Elements of Modern Storytelling: Romance, A Guest Blog by Christine Amsden

by Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

This is blog 2 in our Elements of Modern Storytelling: Romance series. It's by Christine Amsden, a very successful and imaginative fellow author at Twilight Times Books. Christine always has some interesting things to say, so let's get to it.

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Christine:

Where does romance fit as an element of modern storytelling?

Romance is more popular than ever and it's not hard to see why. Modern storytelling is intimate by its very nature, and modern readers want to get to know their favorite characters in ways they never did before. We crave that closeness. That connection. And romance is the ultimate human connection. 

These days limited omniscient third person point of view is so commonplace that we scarcely think about it any longer. Back in the old days, if you wanted to get “inside” a character's head, you needed to use a first person perspective. These days that's not necessary. You can use “he” or “she” to your heart's content and still put us right there inside their skulls, sharing everything they think, hear, see, feel, touch, and smell. In fact, readers have come to expect this.

Why? The answer is simple – movies. These days, books have to compete against movies to provide an enthralling storytelling experience. And let's face it, books can never compete with movies on sights or sounds. Classic books often described a scene from the distant perspective of an omniscient narrator. They would set the stage by describing sights and sounds, what the characters looked like and wore, what they acted like and what they said. But this distant narrator rarely got inside a character's head and when it did it wasn't intimate. It was usually just expedient. 

Imagine modern books trying to use a distant narrator, when live-action movies can show us sights and sounds so much better? How can a book even hope to compete?

Intimacy. The one thing a book can do that a movie cannot is create a connection between the reader and the character. Whether an author uses first person or third person, the expectation is that we (the readers) get to know him or her in ways that no movie could show us. We want nothing more or less than the deepest desires of their heart, and the attitudes behind them.

Coming back around to romance, it is not hard to see that once you've given us a true connection to your character, the busybodies of the world (and most of us are whether we want to admit it or not) want to see those characters happily settled down with the right man/woman/sentient being. Even if that's not what the story is about, once we've established a true connection to a hero or heroine we look for him or her to establish connections with other people. The same way we do in real life. 

Having said that, I often think romance is overemphasized in modern stories. The romantic relationship is not the only way for people to connect with other people. We have friends. Family. Mortal enemies. 

I also worry that the romantic relationship is a true fantasy in many stories. And I'm not talking about magic – I'm talking about things that don't happen in the real world. The way love is often presented, it is indistinguishable from lust, and it establishes a false framework for what a real lifelong commitment is about. 

One challenge authors face today is reader expectations. And as much as readers swear they'd like to read something different, the truth is usually that they want to see something that pushes them just outside their comfort zone – not something that propels them out of it. Which is why I will be a very old woman before I write the non-happily ever after romance I'd love to try (if I ever do).

In the meantime, I'm trying to use romance to support other aspects of story and character, rather than as a focus for the story. (Or even as a superfluous subplot.) In so doing, I'm hoping to create a subtle honesty to the romance in my stories that belies the traditional lust-based undercurrents. In addition, I'm trying to include other important relationships in my characters' lives. 

My Cassie Scot series is an excellent example of what I mean. A lot of my reviews point to the “family drama” in the series and Cassie's friendships as being as compelling as the romance. Seeing these comments warms my heart because this was exactly what I wanted to do. Cassie will eventually be a wife and mother, but for now she is a daughter, sister (six times over), and a friend. 

When it comes to the romance in that series, Cassie isn't ready for it yet. Between magic, mystery, romance, and family drama there's a lot to keep her busy but the arc that drives the story is Cassie's personal coming of age story. She can't be with someone else until she's okay with herself (which she's not at first). Thus the romance supports the story/character and not the other way around.

Of course, there are a lot of books out there and a lot of approaches to romance. I am in no way suggesting that every story should be the same. There will always be a place on readers' shelves for steamy or heartwarming romantic fantasies. I read them myself and enjoy them quite a bit. 

