Creative – Stephanie Hurt

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Good morning! Hope everyone had a great, productive weekend. Let’s make the best of the week ahead.

Life as a writer is sometimes crazy. There are stories running through our heads at every turn. Some days it’s hard to do my day job because a character is knocking on my brain, wanting out. But, when I finally sit down to let the character out, they are stubbornly sitting there with arms crossed refusing to come out.

Then, when you get a couple of days to do some serious writing, everything else has to be done. I try to do social media posts and write on weekday mornings. Of course, I need to train myself to wait on the social media posts until after I’ve written my designated word count for the day. Social media is like a leech, it sucks the time out of the morning.

What’s fun is when you have a great story come into your mind, but you’re in the grocery store… LOL! That’s why I have notes on my phone. Usually, I’ll stop where I am and at least get the basics down, if not, I’ll forget them until a much later time.

Oh, and then you have a deadline, but also a list of things to be completed. That’s when you get creative with your time. Even eating breakfast while typing. Ok, so my laptop has crumbs in the keyboard, but it still works.

So, how do you juggle things?

As always, good writing and May God Bless You….

When writing a romance novel you’ve got to have a leading man. How do you design him? Here’s the top ten things I ponder when creating my leading men. Hope you enjoy even if you don’t use them 🙂

1: Leading men always need to be able to take charge, be the hero type, at least for me. They have to be able to handle whatever the leading lady throws at them, or at least eventually handle it.

2: In the same instance, I like my leading men to be able to show emotion, whether it’s anger, frustration, or down right cry. It shows a human factor.

3: Most of my leading men have to be able to wear a Stetson and ride a horse. I know that’s just a personal preference, but it works in my books. The black Stetson is kind of my trademark.

4: Most of my leading men have dark hair and blue eyes. You definitely have to define the leading man’s looks and stick with it. If somewhere along the story he suddenly goes blonde and green eyed you have a problem.

5: What about size? Is he tall and lean or medium height and husky? It’s up to you, but it’s a pivotal point. If he’s a string bean with no muscles and the heroine needs to be carried off into the sunset you might have a problem.

6: Is your leading man a general good guy or does he have a bad side to go along with it? Sometimes your leading man has to be a little bad to get the lady, but that’s just my opinion. Sometimes they have a little rogue in them that draws your leading lady in.

7: Will your leading drive a car or a truck? You may say that doesn’t matter, but it does in most stories. If he’s a high powered business man that wears a suit to work, nine times out of ten he’s going to drive a sporty car versus a four wheel drive truck. Now if he’s a cowboy he’s going to drive a truck. It makes the story more realistic to get the small details straight.

8: Will your leading man be a business type, a cowboy, a blue collar worker, or maybe be unemployed for the sake of the story? You can’t go from one thing to the other in the same story without a story line to support the change.

9: Is your leading man educated? In a lot of story lines this is important because the dialogue needs to lean in one way or the other.

10: Ok, this is a biggy with me, is he romantic? Will he bring the leading lady flowers when things go wrong? Will he be the first to say those three little words that most men have a allergic reaction to? Or is he totally unromantic and moody? Your call…

I could go on forever, but these are the top ten things I look at in a leading man. Sometimes if you sit down and do a character sketch ahead of time it helps you to keep the story in line.

As always, good writing and May God Bless You…