Or, at least a celebrity! Great job, Voices in picking a Heroine for our Romantic-Suspense Blog-a-Book. I love the sparks of an everyday hero falling for a well-known (and beautiful, no doubt) woman. Can anyone say Notting Hill? Yay!

There’s been some riveting discussion on both our Hero and Heroine over on the VOICES forum…one in particular really nailed the questions before us:

>>>The word Celebrity usually comes with negative connotation, because of the lifestyle we often hear about in the news or magazines…. but what if she is a strong Christian who grew up in East Tennessee and moved to L.A., N.Y. or Vancouver (there is film industry there as well). She is still the same person, but our hero doesn’t want anything to do with a “High maintenance” celebrity type who has come home for her little sister’s wedding, in between projects or just wanted to get away. She has to defend her career choice and set our hero straight on a few miss guided notions about her. It could be fun. 🙂

Our Heroine could be an actress who started dating a man just before he was killed. She could have seen the murder or has something the killers want and she is unaware of it.

Our Heroine could be a director/producer that just finished making a documentary that certain people don’t want to be shown to the world as they would lose millions.

She could be a singer/actor that ran into our Hero’s brother/sister while on an USO tour entertaining our troops. What if she grew up with them, but moved away to pursue a music/acting career. It has been years since she has been home, but goes back to deliver the letter. However, our hero’s brother/sister died and whatever is in that letter may explain who or what killed them.

I like to think that she may be in East Tennessee not by choice. Either it could be to take care of a family member or for work. If she’s a celebrity it may be because she’s hiding due to some bad publicity. Or she’s been separate from her family due to her independent nature and now is obligated to come and take care of a seriously ill sibling or parent. Or is a journalist and is doing a human interest story for her national newspaper. Or might just be wanting to have a fresh start in life after a death in the family which has caused chaos in her normally very structured and controlled life.< <<

These are great questions! Which all lead to: Why did she come home, and what are her goals?

One voice added: >>> “I too like the idea of a “celebrity” coming home for some serious reason, like a dying relative. She could be perfectly happy being out of the limelight, but the hero has negative connotations of her because of her career choice. Remember “Sweet Alabama” with Reese Witherspoon? Something like that?” < <<

Yes, maybe something like that!

So, now we need nail down our story.

Here’s what have so far:

Set in Eastern Tennessee is the romantic suspense story of an everyday hero (some ideas: Park Ranger, Janitor, Photographer…) and a celebrity, possibly a transplant. (actress, scientist, musician…?)

So, now, we need to figure out the premise.

We’ve had some excellent ideas this week over on the Heroes discussion, esp as the conversation turned toward a Celebrity Heroine.

Some of the conversations have been:

Photographer and the Paparazzi Princess
He’s a nature photographer, and she thinks he’s paparazzi, so she steals the film/disk from his camera because she was in one of the pictures he took, and she’s trying to get away from the public eye. The problem is that he just got back from a mission trip and now terrorists (and maybe even the CIA) are after him because he got something on film/disk from overseas that nobody is supposed to know about. Thus, everybody goes after her.

Historian and the Documentarian
Maybe he could be just a researcher in the back room of a museum. He used to be an archaeologist and traveled around to exciting sites and once begged his best friend, a museum researcher, to go out on a dig with him. There was a freak accident and his buddy died, so now our hero is carrying on the research work of his friend as a memorial to him and out of deep guilt, even though he’s stuck day after day alone in the back room of the museum. Until one day he comes across something that sets
off alarms in his brain–maybe some notes he finds left by his friend casting some suspicion on the museum’s practices. And now he has to prove that the museum is deceiving the public. Maybe the heroine could be the new curator.

Or she could be a celebrity participating in a documentary which highlights some human interest plight?

Park Ranger and the Journalist? (maybe a television anchor?)
How about someone who patrols the Appalachian Trail? He could meet anyone out there. Maybe the heroine. Maybe he’s a laid back nature-lover and the heroine’s an overachieving professional who took six months off work to hike the trail. Maybe he’s saved. Maybe she’s not. Maybe there’s an accident, or terrible weather that she could have avoided if only she wasn’t so dern stubborn. And she finds herself dependent upon him to….well, you get the point. 🙂

These are all intriguing! But, before we can decide on a premise, or the gist of the story we need to determine a few things:

What are the greatest fears of our hero/Heroine?
What are the greatest dreams of hero/heroine?
What is their Goals, Motivations and Conflicts?

The greatest fears/dreams of our hero/heroine can be determined by looking into their past? What drives them today? What dark moment in their past has shaped their lives? What did they learn from it?

From there, we can figure out their goals, as well as their motivations.

But what is their conflict? Try and establish opposite goals for your characters, and this will lead to sparks! For example, what if she is in town to do a documentary, but she’s digging up information that could potentially hurt people, and he, as the town historian, knows it. He’d want to keep her from digging up this information. Conflict!

So, what is the conflict between them?

We have two days left to nail down our Greatests, and our GMC over on VOICES. Then, the Therapists will pick the most viable threads (for our abilities!) and put it to a vote! So, go over to VOICES, and add your voice to the PREMISE thread!

Our story is just beginning to take shape, like a piece of pottery on the wheel, so stay with us – we’re nearly to the premise!

Every Voice Counts!