He's Gone by Deb Caletti: Women's Fiction Review

I always figured it was only a matter of time before Deb Caletti began writing for adults, and here is her debut. 

She's been one of my favorite authors for Young Adult fiction: Stay; The Story of Us; The Secret Life of Prince Charming; Wild Roses; Honey, Baby, Sweetheart; The Nature of Jade; The Six Rules of Maybe; The Queen of Everything; The Fortunes of Indigo Skye.--all those great books, in fifteen years. 

Her women's fiction debut has all the hallmarks of her young adult novels, but with far more depth. She was always all about characters, and with great insights about the human condition, but plot needed to take a bigger role in her young adult fiction, due to the nature of young adults. (This is the primary reason why I figured she would move on to writing for adults at some point--young adult was too confining for her particular skills.)

In this psychological thriller/women's fiction novel, thoughts, insights and back story take precedence over the front story. In fact, the back story pretty much IS the story--but it's so interesting.  

In this book, Dani Keller leaves a troubled marriage via adultery, after believing she's found her soul mate, only to discover, after many years and countless trials, the truth that no matter what your troubles, no matter who you're married to, the person you have most need of dealing with is yourself. You bring yourself into any marriage you're in, and so the problems in one marriage will always look eerily the same in the next.  

He's Gone is mostly a narrated look into Dani's thoughts and reflections about the journey out of one marriage and into another, from the first time she meets her second husband until he goes missing one night after a party. Try as she might, she cannot remember anything beyond an argument with him, and then their drive home. She spends the next week trying to piece together what happened, and to find him.


Being all about characterization myself, I've always had a lot of fun pinpointing the exact personality types of her characters. Her females are almost always waif-like, unformed enneagram style NINEs, including in this novel. This type is psychologically unformed, in a childlike state, more or less, until the end of the novel, when they come of age. 

In her young adult novels, the father figures were frequently the shady side of type SEVEN. In this book, she takes on type EIGHT (first husband) and then type ONE (second husband). 

I'm sure means nothing to people who read for story, and so for that, my apologies. But I do appreciate how spot on she is with her characterizations, and her insights about those characters, and the hard-won insights her protagonists get about themselves throughout the book, and especially the big one at the end. 


Butterflies as theme and counterpoint are her strongest metaphor in this book, and to a super creepy effect. 


Does she ever find her husband? If you like psychological thrillers and mystery, read the book to find out. 

Review Source: NetGalley.

Novel Writing Diary: The Tinkertoy

Do you remember Tinkertoys? You can still buy them, but Legos, I'm sure, have overtaken them in popularity.

Still, I've always preferred the skeletal nature of Tinkertoys to the solid bricks of Legos. Why? I like being able to see and understand the underlying design and structure of something, particularly that of my preferred art form, the novel. 

That said, I have now progressed to making those small structural changes in the following areas of my YA manuscript: 

All notes for how each scene needs tweaking have been dropped into each scene.

I've determined new chapter breaks, based on a slightly altered pacing.

I'm now looking at the MS scene-by-scene, and paying particular attention to scene beginnings and endings, to ensure the transition is seamless. Am also making sure the hook at the end is as strong as possible.

I'm looking at each scene's conflict and, if necessary, boosting it. I'm also making sure the conflict has an appropriate arc.

I'm checking to see if each chapter works toward a focal scene, and that the chapter also has an arc.

For each set-piece scene, I'll make sure it’s as big as it needs to be. A couple of them aren't.

I'll make sure temporal cues are present in each scene, to ground the reader in space and time. If the scene is too talky, I'll add some relevant action to further ground the reader. My beta readers have told me that dialogue is my greatest strength. But I'm also aware that there is such a thing as too much dialogue. Sometimes the pacing needs to be slowed by filling out the scenes more. 

So that's where I am now. I don't foresee it taking more than a month to make the changes. 

When that's done, I'll start sending it to some RWA contests, based on how much feedback they give, and also the editors they've lined up to judge the finalists in the YA category. 

How's your writing week been going?

