My First AH-HA Moment, what's yours?

My previous couple of posts made me think back to my writerly beginnings and my very first AH-HA! moment.

Now, writers tend to have multiple and numerous AH-HA moments, or we should; otherwise, we would be living in a vacuum and fail to learn new things. As a writer, we must be asking the question 'why'. If we fail to question and seek an answer then we are as as bad as a stagnant pond on a hot summer's day--smelly with loads of fish poo.

Writers should be always learning, honing their craft, and pushing their boundaries. By doing so, we learn and have AH-HA moments.

I will always remember my first AH-HA moment.

I don't remember the year, but I do remember everything else.  I was working on my second manuscript, THE DRAGON WARRIOR, an ill-fated Viking romance with a fairy dusting of paranormal witchery. I had been a member of RWI for probably two years and I desperately wanted to belong to a critique group.

One day I was asked to join a group. HALLELUJAH!! I was excited beyond words.  The group was small, comprising Marilyn Pappano, Susan Shay and Linda Trout. We met every other week (I think. Sorry, I've slept since then) and thus began the most brutal writing time of my life.

I still get nosebleeds from thinking about that darn learning curve!  But I learned a lot from that experience.

After awhile, I had to quit the group.  I simply couldn't keep up the pace of submitting new work, since I worked part-time and had a youngster. I got to the point that I was writing crap--crap that shouldn't be seen by the human eye--just so I'd have something for them to crit.

--plus I discovered, quite recently actually, that I'm a feast-or-famine type of writer. When I'm writing, I'm WRITING. The rest of the time, I'm goofing off, working out story problems or editing and formatting.

Again with my digressing!  Back to my AH-HA moment.  My memory might be wrong--it's a sieve, remember?--but this what I recall.

We were sitting at Olive Garden, occupying a table they so desperately wanted to turn, and I had a scene that was critiqued. Actually, if I remember correctly it was a fairly clean scene that time.
SCENE: My heroine had been rescued from being burned (or simply left to rot) at the stake by a Viking.  She passes out and awakens on his longboat. I describe stuff, and had decent cause and effect going on, but I knew something was wrong with the scene, but I didn't know WHAT.

Our lovely Marilyn piped up and said, "I know what it is."

"What?" The rest of us chimed in.

"The emotion is missing."

*ding, ding, ding, ding*

Wow.  What an epiphany.  True, when you write romance the story should be all about emotion, but I didn't get it until this point.  And emotion isn't just for romance, it's for every story you write.

Emotion aids characterization by defining who that character is by the way they act, react, overreact, or under react in a situation or with another character, etc.

Emotion deepens the character's point-of-view (POV) The deeper the writer can get into the head of the character the more accurate the character is written, thus the greater the conflict.

Emotional conflict is one way for a character to grow through the story--it's imperative for a romance.

Character growth is the deep down reason a reader is drawn to a story.  Oh, the external plot might be what hooks the reader, but in the end, all the reader invests his/her emotions to the character driving the story.

Who wants to read about a stagnant character? Or even one who is without flaws, is richer than Midas, or smarter than Stephen Hawking.  All I can say is BORING.

Remember: writers must constantly be learning and your characters should show emotional growth, too.

Later, Peeps.