Worderella Writes

Beta Males Revisted

Just a quick entry to let you know about an interesting discussion that’s happening at Redlines and Deadlines about beta males in fiction/romance.

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Book: Wildford’s Daughter

Emma Wildford, seeing how her society-addled mother ruined her parents’ marriage, decided to live with her practical-thinking father when her family split apart. But now that Emma is interested in marriage, she finds her father jealous of the idea. Both the sensible Captain Ringan and the opportunistic Mr Critchley show interest in Emma, confusing her, and so she turns to her friend Mrs Fry. With Mrs Fry’s help, Emma looks past the immediate pleasures the Regency period to visit the miserable female inmates of Newgate Prison, showing her just how lucky she is, and who she really has feelings for.

I actually found this book in my library while looking for Love in the time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Marquez’s book was out, for the curious, so I picked up this one). I’ve never read a book by Manners before, but I really enjoyed this. Some characters are flat, but the majority are flush, amusing, and heartening to read.

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“Gender Genie” saves the day

So about a week ago I read about an author who was having trouble with her hero’s voice… that is, she couldn’t seem to make him actually sound like a man. And then she remembered a great online tool created from an actual study in which some academics discovered men and women do, in fact, speak differently: The Gender Genie. They even came up with an algorithm that predicts whether the person speaking was a man or a woman.

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A Recent Conversation

Mina: So how is the new work-in-progress going?
Me: Really well! I mean, I got up to chapter 18 and I was flowing and everything. Wrote a couple thousand words last month, but then… (sigh)
Mina: …?

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Book: Stardust

In the town of Wall there is a young man named Tristran Thorn, and he is in love with a young woman named Victoria Forester. Victoria, young, beautiful, and completely aware of the fact, sends Tristran on a fool’s errand: to fetch the fallen star on the horizon. And so, Tristran steps across the border from the everyday to the mystical.

Why whould you read this book? Because it’s Neil Gaiman, and everyone should read one Gaiman book at some point. This book begged to be read aloud, and I almost wish (now this is a shocker) that I had the audio version. The narration is simple yet intriguing and complex; I want to read it again just to figure out how he was able to convey so much with so little. Which is exactly why you should read this book. Long sentences and over-the-top vocabulary are gimicks easily pointed out…they hide bad plots and expose worse execution. Gaiman’s simple narration is a quick read, yet, there are important themes discussed.

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Hurting Our Characters

Well, it’s Finals Week™, so we all know what that means: I get to start writing again! At the end of every quarter as assignments trickle to a halt and I’m left with more free time, all those little nuggets of inspiration that came to me earlier (but I couldn’t encourage because I had to be in school-mode) are now free to take over. What does this mean, Worderella? What are you trying to tell us?

It means that I’ve written another couple of thousand words over the last few days, which is a cause for celebration. Assuming I keep my overall goal of approximately 85 000 words (the range for a full-length novel is anywhere from 80 000 to 100 000+), then I can safely say I am 39.5% complete with this draft.

But I’ve hit a slight roadblock.

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Book: The Thirteenth Tale

Margaret Lea has a secret about her birth; a secret that haunts her to this day, and affects every decision she makes. She is the daughter of an antique book dealer, and so is his helpmate in running the bookshop that maintains their lifestyle. One day, a letter arrives for Margaret, written in an awful hand, requesting that she journey to the home of the infamous writer, Vida Winter. Miss Winter is infamous because of her past, or lack of it, for with every interview there is a new rendition, and none of them are true. There is no record of Miss Winter’s birth, her childhood…nothing to say who she was before she appeared in the literary world. Miss Winter, it seems, wants to tell the truth of her past for the first time, ever, and she has chosen Margaret for the job. After thirty (or forty, perhaps?) years of public speculation about the past of Miss Vida Winter, and the plot of the missing thirteenth tale from her book Thirteen Tales of Change and Desperation (only twelve were released), Vida Winter is ready to speak the truth.

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From the Notebook: Bringing Fiction to Life

I’ve been cleaning my place, trying to get things in order since I’ve moved back to campus, and I found some old notes about how to bring fiction to life. I only got as far as character surface life in terms of my detailed handwritten notes, with a character that I gave up, sadly enough. There are a couple things I wanted to post from my notes, however, since they seem useful.

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Creating Convincing Characters

Happy Labor Day!

Today is a list from The Writer (July 2006) that quickly describes how to create convincing characters by Corey Blake. Blake begins the article, Creating believable characters takes time and discipline. Creating dynamically real individuals and not imposing your own thoughts and impressions on them is not easy to do, and is often the difference between a novel or screenplay that sits in a closet and one that finds its way into the hands of audiences.

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Mr Beta Male

In your everyday historical romance, the hero is an Alpha Male. He takes charge, he’s depressingly sexy, and he makes you jealous of the heroine because she gets to touch those perfectly scuplted pecs. Don’t get me wrong, they certainly are fun to read. But my stories usually feature the Beta Male. What does that even mean, the Beta Male? Doesn’t that mean he’s a wimp? That’s he’s almost…too pretty to be a man? No, I don’t think so. (I am, admittedly, a little biased.) …

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