One Scrapbooker's Paradise

I've written before about my scrapbooking room. Since the last time, two years ago, the room's changed quite a bit.

I'm almost hesitant to show it off. If you Google terms such as "Where Bloggers Create," you will find craft rooms of women who are featured in Somerset's Artful Blogging magazine.

Those rooms are incredible. They are in themselves things of beauty. Pictures of rooms you would Pin. My room's not a thing of beauty, but of organized functionality where I create things of beauty and worth to me. Our family's photo album scrapbooks.

It was early in 2004 that I took up scrapbooking, at which time I took a five-year hiatus from my writing. Since then, I've created 30+ scrapbooks, and yet I still haven't put a dent in photo journaling my family history. During those years, besides our nuclear family's history, I made a scrapbook for my father's 80th birthday, a memorial for my mother's funeral, and two retirement scrapbooks for friends with whom I worked.

I love scrapbooking so much that I could've devoted all of my free time to it forever, but I also love writing, and I eventually (mostly) set it aside and took up writing again in my spare time. Now that I've retired from the full time paying job, there's much more time for unpaid joys.

The first picture, above, is of the west wall. Unlike the pictures you would see in Artful Blogging, I'm not interested in having artful containers for my embellishments. Instead, I adore functionality AND keeping things in drawers, so they stay clean and free of dust.

This second picture is of a set of three shelves along the North wall. Each shelf is 10 feet long and, as you can see, stuffed with stuff. Below the shelves is a long desktop, not shown in this picture, but in the one below.

The Northeast corner of the room is devoted to paints, stamping ink, glitter and embossing materials, plus all manners of distressing and collage tools. Yes! Paste; UTEE; sponges, paint brushes and so on.

You see a lot of crates. Each one contains patterned paper in different themes such as: High Summer; Indian Summer; Autumn (October 1 through Thanksgiving); Halloween; Christmas; Winter; Farm; Travel; New Year; Fourth of July; Courtship, Weddings and Anniversaries; and Heritage.

It's very possible to stack all of those crates on top of each other, but I refrain from stacking them more than two or three deep, so that when I want something, I don't need to move a dozen crates to get to it, but only one or two.

This picture is of my primary work area, East wall, although I am currently working on my laptop at the table on the West wall, first picture in the post.

This is the same picture as before, but with a better view of how I handle storage. Under each of my countertops--I have a 4-foot table on the West wall, a 12-foot built in desk with countertop on the North wall, and a 8-foot table (to the left) on the East wall--beneath each of these are rolling drawers. Ugly, but functional. The drawers in this picture are overflowing with embellishments, grouped by color.

These drawers hold some of my rubber stamps. The crates to the left of them contain some of the patterned papers in different themes.

More rubber stamps and also card making supplies and frames.

These are my 12x12 colored paper drawers, which contain Bazzill and Colormate papers (solid colored cardstock), as well as patterned papers in each color that are not theme-specific.

The paint chips denoting the colors are from Sherwin and Williams, my favorite paint store.

They help me zero in on what color, exactly, I am looking at, in many cases, as I sort the papers by color.
When the intensity of each color is so dulled as to become neutral, I use another tool, a color swatch indicator used by quilters.





The final picture shows my ribbons, again sorted by color. I used to keep them out in the open, on dowels for easy unrolling, but I decided keeping them clean was far more important to me than having them look pretty.

That's a tour of my scrapbooking room, where I keep promising myself that I'll start spending more time. Hey! I'm it right now. Guess I may as well start scrapbooking last January's trip to Disneyland with our son and his family.

Such a joy. Such a labor of love.

Do you have a crafting room or area where you can create to your heart's content?

Novel Writing Diary: Clarity

It’s been a week since I began taking one final look at my YA manuscript before sending portions of it off to contests, and after getting contest feedback, querying agents.

I’ve made some decisions about it:

I’ve decided to bump it from 64,000 words to 75,000. I generally write lean to the bone, and so I’ll use most of the additional wordage to add further details for clarity, and otherwise to fill out the leanness. In each of the book's seven sections, I should be able to add about six pages, which amounts to about one page per scene, assuming the scene needs it. 

