General

So, I watched Wonder Woman 1984 last night.

I mean, it was okay. Not great, but certainly not as bad as some of the reviews made it out to be. But I have a soft spot for super hero movies and romance, so maybe it’s just me.

Many of the bad reviews had good points (no spoilers). The opening scene didn’t come to anything (and therefore could have been cut). The 80s thing was only there for its own sake. (Just because Stranger Things did a good job with it doesn’t mean it has to be a whole THING now.) The villain left something to be desired in his motivations. The CGI could have been better. And my biggest complaint: the rules of the universe didn’t make sense. I won’t spoil it here, but the main magical item of the movie was not consistent AT ALL in its execution. The magical “rules” were adjusted repeatedly in order for the plot to continue or to accommodate an action sequence.

And at one point, they randomly saw some fireworks and mentioned off hand, “Oh right, it’s the 4th of July. Neat.”

That’s paraphrasing, but come on. If you need to shoehorn in literal fireworks to make a magical moment, your moment is lacking.

I can’t fault anyone for pointing out these obvious pitfalls in story telling. But there was one review that really got my goat:

Patty Jenkins [director] sets women back with this rubbish.

Oh for fuck’s sake. How?

Well, apparently this is how:

In WW84, when she’s not pining for her lost love (because we all know a woman is lost without her man, right?)…

What, because if a woman has a love life she’s not a strong woman? Well that crosses off 98% of all woman on the planet, then. 98% of all human beings, for that matter.

First of all, she’s not lost without her man. She has a few pics of him around her house and mentions him once to a friend after being asked explicitly if she’s ever been in love. She spends her day kicking ass as an anthropologist and her evenings saving pedestrians from negligent drivers and jewelry stores from thieves (in what looks suspiciously like the Star Court Mall from Stranger Things. But surely they’d use a bit more subtlety than that when riding that gravy train… right?).

Second of all, where is the outrage that Iron Man has a love interest? Where’s the outrage that Thor is so enamored with Jane that he’s driven to distraction? Why did no one care that Christian Bale’s Batman was so obsessed with a woman who had rejected him that he lived in a state of denial for most of The Dark Knight about it? (btw, later in the review, the author expressed disappointment that WW84 wasn’t as good as Dark Knight. Talk about irony.)

But no, Diana Prince has a vagina, so the fact that she’s sad about a dead boyfriend makes her a weak character and actually sets back the fight for feminism.

The last time I checked, the struggle with weak female characters was never about romance. Never. It was about the fact that the female character was consistently shallow and only existed as a reward for the male MC. She was there to provide a romance subplot for another character.

That was NOT the case in WW84. If anything, Chris Pine’s character fails that particular test. He literally ONLY existed in that movie to provide a romantic plot line for the female MC. Sure, he beat up a couple of guys and tried on a few examples of awful 80s fashion, but that was about it.

And yet Chris Pine only gets positive mentions in any review I saw. One even claims his “…baby blue eyes are the only redeemable feature in this film.”

Talk about a double standard. He’s got a weak character whose only purpose is to provide romance for another character, but he’s hot so two thumbs up!!

To be clear, I’m not bashing Steve Trevor. Pine did a great job with it and got several decent laughs out of me for marveling at the amazing technology and fashions of the 80s.

But the point of this rant is that Diana Prince was not anti-feminist for having a love life. Gal Gadot did a wonderful job, cool and sexy as usual. And she displayed some real emotional range between the happy lovey scenes and the more difficult decisions she had to make later.

…when she’s not pining after her lost love…she’s winking at little kids… 

I have to admit, they did lay on the “winking at kids” thing a bit much. I mean, it didn’t come off as motherly, but it was weird. Could she not wink at an adult once or twice? But I don’t see that as a feminist issue. I see that as an issue with having innocent children as casualties. It’s really easy to get an entire mall to stop and be horrified when you dangle a child over a third floor railing. It requires zero effort to get that emotional response.

And yet this reviewer is so offended that Diana likes kids that they completely missed how lazy it was to overuse kids in that role in the first place.

