Crafting a story isn’t easy. There are characters and settings. There are backstories and possible futures. There’s action, and there is conflict–inner and outer. I remember a romance author once telling a group of us in a seminar class that just when your main character is happy, you need to figure out the worst that could happen and then make it happen. Otherwise, your book would be a chapter long, if that. Girl meets boy (or vice versa or boy-boy, girl-girl, pick two or more…), they fall in love, and live happly ever after. It’s a good story but readers want more. Why does one want the other? Do their families approve? Heck, does her dog like his cat? Without conflict, the story is short, sweet, and over. On that note, the Universe has a point…

If you could choose between living two lives, Silver:

1. One that was easy, or
2. One that presented challenges you would overcome

Which would you choose?

Game on,
  The Universe
©www.tut.com 

P.S. Silver, you are legend.

As a storyteller, because that’s who those of us who write fiction are, we need to choose the challenging life. We need to make our characters jump through hoops, make life hard for them, make them work for that elusive Happy Ever After. I’m all for conflict–internal for each MC and external for outside forces trying to keep them apart. Sometimes, a writer gets lucky and the two conflicts coincide. That said, a word of caution here. I won’t mention the author or the series but this debut series put them on the lists. I will say the novels were Paranormal Romance/Urban Fantasy and they were just different enough to be interesting. The main couple kept working toward achieving their HEA.

Now, a bit of an education for those who don’t necessarily read UF or PR. While similar, they are different genres and therefore have different rules. UF usually has romantic elements but the two MCs don’t always get together until several books into the series. An example of that is the Kate Daniels series by Ilona Andrews. For a PR series, you can look at my own Moonstruck books. Each book features a couple and they get their HEA by the end of the book. Romance is a big part of the story line. Make sense? Anyway, sometimes, when you start to read a series, you aren’t quite sure if it’s a UF or PR. Sometimes, it’s a mix of the two because there’s like a 3-book arc before the characters get to the HEA.

Back to my cautionary point. In this unnamed series by this unnamed writer, the original couple remained front and center even though secondary characters got their HEAs in subsequent books. Every time the MCs got there, BOOM! Things blew up in their faces–sometimes quite literally. I gave up on the series. It got to the point that I no longered cared if the MCs made a life together or not. In fact, I was tempted to throw the book against the wall. Turns out, I was not the only reader who developed that opinion.

What I’m trying to say is that, yes, there should be challenges but they should also be overcome with the payoff of the HEA at the end. When push comes to shove (and yes, I do love that idiom), a writer can shove their characters too hard. Readers get tired of the conflict and, frankly, it gets boring after a while. Don’t be a boring writer. And don’t take your readers for granted. Know your genre. Yes, some rules can be broken but the hard and fast ones? Pay attention. There’s a reason they are carved in stone. On that note, I need to go inflict a little conflict on a couple of my characters. What do y’all think about conflict? Can there be too much?