There were two other reasons for the decision:

Though I write lean, I did find some bloat in Journey 2, (the scenes for the four throughlines that span a couple of chapters before, and a couple of chapters after, the middle). According to Dramatica, that section was 24 pages too long, which really S--L--O--W--E--D my pacing.

But I was able to excise about half of it and easily move it to the next section (Signpost 3, which are all scenes that lead directly to the black moment). Signpost 3 was too short by 10 pages, and so everything’s still relatively well paced.

With the extra 12 pages remaining in Journey 2, I’ll think about shortening one of those scenes. The worst offender, a scene that is 3000 words long, is where the heroine almost gets booked for shoplifting with the bad boy character. He's fairly tangential to the story, but I had so much fun writing that segment, I hate to give any of it up. Although, as the saying goes, you have to “Kill Your Darlings.”

I don’t need to get rid of it entirely, but it might do the story good to enter the scene at a later point. Or maybe I’ll leave it alone and, hopefully one day, see what an editor has to say about it. 

The last reason that led to my decision to lengthen the book came after doing a quick Amazon search and discovering that YA Romance is usually longer than most adult series romances. Even 300 pages (75,000 words) is on the low end.

Other things I've learned or done in the past week: 

Though Dramatica’s great for helping to develop your story, you can also use it to give editorial guidance during revisions. I wasn’t familiar with it when I first dreamed up this story, and so most of it was written without the aid of Dramatica. But it did help me better understand my story after its first completion, to restructure and enhance it in many big ways. 

The biggest thing it helped me see was that I could end my story any way I wished. In fact, I needed to come down on one side or another of my overall theme and drive it home. 

Now, a year later, and after two or three more revisions, Dramatica is again helping me, one last time for this project. 

This time, I've dropped all of the Dramatica notes into Scrivener and am able to analyze, in side-by-side panels, each of my book’s 28 scenes against Dramatica’s suggestions for what that particular scene should contain. 

I’ve never used Dramatica at this level before. I’ve never paid any attention to the thematic issues that Dramatica suggests for each scene in this unique storyform (my book). 

What I’ve discovered is that, delightfully, my own intuition has dealt with many of the thematic issues, meaning that I’m on track most of the time. But not always. And when I take Dramatica’s additional suggestions about things I hadn’t thought of, I’ll be adding further depth to my story. 

That said, I’ve made notes to drop little clarifying details into most of my scenes. Dramatica has helped me see that many of my scenes need to be ever so slightly reslanted. Reslants and clarifying details are small things, and yet I have a feeling they’ll make a big difference to the reader’s experience of the story, understanding more fully all of its underlying themes. 

During my analysis, I discovered some changes to the hero’s and heroine’s backstory, giving it both greater depth and some surprises in the end. 

In some scenes, I discovered, I could change a character’s motivation to make the scene more interesting, but with the same outcome. I remember reading this once, in a book by Donald Maass (Writing the Breakout Novel). I didn’t get what he meant then, but I do now. 

I also discovered that I have the hero and heroine getting along way too well, way too soon. I need to go in and tweak those scenes to make them not get along so well. 

In summary, in one week, I analyzed my book, scene by scene, noting small changes that need to be made. 

I was also able to go through Section 5 of the manuscript (all throughline scenes leading to the black moment), and actually make the planned changes. 

I read once that the whole purpose of writing a novel is to push the protagonist toward the black moment, so that they can fail, and then have an epiphany about how they must change, to have the life they want to live, or be who they want to be. 

So I decided to tackle that section first. Tomorrow, I’ll deal with the aftermath of the Black Moment (Black Moment Effects, epiphany and change) and the Resolution, and then next week, after being out of town for the weekend, I’ll start again at the beginning. 

What you see above is a screenshot of my Scrivener desktop. I am so gobsmackingly delighted with Scrivener and Dramatica. Both are everything I've longed for forever, to help me understand what goes into writing a novel, and to corral all the notes and things that contain my thoughts. 

