Spiritual Conflict in The Romance Novel by Laurie Alice Eakes

“Eakes has a charming way of making her novels come to life without being over the top,” writes Romantic times of  bestselling, award-winning author Laurie Alice Eakes. Since she lay in bed as a child telling herself stories, she has fulfilled her dream of becoming a published author with a dozen books and novellas in print and more on the way. A graduate of Seton Hill University’s Writing Popular Fiction graduate program, she also teaches writing and gives inspirational talks to women’s groups. She lives in Texas with her husband, dogs, and cats.

Follow her on Twitter: https://twitter.com/LaurieAEakes

Read excerpts from her books at: http://www.lauriealiceeakes.com

Spiritual Conflict in the Romance Novel

"Why do you read romance novels?" I've been asked more times than I can count on fingers
and toes with my nose and ears tossed into the mix. "You know how it's going to end. The  hero and heroine always get together."

"Ah, yes," I respond, "But it's HOW they get together, how they resolve their conflicts that makes the story worth reading." 

Conflict is essential to a romance novel. Without a believable and compelling reason for the hero and heroine to stay apart for 200-400 pages, the point of the story is completely lost. In fact, if boy meets girl and they fall in love and have a friction-free courtship, no one would want to read the story because it is probably unrealistic. It is what non-romance readers think that romance novels are.

Conflict, contrary to what many believe, is not 200-400 pages of hero and heroine sniping at one another until they realize they’re in love. That would be ludicrous and tiresome to read.

The hero and heroine must have some kind of personal issues that keep them from diving head first into the relationship and staying their. This is internal conflict. One can also have external conflict. This is some outside force that keeps the protagonists apart—war, an interfering parent, whatever the writer’s imagination comes up with. Internal and external conflict have been the mainstay of romance novels since romance novels have existed—Mr. Darcy is arrogant, Mr. Rochester had another wife already, Emma needs to grow up. . .

Now, enter the inspirational romance novel and one more layer—spiritual conflict.

Inspirational romances are written from a “Christian world view”. Again, this does not mean their world is friction free. It means the Christian characters incorporate their faith into the decisions they make, the actions they take, the viewpoints about the issue they hold—at least they are supposed to. At least they know they are supposed to do so. When they do not consider their faith, or if their faith is in crisis, you have spiritual conflict.

In my recent release from Baker/Revell, A Flight of Fancy, my heroine, Cassandra, and hero, Geoffrey, Lord Whittaker, hold a great deal of guilt because of their past behavior with one another. They allow this guilt to stand between themselves and god, and then between one another. When a tragic accident befalls Cassandra, she thinks God is punishing her and thus backs away from her faith altogether. Until Cassandra and Whittaker can resolve their spiritual conflict, they cannot resolve their romantic conflict either.

On the other end of the spiritual conflict spectrum, in my upcoming Heartsong, The Carpenter’s Inheritance, my hero and heroine hold their faith and hold it fairly strongly throughout the story. The conflict rises from them questioning god’s purpose for their lives, as they try to work out which direction they should take as godly men and women. Their decisions in this direction make a difference in the romance outcome also.

Unlike with romantic conflict, an inspirational romance does not specifically need spiritual conflict; however, it makes for a deeper and richer story if that extra layer of internal issues exists. In addition, when the characters need to get their hearts right with the Lord before they can get their hearts right with one another, it sends the reader a stronger message of how accepting God’s love and redemption impacts all aspects of our lives, especially our relationships with one another.

Her head is in the clouds. His feet are planted firmly on the ground. Can love cover the distance?
Cassandra Bainbridge may be a bit of a bluestocking, but when Geoffrey Giles is near, love seems a fine alternative to passion for Greek and the physics of flight. With his dashing good looks and undying devotion to her, the earl of Whittaker sets Cassandra's heart racing with his very presence. It seems his only flaw is his distaste for ballooning, the obsession that consumes so much of her thoughts.

When a terrible accident compels her to end her betrothal, Cassandra heads for the country to recover from both her injuries and her broken heart. With time on her hands and good friends to help her, she pursues her love for ballooning and envisions a future for herself as a daring aeronaut. But when Lord Whittaker slips back into her life, will she have to choose between him and her dream?

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Beyond Jane Austin: The Real Regency Romance

Award-winning author Laurie Alice Eakes has wanted to be a writer since knowing what one was. Her first book won the National Readers Choice Award in 2007, and her third book was a Carol Award finalist in 2010. Her first book with Baker/Revell, Lady in the Mist, was picked up by Crossings Book Club, and six of her books have ben chosen for large print editions by Thorndike Press. She has been a public speaker for as long as she can remember; thus, only suffers enough stage fright to keep her sharp. In 2002, while in graduate school for writing fiction, she began to teach fiction in person and online. She lives in Virginia with her husband, two dogs, and probably too many cats. Contact Laurie Alice on her website here

Beyond Jane Austen: The Real Regency Romance

To prepare for writing this post, I asked Regency writers how they would define a Regency novel/romance. Then I asked readers, most of whom had never picked up a Regency novel, what is their immediate reaction to the term Regency romance or Regency novel. My conclusion is that the writers of the genre know it inside and out. Readers opinions lie at both ends of the “unlike” to “love it” spectrum and all the areas in-between. Amidst th

ese observations resides the reason why early nineteenth century Great Britain is my time period of choice for reading and writing.

