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Imagery and Characterization, can the two ever meet outside of an English class?

Is your hero a volcano, seething with fury and ready to burst at any moment? Is your heroine a skittish crane attempting to fly far, far away whenever trouble startles her? How about something more basic? Earth, air, fire, or water. When they’re angry, do they darken, flash, seethe, or boil? When they’re excited, do they thicken or sear, experience lightning or rivers of fire?

Talk about imagery and even writers roll back to their worst high school English class. That’s unfortunate because there is no easier tool for characterization than using good consistent imagery. How many of us have read something like this: His touch was like a hot brand against her skin. Her heart quivered with longing as he stabbed her with his arrow of luv. Okay, maybe not that last one, but you get the idea. Cliche imagery for cliche stories.

So many romance novels end up with Ken and Barbie characters. Physically they’re perfect, emotionally they’re perfect&ndashexcept for their one scar that is the focus of their arc. Barbie needs to learn to trust because she’s been dumped before. Ken lost his last girlfriend to a fire because he was a coma at the time therefore it was all his fault and he now has a protect the world from its own stupidity. I’m making fun here, but romance readers know how the same emotional baggage in the hands of one author is farce in someone else’s.

So how do you make your characters deeply emotional people with real problems instead of Ken in a coma? Hard work. Ha! You thought I was going to say imagery. No, good imagery will not save a stupid book. But consistent imagery will deepen your characters and&ndashhere’s the good part&ndashkeep your themes in your head from the beginning all the way through to the end of the book. Yup. Since writing is HARD WORK, anything that makes it EASIER WORK gets a thumbs up from me.

Raise your hand if you’re wondering what the heck I’m talking about. Think of your heroine. For this example, we’ll call her Better Than Barbie (BTB). What’s her character arc? What does she learn through the course of the book? How does she change? If you can’t answer that, sit down and think of an answer. You can’t write a credible book without it. Remember, the answer could be that she doesn’t change. Despite everything, she remains rock solid in her beliefs.

Great, now BTB has a character arc. Let say BTB needs to learn to forgive, not only herself for her bad choices but her Mother From Hell who set her up with the Fianc

Imagery and Characterization, can the two ever meet outside of an English class?

Seething volcano or skittish bird, what image best fits your characters and why would anyone care? Last time I talked about giving a unified imagery set to your main characters. I outlined how choosing basic element properties to your characters creates adds texture and EASE to a character arc. We went with the basic earth, air, wind, and fire possibilities. But let’s say you want to go one step further. How would that work and why?

Make your imagery more specific. First off, add metal to your list of elements. Then while you’re at it, maybe add all the elements of the periodic table. What if your hero is a tinman in search of a heart? Give him metallic colors to wear and surround himself in. Make him bendable, but when he adjusts to the heroine it gives him a sharp edge to his words and actions.

Now start picking out words to use for your hero. Match it with all five senses, but make sure to pick words that reflect both the good and the bad. You want to be able to indicate your character’s changes from a problem through growth into happiness (and love). Confused? Try these examples. For sight&ndashmetallic and reflective. When people look at him they see themselves reflected back, not the man himself. When you describe him and his environment surround him in chrome and give him a tin car toy collection. Let the heroine see him as childlike but cold. Then as he grows around her, you can add color to his clothing and surroundings.

Sound&ndashtinny, brittle. You don’t have to make his voice sound tinny or thin. That’s not hero-like! But he can speak with a brittle edge or it can grate like metal on metal. He can hit something that clinks. When he’s depressed he can have a hollow echo to his tone, but as he warms to the heroine, his voice gets depth and color. Eventually&ndashat the end&ndashsomeone hears his heartbeat. Even the music he listens to changes from Metallica to country&ndashor maybe that’s too much of a stretch.

Touch&ndashsharp but malleable. Initially his touches are cold and angry words hit like shards. But as he changes, his rough edges smooth. His face is not chiseled but pressed or shaped. Then when he smiles he shows a kind of light (heroine’s reflected light). She warms him (because metal doesn’t carry his own warmth), but he protects her and brings out her child-like qualities (because he’s a tin toy).

Now you add taste and scent. Truthfully, with a tin toy image, I stick with cold feel, metallic taste, and sterile scent. None of that is erotic or hero-like. So if you mention these things, keep them at the beginning of the book, letting the negative words drop away as he changes for the better. He is, after all, gaining a heart and growing into a real boy. But remember, he can be a geologist or a metal worker. He can work in a sterile room or be comfortable in clinical settings.

So now you get the idea, but don’t just stop there. Make your images very specific. My hero in Tempted Tigress is a Chinese ink and brush set. He’s a scholar and when he feels drained, I say that his words were like ink mixed too thin. His body is thin and pointed, and during the love scene, his touch paints words on her.

My heroine in Cornered Tigress is a cat. Every time she enters a room, she experiences it first through taste and scent. When she’s afraid she tends to go into tiny enclosed spaces. You can use anything that sparks your imagination, so…go wild!

Writing erotic romance is certainly a sexual liaison with my muse. Anticipation starts the juices flowing, and then imagination takes over. What is hotter than the expectation of tingles and whispers, caresses and sighs, and finally, skin against skin. The mind, after all, is the most potent erogenous zone. Much like spending a hot night with a lover, foreplay begins while walking up the stairs, or in this case, turning on the computer!

Before computers, writers stared at a blank page in a typewriter. Now, it is a white screen on a monitor waiting to be filled. My muse helps me find the sensual space in my imagination, from which sexy stories appear. Sometimes when I need him, my muse has to be enticed to come out and play. I tease him, pursuing him until he can no longer resist.

My muse is certainly masculine, a commanding presence when he emerges. To coax him out of the private sanctum where he lives, I bait him. He loves music, especially the blues. Oh baby, yes, the blues will lure him out every time. He absolutely cannot resist Etta James.

Once I have his attention, I take a hot bath and soak. That is when we commune. He whispers to me as I drift, telling me what he wants to do. Often, he shows me what he wants, the erotic pictures vivid in my mind. When finally I sit down at the keyboard, the words and images flow from my mind into my fingers.

Holding onto the space of erotic thought can be a challenge. It is a delicate altered state of consciousness, a meditative zone where nothing exists except the story. The characters are on stage, and I have to be a rapt audience. There is no room for laundry waiting in the basket, the grocery list sitting on the table or vacuuming the cat litter tracked onto the rug. Everything, and I do mean everything, has to take a back seat to the presence of the muse. When his virility fills my heart and soul, I have to pay attention.

To sustain my concentration and encourage my muse to continue his flirtatious whispers, I often look at pictures of beautiful men. I trace the curves of their muscles with my eyes, allowing their potency to wash though me. The impressions translate easily into scenes, where I play voyeur to a gorgeous hunk of man making love. Watching him in my mind’s eye, my own fire burns brighter. The tactile sense of him, how he smells, the sweat on his skin, the hard line of his body, the softness of his hair &ndash he overwhelms my senses.

Making love on the written page is as intimate and personal as loving on a bed (or any other surface to your liking). The endorphins kick in and identification with the characters is spontaneous. Whatever is happening on the page is also happening in my mind, an alternate reality for the duration of the session. My muse strokes me until I am sated. Then, he allows me to rest until our next liaison. With a tender kiss, he promises the next time will be even better.