How is your writing going this week?

A-Z 2013 Reflections Post

This was my third year for the challenge, which is the best blogging challenge that comes around each year. Why? It's a time when I have access to almost 2000 blog links, and I can go forth and visit perfect strangers--they've invited me to stop by!--and make a few new friends from all over the world.

That's what I noticed most this year: the challenge has truly gone global. There were so many more participants from Australia, New Zealand, England and India than ever before.

I love seeing the uniqueness of every person's blog. Everyone decorates their virtual home so differently from everyone else. We certainly leave a different impression. So much can be learned by each person's personality type by studying their blog, and personality types are my love and my forte.

Most blogs, personality type aside, are very intelligent and inspiring. But others? Not so much. Blogs I dislike are:

• Those that have a photo of the blogger in almost every post--said blogger wearing a new dress, new nail color, new makeup. (Sorry, I'm not a teenager anymore. Not interested, but for all the teen girls, I hope they met up with each other.) 
• Those that told me in their blog title that their blog is about ramblings or musings, or that they are a procrastinator. My personality being what it is, I don't have time to read the ramblings and musings of a procrastinator. These people generally derail around the letter E anyway, and no more posts from them.

That said, although I peeked at most of the blogs that signed up, the only ones I ended up following were people who share my interests--writers and book bloggers. I truly enjoyed the various overall themes of many people's blogs, not just their A-Z themes. But beneath it all, I knew that once the challenge was over, I wasn't likely to ever visit them again. Even if they were blogging about delicious recipes. Or making beaded jewelry, which is something I did in another life.

There were a couple of exceptions. The previous two years, I sometimes followed bloggers who live in rural areas, as I do. Sometimes I followed bloggers who, like me, are "of a certain age." Sometimes, I followed travel blogs. This year, none of that.

On a different note, unlike previous years, I hit a wall this year and completely stopped visiting blogs around the middle of the month. I was sick and tired of it, until about two days before the end of the challenge, when I spent a couple hours on Saturday afternoon, checking out all the blogs that a friend of mine is now following as a result of the A-Z. That was relatively fruitful; I met a few more new friends by doing that.

The reason for burning out? I think it was because there was so much lead time this year. People were mingling with each other a couple of months before the challenge officially started, which made it feel as if the challenge was endless--two or three months long instead of one.

Yet now that it's over, I expected to need a nice, long break from blogging, as I did the previous two years.

Instead, I'm ready to move on to new blogging subjects, and happy to know the pressure's off. I can visit my new friends at leisure, and I'm not pushing myself to set any blog visit/comment quotas.

What about you? If you finished the challenge, what did you think of it?

Monkey on my Back

I dreamed last night that I was in a rowboat, rowing between Miami and Bermuda, when from out of nowhere, a monkey landed on my back and dug its little claws into me.

I couldn't shake it off, so I kept rowing. Fortunately the sea, which was choppy when I started, became smooth and as transparent as glass as I neared the tropical island.

When I got out of the boat, someone lifted the monkey off my back. It turned out that it wasn't one monkey, but a whole family of monkeys--mom, dad, and a couple of cute babies. Seeing that they were no threat to me, I decided to keep them.


This is truly what I dreamed last night, and I think I know why. I spent much of yesterday again pouring over notes I'd made about my manuscript, after having read through copious Dramatica reports the day before.

Reading the notes, I realized that while I have studied the Dramatica theory in relative depth (I had read the 270-page theory book three times, and the 60-page Lexicon twice, besides playing with three story ideas using the Dramatica Software), some small but important details still eluded me. Since first becoming familiar with the software, and the theory, a little over a year ago, I had promised myself that one day when there was time, I would learn the final distinctions. Yesterday was the day.

To fully understand the reports that Dramatica makes for your story idea, you need to understand the Dramatica Lexicon. You may think you understand a particular term, but in all likelihood there is more to the definition than you would've thought. Or, that's how it is for me.

I already understood Signposts and Journeys, Throughlines, Static Appreciations, Main Character, Impact Character, Overall Story, Subjective Story, Benchmarks, Costs, Dividends, Requirements, Prerequisites, and Forewarnings.

