“Critics cite many reasons in their dismissal of the genre, reasons that ostensibly aren’t rooted in literary snobbery. ‘The problem’ with chick-lit, I’m told, is that it doesn’t deal with the real issues that women face. Well actually, some of it does. From sibling rivalry to infidelity, addictions to poor body image, a woman can take her pick within the genre if she wants to. And the rest of it? It’s meant for pure indulgent enjoyment, and there’s nothing wrong with that.

“But why insist that chick-lit reflect the issues facing its readership when no other genre is measured by the same yardstick? It isn’t expected of science fiction, crime, mystery, historical fiction, or even most literary fiction. Women didn’t flock to buy We Need to Talk About Kevin thinking, ‘Gosh, my son is in prison too for picking off his classmates with a crossbow. That’s the book for me.’

“And there’s no need to fret over the malleable minds of chick-lit fans. Our poor little female brains aren’t going to turn to mush because we read light and breezy books. And it’s not as if women who read chick-lit read it exclusively. Most of us enjoy chocolate cake, but we don’t eat it every night for dinner.”

As you’ve probably gathered from past posts, I don’t find our strict, and often snobbish, distinctions between genres helpful at all. The genre doesn’t dictate how well a book is written – nor how much it says about society.

Chick lit and romance can and do deal with the issues of our times: attitudes of men to women and vice versa, dating rituals, the difficulty of finding love in modern society…

One of my favourite authors, Michael Chabon, who won the Pulitzer for his wonderful book, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, recently wrote a book of essays on reading.

Chabon would like to see the distinction between “serious” and “popular” disappear. He argues that “serious” fiction has as many conventions and restrictions as any other. Far from being a higher form, it is just another genre, no different from any other.

Personally I like all kinds of fiction – and I have a great love of good crime novels. Besides having all kinds of worthy reasons for reading, I also find that it makes me happy. What can be wrong with that?

Jo-Anne Richards is a writer and lecturer in the Wits journalism department. Her novels include The Innocence of Roast Chicken, Touching the Lighthouse and Sad at the Edges. A new novel – My Brother’s Book– was released last year.

His characters were beautifully drawn and tugged us into a poignant memoir. But he had always longed to write a novel. I couldn’t wait to see it.

When he showed me a draft, I couldn’t believe it. The characters were cardboard stereotypes.

“But where are the kind of characters you had in your first book?” I asked.

“But that was non-fiction. This is a novel. I have to make them up.”

But you see, you don’t. You can, but you don’t have to. If you work from real life, think of a real character and lie. Change them to suit your story.

That is important. Real life is fine as inspiration. But don’t stick so closely to the real model that you lose sight of the dramatic imperatives of your story.

If you make a character up from scratch, don’t think of them merely as “the tough game ranger” or the “prostitute with the heart of gold”. Everyone has quirks, inconsistencies and contrasts. Everyone has hopes and dreams, fears and heartaches.

Characters don’t exist in isolation. They are the sum of their history, experiences and personality.

You need to work out far more about a character than will ever actually appear on the page. If you don’t know how someone grew up and what relationship they had with their parents and siblings, you’ll never know how they’ll react to older men, younger women – in fact, to anything at all.

You need to work out how someone appears to others – what they look like, what they do, their work, hobbies and everything else that make up their public self. But everyone has internal characteristics too. You need to know how they feel, what makes them tick, their likes, dislikes, fears and favours.

Don’t forget what they look like and how they feel about themselves.

You need to be able to see and hear your character – to know intuitively how they’ll react. If you say to yourself: “Hmm, what should I make this character say now, they’ll never sound real.
For more about characters and lifting them beyond the cardboard, join our one day Character Development Course on 24 October 2009 in Parkview, Johannesburg.

Jo-Anne Richards is the author of four novels. Her latest is My Brother’s Book, published by Picador.

She lectures in journalism and writing skills at Wits University, besides running workshops in literary skills, narrative journalism and Romance writing. She supervises Masters students in the Creative Writing Masters programme at Wits.

She is co-founder of allaboutlove.net. The site runs interactive online writing courses in romance writing.

We tell stories, not just to entertain and to escape, but as a rehearsal for life. How would we handle this or that? How would we face the trials of our hero or heroine?

Romance novels should provide us with the characters and situations that we can, and choose to, identify with.

Lesbian Romance gives gay women the kind of love stories they can be drawn into – that provide them with a “rehearsal for life” in the love stakes.

