Writing a novel is really like putting a puzzle together. Characters, plot, setting, theme, dialogue, emotion. Or perhaps it’s more like cooking a stew.
But how does it all actually come together? After all, it’s not as simple as throwing a bunch of random characters into a pot, adding in some stuff that happens, followed by a setting, a theme, and so forth, and expect it to work. It’s a little — ok, quite a bit — more involved than that. I’m going to explain exactly how I came up with the stew of my December romance release, called “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me”.
Before I started writing “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me”, I knew I wanted to pay homage to my home area (Windsor, Ontario) and that I wanted Motown music to play a role. Why? I loved music, even as a little kid, and in the 1960s and 1970s, Motown music was king. And it defined the geographical area where I was from, since this musical and cultural phenomenon was all happening right across the river from Windsor in Detroit, Michigan. To me, the Windsor of my youth was about Motown music and automobiles (Ford, GM, Chrysler, with plants for all three employing tens of thousands of people in my area, including my dad). Thus, I folded the music and a 1965 Mustang convertible into my novel, which is actually set in contemporary times.
So there was my setting. As for theme and characters, I wanted my two protagonists to overcome their own obstacles, mostly internal, some external, and I wanted an age gap (16 years). I wanted Claire and Ellie to be very different in personality, with each eventually coming to influence (in a positive way) the other. And I wanted them to intensely dislike one another at the start (a good source of immediate tension). Now that I had the meat of my story, how was I going to get it all started? And what would I do with it all?
I wanted to start the novel with a bang. And so I did. Claire (42) is a newspaper editor who has just fired her paper’s 26-year-old intern, Ellie, for making a grievous mistake. The inciting incident, which opens the novel, comes a few hours after the firing, when Claire is out driving her Mustang to burn off steam and almost hits a dog. Feeling guilty, she finds an address on the dog’s collar and returns it to its owner…who just happens to be Ellie.
Now my characters are forced to consider each other outside the realm of the workplace. Things they thought they knew about one another aren’t necessarily true. In a romance novel (or any novel for that matter), it’s important to keep a roller coaster of tension between the main characters. How to do that? In this case, I kept throwing them together until the ice between them begins to thaw. Then the attraction sets in. Both have internal obstacles that keep them from acting on that attraction early on. And there’s a major incident later on that almost keeps them apart for good.
There are other secondary elements, which add layers to the characters and lace the novel with emotion (Claire’s guilt over her relationship with her deceased mother, Ellie never quite measuring up to her family’s expectations). I’m intentionally leaving out spoilers, because I really want you to read “I’m Gonna Make You Love Me,” but basically, that’s the way the novel unfolds. I named each chapter after a Motown song…oh, and speaking of Motown, one character hates the music and the other loves it (you’ll have to guess which one!).
I hope I haven’t said too much. Actually, I hope I’ve said exactly enough to make you want to purchase the novel. Please visit your nearest online bookstore or Bella Books (www.bellabooks.com).
https://www.bellabooks.com/product/9781594936142/
