Where Do Story Ideas Come From? ASK #MFRWauthor Donna Figueroa @FallAgainSeries

Fall Again: Beginnings is the first book in the Fall Again Series. My original plan had been to write a short story entitled Time for Coffee. In this story, two actors who have not seen each other in years meet as they're both leaving an audition.(These characters would eventually become Marc & Lauren in the Fall Again Series). Both are short on time, but decide that they do have time for coffee. Over the next hour they discuss their lives, careers and eventually why things could never work romantically between them.

The problem was that I am the queen of procrastination. By the time I finally started to write, I had too many ideas to write this story as a short story. That's when I decided to write a stand alone novel.  The novel eventually grew into a series.

My story is set in the world of working actors. I naturally drew from my own experiences in the industry (I began working professionally as an actor while still in college) and from the experiences of other working actors. We work in a profession that is often misunderstood. I wanted to present a realistic glimpse into the lives of hard working artists as opposed to glamorous celebrities.

But this is also a Romantic novel. Shortly before I began writing I went to a girls night where the conversation turned to the subjects of first loves and the"" one who got away"". Several women on this night wondered what would have happened if they had met someone from their past at a different time in their lives.

Not long after this girls night, I began writing to the theme: what if you met the perfect person- your best friend, your soul-mate and the great love of your life…but at the wrong time?

As a hopeless romantic, I love the idea of a good love story and can see myself writing more romance projects in the future. However I am open to writing in other fictional genres. Last year I completed a first draft of a novel about a family funeral. The novel explores the humorous aspects of an event that most of us will go through at least a few times in our lives.

I love writing because their are no limits and you can go as far as your imagination will take you. At this point my own imagination is an endless sea of possibilities.

Contributed by Donna Figueroa
Donna Figueroa is an actor living and working in Los Angeles CA where she has worked on stage and on the big and small screens. Her credits include several television commercials and voiceovers for animation, commercials and industrial projects. She is a graduate of Emerson College in Boston MA where she majored in Dramatic Arts and Speech.

Donna is a producer and performer at Story Salon, Los Angeles's longest running storytelling venue where she has developed and performed three one person shows.

website  |  facebook  |  twitter  |  goodreads

Fall Again: Beginnings
Contemporary Romance
BUY LINK

What if you met the perfect person- your best friend, soul mate and the great love of your life. But

what if you met this person at the wrong time?

This is the question is at the heart of the Fall Again, a romantic series about two working actors The story takes place in New York, LA and places in between over two decades.
In Beginnings, Marc and Lauren meet in New York City when they are young and starting to build careers. While there’s an obvious attraction, decorum dictates that their relationship remain within the boundaries of a platonic friendship.

Over time, Marc and Lauren will struggle to maintain the façade of friendship to their closest friends and to each other which will become increasingly difficult.  Despite their best efforts to remain friends, they fall in love…and the consequences will change the course of their lives for years.

REVIEW
""This is not a modern romance novel, it is something more - a love story. A love story that weaves us into the lives of the characters until we don't want to leave their world, a love story that engages us to cry at their fictional pain and laugh at their triumphs."" - Amazon Review