The conventions in all published Romance novels are a little more strictly observed than the more “literary” novel.

All readers of genre fiction have expectations. Readers like to know certain things will happen and others won’t.

Certainly, there are different expectations for straight and lesbian Romance, because there are different conventions within straight and gay sub-cultures.

But in one profound respect, there is no difference at all. Both straight and gay Romance writing is about love. Both involve the intensity that we long for in our humdrum lives.

They make us believe – that great love is possible, and that Romance is alive and well.

Both involve the great search for The One. They take us through the unbearable conflict that holds the lovers apart. They keep us in suspense while we wonder if they can ever be together, even though it’s obvious they’re made for each other.

There are statistics on straight readers. By and large, they’re a pretty educated lot. Most have some college education and many are educated professionals. Most work outside the home part or full-time

There are little in the way of statistics for readers of gay Romance, but there’s no reason to suppose they’re any less educated and sophisticated.

It is thought that a significant number of lesbian Romance readers are in the closet – for many different reasons. That’s perhaps the reason many gay romance stories focus on coming out.

It’s a way of living out a gay life without having to do so in the real world. If you can’t talk about lesbian romance and sex, at least you can read about a young woman’s first gay adventures,  before she finds true love in the end.

As one gay reader puts it: “The stories help us to believe that our moms are wrong: that even if we do follow this path, and even if we do play around a bit, we’ll still find true love in the end.”

Gay romance is more tolerant of other sexual relationships than straight romance. Straight Romance heroines no longer need to be virgins. But we don’t tend to see them having wild sexual adventures (except with the hero) within the story being told.

On the other hand, gay readers are quite comfortable with a woman sowing her wild oats within the ambit of the story, particularly in coming-out stories.

The main character could be with someone else when the story begins. Or she, her love interest or both, could mistakenly think they are in love with another partner, before they discover, or rediscover, each other.

Lesbian Romance doesn’t always follow this pattern. Like straight Romance, it often involves two people who meet, are wildly attracted but held apart by their own issues or external factors.

In straight Romance, old-style brutes don’t hack it any more. The same is true for lesbian romance. Old-style butch brutes don’t hack it any longer either.

Lesbian romances are far more nuanced than that. Not all lesbian relationships are based on the idea that there has to be a “male” and a “female” role player. Some couples want this and others don’t, but all couples want love.

Of course, a happy ending is the most important part of any Romance. Imagine a reader’s disappointment if the lovely mysterious Lucinda gathers the beautiful desirable Arusha in her arms, only to mutter: “I’m not really sure that I’m ready for this level of relationship.”

There is the odd love story that ends in tragedy – all the more heartbreaking since it was true love. And the odd lesbian Romance will end with tantalising potential rather than with the conventional happy ending.

But the general rule is that, no matter how she struggles to get there, or how many adventures she must undertake first, the main character should be happily settled at the end.

Our sister site Allaboutlove.net runs online courses.

Sign up for the Basic Guide to Writing Lesbian Romantic Fiction, the Basic Guide to Writing Romantic Fiction for straight writers or start by doing our free Preparation for Writing Romance.

As a writer, you have to do far more research than you’ll every use in your book. But once you’ve done it, you’re tempted to show it off. Resist the temptation.

There’s nothing quite as off-putting as having your characters indulge in a long conversation about the history of Rome, just because you looked it up and you’re damned if you’ll lose it.

In contrast, visiting a place once is not enough to set a story in it. You have to know it intimately. You must have pounded its streets, you must know it’s history and customs, you must have sat with locals and listened to their anecdotes.

If you don’t know which way your characters must walk, and whether they must take a bus, train or taxi, to get where they want to go, you’re not ready to use it as a setting. You’ll be so busy avoiding what you don’t know, that your writing will be stilted.

Not only that, but a novel is far more than the bare bones of plot. The magic of a story is in the way it can transport you to another time and place. And to do that, the texture of that time and place must be enough.

The devil is in the detail, and their must be enough specific details to give your readers the sense of a place – not just the way it looks, but the way it smells and sounds and the way the sun falls at a particular time of day.

For more about writing and research, join our Writers’ Circle Course in Johannesburg or sign up for one of our online writing courses.

Jo-Anne

Jo-Anne Richards is the author of four novels. Her latest is My Brother’s Book, published by Picador. Order it from Kalahari.net

She lectures in journalism and writing skills at Wits University, besides running workshops in literary skills, narrative journalism and Romance writing. She supervises Masters students in the Creative Writing Masters programme at Wits.

