In the last blog post, I explained briefly how I came across Reverse Harem.
Once I’d arrived at the decision to write RH, I thought the rest would be easy. After all, I already had four novels under my belt, and creating stories is something I enjoy greatly.
Turned out, it isn’t as easy as I thought.
Dilemma #1: how much back story should there be?
A well-meaning friend told me to focus on the heroine and not worry about the guys around her. Not surprisingly, that was horrible advice
The moment I sat down to write, I realized the men in Amber’s life needed to be properly developed. Their pasts had to be as powerful as the heroine’s. They needed trauma in their lives, or they’d be boring and one-dimensional. So I spent another three months working out who these guys actually are.
It was important to me to write the characters age-appropriately. The boys are all around eighteen years old. Over the course of the series, they will grow up and become wiser as they get older.
Sidenote: Same with Amber, btw. At the start of the story, she’s a seventeen-year-old teenager. I’ll go into her character in a separate newsletter, but in the first book, she’s not the active, kickass heroine she’ll grow up to be later. Because frankly, most seventeen-year-olds aren’t. Exceptions proving the rule, obviously.
Julian
Let me start with Julian because he’s the first boy who enters our heroine’s life. Julian’s past is pretty heart-wrenching (because I’m a bitch and in charge of the story—mwhahahah!)
He grew up in a religious community in the mid-west, and when his powers came in, the people around him did not react well. To say the least.
I don’t want to give it all away, but he had to be rescued by the FBMA (the Federal Bureau for Magical Activities). Ms. Farkas gave him a place to stay at her academy, and Julian believes he owes her his life.
Amber calls him Emo Guy when she first meets him. He’s skinny, tall, with pale skin and glossy black hair that falls over one eye. He wears a silver earring in the shape of a cross and his pale face is accentuated with black lipstick.
Dilemma #2: how does this all work?
How can there possibly be a relationship between several males and one female? Wouldn’t they fall out constantly because of jealousy? How would the girl handle all the attention without wearing out and craving a bit of peace and quiet?
I bombarded my fellow writers at the Edinburgh Writers’ Conference with all these questions. They suggested (wisely, I might add) to read as many RH books as I could get my hands on.
And so I dived headfirst into the rabbit hole. From Steffanie Holmes to Meg Xuemei to Alex Lidell, I read and read and read. And enjoyed the hell out of it!
What I learned is that jealousy can be part of the story and even add to the sexual tension, if done right. That the female has to have autonomy and is anything but a plaything to her boys.
And that sometimes, she does get sick of it and sends them packing while she has a cup of tea and settles down for a quiet evening. Or maybe I’m projecting. I don’t even know at this stage…
And don’t get me started on the sex scenes!
I went from, “I can write this,” to “Holy mother of—how does this even work? Do I need to draw diagrams?!?” I’m not a prude, but sometimes I get a little… shy? Which is why I decided to ramp up gradually.
Book One is PG-13 (probably. Depending on your thirteen-year-olds these days.) Book Two will definitely be R-rated, and the rest of the series might be over-18. Google tells me that would be a medium-burn.
Dilemma 3: what do they all want?
This didn’t become apparent until I started writing. All the characters wanted something different! That’s hard enough when you create two characters who need to earn each other’s love and respect.
Now try the same thing with five characters. Seriously, halfway through the book, I had to be talked down the ledge by my writer-friends. I was getting that fed up with the guys being, well, guys. No disrespect, male readers. But SERIOUSLY!
Sidenote: actually, it wasn't just the boys. Amber was acting up as well. But I think I managed to wrangle all into the direction I wanted them to go. Can't promise it'll stay that way….
Next time, I’ll write about how I realized Reverse Harem isn’t actually a genre. Yeah, I didn’t know that…