But as romance is inserted as a co-plot into more and more stories, the opportunities for literature as a whole are endless. I've seen more stories about married couples, for instance, showing us that life doesn't end at “I do.” And there is often a great deal of honesty in these tales. 

However it's spun, tales of romance are human connections. And if there is one simple answer I could give to the question of where romance fits as an element of modern storytelling, that would be it: Human connections. 

Christine Amsden
http://www.christineamsden.com

Novels:

Secrets and Lies (Cassie Scot - Book 2) (December 2013)
Cassie Scot: ParaNormal Detective (May 2013) 2013 Global Ebook Award winner
The Immortality Virus (June 2011), winner of the 2012 Eppie Award
Touch of Fate (November 2007)

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Human connnections. I think she has something there. I knew it would be interesting! Thanks, Christine!

More to come next week with another fellow author!

-Stephanie Osborn

http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

Elements of Modern Storytelling: Romance

by Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

Last week I promised you a new series of blogs, to include many guest authors, on The Elements of Modern Storytelling. This week we start the first element, which I have chosen to be Romance. The plan is for me to lead off each new element with my own blog post, followed by views from other authors. Some elements may have more posts, some less, depending entirely on the inspiration of my guest authors, and it's entirely possible that my own schedule could get wonky, in which case someone else may lead off on an element. But that's the plan. And we all know that a good plan never survives first engagement with the enemy (Time, in this case), so we'll see. Anyway. On to the disccussion.

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I write, as most of you know, principally science fiction mysteries. It's a deliberate cross-genre blend. But I also usually have some element of romance in my stories as well. I even (GASP!) allowed Sherlock Holmes to fall in love in my Displaced Detective series. That in itself has created a lot of stir. And a significant number of science fiction fans (mostly male per my observations, interestingly enough) think that romance has no place in sci-fi.

I beg to differ.

Few things are so revealing of one's character as one's behavior when falling, or fully, in love. This is as true in real life as it is in fiction. Granted, it is possible for some to hide their true natures; it's why people get immersed into a relationship only to discover that the partner is abusive, and the like. But in general, I think it's so. When we were dating, my funny, impetuous, spontaneous now-husband grew a serious, gentle side, a courtly side, and he's never lost those things. Meanwhile, curious, serious, reserved me, always with a plan, discovered that spontaneity could be fun. We learned something new about ourselves. It wasn't so much that those things were never in us to begin with as it was that each helped the other discover it in themselves.

This is why I use romance as a tool in my writer's kit. Romance enables me to more fully flesh out the character. To me, it is one of the things that helps bring a character to life in the mind of the reader. And if you'll recall some of my recent posts, that's my ultimate goal in creating a character: bringing him/her/it to life in your imagination. I used it on both protagonists in Burnout: The mystery of Space Shuttle STS-281, in different ways, to pretty good effect, I think.

So if watching the internal struggle, the anxieties, fears, joys and triumphs of a person in love cannot bring that character to life in the reader's mind, frankly, nothing can. It is a microcosm of life.

Okay, fine, so why the [expletive redacted] did you make Sherlock Holmes, of all people, fall in love?

Well, I didn't. That was sort of his idea. And once he explained it to me, it made sense. He's also stubborn enough to insist on it anyway, whether I liked it or not -- which he did, but initially I didn't.

[See, the characters, on some level, become real to me, too. I have yet to decide if the theory of alternate universes where literary characters exist as actual people might be real, or not. But sometimes it surely seems as if the ideas come from somewhere Out There.]

Now, I'll admit that I deliberately challenged him with a brilliant, genius-intellect modern woman. Mostly because I wanted to see if this was a stressor to him. The whole point behind the first Displaced Detective story (which takes place across two volumes, The Case of the Displaced Detective: The Arrival and The Case of the Displaced Detective: At Speed) was to take the great intelligence of the Great Detective, along with all his imagination, creativity, strengths, foibles, preconceptions, and faults, and plop him down in a situation that was so outre that a lesser man would have gone mad. And then I wanted to see what he'd do. This was an experiment on my part, because I didn't have any particular clear plan for what would happen, save that I knew major plot events and I knew who the antagonists were. I set the initial conditions and let it run, following what was in character for the various personae dramatis.