EXCERPT

   He heard her quick footsteps coming up the three flights of stairs before she finally came into view on the landing at the bottom of last flight of stairs.
   As Lauren Phillips turned the corner she looked up at Marc and stopped, seeming surprised. “Marc?”
  Marc responded as he took notice of the striking woman at the bottom of the stairs. “Yeah.”
   An expression of pleasant recognition crossed her face. “Oh my God… Marc Guiro! I didn’t realize that Mel’s friend Marc… was you!” She confidently bounded up the last flight of stairs seeming   very happy to see him.
   But Marc was confused. This girl appeared to know him, but as far as he knew he had never laid eyes on her.
  Lauren quickly realized this. “I’m Lauren Phillips. I went to NYU and we lived in Weisman Hall at the same time the last two years you were in school. We were in different towers but I saw you in the cafeteria and in the laundry room from time to time. You were two years ahead of me… but we were in a dance class together one semester.”
   Marc looked at her closely. “I only took two dance classes while I was at NYU.” He continued to look at her blankly.
  Lauren tried not to take this personally and attempted to play off the situation with humor. “Well whichever class you’re thinking of now… I was probably in the other one.”
Lauren flashed a cool controlled smile at Marc as Mel came into the hallway.
 “Lauren…you made it!”
  Lauren ran to her roommate giving her a big hug. “Thank you for today! It was wonderful!”
   Mel didn’t want to take credit for booking Lauren on her show. Casting liked her look and personality. All she had done was to deliver Lauren’s photograph and resume to the Clayton’s Crossing’s casting department. “No, Lauren that was all you. I just gave casting your photograph. Once they called you in for your interview I was out of it.”
   Lauren was suddenly aware that she was ignoring Marc and looked back towards him.
  “Mel got me a day of background work on Clayton’s Crossing today!” Her excitement was getting the best of her.
   “So I’ve heard. That’s great! Why don’t you both come inside?”
  Marc ushered them both into the apartment while still questioning  himself. Had he ever met this girl? He would have remembered.
 Lauren was attractive. She had deep set dark brown eyes and dark hair which she was wearing pulled back into a perfect lose ponytail. He could see that she was wearing a lot of makeup, but she would be after a day on set. The makeup only enhanced her high cheekbones and smooth skin. She was dressed nicely in a gauzy long Indian skirt and blouse that she wore belted which showed off a tiny waist. She was slender. Over her shoulder she carried a large tobacco colored leather satchel.
   But Marc found himself looking beyond her physical appearance. She had what some might call a sparkling personality, not to mention a bright and wonderful smile. Lauren’s energy was contagious. When she came up the last flight of steps toward him, it was as if someone had turned on an incredibly bright light.

Dealing with Email without Going Crazy @kayelleallen #MFRWauthor #authortips

Have a system for your files 

Are you drowning in email? I average less than a dozen items in my inbox at the end of almost any workday, but I get nearly a hundred emails a day, every day. How do I keep up with it? I have a system, and it has five basic components.

Folders

Who emails you the most? (family, friends, groups, publisher, promo assistant?) Give the people who email you most their own folder. It might be okay to put all book reviews in one big folder, but if you have a promotion assistant who follows up with you and you constantly go back and forth about material needed, you will want a folder for that assistant. Sort your email inbox by sender and see who is sending you the most stuff that you either want or need to keep. Make a list. After you've completed your list, combine folders that make sense to combine. I have one for family and one for friends, but I have separate folders for each of my blogs where I have guests. I need to be able to differentiate emails for the various sites.

Filters

Most email programs have a filter system. What this means if you can set up email to come in and be pre-labeled with a folder name. For example, everything from your newsletter service goes right to the folder for your newsletter. All your Twitter messages go right into a Twitter folder. Instructions depend on what email program you use. Remember, Google is your friend. Search your email program name plus the word "filter". When something goes to the folder where you are going to eventually store it, it saves time twice. You don't have to put it there, and it's out of your inbox in the first place.

Finding

Name your folders in such a way that you can easily see what's in them. If you abbreviate, be consistent. Number folders and they will float to the top in email. Use your email's search program to find things you need. You can often search by sender, which is a big help.

Filing

File as soon as you've read your email. Don't wait. Don't think about it. Just put it in the folder and move to the next thing. It feels great to complete something and move on. Should you have a "pending' file? I have one where I put work that's going to take more than a day to do. I keep it listed as unread, so the folder is Bold and it reminds me that I have pending work there. But everything else is filed and marked as read.

Flinging

At the Mercy of Her Pleasure 

It's not hard to decide whether to keep or toss an email. Stop and think: will I ever need this again? Will I need it to prove I did something, or to prove I paid for something? Does it make me feel good to read it? Will I need to refer to the information in the future? If any of this is yes, keep it. If no, toss it.

In conclusion, whatever system you use, be consistent. Apply simple filters and then file when you complete your work. Toss what you don't need. It's work, but it's not impossible. Do you have tips for handling email? Share it in the comments below.

---

Kayelle Allen is a best-selling, award-winning author. Her unstoppable heroes and heroines include contemporary every day folk, role-playing immortal gamers, futuristic covert agents, and warriors who purr. She is the founder of Marketing for Romance Writers.

