writing – Page 2 – Laney Wylde

Unlikable

I accidentally wrote a book in a genre I had never read. Yes, it’s embarrassing. Let’s move past it.

Anyways, the last few weeks, I’ve been scrambling to read as many New Adult romance and New Adult contemporary books as I can to rectify this problem. From what I can gather, it seems like most of these books fall into the same pattern:

Guy is tortured/secretive and hot

Girl may or may not have her own demons

They meet

Girl is attracted to guy because he is both sexy and mysterious

Guy is attracted to girl for some reason (we’ll get back to this)

Conflict

Twist (hopefully)

They end up together

HEA

All you avid readers are probably like, “Obviously. That’s how the romance genre works.” And that makes sense. I don’t want to read the last page of a Coleen Hoover novel to find that the love interest dies or something else awful (OMG, if this happens in one of her books, don’t tell me. I’m still working my way through them.).

But, I’ve noticed that, even in the best written, most binge-worthy reads, the female protagonists tend to be likable, more or less moral, and known by their circumstances more than their personalities. In other words, flat. Even the guys can’t really articulate what’s so great about these girls besides how they feel when they’re inside them.

For instance, in Ugly Love, which, was stylistically incredible and impossible to put down (I woke up at 5:30 in the morning and couldn’t go back to sleep until I finished the chapters I had remaining), I walked away feeling like I barely knew Tate besides the fact that she was a compassionate nurse/student who allowed a guy to use her for 10+ chapters.

Is this a hallmark of the genre? Is it normal for the romantic plotline to overshadow character development? This isn’t a critique. I’m really asking. I haven’t read enough of anything to know what I’m supposed to expect. Maybe the problem is that I keep hoping that I’ll open to the first page and read the female lead saying something like:

“I have a meanness inside me, real as an organ. Slit me at my belly and it might slide out, meaty and dark, drop on the floor so you could stomp on it.”

“I didn’t stop giving hand jobs because I wasn’t good at it. I stopped giving hand jobs because I was the best at it.”

Of course, these aren’t the first lines of romance novels. They’re words from Gillian Flynn’s protagonists for Dark Places and The Grownup, respectively. Flynn knows how to write a character so real, that you feel like they exist outside the pages of the book. For instance:

Amy, Gone Girl: Selfish, cunning, manipulative but easily manipulated. Brilliant. Cold-blooded. Starved to be someone’s everything, but to be completely herself while doing so instead of the fictionalized version of herself that her parents created or that men create. Oh, did I mention, selfish?

Whatever. You guys deserve each other.

Camille, Sharp Objects: self-inflicted pain, self-inflicted treatment to make up for her mom who neglected her for not accepting her “care.” Associates sex with violence. Desperately wants to find some redeemable quality in herself. Raised around sexism, racism, classism, with a weak father-figure.

Libby, Dark Places: Depressed. Assumes her self-worth is soiled by her blood relation to her brother who slaughtered her family. Desperate to survive but not dependable enough to make a reliable living for herself. Klepto-ish. Terrified to face the night of her family’s massacre, or any night, with the lights off.

Again, none of these women are in a romance novel. And, if they were, would we even be rooting for them? Or would we be hoping the guy rides off into the sunset with someone less crazy? Is it possible to have a complicated, even unlikable, protagonist in a mushy-gushy love story?

So, my question for you is, do you know of any romance novel starring a Camille or a Libby or an Amy? Think: someone you definitely don’t want to be friends with. I’m sure there are a ton, I just haven’t found them yet.

If you know of any, comment below because I want to read them.

February 6, 2018/by Laney Wylde

Never Touched, writing

The Evolution of Sawyer: Creating an Unpredictable Protagonist

“Can we take a break from watching sex crimes?”

I cut my eyes over to my husband as the Law and Order: Special Victims Unit theme song pounds through the signature BUM BUM. Apparently, he finds the show “depressing” and doesn’t “want to watch the same season for the third time” and “the way you talk about Barba doesn’t reassure me that you’re not going to leave me for a Latino.” (E, you have no reason to worry unless I actually meet a real-life, Cuban, Manhattan ADA who wears three-piece suits and evokes a defendant to choke him with his own belt in the middle of court to secure a conviction.)

What I haven’t yet been able to convince my husband of is the fact that SVU quenches my thirst for justice. That’s what those “especially heinous” crimes deserve and often get from New York’s finest…and Barba.

In my favorite episode of SVU, Barba finds a loophole in the New York State law which gives the victim he’s fighting for tons more justice than most he represents.

And, boy, is that woman entitled to every ounce.

In the last scene of this SVU episode, said survivor is actually smiling and hopeful. And, as most episodes of SVU are, this was based on a true story. So, I Googled it and found a New York Times article about the two real-life victims Barba couldn’t get justice for.

