Real people through a characterization lens

I entered the Romance Divas WAW contest--I rarely do anymore. I guess I was just at that stage in my writing where I needed some totally objective, you don't know me feedback. Jen--of course, knew who I was, and had some very constructive things to say. Other people, who didn't, said pretty much the same thing, so I'm leaning toward stripping the beginning and condensing it all into Jacey's point of view--I dunno, or doing something that increases the "impact" of Connor's pov first.

I also submitted the beginning of my category--which to my surprise, did better than my real-stuff.

People say it's stripped, but score wise, it did consistently better.

Earlier, I cruised through the entries--some I commented on, and some I didn't. Some genres I don't feel qualified to judge. In the ones I commented on, I noticed a few issues. Nothing big--just normal stuff. Instant lust, and the dialog to support it. White room syndrome. (I'm guilty, what can I say--it's the way my rough comes out.) Couple grammar mistakes. Threadbare plot. Imho--getting to sex, isn't a plot unless it's an erotica.

Maybe I focused on the categories because that's where "I" had been focused for awhile, but if I can't pick out the line--the story isn't working for me.

One thing that stood out--and this made me think of people as characters, is that people judge through their backgrounds. Like Seger says in her book, Creating Unforgettable Characters, you have to know where a person's been, to know where they're going and how they'll react.

A good example would be this story where the h/h meet, and they want to get it on immediately. Sure, it's true life. People do that, but they usually don't say it up front. However, in certain sub-genres it's accepted practice.

Coming as I do from a non-erotic romantic suspense pov, it hits all my buttons in the wrong way. To another person, coming from the same sub-genre background as the writer--it sounds like a perfect score. For me--the story and construction take precedence over "what's going on", because I automatically ignore the instant attraction. For another person--having sexual attraction on the first page puts a gloss on anything else that might be wrong, because the focus is in the right place.

For that person.

It's why romance writers don't belong--okay, personal opinion coming up--with the fiction writers at Nano get-together groups. The focus of a fiction writer's personal beliefs cause instant cataracts. They can't see the writing because, to them, the focus in a romance is wrong. Although I think that goes across the genre board, and applies equally to sci-fi writers and mystery mavens. Each genre, like each sub-genre, has it's given conventions.