There is also one other thing that I added to the mix as a running theme, and that was the concept of parallelism. If we are going to discuss parallel worlds, universes, then we might as well look at how they are similar -- or not -- across multiple continua. And so I introduced the idea that there were parallels to Holmes' native continuum in Skye Chadwick's, and one of those...was her.

You see, in her own continuum, the one to which Holmes moves, at least until his advent she WAS him. She was her world's Sherlock Holmes. Only, just as other, more direct, versions of Holmes didn't all become detectives (this is mentioned in some of the later books, which haven't come out yet), so too did Chadwick fall into another field of endeavor, namely hyperspatial physics. She is (in her universe) to hyperspatial physics what Albert Einstein was to relativity. (No, not really another parallel. Just a metaphor.)

Well, I mean really. Holmes has been accused of being narcissistic. So doesn't it stand to reason that, when presented with a version of himself in reasonably attractive female form, he might fall? Especially if he's in a highly charged emotional situation such as being yanked to a freakin' different spacetime? He thought so, and when once he had laid out his logic, I did, too.

"I have never loved, Watson, but if I did and if the woman I loved had met such an end, I might act even as our lawless lion-hunter has done."
~Sherlock Holmes, The Adventure of the Devil's Foot

Right here, in Arthur Conan Doyle's own story, he admits that he knows his own emotions would be powerful, in the circumstance. So what if...?

And once again, romance proved a useful tool. Because we -- "we" being Holmes and me -- were able to demonstrate that the great intellect still functions well even through the throes of a tumultuous beginning love affair. And, that relationship having been firmly established, he reverts even more to the Victorian gentleman he always was. And Doyle was right -- the powerful intellect has powerful emotions, even if he does keep them largely hidden from the rest of the world. ("Still waters run deep," and all that.) And such a relationship is capable of being to him the distraction, the divertissement, that an active mind sometimes needs to be able to see the forest through the trees.

I always knew Holmes was a strong character. My intent was to make Chadwick a strong character as well, a strong woman to Holmes' strong man, an equal. How much the more, then, when they have formed such a strong attachment to one another, yet each must still let the other go marching into danger? I've found the arrangement to be ripe for displaying their strengths and weaknesses.

I think it is, also, one of the reasons why the series has a strong fan following.