Plus, it seems like the little kid thing was a major theme across the entire movie, and Diana wasn’t the only character affected. The villain, Max Lord, played by Pedro Pascal, was a casualty of the little kid cliche as well. In a half assed attempt to give him a sympathetic side, they threw an adorable small child at him and made him a loving father. He just wants to make his son proud! Awe, look. He loves the kid. He’s so forgivable.

But when the woman likes a kid, she’s anti-feminist. Boo! How dare this strong woman like kids!

Oh look, that shitty man likes kids!

Boo, Diana!

Yay! Max!

via GIPHY

 In the first WW she was a badass who fought with passion against evil and stood up for her convictions. 

cough AND HAD A ROMANTIC SUBPLOT cough cough

I love how the reviewer was so ready to judge romance that they chose to ignore the fact that the first WW movie had the exact same failings they rail about WW84.

The difference here is in Pine’s character of Steve Trevor. In WW, his character was well rounded, had agency, made decisions, and took action, all while maintaining a steady characterization.

In WW84, he followed Diana around like a puppy, staring at the sights and mooning over “modern” planes. And yet the female character gets the blame for setting back feminism. And Pine’s dreamy eyes get the only good comments in the entire film.

Diana, on the other hand, made decisions, had agency, and took action in both films. In the first, she was discovering the world and making difficult decisions about saving other people and putting her life at risk. In WW84, she had to make a difficult decision about her love life and putting her happiness at risk, so screw her, right? How dare she care about a man? How dare she consider a loving, healthy relationship as a possible source of happiness? How anti-feminist of her.

Oof, guys. I need to stop here. I’m getting sarcastic. That’s never a good sign.

The only 2 strong women (Connie Nielsen and Robin Wright) are gone after the first 10 minutes

And what, I ask you, made their characters so very strong? They had maybe 2 lines of dialogue each, and spent the rest watching the Amazonian equivalent of the Olympics. Antiope had some wise words about truth and fairness, and Hippolyta comforted a sad child and said something along the lines of “Don’t worry, kiddo. You’ll win someday.”

What’s so strong about that? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Regardless of their gender, these two characters should have been cut from WW84 (along with the entire scene). But instead, after being such fantastic characters in Wonder Woman, they were brought back in WW84 for the same reason the 80s setting was used: a throwback.

That, my friends, is not what a strong female character looks like. That’s pandering.

And no, giving them swords and beefy muscles doesn’t make them strong female characters, either. That just makes them athletic.

To Sum Up

Wonder Woman 1984 had a lot of problems. It wasn’t the worst superhero movie ever, but it wasn’t great either. However, I will defend to my dying breath that jumping on the feminism train every time a female character has the audacity to engage in romance is the REAL thing setting back feminism in this world.

Grow up, folks. Strong women appreciate romance, too.

What’s the one thing that keeps a reader turning the page? One word: tension.

To be more specific, it’s the build up of tension and the expectation of release. But that’s such a broad concept with a myriad of options, how can one possibly write a single article on the entire topic?

Well you probably can’t. But there is one place that tension is often overlooked, and that also happens to be the one place it should be strongest: the last sentence/thought of a scene.

There are a whole bunch of writerly advices out there that have been compressed down into a meme or soundbite with the advent of the internet and mass publishing platforms. People have short attention spans, so these little soundbites can be appealing, but they often leave a lot to be desired.

The one that caught my attention today was: End every chapter with a hook so the reader is tempted to turn the page.

See? Sounds logical. It’s a no-brainer. Okay, let’s go through my MS and make sure there’s a hook at the end of every chapter. Check.

Except don’t do that, because like any good soundbite, this one only scratches the surface of tension.

Chapters

First of all, not every book has chapters. Mine usually don’t. Emily does, but that’s literally the only book I’ve ever written that has chapters. Table Five doesn’t have chapters, but many readers might interpret it as having them. I intended the headers that pop up occasionally to simply be excerpts from Mae’s list. But considering it’s a number followed by a short heading, it certainly looks like a chapter heading. Plus, dividing ~48k words into six parts will require those parts to be rather short. They’re about the length of a long chapter.

I included parts in The Little Owl as well, but there’s no possible way to construe them as chapters. There are only 5 parts in this novel, with close to 100k words. They are also labeled as parts: Part 1 – The Crone, Part 2 – Journey, etc.