But what did Concern, Issue, Problem, Solution, Symptom, Response, Catalyst, Inhibitor, Unique Ability, Critical Flaw ... mean? And once you understand what those terms mean, what do the particular words that represent each one mean? It's quite a puzzle to unravel, but thoroughly involving.

For example, my heroine's critical flaw is KNOWLEDGE
Her unique ability is CONFIDENCE

My hero's [Impact Character, not an Antagonist, but a Contagonist, who is attempting to get the heroine to change] --his critical flaw is WISDOM
His unique ability is SECURITY

What the heck? 
Yesterday, I finally reached the point where I understand all terminology, the fine distinctions, for this particular manuscript. (My YA novel.)

And while I wasn't sure at the start of my journey of the terminology's final VALUE or WORTH (two other great Dramatica terms, with important distinctions) to me ... I decided that the new KNOWLEDGE ... those little monkeys ... is pretty darned cool.

Definitely, definitely, definitely worth a day's study.

I learned an enormous amount about the underlying STORY ENGINE (Dramatica term) of my book, and I am now prepared to make many small changes to significantly improve the manuscript.

Character Epiphanies are Good, but Author Epiphanies are Better

Today, Wednesday May 1, 2013, I printed about 90 pages' worth of reports from Dramatica, which it created for my project. There was lots of redundant information, but I spent the day pouring over the reports to see if I had covered all bases in the book, originally when I wrote and then revised it ...Several times, but who's counting? 

Well of course, I hadn’t covered all bases, according to Dramatica. I may not have even come close! So I took copious notes and will attempt to rectify some of the problems. Dramatica gets into such depth that it boggles my mind.

While reading the Story Structure Report, though, I had an epiphany. I’d thought I’d had all the author epiphanies that were to be had regarding this story, but no. 

The choice for Crystal isn’t between Chad’s love or achievement. She can achieve her goals with or without him. It’s between choosing Chad as her life partner, or choosing someone else, later along life’s path.

She chooses Chad, so I need to go in and tweak the scenes that were slightly skewed because of my original faulty/inadequate thought processes, to make them fall in line with Crystal's true dilemma. 

What's up with my Animus?

Today, Tuesday, April 30, 2013, I imported the YA manuscript into Scrivener and immediately divided it into its separate scenes. 

It is so cool! Each one can be looked at separately, with a word count, a scene synopsis card, and a sidebar with file notes or document notes! 

Yet it’s all still stitched together as a whole, even if it doesn’t look like it. Oh, and I can split the screen into index cards on one side, scenes on the other. Amazingly cool. 


I also took time to pinpoint the hero and heroine’s flaw, fear, desire and so on, the same as I’d done last week for the new project. Was delighted to see I’m working with some very different personality types in each book. 

Yes of course I knew that, but seeing their fears and flaws side-by-side is telling. 

I’m thinking that I will find the heroine’s personality issues in the new book (Inspirational Historical Romance) challenging. She's a style 8, the Challenger. This type's issues seem fairly simple, but their personalities are so unlike mine that I'll need to ramp up my personality as I'm writing this type, always remembering that she's a "Deal with me" personality. There are some male personalities within my family clan that are like this, so I'll keep them in mind as I write her.   

Interestingly, the hero in each book has a defect. Hmmm. Does that make them the same? Will I be rehashing old ground? Not by a long shot. The way each man deals with his defect is completely different, due to their differing enneagram styles. 

But because each has a defect, I'm wondering what it's saying about my animus--my inner male archetype, as defined by Jung? Is it saying that the guy inside of me is weak? 

I can't answer this question now, but perhaps my mind will come up with an answer sometime. If it does, I'll let you know. 

Decisions, Decisions!

Today, Monday, April 29, 2013, there wasn't time to work on the book, but even as I spent the morning helping move tractors, and the afternoon taking the grandkids to the humane society and then to the pet store, my brain was mulling ... 

