How Often Can You Recycle Plot Ideas to Keep Your Series Going?

Recycling writing ideas has been part writing almost since novels began.

Like I seem to remember a comment that runs along the lines of --  a man with a fortune is surely in want of a wife.

That premise has been used over and over again, especially among writers of romances. Poor girl wins the heart of a rich man. Rich girl wins the heart of a rich man. Middle class girl wins the heart of a rich man. Then, someone wants to be different, and they decide to switch the paradigm around. Poor boy wins the heart of a rich girl.  etc. etc.

One writer who squeezes the most out of that premise is Stephanie Laurens. She does it so well that she lands on the New York Times Best Seller lists regularly. Her best-selling Cynster series is based on the idea that a masterful rich man feels something missing from his life and wins the hearts of a worthy girl from at least the gentry to set up a family to fill the void. Very often, Laurens add a credible mystery to make the storyline more interesting.

With The Masterful Mr. Montague, Laurens has done a her double squeeze -- linking a romance to a mystery being investigated by Barnaby Adair and Penelope nee Cynster plus the Stokes couple. How two wives get included in their husbands work in late Regency times is one of the subplots of the book. Laurens is even trying to polish the mystery aspects of her stories by setting up a sub-series -- Barnaby Adair's Casebooks. I finished reading the book, but felt the storyline was as worn as a thread-bare carpet. 

Oh, there's a mystery to be solved, three murders and one attempted, but the perpetrator wasn't particularly hidden within the action. [I found it rather embarrassing for the usually acute characters didn't to interpret the clues faster.] Assorted Cynster ladies make cameo appearances to gossip about the suspects. The red herring turned out to be the most interesting part of the story line for me. [I don't think I've seen that particular scenario used before.] And yeah, the various couples get to enjoy moments of rapture, Laurens' style. Plus there're cute babies ... if you coo at such things.

More important, good craft techniques in setting up characters, settings, etc. are there in quantities enough to make me green with envy.

Yeah, there's the man of fortune who needs a wife to fill an emotional void. This time around, though, the romp travels a thread-bare path without much tension or innovative sparks. I usually enjoy Laurens' novels without reservation. This time, I'm sorry to say: I give it 3 Stars***. 

~~#~~ 

As usual, I've been running out of time ... everyday. It's getting a little tiresome. I'm not even playing much Mahjong.

Did get some something done though. First, I got my free, dark fantasy short story, set in the world of Andor -- The Ignoble Nobel Prize Winner -- published. It's up on Smashwords as I write in mobi, epub, PDF, and read-online. I rather like the manner in which I killed the demons, in an appropriate secular way, at the end. Even my critique group liked the ending.

Have also been working on the rewrite of Crossings  -- mostly because my critique group demanded I not end the story with Old Nance/Granny Nan dying. They wanted vengeance. So, I've devised another secular way to kill demons ... which meant I have to go back and forth to read the story so I can remove and add stuff, aka revise.

I'm keeping the slow beginning though. I knew I was breaking the "rules" when I drafted it. Yeah, I value my critique group, but I don't listen to them 100%. How about you, if you're a writer?

Now if I could only market well-enough to sell more than a hundred novellas a month. 

*Sigh*

Appealing Historical Settings

What historical period appeals to you most? 

The Regency, or perhaps more accurately the Enlightenment, has been my favorite time period since I was old enough to be aware of such things, though I like novels in any well-developed historical period. I empathize with the mind-set, but more, I ended up liking English/Scots politics in spite of their rigid class system. 

Don't know where I read it, but the French of the time were doomed in my affections because of their taxation policies. The British taxed the aristocracy by the number of the windows the owned [hard to avoid] while the French didn't tax their aristocracy at all. 

The fact was enough to turn me into a froggie-phobe, 

in spite of a thin Marlon Brando playing Napoleon in Deserie [sp?].
Then, the French indulged in a rather bloody revolution ...
[ah, the twists and turns of politics, which I'll now ignore.]

This high-falooting introduction is my justification for why I often choose "mindless" Regency romances as an escape. Of course, I'm very picky about the authors I read ... they have to be historically accurate no matter what fantasy they're weaving, sorry, writing. 

None did/does this better than Georgette Heyer.  During the 70s, I managed to collect all her titles in paperback, though I have since culled some of her lesser works. [I never cared much for her mysteries either.]

Over the Christmas book-buying-binge, my son discovered Jennifer Kloester's Georgette Heyer's Regency World, a combination history and trip down memory lane. Kloester's book is a social history of Regency Britain, told through the situations and actions of the characters in Heyer's novels. A light, fun read.

How good a writer was Heyer? Well, I don't think I've read more than a couple of her books in the last decade, yet I was able to recall and add details in Kloester's discussion of the Regency social milieu. How good is Kloester's book? With the excellent its many illustrations, I think it's a great little reference work to quickly check details if you write in the Regency period.

All this has me thinking about somehow combining the Regency mores with the Fae in some way -- sort of a juxtaposition of folk beliefs and scientific reasoning. I put that interesting thought in my idea book -- though it's not as intriguing as having Jesus Christ and Bridgett, the Irish goddess, encountering each other as the only two "humans" who ever turned water into alcohol, [wine and beer respectively].

While I'm confessing, I must admit I just finished Stephanie Laurens' The Capture of the Earl of Glencrae, the concluding Cynster novel about the adventures off Martin Cynster's three daughters. After a relatively weak second book in the series, Capture came on strong with all the elements that keep Laurens on the best seller lists. [Yeah, I think I read all the Cynster books although I know I've traded some because they were too trite, slight, weak, ???] 

I like the way Laurens' uses strong women to "tame" strong men while they solve a mystery together. Under all the emotional goop, Laurens presents interesting female/male partnerships in an era where they weren't the norm. It's the strength of the mystery that determines whether I keep a book or not.

Of course, if you like sex scenes that's an added draw in Lauren's books -- though I find them a little over the top when she bogs down describing the "glory" of love-based sex. Of course, if you don't like sex scenes, you can skip them.