I joined a gym yesterday.
I also have a flabby middle.
The two things aren’t necessarily related (okay, maybe a little).
The flabby middle actually relates to the concern I have with Warrior’s Surrender, my latest WIP.
You see my characters have been through the mill in the first third of the book – filled with angsty, angsty goodness that makes romance such an emotionally resonating fiction genre and they will go through plenty of drama before we get to the happily ever after, but I thought they deserved a little idyll, an eye of the cyclone, if you will, but how much is too much?
That’s what I need to go back and decide.
Perhaps I should take Nora Robert’s advice:
Hmm, I’m not sure I want to kill any of my characters off – just yet.
Perhaps one of the characters who precipitates the action in the final third of the book should get her comeuppance early… ?
Now that’s something to ponder. Along with a couple of these great ideas.
For now the only thing to do it use my metaphor and turn it into reality – take the tension and take the energy and use it.
I’m going to the gym to exercise away my flabby middle, I need to exercerise a little more thought and to get rid of the flab in Warrior’s Surrender.
And I can’t do it alone, so that’s why I’m going to a gym and that’s why I’m going to use the support of my crit partners, including my darling husband and perhaps try some of these exercise tips:
- Crunches – It should be crunch time, a decision time for my heroine. She needs to have her big revelation here.
- Lunges – Lunge into some action right from a standing start. Our characters have been standing around for a little bit. They’ve had enough of a break now.
- Walk, jog, run! – The reader should by now have gotten to know the characters and fallen in love with them too. Now is the time to accelerate the action.
- Leg raises – Well, it is a romance after all…