Because I missed being a finalist in RWA's Golden Heart contest by only two points, I decided I owe it to myself to do some further work on that manuscript, a YA romance. 


I'll table the new project an Historical Inspirational Romance for now and spend a couple of weeks tweaking the YA project. After two weeks, I'll see if it feels ready to submit to some of RWA’s summer contests, for feedback. 

After two weeks, I might realize how deluded my thinking was, but this morning, I feel optimistic.  

Zealot meets Salesperson or, Ann Coulter meets George Clooney

Today's letter is Z ... WooHoo! Made it through the challenge. We're looking at a match between Zealot Ann Coulter and Salesman George Clooney.

To start with, Ann and George would likely never be in a relationship, or even talk civilly together, as they are on opposite sides of the political spectrum. However, Zealots and Salesmen can find happiness if they share other deeply held beliefs and values. Zealots with Salesmen personalities are a common pairing in life, movies and books, as they create sparks off each other. 

Zealot types, who are often missionaries or evangelists; protesters, reformers, are convinced that what they believe about an issue is the only correct way to look at it. They feel they have the authority of tradition or scripture backing them. They’re courageous and determined to bring people around to their views. The fiery passion that simmers just below the surface in their personalities is often channeled into politics, religion or some other worthy cause.

If this type were in a movie, the purpose would be to get them to let their hair down, focus their passion in a different direction, by breaking rules and having fun. At their core, they are fiery, but they are also trying to control the fire, which could lead to unwanted consequences.

Katharine Hepburn films (The African Queen) often use this theme, as well as The Sound of Music; My Fair Lady, and the King and I. The Zealot gets in touch with their feelings and with their playful side, enjoying their sensuality instead of disapproving of it.  

But that won’t happen unless they come in contact with someone to help this happen. And who is the perfect person? Read more about the Zealot personality.

The Salesman personality—the charmer; the hippie; the adventurer, the Don Juan. As with all types, Salesman has its own inner demons. Non-commital risk-takers, they will skim over the top of life as long as possible, but they will eventually come face-to-face with something, or someone, they cannot seduce with their considerable charm. This person, thing or event will teach them some of the things they need to learn. Read more about the Salesman personality.

  

Having said this, you can imagine the sparks that would fly if Zealot Ann Coulter and Salesman George Clooney were face-to-face. 

Each one contains within their personality something that the other is lacking, and a friendship/partnership/marriage could lead to growth on both parts, assuming they could ever stop fighting with each other.

This is what the Zealot would bring to the table: discipline, organization, attention to detail, and excellence, which he would appreciate. Here’s what the Salesman would contribute: spontaneity, energy, and a love of fun and adventure. Both are idealistic and future-oriented planners. Whereas the Salesman likes to keep his options open, the Zealot will rein him in, keeping him focused on follow through.

The Salesman will make life seem more exciting and enjoyable to the Zealot. The Zealot will help the Salesman see deeper meaning of things. The Zealot will take care of the details of life; the Salesman will provide the spice.

The relationship between the Zealot and the Salesman could be great, as long as they share the same values, and are working toward attaining the same things in life. In this real-life example, it’s unlikely that they would ever be more than nodding, and bitter, acquaintances.

If trouble were to arise between the Zealot and the Salesman, the Zealot would become more critical, judgmental, and inflexible than ever, insisting that things need to be done the right way—their way. The Zealot will begin to see the Salesman as undisciplined and childish, and they’re sure the Salesman is being that way only to annoy them.

The Salesman will see the Zealot as petty and uptight. They’ll tire of all the criticism, and become very demanding. Disillusioned, the Zealot will withdraw emotionally from the Salesman, and the relationship will die. 

Additional Information:

What is the Enneagram, and What are Enneagram Personality Types?  

What are Instinctual Subtypes?  

Traits of the 27 Individual Subtypes  

Sources of additional information, from which I synthesized all of the matches 

What I Learned by entering the Golden Heart Contest

The Golden Heart scores have now been released. If you're unaware, the Golden Heart contest is sponsored by RWA (Romance Writers of America) each year for aspiring writers in the romance genre. Entries are separated into six different categories: series contemporary, single title contemporary; series historical, single title historical; romantic suspense, and young adult.