What is a Regency Novel?

Most people believe that Jane Austen defined the Regency novel. After all, she lived in and set her books in the time period when George III was mad from an illness and his son became the Regent ruler of the country. This is specifically 1811-1820; however, for publishing purposes, the time period extends from the French Revolution as far as to the end of George IV’s reign in 1830 for reasons I won’t get into in this post. My point here is that Jane Austen did not write Regency novels.

“Jane Austen,” says Tamela Murray, an agent with the Laube Literary Agency and author of two Regency novels and one Regency novella, “wrote contemporary novels. Austen did not have the perspective of whole picture insight into Society.”

Today, we have access to information about the working classes, the disastrously poor, the urban lives, and the place Great Britain played on the world theater. Now, we e

njoy thousands more resources than Ms. Austen could have found or afforded such as private journals, many newspapers, and other original sources such as military documents and scores of other books written during her time. Austen wrote of her microcosm. She wrote rather cynically of her microcosm. Her novels were no different than the author from a small town in America without television or the Internet, writing about the people and events of that town—perceptive regarding human nature, often witty, more often than not snarky, ultimately a view no broader than what one can see through a set of binoculars.

Because of the movies and numerous spin-off novels with Austen’s world, readers responded to my query with, too often for this regency writer’s pleasure, “Boring,” or “Not my favorite”.

So let us, bored and disinterested reader, leave Jane Austen in her contemporary and narrow little world and leap forward about a hundred and ten years to the advent of another English lady onto the scene—Georgette Heyer. I haven’t read her biography, so don’t know a great deal about her personally. I do know, however, that she was brilliant and a fabulous author and a huge influence on my writing and thus my life. Heyer brought the Georgian era alive with everything from swashbuckling romances, to drawing room comedies of manners, from mysteries, to gothic novels set from the 1740s, to 1820.

Georgette Heyer set the stage for the modern—Post Modern to be literary—Regency novel. She gave us a perspective of the haut-ton, the highest of society, to the middle class and even glimpses into the darker side of that fascinating era. She gave us a broad spectrum of the Napoleonic wars and dashing, sometimes dangerous, heroes, with spirited but never anachronistic heroines.

“In my mind,” says Rita award-winning author Diane Gaston, “what defines a book as a Regency is the setting. Is it set in the "Regency World?" To me, the Regency world means that it is written from the British perspective, about the places, events, and people who lived in Great Britain or were British during roughly 1790 to 1830. The setting could include British India, British characters in Europe (such as British soldiers in the Napoleonic War--like in my Three Soldiers Series ), or even America (War of 1812, for example), but it is about British characters and involved in British social, political, or economic concerns. Mostly, though, the stories take place in Great Britain and are about the social world of the privileged, although some of my Regencies have been about characters who are not of the aristocracy, but whose lives are more peripherally involved.

Shannon Donnelly, an award-winning Regency author, responds to my ques

tion with, “it was an era when style mattered more than almost anything else. Good "ton" mattered -- wit and fashion.” (Note: “Good ton” means having a respectable reputation in Society.)

I think of gentlemen and ladies, fashion, glitz, glamour, and society,” replies Kristi Ann Hunt, fan of the genre and writing her own Regency novel. “I think of the wonderful interest created by a period in such transition - the shift of power among the classes where society and family history still reigns supreme, but money can buy you a place, too. The horse is still the main form of transportation but the train is making an appearance as well. Even indoor plumbing is making its way into buildings. Mostly I think I'm going to read a book that takes me to a place that is either a world in transition or one where reality is still covered with a sheen of old society. I expect characters that are at least aware of the strict social rules, even if they choose to break them. I expect men to treat women like ladies. I like the clothing of the time period.”

All of these ladies and the scores of others who responded to my questions sum up the subgenre of historical romance novels in this same fashion. Wholeheartedly, I concur. It is an exciting time in history with a world of opportunity for romance and adventure, grief to overcome and joy to share, advancement in science and a powerful need to carry the grace of God to a society that went to church out of obligation and habit and not a need to w

orship.

Although Jane Austen’s endurance into the twenty-first century brings readers to an awareness of the Regency period, her novels barely scratch the surface of everything going on in that world. Georgette Heyer and those who followed in her footsteps—Clare Darcy, Patricia Veryan, etc.--took the genre one, two, a dozen steps further.