At the Mercy of Her Pleasure http://kayelleallen.com/at-the-mercy/
Romance Lives Forever Reader Group http://kayelleallen.com/bro
Twitter http://twitter.com/kayelleallen
Facebook http://facebook.com/kayelleallen.author

Making Your Reader Like Your Characters #MFRWauthor #MFRWorg #WriteTip #Authors

Have you ever read a story and absolutely hated one or both of the main characters? 

This month I’m looking at how we can make our readers like our character.

The first thing the reader will want to know is who the character is and why should s/he root for them. Why should the reader care what happens to the character?

Recently I saw the film Interstellar with Matthew Mcconaughey, one of my favorite actors. If you haven’t seen this movie—a: I highly recommend it! It was amazing, so emotional and touching. And b: I’ll try not to ruin it for you so in the interest of giving you a heads-up…Spoiler Alert…

I was thoroughly enjoying the movie when it got to the part where one of the characters died. Sadly I didn’t care because I didn’t really know him, which is always a warning that that character will more than likely be the first to get bumped off. But what made it worse is that the character became too stupid to live (TSTL) just before he died. I positively disliked him for his sheer stupidity. After his untimely exit, I didn’t give him a second thought.

In contrast, when the main character almost died I was on the edge of my seat. The difference between these two characters? I never really got to know the first guy, so I wasn’t invested in him or really cared about him, and it was easy to dislike him for his stupidity because there was no reason for his actions. 

Meanwhile, I’d gotten to know the main character, empathized with him, cared about him, so I was invested and wanted him to survive. Plus he fought for his life. The other guy stood around like an idiot and did nothing! 

Don’t get me wrong, we want our characters to be flawed. Without flaws, our characters have no way of changing or growing. 

The flaw is the external representation of the internal fear. What I mean is the flaw is the result of the internal conflict, and internal conflict usually results from a past emotional scar.

For example, what if your hero is overprotective because somewhere in his past a loved one got injured or killed because of something he did or didn’t do. Say, maybe, as a teen he had a girlfriend and they got in a fight while driving home. She demands he pull over and let her out. He’s so mad he does exactly that and leaves her. She is attacked and possibly murdered. The hero has to live with this for the rest of his life. So now he won’t let the heroine out of his sight because he wants to protect her and make sure nothing bad ever happens to her. 

Now, if we make the flaw too dominant we will make the hero unlikable. In order to make your reader like him, you need to let the reader see the reason for his fear and you need to make your hero begin to fight the impulse to be overprotective along the way.  

Don’t make your characters’ issues so deep and dark that you create jerks. On the other hand, if you do have deep dark issues, you need to work extra hard to show the reader why the character is like this and give glimpses of a softer side—hint that this character can change. 

So How Do You Make Your Character Likable?

Start with the core competencies of your character, made up of three aspects: strengths, skills, and desires. As well as having bad experiences from the past that gives us our internal conflicts, we also have happy moments that might inspire us to do, or be something. I like to think that for every bad moment of the past there is a good. As authors we often focus on the bad in order to get a hold of the internal conflicts, but when we let the reader see the good moments that influenced our characters we allow the reader to bond with, and therefore, care about and like, our characters on a deeper level. 

Our overprotective hero from above may be a rescuer at his core. You can give him a job to reflect this and maybe he beats himself up so much because he feels guilty that he couldn’t save the past girlfriend. His black moment can come when we place him in a redemptive situation and give him an opportunity to redeem himself from the past by now saving the heroine. This guy can have a lot of layers, and if we show them to the reader, she will not only understand him, she will fall in love with him. 

The trick is to show the character’s niceness before you show the flaw. That way the reader is already invested and will stay to find out if this character finds her/his happy ever after. 

Do leave a comment in the comment section below. Even if you just want to say "Hi!", I'd be thrilled to know you stopped by.

Until next time, write with clarity and style!


Monique x 

Author/Screenwriter Monique DeVere currently resides in the UK with her amazing hero husband, four beautiful grown-up children, and three incredible granddaughters. 

Monique writes Romantic Comedy stories some call Smexy—Smart & Sexy—and others call fluff. Monique makes no apologies for writing fun, emotional feel-good romance! She also writes Christian Suspense with a more serious edge. 

Monique loves to hear from her readers. You can contact her by visiting her HERE to learn more about her and check out her other books.