She is co-founder of allaboutlove.net, a website dedicated to good reading and writing. The site publishes novels and short stories, and runs interactive online writing courses in romance writing. It includes a basic lesbian romance writing course – thought to be unique.

Immediately, we know a huge amount about this person, without anything having to be explained.

By now, the concept of “showing” rather than “telling” is pretty much accepted. But in numerous writing workshops, it’s become clear that people may accept the concept, but they’re often unsure how to to put it into practice.

Basically, instead of explaining something about someone – he was angry, she was beautiful – you’re going to show us these things. What we’re always trying to avoid, in good writing, is to bring something into sharp focus without having spell it out in long reams of exposition.

There are several ways you can do this. Here’s a small reference guide to what can be used to “show” things to readers, rather than “telling” them what they should know.

• Dialogue – the things people say, and the way they say them.
What people say – about themselves, other people, and places, says a lot about them. They way they speak does too. What kind of words do they use? What is the tone of their speech – and perhaps more importantly: what do they not say?

• The reactions of others to our characters.
How do people respond … to the powerful man, the beautiful woman. Do they inspire fear, reverence, fawning attention? Are they ignored in company?

• Introspection – our characters’ thoughts on other characters, or their setting.
Do they react jealously to others. Do they hate the outdoors? Are they too hot on the beach or miserable in snow? Are they totally at home in a small flat with 16 cats? Would the mere thought of a small flat or one cat bring on a fit of sneezing claustrophobia?

• Sensory images.
Showing involves the senses, rather than just knowing something in your head. You know that he’s nervous. But you show us the sweat beading at his hairline and dripping to his collar. You hear his fingers drumming. You feel his legs jumping. You smell the acrid stench of him

• Specific actions.
The way people behave tells us not only what kind of people they are, but also how they’re feeling at a specific time. Show us the robust affection in a family through the teasing insults they exchange and the laughter at the table.
Show us she’s feeling sad: She opened his drawer and took out his old blue shirt, the one he used to wear to potter about the house.She brought it to her face and breathed in his smell.

• Small, telling details.
This article began with one of these. Find the right specific and everything else springs into place. If someone is slowly going insane with post-partum depression, show us a plate, covered in tomato sauce, perched on a pile of dirty sheets. And a woman with jeans on, but on her upper body, a pyjama top.

• The contrast of other characters.
The troubled teen – does he have friends? Does he behave and speak and dress differently from the other kids?

It never harms to think more visually. That doesn’t mean never including inner thoughts or short explanations.

But the more you learn to use detail effectively, the more powerful your writing will be.

For more information on detail, join our Writers’ Circle Course in Johannesburg or sign up for one of our online writing courses.

Jo-Anne

Jo-Anne Richards is the author of four novels. Her latest is My Brother’s Book, published by Picador. Order it from Kalahari.net

Her first novel, The Innocence of Roast Chicken, was published by Headline in London, shortlisted for the M-Net Book Prize and nominated for the Impac International Dublin Award. The book was chosen as a Dillon’s Debut in the UK, to be showcased as “an outstanding first novel”. She has published short stories in five collections.

She lectures in journalism and writing skills at Wits University, besides running workshops in literary skills, narrative journalism and Romance writing. She supervises Masters students in the Creative Writing Masters programme at Wits.

She is co-founder of allaboutlove.net, a website dedicated to good reading and writing. The site publishes novels and short stories, and runs interactive online writing courses in romance writing. It includes a basic lesbian romance writing course – thought to be unique.

You’ve written a really crucial dialogue that will end your characters’ marriage. It should be dramatic and poignant, but instead it seems flat, unreal or, worst of all, dreary.

What’s wrong with it? It will change your characters’ lives. Why doesn’t it affect the lives of your readers?

