Finding Your Inner Squee
Someone asked how I come up with the elements/themes of a book that bring out my inner geek. Long story.
So, once upon a time there was this valkyrie book. This author absolutely loved this book, but it had flaws. For one, it was poorly written with a character that liked to talk with exclamation points!!! And talked to herself because that was how she was explaining the story to the reader. Noob mistakes. Happens to the best of us. But this author loved this book so much that she decided to rewrite it. And decided to update a few things in it. The first version had a funny, talking horse that the author loved – gone. That romantic interest that shows up in the second half of the book? Gone too. The wacky shenanigans? Gone. This was going to be a serious, extremely dark urban fantasy. Gritty. Dark. Noir. Despairing with just a touch of hope. The love interest would still be in the story, but the love plot wouldn’t come in this book. The author made him a junkie instead, because that was edgy.
I’m sure you can guess who wrote that second valkyrie book. And you know what? Writing that book really sucked.
Oh, it wasn’t a total loss. There were a few cool worldbuildy things I liked, and some neat twists I’d given the story. But writing it was a total slog, and by the time I was done with it, the end result was much better, grammatically, but I’d given up on it mentally. One crit partner told me that the second one was a better book, but it had no spirit. The first one was the one with the spirit.
So where did I go wrong?
I was so frustrated after finishing that book (and believe me, it took forever just to finish the first draft) that I turned to comfort reads instead. The Elfquest comic book series. Julie Garwood’s THE SECRET. Jude Deveraux’s A KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOR. Sharon Shinn’s ARCHANGEL. And as I re-read each of these, it stewed in the back of my mind. What did these books have that I loved so much? So I made a list.
Elfquest:
1) Prehistoric fantasy (you have to admit that’s neat)
2) ‘Stranger in a strange land’ theme
3) The epic quest
4) Soulmates (I’m a nerd, I love this trope) & Romance
5) Exploring old ruins & learning forgotten history (Book 4)
6) Factions warring with each other (Go backs vs Wolfriders, etc)
7) Animal bonds (another nerdy trope I’m a sucker for)
8.) Moments of light-hearted humor
Julie Garwood’s THE SECRET
1) Medieval England & Scotland setting
2) Heroine is a ‘stranger in their strange land’
3) Humorous circumstances involving the heroine and her efforts to ‘help’
4) The warring clan factions
5) The heroine’s quest for her own history
6) Romance between the gruff clan leader and the cheerful heroine
Jude Deveraux’s KNIGHT IN SHINING ARMOR
1) Time travel (love this trope too)
2) Heroine is a stranger in a strange land
3) Humorous circumstances involving the time travel and the heroine’s lack of knowledge
4) Elizabethan period
5) Romance between the strong hero and the weaker heroine
Sharon Shinn’s ARCHANGEL
1) The warring factions of slaves (edori) vs angelic society
2) The soulmate thing
3) The heroine is a stranger in the hero’s society
4) Romance between the strong asshole hero and the equally asshole heroine
5) Angels!
So. These are some pretty different books. One’s a time travel. One’s a fantasy. One’s a ‘classic’ medieval romance. One’s a freaking comic book (which I love, but are a little different from the norm). But there are a couple of themes that happened in all 4 of these stories.
1) Every story had some sort of faction/group pitted against another
2) Every story had the ‘stranger in a strange land’ trope
3) Romance
These are the ones that popped up repeatedly, but not every time:
1) Fantastical elements (time travel, angels)
2) Soulmates
3) Humor
Okay. Then I looked back at my first valkyrie manuscript. It contained the following:
1) Stranger in a strange land
2) Two factions fighting each other
3) Romance
4) Fantastical elements (norse mythology, hello)
5) Humor
Sure, there wasn’t a way for me to squeeze a soulmate or two out of it, but not for lack of trying! 
Then I looked at the second valkyrie manuscript to see what elements were in there:
1) Stranger in a strange land
2) Two factions fighting each other
3) Fantastical elements
No romance. No humor.
I had no idea those two things were so important to me as a writer, but it was a stark contrast between one manuscript that I wrote in six weeks (and loved every moment) and one that I struggled with for six months. I figured I was on to something, so I went back and looked at a few other manuscripts that I’d written. Ones that were missing the humor? Major fail. The romance? Fail again. Some didn’t have the theme of the ‘stranger in the strange land’. Equally fail.
For me to get excited about a project, it needed to have pretty much 4 out of 5. All 5 was like mental jackpot. 4 out of 5 means I’m happy with it. 3 out of 5 means that I can put my finger on it that something is not quite right, but it’s hard to identify. 2 out of 5? I’ll be lucky if I even finish the darn thing.
After all, 2 out of 5 doesn’t press my internal squee button hard enough.
You can play this game with your own stuff, or a few of your favorite comfort reads. Moreover, you can apply it to your writing. Does your current manuscript hit 5 of squee points? Or are you further down the food chain?
Think of your writing as, well, a wagon at the top of a bumpy hill. The bumpy hill is the path you take to complete your project. The wagon is your book. If you let it coast down on its own, it’ll eventually get to the bottom. Consider each of your squee-points as weights. We can toss those weights into our wagon. One will definitely add to our momentum, but five will make it race down that hill like, well, like a racing wagon. A racing wagon gets to the bottom a lot faster and might not go off on track as much as a slow one with lots of minor path corrections along the way. And a racing wagon is far, far more thrilling than a plodding one.
I think we all want the racing wagon. 
(PS – GENTLEMEN PREFER SUCCUBI contains all 5 squee elements. /plug)
good idea.
:shapeshifters
:witches
:the fay folks
:mythology
:present time
Mmm and what else?