{"id":522,"date":"2009-09-15T09:14:06","date_gmt":"2009-09-15T15:14:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/?p=522"},"modified":"2012-02-18T08:17:35","modified_gmt":"2012-02-18T14:17:35","slug":"chemistry-101-mini-lesson-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/2009\/09\/15\/chemistry-101-mini-lesson-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Chemistry 101–Mini-Lesson 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reader Beth had suggested that I make a blog post of the workshop on romantic chemistry that I gave at RWA National.\u00a0 My immediate response was a demurral.\u00a0 I had 11 pages of speaking notes–it couldn’t be done.\u00a0 But then I gave the workshop again recently to my local RWA group, and afterwards I thought, you know, the best part of any such workshop is always the examples.\u00a0 And I definitely can put up the examples and why I used them as a series of blog posts.\u00a0 So thank you Beth, and here we go.<\/span><\/p>\n

What makes for good chemistry?\u00a0 Great conflict.<\/p>\n

What makes for great conflict?\u00a0 As my critique partner Janine asks, what are the lies that your character tells himself to get through the day?\u00a0 Who is the person who by the very fact of her existence, by everything she says and does, exposes your character’s lies to himself as just that, lies?<\/p>\n

In other words, who is this person who would cause the greatest amount of emotional disturbance in your character?\u00a0 Who is the person your character most fears for the truth she represent, and yet who cannot be dismissed, precisely because of the truth she represents?<\/p>\n

Put these two people together and you have tension, conflict, and chemistry.<\/p>\n

Example:<\/p>\n

People could not keep their eyes off her.\u00a0 Yes, she played it very well indeed, the role of the simple, serene martyr, giving up her life and all its brilliant promises to save her people from annihilation.<\/em><\/p>\n

She basked in the attention.\u00a0 And she broiled in it.\u00a0 This had been the part of her Calling she loved the most–that was, before she came to hate the Calling itself.\u00a0 She still got shivers from it, the way some people looked at her, in sincere, almost head-shaking admiration. <\/em><\/p>\n

And then there would be others who watched her because she was the freak, a dead woman walking. <\/em><\/p>\n

Ten days.\u00a0 They were all that remained to her, before she marched into the maws of death.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/em>If she marched into the maws of death.<\/em><\/p>\n

“May I have this next dance?” <\/em><\/p>\n

She turned around slowly.\u00a0 There were exactly nineteen mobilecams bobbing in the air about her, several representing various media outlets from her home planet of Pax Cara, the rest bearing logos of the interstellar communication conglomerates that were on hand to cover the glamorous goings-on. <\/em><\/p>\n

The mobilecams had been trained on her, as she gazed up at the dance sphere, her expression the tranquil wistfulness she’d long ago perfected for such occasions.\u00a0 And she knew just what the voiceover would say too, above heroic music played at a muted volume: <\/em>What is going through the mind of this young woman, knowing that the fate of her people rests on her shoulders, that her life will end before it has fully begun, and yet her name will live forever?<\/p>\n

The man who asked for the next dance had just as many mobilecams hovering around him.\u00a0 Eleian of Terra Illustrata, the most beloved prince in living memory, the one person she resolutely did not want to meet.<\/em><\/p>\n

The heir of a non-ruling house, he’d come of age during a time of great instability for his thirty-system principality.\u00a0 A decade-long civil war that had begun before he was born had produced a dictator who held power by brutal oppression.\u00a0 After the dictator’s death, chaos threatened to reign once again.<\/em><\/p>\n

With almost unbearable courage–for his life could have been forfeit at any point-the young prince had stepped in and stood up to those who sought power solely for their own gain.\u00a0 Against all odds, he’d guided his people back to their nearly forgotten tradition of representative government.<\/em><\/p>\n

“Your Highness,” she said, with a searing admiration.\u00a0 And envy.\u00a0 And a resentment that almost choked her.\u00a0 His had been true valor, whereas hers was but the appearance of it. <\/em><\/p>\n

And he’d survived.<\/em><\/p>\n

“My lady,” he inclined his head. <\/em><\/p>\n

She was a commoner.\u00a0 But here the media had taken to call her a prince of her people, and styled her accordingly.<\/em><\/p>\n

The mobilecams swarmed close, eager to capture the expression on her face.\u00a0 What would they see?\u00a0 She had not practiced for this, for dealing with this one man who reminded her with his very existence the fraud that she was-and the bigger fraud that she planned and prayed to be.<\/em><\/p>\n

(This is from a SF romance novella that I’m working on, as part of the One Beginning anthology with Janine, Meredith, and Bettie Sharpe.)<\/p>\n