In writing inspirational Regency romantic adventures such as my espionage plot in A Necessary Deception, I wish to open a whole new world to readers—the realization that the people of the Regency era needed more substance. It was a world of constant seeking after entertainment and pleasure, concern about their shoes and clothes and appearance, leaving little room for God. . .

Sound familiar?

Yes, the parallels are often eerie and enough for another blog post. Let us just say that, through writing a spiritual aspect into the Regency subgenre, I, like my predecessors, the late Jane Orcutt and beloved Marylu Tyndall, and my co-Regency authors Ruth Axtell Morren, Louise M. Gouge, and a handful of others, wish to open up a new horizon to readers of Christian fiction and Regency romances.

A Necessary Deception

When young widow Lydia Gale helps a French prisoner obtain parole, she never dreams she will see him again. But just as the London Season gets under way, the man presents himself in her parlor. While she should be focused on getting her headstrong younger sister prepared for her entrée into Society, Lady Gale finds herself preoccupied with the mysterious Frenchman. Is he a spy or a suitor? Can she trust him? Or is she putting herself and her family in danger?

Discover a world of elegance and intrigue, balls and masquerades as Laurie Alice Eakes whisks you into the drawing rooms of London Society on

this exciting quest to let the past stay in the past—and let love guide the future.

Buy A Necessary Deception at:

Barnes and Noble

Amazon

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Plotting is Easy. . .

Award-winning author Laurie Alice Eakes wanted to be a writer since knowing what one was. Her first book won the National Readers Choice Award in 2007, and her third book was a Carol Award finalist in 2010. Between December of 2008 and January of 2010, she sold thirteen books to Barbour Publishing, Avalon Books, and Baker/Revell, making her total sales fifteen. Recently, she added two novella sales to that collection, as well as having her first book with Baker/Revell, Lady in the Mist, picked up by Crossings Book Club, and three of her books chosen for large print editions by Thorndike Press. She has been a public speaker for as long as she can remember; thus, only suffers enough stage fright to keep her sharp. In 2002, while in graduate school for writing fiction, she began to teach fiction in person and online. She lives in Texas with her husband, two dogs, and too many cats even for her. Visit Laurie at her website www.lauriealiceeakes.com


Plotting is Easy. . .

Or at least it’s not as difficult and daunting as I used to think it was once I figured out that working out a plot is simply answering four basic questions.

Once upon a time, I sat down and just wrote. Pantsters I’ve heard them called. Since I’m a skirt girl, I found this a bit difficult to relate to. I didn’t want to write and hope the story went somewhere because, for a long time, it never did. It was like packing the car for a journey, heading out of the driveway, and getting stopped at the entrance ramp to the expressway—uh, duh, where am I going? Right? Left? Or do I want a winding country road instead?

But other people‘s plotting techniques didn’t work for me. I’ll leave those anonymous so I don’t offend anyone if they think I’m dissing their program. I’m not; it just didn’t suit my need to have structure, yet have the freedom to expand or diverge a bit, too if necessary.

“Know the story—as much of the story as you can possibly know, if not the whole story—before you commit yourself to the first paragraph….If you don’t know the story before you begin the story, what kind of a storyteller are you?”
-John Irving

It comes down to four basic questions to ask yourself about your story. I call these WWW&H.

W1: Who are you?

This is all about getting to know your character, what your character’s reason for existing is. In other words, what makes her—them—tick and why?

Example: In Lady in the Mist, my heroine, Tabitha, has her identity tied up in being a midwife because it’s what she was taught and what she knows. She loves it, yet she knows it’s not who she is; it’s what she does. Yet this is how others see her—the midwife, respected, feared, not necessarily loved.

W2: What does she want?

This is the crux of plot. If the characters don’t know what they want, no story can happen. Mind you, you can have a story where the character is trying to work out what they want.

Example: Tabitha wants to be like other women—loved, respected, a wife and mother. She wants security after a life of loss.

W3: What is your character willing to sacrifice?

Here is where scenes and the pushback that makes tension and conflict occur. If the character just goes with the flow—no story. You can go as far as necessary in working out what you do to your characters to make story happen. The black moment is the climax of this point.

Example: Tabitha is willing to give up a future that looks secure on the surface in exchange for discovering the truth of bad things happening in her village. She is willing to stick to her moral principles, too, and help the man she falls in love with even though she is certain him leaving her is inevitable.

H: How does the character change?

This is the epiphany moment, the lesson learned, the post black moment wrap-up. How is your character different at the end than she was in the beginning?

Giving an example of this one is difficult without giving away endings.

This is the foundation of the private and group lessons I teach unpublished and published authors alike—helping them take their ideas and turn them into story. Once I learned how to plot before I started writing, I started selling books.

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