If only their stories ended with smiles.

In the article, these women describe what each day is like as a survivor, the severe limitations their assailants shackled them with despite their talent, intelligence, and effort, and how no amount of justice the courts can give them will make any of it go away.

None of it will ever go away.

For a lot of us, trauma’s that etching an event carved under our skin. We’re all familiar with it to some degree. We watch the nightmares and we wake up. We take a few deep breaths and, eyes wide, peel off the shirt clinging to our sweaty backs. We remind ourselves that it’s over. We fear it’ll happen again, but, for now, it’s over. We try to fall back to sleep.

These girls wake up, take a few deep breaths and, eyes wide, see the rest of the world watching their nightmares. Years later. On repeat. With relish.

Now, I must confess that these resilient women were not initially on my mind when I sketched Sawyer. One of my friends still entreats me to title it after its initial three-word premise:

Stripper Math Genius.

Yes. I actually thought, “Hey, what if a stripper was good at math?” (to which my husband replied, “Is this your secret life?”).

But, after reading that NYT article and researching all I could, I took a terrifying step and scribbled a kind of trauma into Sawyer’s past that I had no experience with, no right to write about, praying that I’d tread carefully enough that those anonymous women in that article could read Sawyer and not want to punch me in the teeth.

I know, horribly presumptuous.

Let me be clear, I don’t know those women, but I know Sawyer. I know because I got everything about her wrong for weeks. But then she got her voice, and, holy balls, was it loud. So loud that I had to tear up the entire storyline I had spent hundreds of hours writing for her and start from page one. Once I did that, I learned just what she sounds like.

“My soul is crooked and dark, depraved and destined for hell.”

Ah, that’s my Sawyer.

Turns out, she is witty and socially inept, bookish and sexy, badass and scared shitless, and…

…didn’t love the guy I had destined for her.

Yeah, that was a tough one for me to wrap my heart around. Never Touched was supposed to be about Sawyer and Guy A. Even when I was onto my fourth or fifth working title, Sawyer still ended up with Guy A. I kept working and reworking and re-imagining the final chapter and realized I had it all wrong.

I had her all wrong.

I was trying to construct her story when in reality, all I could do was write what happened. I couldn’t dictate the choices she made, just record the results of them. And she wouldn’t choose Guy A.

Enter Guy B.

Guy B was already there, sure, but he was supposed to be a transient figure. He walked in, left his mark on her, and exited stage right. But Sawyer wouldn’t have any of that. She fell stupid in love with him. And, much like love in real life, it screwed up everything.

But that’s also when I realized that Sawyer’s story isn’t a love story, though there’s one (or two) in it. Hers is a quest for security, a safety she knows doesn’t exist for people like her, and until I understood that, I wouldn’t get why she did all the logic-defying things she itched to do. Or resorted to doing.

So I stopped judging her. I stopped trying to fix her. Instead, I stood in awe of her. Then I gave space on the page for her thoughts, no matter how ugly.

And I’m going to ask you to do the same.

Because maybe you also have nightmares. Maybe you ache, too. Maybe your thoughts darken when you realize the justice you never got, never will get.

And, I’m betting you didn’t get Barba to plead your case either.

February 1, 2018/by Laney Wylde

family, writing

For Mom

“Is my gangster rap disturbing you?”

I looked up from The Moon and More to my thoroughly white, fifty-one-year-old, children’s ministry staff mom peeking her head around the corner from her kitchen, where she was meal-prepping and listening to, well, what only could be described as gansta rap. “Um, no,” I answered.

This, by the way, was no more than an hour after my mom found one of my condoms stashed in her guest bathroom cabinet. She handed it to me and asked, “Do you need this? Because I don’t.”

“You can throw it away,” I was quick to respond. My husband and I don’t have sex as far as she needs to know. And definitely not at her house. She paused, and I realized that she struggled to waste anything even a three-year-old condom. “Actually, I’ll take it. Maybe I can pawn it off on a friend.”

That’s my mom.

My mom who, when her friend asked her if she was surprised I got a book deal, was quick to answer, “No, because whenever she sets her mind to something, she does it.”

And, when I told her with hypomanic enthusiasm, “I’m going to write a book, and it’s going to get published. And then I’m going to adapt it to a screenplay and it’s going to be incredible,” she said, “Yeah, you are. Do it.” No doubt. Never doubt. Just sheer, blind faith in her daughter’s ability to do anything.

So, thank you, mom, for taking my side when I am in the wrong, for believing in me when there’s no reason to, for listening to me babble on and on about writing when you don’t even enjoy reading.

You and your gangster rap keep me going.

January 29, 2018/by Laney Wylde