What’s Your Story?

This post is actually inspired by a comment that Jamie Wesley left on my blog, with a quote from Jayne Anne Krentz about taking your core story and moving it across genres/sub-genres.

I thought that was a pretty profound statement. I know I’d heard it before, but because of where I’m at professionally right now, it hit me particularly hard this time.

I’m not sure I could succinctly define what my core story is. A core theme of mine is definitely discovering that you’re a person of great value, no matter where you come from, or what you’ve done. That you don’t need to hide who you are behind a mask. And that you’re deserving of love. I deal with a lot of characters who need redemption and who need to find peace with themselves.

And whether I’m writing a Presents or a single title romance, those themes are bound to pop up.

And no matter what you’re writing, in romance, emotion is at the center of it. It’s like a chocolate truffle. Maybe it’s in a pink wrapper, or a blue on, or it’s got coffee dusted over the shell, or it’s got dark chocolate coating. But at the center, you’ve got your gooey truffley goodness. No matter how you dress it up, it’s still chocolate. Darker or lighter maybe, but chocolate.

In Presents, I wrap it all up with a little gold leaf. And it’s concentrated, dark, stuff. In the Silver Creek books, the wrapping is a bit more dressed down. (Though, I won’t lie to you good people, these are very well-off cowboys. Maybe not a private jet, but expansive ranches and maybe a hint of country glamour, even.)

My Silver Creek novella is about a very self-contained city councilwoman learning to live a little with her older brother’s very bad boy best friend. The setting was wildly different to anything I’d written before (though true to my real life!) but the characters, the heroine especially, was carrying that core theme of mine.

(No this is not when we psychoanalyze me about why I write these themes. 😛 )

I think it’s because we have to write something that feels real to us. I’ve talked about this before, because people have a tendency to dismiss Presents or romance in general as being a total unrealistic fantasy. And while the story may be wrapped in glittering foil, the heart of it, the emotion, is very real and it is, in my opinion, what resonates with readers.

I think the concept of the core story, that is transferable, opens up a lot of freedom to you as a writer. Your core, your truth, can travel with you. To different locations, different characters, different sub genres, different word counts.

It was easy to think of myself as a category writer, and that anything else would be too hard because, I wrote category and learning to do something else would be like starting over. But the truth is, it’s not. Because the emotion travels. My story travels. And so does yours!

So what’s your story? 🙂