Here are a couple of quick hints that will lift a plain or dreary dialogue and give it dynamism:

• Give your characters real business, real emotion. Give it dynamism. It’s not just a couple of talking heads. People don’t exist in a vacuum when they’re having a conversation. What are they doing? How does it affect what they’re doing? Do they stop? Do they suddenly sit down? How do they show their emotion? Understated is always better, but imagine she is preparing dinner. What does she do? Does she chop carrots savagely until they appear pureed? Does she emphasise the points she’s making with a particularly vicious-looking knife?
• Don’t go mad on the accent or ethnic line. Just a hint of accent is fine, otherwise it begins to irritate. This works together with tics and action. Some people pace, others twist their hair or bite their nails. These quirks can help you build emotion, and the sense of real characters. But too much will also irritate your readers.
• Don’t put too many “he saids” and “he averreds”. If there are two people speaking, we often know who is who after the first utterances. And if you need to say who is speaking for clarity, “he said” often works best. Our eyes are used to passing over it without being brought up short. And don’t forget, if he hisses, there must be sibilance. Use s’s. If he barks, his words will come out in short, sharp bursts.
• The rhythm of speech changes according to our emotions. An angry person will be short and sharp. A person in love will be long and languid.
• Never forget the subtext. Dialogue is often a mask for unexpressed feelings. Or even for lying. People frequently don’t say what they mean, for whatever reason. It makes for interesting dialogue if the reader knows that someone isn’t saying what they mean, or is lying. It creates tension.

For more about writing dynamic dialogue, join our Writers’ Circle Course in Johannesburg or sign up for one of our online writing courses.

Jo-Anne Richards is the author of four novels. Her latest is My Brother’s Book, published by Picador. Order it from Kalahari.net

She is co-founder of allaboutlove.net, a website dedicated to good reading and writing. The site runs interactive online writing courses in romance writing. It includes a basic lesbian romance writing course – thought to be unique.

Here’s a quick guide to really good dialogue:

• Does it give the appearance of real speech without the repetitions and inconsistencies of life? If you’ve ever recorded a real conversation, you’ll know that people speak in circles, they repeat themselves, they often talk nonsense … what we want in dialogue is the appearance of speech without the tedium of all that circular repetition.
• Is it energetic? You can energise dialogue by interrupting it, by having people not listen to each other, not ending sentences.
• Is it provocative. Does it surprise other charcters? Does it surprise, intrigue or delight us?
• Does it “show” us something or confirm something about the characters? This, in the things they say, they way they say it, and even the things they don’t say.
• Is it necessary? Does it convey something we need to know? Does it develop our characters or take the story forward?
• Is it economical? We don’t want long swathes that tempt us to skip.
• Does it convey a reality and a past bigger than the narrow plot objectives of the scene? Characters have lives beyond the page. If we hint at a larger existence, it makes them more real and complex.
• Is it witty? Obviously it doesn’t always have to be – but it can give dialogue a real lift.
• Is it appropriate for the character uttering it? Does it show their unique voice, background, personality?

This is just a guide, obviously, but it does contain the most important elements contained by some of the best dialogues ever published.
For more about writing good dialogue, join our Writers’ Circle Course in Johannesburg or sign up for one of our online writing courses.

Jo-Anne

Jo-Anne Richards is the author of four novels. Her latest is My Brother’s Book, published by Picador. Order it from Kalahari.net

Her first novel, The Innocence of Roast Chicken, was published by Headline in London, shortlisted for the M-Net Book Prize and nominated for the Impac International Dublin Award. The book was chosen as a Dillon’s Debut in the UK, to be showcased as “an outstanding first novel”. She has published short stories in five collections.

She lectures in journalism and writing skills at Wits University, besides running workshops in literary skills, narrative journalism and Romance writing. She supervises Masters students in the Creative Writing Masters programme at Wits.

She is co-founder of allaboutlove.net, a website dedicated to good reading and writing. The site publishes novels and short stories, and runs interactive online writing courses in romance writing. It includes a basic lesbian romance writing course – thought to be unique.

Every day I ever sat down to write, I thought I wouldn’t be able to do it. I always sit down sweaty-palmed, wondering if I’ll be able to get a word on paper.

That’s why I believe writer’s block is another way of saying “fear”. And it’s just another excuse for not pushing through it.

I find the process a little easier if I can spare half an hour the evening before. I reread the last page or so of what I wrote last time. Then I meditate – I’m not the world’s greatest meditator, but it helps sometimes, even for just 10 or 20 minutes.

Just as good is going for a run or a long walk. When I’ve finished, I find that my mind’s been playing around with what I last wrote.

Writing always starts slowly in the morning, but be patient with yourself. Sometimes, usually after an hour or two of writing, it can actually fly – perhaps you know the feeling. Those euphoric days when the words seem to stream through you.

But we all have days when that empty screen mocks us, and every word written feels like we’re plodding through a swamp. Those are the days when you think: “Hell, I’m wasting my time here. Perhaps I should do something a little more constructive, like … finding lost tupperware lids.”