Romance. It's good for way more than just a fling.

~~~

Next week, Christine Amsden's take on The Elements of Modern Storytelling: Romance.

-Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

Excerpt: The Case of the Displaced Detective:The Arrival

This is the prologue to the first book in my Displaced Detective Series, The Case of the Displaced Detective: The Arrival, a science fiction mystery. Books 1 and 2 (The Case of the Displaced Detective: At Speed) are in release, ebook and treebook; book 3, (The Case of the Cosmological Killer: The Rendlesham Incident) will be released later this year. You can purchase both in pretty much any format you like through my website, www.stephanie-osborn.com. Hope you enjoy this excerpt.

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Prologue—Objects, Subjects, and Beginnings

A tall, dark figure, clad in formal Victorian eveningwear, strode briskly down the shadowed street, casually swinging his silver-embellished walking stick. No carriages had passed in the last half-hour, and only one hansom cab had wandered by ten minutes before, its horse’s hollow hoofbeats echoing between the buildings. The gas street-lamps were long since lit, but between them were patches of deep darkness, patches entirely too broad for comfort in these circumstances. Beneath the brim of his silk top hat, eagle-sharp grey eyes darted about, studying the shadows, alert and aware. For well this man knew that danger lurked in the gloom this night, danger peculiar to him alone; and he was alone. So very alone.

But not for long. He was headed to a specific destination. To the one man he knew he could trust, the one man who would stand at his side regardless of danger—for had he not done so, many times before? Was not this the reason for the deep, if largely unspoken, bond of friendship between them?

His friend would help. There was no doubt in his mind on that point. Already today two attempts had been made upon his life, and well did this man need help.

"Not far now," the words breathed past thin, pale lips. "Almost ther—"

The words died on said lips.

A hulking, brutish shadow materialised from the alleyway in front of him. The elegant man in the top hat ducked just in time to avoid the lead-weighted bludgeon that swung through the space his head had occupied fractions of a second before. Instead, the silk hat took the brunt of the blow, flying across the sidewalk and into a puddle in the gutter, its side crushed. Flinging up his cane and grasping each end in his hands, the gentleman dropped into an Oriental horse stance, and prepared to do battle.

"’Ere, now," the other figure said, in a coarse growl. "Hit’s th’ end o’ you, it is. Me superior won’t be ‘arvin’ it, an’ Oi means t’ see ‘e don’t ‘arve ta."

"You can try," the gentleman replied, calm. "But better men than you have tried, and here I stand."

A guttural, angry sound emerged from the assailant, and the cudgel swung again, this time with enough force to crush bone. Deft, the gentleman caught it with the center of his cane, but to his chagrin the walking-stick, his weapon of choice in many a similar street altercation, chose that moment to give up the ghost. It snapped in two, splintering and cracking. He snarled his own irritation, and flung the pieces aside when he realised there was not enough left to use as a decent weapon.

Then he began to flit and weave as the other man smirked and lunged at him, swinging the club repeatedly, as hard as he could. It was a dance of death, and one wrong move by the gentleman would have serious, possibly fatal, consequences.

But the man in the evening dress was not without weapons; no, his best weapons were permanently attached to his person. The alert grey eyes watched, looking for some opening; and when he saw his chance, he struck like lightning. A fist shot out at the loutish face, catching the hit man squarely in the mouth just as he realised his danger and started to shout for help. All that came out was a grunt, however, and the assassin fell to the pavement as if pole-axed, with both lips split.

The gentleman hissed in pain, grabbing his fist with his other hand for a moment to let the worst of the discomfort pass before examining the damage.

"By Jove, he has sharp teeth for such a troglodyte," he murmured, peeling off the ruined black kid glove to expose the bloody knuckles beneath. "Completely through the leather and into the flesh. I shall have to have this disinfected, for certain. No time for that now. Go, man!" He turned swiftly to resume his journey.

A crack resounded from the brownstone close at hand, and the man felt a spray of stone chips strike the side of his face. He flinched, and a sharp curse left his lips. He took to his heels and rounded the corner of the street, then disappeared into shadow.

* * *

Not ten feet away from the gentleman, though invisible to him, an elegant blonde woman in a white lab coat stood between tall, electronic towers. Behind her, concentric rows of computer consoles were manned by two dozen scientists, engineers, and technicians. Surrounding all of them was a huge, domed room carved from solid pink granite.

The woman stood for long minutes, silent, watching.

Finally one of the technicians broke the electronic silence.

"So, Doc, whaddaya think?"

"What do you think, Jim? How were the readings?" The woman turned toward him.

"I’ve got bang-on, Dr. Chadwick," Jim noted, glancing down at his own console, brown eyes darting about as he surveyed his readouts. "But I can’t say for everybody else."

"Rock steady at Timelines," someone else called.

"Sequencing looks good…" another said.

"Software’s running nominally."

"Hardware’s humming right along…"

On it went, from console to console. Finally the woman nodded.

"Perfect," she purred in deep satisfaction. "We’ve got our subject. Page Dr. Hughes and have her come down."

"On it, Doc," Jim grinned, reaching for the phone.

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For more, or to purchase this and more books in the series, go to my website, www.stephanie-osborn.com.