So it’s easy enough to apply the “hook” advice to a chaptered book, but what about Little Owl? What about Table Five, where the “chapters” are few and far between?

Drama

I am not a big fan of cliffhangers. They have their place, sure, but only sparingly. Too many cliffhangers and sharp hooks, especially when followed by a chapter break or line break or POV switch (delaying relief of tension), that savors strongly of soap operas.

It was her secret twin all along! Dun dun dun!!! *cut to end credits*

God, it would be exhausting to be so shocked all the time.

That’s not to knock soap operas. I am personally a big fan of soapy shows, but the true soaps I just don’t like much. Jane the Virgin is probably the only one I can enjoy, and that’s entirely because it’s a little parody-ish. Plus it’s been fun to slowly but surely start to understand Alba’s dialogue as I learn Spanish.

As a writer, that kind of drama is usually intentional. You do it because you WANT your book to be soapy. But most books just aren’t like that. Most readers seek it out intentionally, but don’t expect to see it as a rule.

Hooks and cliffhangers at the end of every chapter or scenes would be soapy. Plain and simple. That’s a common thing in TV, but in writing, more subtly is needed.

So how else are you supposed to create the tension that is so necessary?

Unanswered Questions

That’s it. That heading there, that’s the big secret: unanswered questions.

How do you keep the reader turning the page? Easy: Give them questions worth seeking the answers to.

Of course the big umbrella question every reader should be seeking the answer to is “What’s going to happen to this character?”

First, you’ll need good characters that the reader cares about. You want the reader invested in what happens to them. If your character isn’t likable, your reader won’t care what happens to them.

Second, you need to set the stakes for the character. What are they risking when they make decisions? Make sure it’s very possible that they fail. Or even better, actually have them fail sometimes.

Those are the only two universal requirements for creating tension. After that, it gets very optional. There are a dozen ways to intrigue your reader depending on the genre and the tone. In mysteries, the big question is “whodunit?” and “How did they get away with it for so long?” In romance, the questions are often predictable, but still interesting. “Will the boy get the girl?” In action, “How will Tom Cruise endanger his life this time?”

But those are just the big genre tropes. There are a thousand little ways in your story to keep the reader seeking answers that are entirely dependent on the specific plot.

In Table Five, Jamie is obsessed with getting to number 4 on Mae’s list. He can’t stop thinking about it, but I don’t tell the reader what it is. “What is number 4 on the list? It’s gotta be good if he’s this obsessed with it.” Keep turning the page to find out.

In The Ordinary Life, “Is Emily going to date Ethan?” “What is Shannon up to?”

Little Owl: “Can Sasha be real?” “What’s causing all these disappearances?” “The assassin left no traces behind. Who sent them?”

None of these questions appear at the end of a scene or chapter. They’re incorporated into the action.

The Final Word

So where did this meme come from about having a hook at the end of every chapter? This no-nonsense, simple, obviously right advice has to have some truth in it, right?

Yes! It does.

In every scene, the final line is the jumping off point. The last sentence is what sticks with the reader. It gives the final and most lasting impression, and it acts as a springboard for the reader to jump to the next scene/chapter/part.

SO IT CAN’T BE BORING.

But that doesn’t mean it has to be a cliffhanger, either.

And even if it is an exciting cliffhanger, it won’t keep the reader going if the chapter was full of boring characters with no stakes and no questions that need answering. No surprise evil twin can turn the page all on his own if I don’t care about what the good twin stands to lose.

But it’s still important to keep up the tension through the last sentence. There are a number of simple points of advice out there for exactly this purpose, and none of them include a hook:

• Don’t end a scene/chapter with the character going to bed
• Don’t end with a character leaving the big party/event and going home
• Don’t end an argument or uncomfortable discussion with both parties fully satisfied
• Don’t end a scene with a hug and a warm glow
• Don’t end a scene with meals or other daily logistics
• Basically, just don’t end a scene tied up in a pretty bow

There are exceptions to all these rules, of course. Sometimes leaving a party in a huff is a power move and you kind of need it. If you’re at the end of the book or subplot and you want to leave two characters with a healed relationship, then sure. Let them hug it out at the end of the scene.

