Please welcome this week’s featured author, Jude Knight. She’s here to tell us a bit about her writing process and a tad about her newest story, Melting Matilda.
Do you remember this song from The King and I? https://youtu.be/Vlx6gQWfjp0
This is, in essence, my writing process.
I write for a living, mostly turning legal and financial documents into plain English. When I first set out to write a historical romance, I started the same way —extensive research, character interviews and questionnaires, and a plan with a detailed outline, timelines and day-by-day goals.
The trouble is, my characters wouldn’t co-operate. It turns out that I write by watching the movie reel unroll inside my head. My characters had no idea what was going to happen, and as I soon found out, neither did I. The villain had a revulsion of feeling after the preface and commited suicide before chapter 1. The slightly sinister neighbour turned into a major criminal. The hero wanted to seduce the heroine instead of courting her. The heroine’s reason for hiding proved to be something quite different to the reason in my plan. New villains came out of the woodwork, and the hero’s best friend was a bit of an <cough, cough>. I ended up more or less where I expected, but by a completely different pathway.
Very little of the entire second half of the book was in my plan, and several subplots had to be written back into the first half during the edit.
Novel two was even worse. I planned a cheerful romp with a rake and the mistress who led him a merry dance, and it became something entirely different.
By the time I wrote novel three, I’d realised that detailed plots didn’t work for me. What did work was getting to know my characters so well that I could just put them in a situation and record what happened.
I’ve been doing that ever since.
So I’m not a plotter.
Nor, apparently, am I a pantser. If I try to write without at least some of that plotting work, my muse goes into a major sulk and I bog down.
I am, I guess, a patterner. It isn’t so much that I make patterns, but I recognise them. Two or more disconnected facts suddenly come together in my mind, and all of a sudden I know where I’m going. My plotting takes place two or three scenes ahead of where I’m writing, and the only prework is on the story arc that each character has to take to learn what they need to know.
It’s a bit like driving after dark. Your headlights show you a bit of the road, and you have a vague idea of the destination and the direction, but no GPS, no map, no knowledge of street names, and no friendly local to point the way. I start and I work out the journey on my way. I write the book so I can find out how it ends.
Now for a word about Jude’s latest story: Melting Matilda in Fire and Frost: A Bluestocking Belles’ Collection ~ Fire smoulders under the frost between them.
Her scandalous birth prevents Matilda Grenford from being fully acceptable to Society, even though she has been a ward of the Duchess of Haverford since she was a few weeks old. Matilda does not expect to be wooed by a worthy gentleman. The only man to attract her interest gave her an outrageous kiss a year ago and has avoided her ever since.
Charles, the Earl of Hamner is honor bound to ignore his attraction to Matilda Grenford. She is an innocent and a lady, and in every way worthy of his respect—but she is base-born. His ancestors would rise screaming from their graves if he made her his countess. But he cannot forget the kiss they once shared.
Release date: 4 February 2020
Pre-Order/Buy links:
Amazon Global:
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About Jude: Jude always wanted to be a novelist. She started in her teens, but life kept getting in the way. Years passed, and with them dozens of unfinished manuscripts. The fear grew. What if she tried, failed, and lost the dream forever? The past 5 years have brought, 7 novels, 13 novella, 3 awards, and hundreds of positive reviews. The dream is alive.
Website and blog: http://judeknightauthor.com/
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Books + Main Bites: https://bookandmainbites.com/JudeKnightAuthor
Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/Jude-Knight/e/B00RG3SG7I
Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/8603586.Jude_Knight
LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/jude-knight-465557166/
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