Whatever you do – don’t do that. It becomes that much easier not to write the next day, and the day after. You procrastinate and think you’ll never, ever write again.

Make yourself a cup of something hot, and sit down again. Force yourself to sit staring at the screen. Write a word, and then a second, even if it’s like squeezing blood from your fingertips. Keep writing, one word at a time. Keep staring.

Some days you’ll plod through your writing time. Push yourself through the hard bits.

What I have found is that, when you go back to them later, you can’t see the difference between the flying and the plodding days. Sometimes I even find the plodding days read better. You’ve been slower, taken more care.

There’s another thing that freezes writing – the need to make it absolutely perfect. The self-consciousness we feel when we allow part of ourselves to sit mockingly on our shoulders.

Banish that self. It doesn’t have to be perfect. Don’t think about being published. Don’t worry about what other people will think. Just think about finishing.
You can fix almost anything at the editing phase. But if you don’t finish, there’ll be nothing to fix.

Join our 12 week Writers’ Circle Course in Johannesburg.

Jo-Anne Richards

Jo-Anne Richards is the author of four novels. Her latest is My Brother’s Book, published by Picador. Order it from Kalahari.net

She lectures in journalism and writing skills at Wits University, besides running workshops in literary skills, narrative journalism and Romance writing. She supervises Masters students in the Creative Writing Masters programme at Wits.

She is co-founder of allaboutlove.net, a website dedicated to good reading and writing. The site publishes novels and short stories, and runs interactive online writing courses in romance writing. It includes a basic lesbian romance writing course – thought to be unique.

Most novels need rewriting and extensive editing. But if you never finish writing, it, there’ll be nothing to work on.

Writing four published novels, I’ve learnt one or two things about how hard it is – and how to make it easier on yourself.

I believe in rewards. Even little rewards. While busy with my first book, I used to make up lavish “When my book is published” daydreams. Only, I wouldn’t allow myself to indulge in them until I’d finished writing for the day.

While a colleague and I worked on a screenplay, we would allow ourselves a glass of champagne at the end of every scene. At the end of each act, we went out to an elegant cocktail bar for strawberry daiquiris.

There’s nothing more important than just keeping on. It doesn’t have to be perfect first time, so that’s no excuse.

Make yourself rituals, if that helps. I like to place a certain pen by my computer. And (ridiculous as it sounds) I always wear the same pants when I write. (I become hysterical if they’re in the wash.)

I view them quite supersitiously, which helps, I suppose. They can’t be used for doing anything else. That means I can’t “just quickly check my emails”. I’d have to get up, take my pants off, check my emails…

More than anything, it’s an aid to discipline.

Let me share another tip with you: Don’t talk too much about your book in the making. If you need to work through ideas, choose someone who takes you and your idea seriously.

I know writing is lonely. But talking about it somehow neutralises the desire. It satisfies the story-telling self, and allows you to stop doing it.

Also, so many people claim to have a story in them, that few people will take you seriously. They’ll pop in for coffee because … well, you’re not really working, are you?

They’ll find it vaguely amusing and ask you, in arch tones, how The Book is going. It’ll begin to seem ridiculous and you’ll feel absurd – an imposter in the literary world. It’s better just to keep quiet, at least until the end is in sight.

So, that’s it really. People often ask me for one tip for aspiring writers. And I always say just that: Keep writing. Whatever helps you do that – personal threats, rewards, rituals – use them for all they’re worth.

For more information on how to keep writing, see our online writing courses or join our Johannesburg based Writers’ Circle Course.

Jo-Anne Richards is the author of four novels. Her latest is My Brother’s Book, published by Picador. Order it from Kalahari.net

Her first novel, The Innocence of Roast Chicken, was published by Headline in London, shortlisted for the M-Net Book Prize and nominated for the Impac International Dublin Award. The book was chosen as a Dillon’s Debut in the UK, to be showcased as “an outstanding first novel”. She has published short stories in five collections.

She lectures in journalism and writing skills at Wits University, besides running workshops in literary skills, narrative journalism and Romance writing. She supervises Masters students in the Creative Writing Masters programme at Wits.

She is co-founder of allaboutlove.net, a website dedicated to good reading and writing. The site publishes novels and short stories, and runs interactive online writing courses in romance writing. It includes a basic lesbian romance writing course – thought to be unique.