Your Character vs Your Genre??

 There's hot debate in my world at the moment about the messages we writers are sending and while I am greatly opinionated to one side of the debate I'm going to save that for another day.

But it's really got me thinking about what we're doing with our craft.

You spend time with your character. You build their world, their hopes and their dreams. You then go and turn it upside-down and then leave it... how?? Well, that depends on your genre.

Everyone knows the first rule in romance is we all live happily ever after ...

em,well, no we don't actually.

And there's nothing more annoying than reading a fantastic novel with an excellent character-driven plot to reach a point where the character JUST WOULD NOT DO THAT!!! whatever "that" maybe, especially at the end.  Ergo, Book meet Wall ! ! !

When I was writing Life's A Ball? and when I created my main characters - commitment phobic Elle and her long time secret admirer Adam - THEY wrote their romance to the point where he convinced her their love was the real deal. Yes, of course, I shattered their happiness into a thousand tiny shards of glass because I'm evil like that. But when it came to bringing them back together... Adam would but would Elle? And I'm not going to tell you how I ended their story, like I said I'm evil... mwahahaha!

My point is just because the genre dictates a certain stereotype, You know your character, You're their best friend... would THEY do what you're expecting them to do? Besides who says you can't be different? who says you can't break the mould? I find if listen to my characters its always my best work.

Erin