He certainly disturbs her on a most profound level, doesn’t he, merely by breathing?\u00a0 And I swear I didn’t alter it after hearing about Janine’s remarkable thesis on chemistry.\u00a0 This was how I conceived it: the one who plans to run from her burdens vs the one who faced his head on.<\/p>\n

Come to think of it.\u00a0 It actually gets a little better.<\/p>\n

“Then why?” she asked.\u00a0 Why would anyone want to marry a woman who was about to die a very public death?<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

“<\/em>The Quiet Girl,” he said.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Quiet Girl was a documentary film about her, shot when she’d been seventeen.\u00a0 It had been produced as summer project by a pair of student filmmakers and sent to a Sector-wide vis-media festival on a lark.\u00a0 To the surprise of everyone involved the film had been selected for inclusion at the festival; to their further shock it had won the grand prize.<\/em><\/p>\n

The film’s subsequent dissemination had garnered her a degree of interstellar fame that had been unheard of on Pax Cara.\u00a0 She’d always turned down each and every request for her to go off-world: Modesty, or at least the appearance of it, was an important part of her persona.\u00a0 But she had enjoyed it, the fame, and the adulation that came with it.<\/em><\/p>\n

“What of <\/em>The Quiet Girl?” She hoped he didn’t hear the tremor in her voice.<\/em><\/p>\n

“I saw it when I was nineteen–and struggling with the course of my life.\u00a0 I had my aerie in the mountains.\u00a0 Our princely hold of Terra Luminare was at peace.\u00a0 I needed not involve myself in distant political turmoils.\u00a0 Moreover I was afraid: I’d had little dealing with the more uncouth elements in life.<\/em><\/p>\n

“I was inclined toward cowardice until I watched your story.\u00a0 Your determination and wisdom quite shamed me.\u00a0 And you faced certain death, whereas I face only danger and the possibility of bodily harm.”<\/em><\/p>\n

Stop, she wanted to say.\u00a0 Stop.\u00a0 That me no longer exists.<\/em><\/p>\n

But she listened with a stark hunger.<\/em><\/p>\n

“And whenever I thought my courage might fail me, I would watch it again.\u00a0 I can recite word for word what you said near the end of the film: ‘I would have liked to live a thousand years, for life is such a remarkable and marvelous thing, is it not?\u00a0 And yet I cannot say I regret being chosen for this task.\u00a0 I live more incandescently for it.\u00a0 And I am not afraid to die when I have lived so.'”<\/em><\/p>\n

She’d watched <\/em>The Quiet Girl not too long ago, hoping to find a renewal of courage in her unquestioning bravery of old.\u00a0 Bu all she’d felt, as she watched herself give that little speech, had been a numb despair.<\/em><\/p>\n

He brought them into a closer spin.\u00a0 “It would be a privilege if you would accept my suit and allow me to share the rest of you days.”<\/em><\/p>\n

The rest of her days.\u00a0 All ten of them, unless she managed her escape.<\/em><\/p>\n

I think Janine might say I did pretty well in setting up this conflict.\u00a0 \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 It’s not a particular original conflict, that of the erstwhile romantic ideal fallen from the pedestal.\u00a0 But it is a good one.\u00a0 Oh boy, is it a good one.<\/p>\n

Rest assured that the rest of the examples I will use are not mine.\u00a0 I wasn’t going to use any of mine at all.\u00a0 But there I was, at the hotel in D.C., fretting over my workshop which wasn’t coming together, and boom comes Janine’s remarkable insight–related by Meredith, I must add.\u00a0 And suddenly I said to myself, wait a minute, I have something exactly like that on my C drive.\u00a0 \ud83d\ude42\u00a0 And it went into my workshop.\u00a0 The first part, that is.\u00a0 I didn’t even think of how the second part works on the same principle until I was putting together this blog post.<\/p>\n

Next one in the series in a couple of days.<\/p>\n

And in the meanwhile, today I’m being interviewed at Romantic Crush Junkies<\/a>.\u00a0 Come say hi.<\/p>\n

<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reader Beth had suggested that I make a blog post of the workshop on romantic chemistry that I gave at RWA National.\u00a0 My immediate response was a demurral.\u00a0 I had 11 pages of speaking notes–it couldn’t be done.\u00a0 But then I gave the workshop again recently to my local RWA group, and afterwards I thought, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[31],"tags":[54],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=522"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1312,"href":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/522\/revisions\/1312"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=522"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=522"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sherrythomas.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=522"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}