But if you want to keep the tension up, don’t relieve the reader with a happy ending just yet. Don’t take away from the big argument at the party by having your MC pack up, talk to the valet, and go home. Don’t diminish the weight of a big day by leaving your reader with the final image of your MC tucked in bed. That’s boring.

Don’t ever be boring!

Examples

Some of my favorite examples of scene/chapter endings that aren’t hooks or cliffhangers. These are from my own works, many of them still drafts. These are designed to carry the tension over to the next scene without diminishing it.

It was my first lie. I was fourteen years old.

That’s what this whole list about: getting a new perspective. And god damn it, she was going to get some.

I went back to putting away the dishes, doing my best to ignore the growing lump in my gut.

If I’d had any time at all to realize what that popping sound had been, I might have vomited everywhere. Fortunately I blacked out first.

And as I rode in that cart, watching the road lengthen behind us, I wished bitterly that I didn’t know.  

When I came back I found him coiling one of the ropes of hair into a large heart-shaped locket. He glanced up at me, pleased with himself now for more than one reason. “This one’s for Bob.” 

***

So the next time you’re reading your favorite book, pay attention the final lines before a line break or chapter heading. Is it a hook or cliffhanger? Is it a tension diffuser? Does it make you want to keep reading? Why?

And pay attention to the meat of the scene as well. How and where does the author set up tension by creating a question that needs answered?

If there’s one thing every author needs, its eyeballs on your page. Not just one pair, but many.

Of all the long, complicated, fluid steps involved in writing a book, one of the most valuable is the Beta Read stage. At this point, you have finished your novel and are relatively happy with it. (An author is never completely happy with their work, but you can get close.) You’ve double checked everything, tied up all the loose ends, and even had a friend read it to check for obvious errors.

Now it’s time for the beta read. It can seem daunting to pass your baby out to strangers, but strangers is exactly what you need. You need someone who doesn’t give two shits about you or your book to read it and give honest feedback.

A good beta reader will:

• Read the entire book in a timely manner
• Note things that they liked
• Provide constructive criticism
• Ask questions where confused
• Point out obvious errors

A fantastic beta reader will also:

• Explain why they liked/disliked things
• Discuss or workshop difficult problems with the author
• Provide an honest review and rating for the book to put on Goodreads, Amazon, etc

Unfortunately it can sometimes be a crap shoot. Some people will leave lots of comments, while others only leave a few. Some people never actually read the book or respond to follow ups.

And of course, there’s always the chance of getting a bad egg. A reader may be rude or derogatory about your work, or they could even share it with another reader without asking. And heaven forbid you have to worry about the P word (rhymes with schmagerism). Guys, a NDA is a great idea! Just saying. It won’t stop theft, but it is a deterrent.

But Beta Readers are absolutely essential to the process. You can’t have just one or two, you need several. I am currently in the beta stage for my latest erotic novella, Table Five. I’ve had 2 excellent readers, and 3 good ones. The excellent readers have given me lots to work with, but it was the 3 good ones that caught glaring typos and continuity errors.

It wasn’t just one of them, either. This is the big reason why you need many.

My husband has a great eye for detail. He’s also hilarious. He caught several typos, and took every opportunity to make fun of me for it.

I misspelled “silverware.”

I also can’t spell “vibrator,” which isn’t great for a romance author…

I was today years old when I learned it wasn’t “door jam.”

But he didn’t catch everything. Another reader, who only provided a handful of comments and an overall opinion, missed those typos but caught 6 instances where I misspelled the main character’s name. What, and I mean this with all sincerity, the fuck?

Yet another reader noticed where I changed a side character’s name halfway through a scene. This one was also very disappointed (my word, not hers) in my minimalist style when it comes to description. She’s not entirely wrong. I’ll be bulking up the sensory details thanks to her.

All of them agreed that my final sex scene was cut far too short, so I suppose I have some more work to do there, as well.

So to any and all aspiring authors out there, don’t skip the beta readers! There are plenty of options out there, from dedicated websites to facebook groups. Be cautious who you give your work to, and always get a NDA (non-disclosure agreement). I have had success on facebook, but I think I’ll give Critique Match a shot on the next go-around. I’ll come back with my experience with that eventually.