if I don't remember it no one else will either. Sort of like the age-old question, "Did I wear this shirt already this week?")

7 comments:

Cate Gardner said...

Oh it's going to sell to Harlequin, and then I'm going to be forced to order it from Amazon and read it on the bus and it'll probably have a rippling chest on the cover and people will point.

Aaron Polson said...

I'll buy a copy.

Don't expect me to read it.

(But my mom probably will...she gobbles the stuff. Ugh.)

K.C. Shaw said...

Cate--Maybe you can make a plain paper wrapper cover for it. :)

Aaron--You can score points by giving your copy to your mom. Everybody wins!

Anne Spollen said...

I guess it doesn't matter so much, the freshness stuff, in that genre, but I still think you should write it as well as you can since your name will be on it.

And I do the same thing, with the rushing at the beginning. Never see it until I read it later on.

K.C. Shaw said...

I was actually impressed with some of the writing when I reread it. I wrote some lovely descriptions--consistently good. I would never dumb down my writing or do sloppy work just because it wasn't a genre I particularly like. For one thing, I'd like to sell it. :)

Fox Lee said...

If the rescue scene still bugs you, you could always have her rescue herself and tell the hero about it. Then he can tenderly comfort her, or some such fluffiness (foreplay).

K.C. Shaw said...

It's more that it happens at all, or at least that I have it so early in the book. I think I'll have to move it closer to the end of the book.