Posts Tagged "Brainstorming"

• A Marquess By Any Other Name

  Blog

  A couple of weeks ago, my agent (still love saying that!) asked me to write brief blurbs for my next two books. The reason for this request excited me — with insight into where I intend to take the series, she can better match my career goals with the right publisher and hopefully drum up interest for my future books. But, the request also filled me with terror — how do you write a blurb for a book you haven’t written and cannot read, particularly when you don’t even know one of the main character’s names?

  Luckily, the characters have been living in my head for a long time, impatiently beating at my skull while I spent some time revamping my first manuscript during the agent hunt. Now that the agent hunt is over and she has my manuscript in her hands, it’s time to get back to my work-in-progress. But first, the blurb — and that means finding a name for the as-yet-unnamed marquess of Folkestone.

  Folkestone is the hero of the third book, and he ends up reuniting with Ellie Claiborne (Ferguson’s sister), who married his cousin seven years ago. The cousin died, leaving Ellie a widow and the unnamed hero as heir to the marquessate. So I couldn’t just call him Folkestone — Ellie originally fell in love with him when he was a mere mister, and she wouldn’t start calling him by her dead husband’s title.

  I turned to the OXFORD DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH CHRISTIAN NAMES. I almost immediately turned away again — two of my favorite names in there were Radegund and Sacherverell, neither of which exactly rolled off the tongue. So, I picked up my trusty SECRET UNIVERSE OF NAMES, which purports to identify personality traits by the sounds in a person’s name. While it sounds a bit crunchy, it’s also scarily accurate — it claims that Saras are multi-talented, caring, strong-minded (that’s listed as a strength, fyi), pessimistic, sarcastic, and stubborn, which is about as close to my personality as you can get.

  After much hemming and hawing, I settled on Nicholas Claiborne, marquess of Folkestone. Men named Nicholas are strong-minded, steadfast, loyal, irritable, judgmental, and defensive — traits that fit well for a character who tries and fails to forget the love of his life. And while there are other names out there that would probably fit him, naming him Earl or Randy likely wouldn’t give the impression that I intended.

  What do you think? How important are characters’ names? What are the best and worst names you’ve come across?

  
  | Brainstorming |
  0 Comments

  Posted 28 June 2009, 9:20 pm

• On Business Cards and Taglines

  Blog

  I want to get some writing-related business cards before the RWA National Conference in Washington this summer, and I’m having trouble deciding what to put on them. My name is a critical component, obviously, as are email and phone. However, I do not think I will put on my home address, both for privacy reasons and because I move often enough that I don’t want to have my card be obsolete in six months.

  The trickiest part is my occupation and the description of my business. I am calling myself a writer because that’s what I am, even if I haven’t made any money for my labors yet. Beyond that, though, I want something on the card that hints at the type of writing I do. I can do this partially through the font, color, etc. — if I choose pink with a flowing script font, it’s clear that I write traditional romances rather than paranormals (although I do want to write paranormals someday). But I also want a tagline to describe what I write in one pithy, memorable sentence.

  I spent a few minutes brainstorming tonight, and clearly I’m going to have to do more — what I came up with is definitely memorable, but not particularly useful (”Love in the Time of Syphilis” and “Sara Ramsey: Ramming It Old-School” were my two favorite inappropriate taglines). So, it’s back to the drawing board — do you have any thoughts?

  
  | Awesomely Ridiculous | Brainstorming | Writing Career |
  2 Comments

  Posted 20 April 2009, 9:44 pm

• Madeleine’s Story - Brainstorming Phase

  Blog
  I just spent the last couple of hours (plus some of my commute today) brainstorming the storyline for my next romance novel. I had always intended for it to be about Madeleine, who is the best friend of the heroine in my current book and also, conveniently enough, a French girl orphaned during the Revolution who has lived with the Stauntons since she was five. Drama, right?

  I originally intended for her to be secretly in love with the eldest Staunton son, who is now her legal guardian (but since she’s 25 and he’s 33, this isn’t creepy in the way that you might think). In addition to being a hot English earl, he’s also a collector, and I thought that perhaps something in her back-story played into an artifact that he just acquired. However, upon further reflection, she might end up with Ferguson instead — Ferguson is the best friend of the hero in my current book, and feigns being an insane, selfish dilettante to infuriate his father, who despises the fact that Ferguson will inherit the dukedom. The father has ordered Ferguson to find a bride — and I’m thinking that Madeleine would be a good initial start. Both of them have reasons to feign an engagement — Augusta Staunton, who basically raised Madeleine, is pressuring her to find a husband, and Ferguson realizes that a Catholic-born French girl with a small dowry and no family connections is the best way to drive his father mad. What neither expects is that their charade will turn all too real.

  Add in a betrothal from the past that comes back to haunt Madeleine, Ferguson’s need to balance his desire to ignore his father with the responsibility he feels toward rebuilding his Scottish estates (inherited from his mother after his father has already devastated the woman’s ancestral clan), and some other ridiculous twists, and this is definitely showing some promising seeds.

  Writing is an interesting process. I can have an idea someplace — in this case, in a flash as I was driving down the 101 at seven a.m. — and see the general outline almost immediately. But, it then takes several grueling months to understand the twists and turns in these characters’ paths, to find the scenes and the conversations  that move them inexorably from point A to point B, and the personalities that make people care about finding out what happens to them. Or, rather, I *hope* it takes several grueling months — I think I could finish a good first draft in three months if I diligently worked that much writing into my schedule, and I certainly can’t afford to take three years like I have with my first book. But now that I know that it’s possible to find a polished gem within the piles of gravel, I think the second book will be much easier.

  
  | Brainstorming | Ferguson and Madeleine | Writing Process |
  2 Comments

  Posted 6 October 2008, 9:51 pm