After a preliminary round of judging, the top ten percent of each category's entries, with a limit of eight in each category, provided the minimum total score for each finalist equals 80 percent of the total possible score, moves into the finalist category, which is judged by acquiring editors. Therefore, having a manuscript final in the Golden Heart is a big deal. Many finalists become published authors not long afterwards.

Preliminary round judges are themselves contest entrants but, obviously, in a different category than they are judging. Most contest entrants are at the level of having completed at least one manuscript and are members of RWA PRO, which means they've submitted one or more manuscripts to editors, and have proof. I.e. rejections! (Yes, I am a member of PRO.)

There are many RWA contests throughout the year that provide great feedback, however this contest provides none, only the entrant's raw scores. Also unlike all other RWA contests, this one requires that a completed manuscript be sent along with the contest submission, although only the actual submission is judged. The submission includes sample chapters and a synopsis, with the combined total not to exceed 55 pages.

So why, if you get no feedback whatsoever, should you enter? The truth is, you probably shouldn't. I wish I hadn't.

I wish I had entered feedback-providing contests prior to the GH. Based on the feedback, I could've honed my manuscript a bit more before entering The Big Kahuna. Due to the flow of my life at the time, it just wasn't something I had grasped. But with my next manuscript, guess what I'll be doing instead?

Even so, I did learn a few things by entering the GH. 

I was judged by a total of five judges, which was cool. I got five different opinions about my manuscript's market readiness. The manuscript sample was judged on four criteria:

1. The Romance (20 points possible)
2. The Story/Plot (10 points possible)
3. The Characters (10 points possible)
4. The Writing (10 points possible)

Overall, the highest and the lowest judges' total scores were dropped, and the three middle scores averaged.

In all, I actually didn't do too bad. Although I wasn't a finalist, I missed being one by only 2.3 points.

See where entering prior contests might have made a serious difference to me? As stated before, I should've entered some of the other feedback giving RWA contests, gotten some great feedback, and revised my contest entry BEFORE throwing it into the GH pool. Had I done that, I *might* be a finalist. (GH winners will be announced at the national convention in August.)

As it turned out, two of the judges put me in the finalist category for overall score, but there was one that didn't like my entry, and gave me middling scores in every category.

But I did see that three out of the five judges believed the Romance was at finalist level. Three of the judges thought my Story/Plot was at finalist level. Three of the judges thought my Writing was at finalist level, and three of the judges thought my Characters were at finalist level. In fact, three of the judges gave me a perfect score of 10 for my Characters.

Expensive lesson learned. Others, please take heed: Enter other contests BEFORE entering the Golden Heart!

Yes Man meets Responsibility or, Ben Affleck meets Jennifer Garner

Today's letter is Y, and I've chosen my second real-life match. First one was Kate and Wills. Anyway, we're coming close to the finish line with the match between a Yes Man, Ben Affleck, and Responsibility, Jennifer Garner, his wife.

The Yes Man is more often male than female, and is also the Horatio Alger personality, the Career Woman, the Soccer Mom, the Trophy Wife. It’s the Company Man and the Stepford Wife. This type focuses on getting ahead in their selected career. In movies featuring this personality type, themes involve overcoming obstacles by perseverance. (My left foot; Pursuit of Happyness). Themes also include immigrants seeking success in the New World. (Hester Street; Far and Away). This is the home of Success or Impostor stories, and the conflict between love and work. We see someone who never wanted to be a parent, but who’s suddenly become one, is clueless about how to be one. We see someone who’s lost their job due to illness or some other factor, and is forced to spend some time thinking about who they really are apart from the identity their job gave them. (Castaway.) They learn to be less concerned about material success and to take more time to smell the roses. Read more about the Yes Man (corporation man; man in the gray striped suit) personality.
The Responsibility personality is as often male as female. The Responsibility personality is most often associated with safety, family and home life, conservative values, and appreciation of cultural traditions. As children they were fearful and shy, whereas their related personality type, Warrior, were fearful, but overcame their fears by acting out. Family oriented, their home shelters them from the world. Often family is all they need, but they are also loyal friends. Books that exemplify this type’s outlook and values include family life stories: Sarah: Plain and tall; Little Women; Old Yeller; Our Town; Cheaper by the Dozen; The Waltons. Movies and books that focus on love and romance after marriage (rather than prior to marriage, which is grist for the Ambassador, Queen of Seduction and Nurturer types) fall into this type’s themes. This personality type gives love freely, giving people what they need but not what they don’t want, whereas the Ambassador, Queen of Seduction and Nurturer types often have a hidden agenda. Feeling unlovable, they help others in order to gain love. Knowing that they are loved, this is not an unconscious need for Responsibility types, and so their love is a gift without strings attached.

Additionally, these are the featured types in books or movies that feature loyal employees (labor dramas) or shy sidekicks; Thrillers (stories designed to invoke fear); fear comedies (because they are more fearful than most personality types, this type of movie pokes fun at their fearfulness. Examples: The Out-of-Towners; What about Bob.) Books and movies featuring this type also include those with themes that celebrate cultural traditions and also those of ordinary people banding together to fight a common enemy. Superhero stories fit into this personality type’s fantasies in movies and books. Lastly, themes for this type also fall under the umbrellas of science versus faith (this type prefers faith) and fear versus faith (this type uses their faith to overcome their fears). Read more about the Responsibility personality.   

  

What might a pairing between the Yes Man (Ben Affleck) and Responsibility (his real life wife, Jennifer Garner) be like? Or if not them, between people of similar personality types?

My sources tell me that while this isn’t a common pairing, these types can work well as a team. Both are practical but eager to achieve material success. Both are hard workers, and will persevere until they achieve success.

But success is dependent on them resolving the tension between performance and performance-anxiety. (He’s naturally a great performer, or has worked to become one and will never forget how to be a success, whereas she might be one as well, but her never-ending performance-anxiety will keep her from maintaining success.) When she wants to stop and discuss her doubts (she’s always full of them), he’ll be afraid to do so, because it dredges up anxieties about his self-worth, despite the confident face he shows the world. So instead of stopping and talking about it, he’ll soldier on, which will inadvertently serve to increase her anxieties. Instead of working things out, issues are forgotten.

Ben will be energetic, optimistic, outgoing. Jennifer will be warm, supportive and loyal. She’ll feel compassion for the less fortunate, and because of this, he’ll learn to care more for them as well. Each respects the other for their talents. They’ll bolster each other’s confidence.

She’ll help him become part of something bigger than himself—a church, or political organization, a cause. Both become stronger individually and as a team through such endeavors. As long as they share important values, their relationship will be successful and lasting.

Each completes the other in important ways, but if the relationship isn’t healthy, they’ll bring out the worst in themselves and each other. Both are competitive and tend to spend too much time at work; both are insecure and need external reassurance and acceptance, and may look outside the relationship to find it. 

Neither likes to talk about their feelings, but instead to soldier on in their respective tasks, which can get on each other’s nerves. She’ll see him as being too ambitious, and with too big an ego. She’ll get tired of his boasting. Both view success through very different eyes. He’ll feel accomplished if he can do something well, whereas she’s unable to remember her successes, and will need to be reminded. It helps when she can learn to focus on the task at hand, rather than getting mired in fear of failure.

He’ll see her as being too nervous and cautious. Both could become evasive about their actions and feelings. If still unwilling or unable to talk about their feelings, both could develop separate social lives from each other.

Ben will try to keep up appearances, and would be embarrassed if she let it be known that their relationship was in trouble. Instead of Jennifer’s healthy questioning of him, and his challenging competitiveness with her, they would lose interest in each other until something exposes the fact that the relationship has died.

Additional Information:

What is the Enneagram, and What are Enneagram Personality Types?  

What are Instinctual Subtypes?  

Traits of the 27 Individual Subtypes  

Sources from which I collected and synthesized information about the matches