The health continues to improve at a frankly astounding rate and the last few days in particular have definitely benefited from the steroid shot I got along with my antibiotics (translation: I was more than slightly hyper and got a lot of shit done). That aspect is slowing down as you’d expect, but I still feel hella better than I did four days ago. Pity that prednisone has such corrosive long-term side effects.

Anyhoo, we’re starting to spiral in on the end of Act II where Matthias and Danaë are about to go through the Hellene wedding ceremony only to get word of what precisely Matthias’s son Lukas has been up to all this time, plus two acts of betrayal which pretty much scramble all plans and launch my royal lovebirds into Defcon Four. Hey, if you’re not throwing the kitchen sink at your characters there’s no drama and the reader starts to get bored.

Today’s stats:

Started With: 52,699 words
Wrote: 3,663 words
Total word count: 56,362 words
What else did you do today, Nicola: Cat chores, cat chores at my friend’s house, made a bunch of jewelry, did laundry, and planning out the cleaning attack I’m going to launch on this house next week because Lord, I cannot stand living in this sty for much longer.

Writing Tips: Most people are generally decent, I believe. If you’re one of these generally decent people, you may be hesitant to put your characters in danger or pain, break their hearts, make them argue, or generally stress them out in some way. After all, no one but a psychopath truly enjoys someone else’s unwilling pain (consensual sadism is an altogether different topic and one we won’t cover today), so it makes perfect sense that you don’t want to hurt your MCs.

That being said, harden your heart and do it anyway. Drama comes from conflict, and without drama a story will collapse like a souffle in a gun range. It’s a truism of human nature that we like to watch trainwrecks, so don’t shy away from throwing some into your story. Not only does it add interesting conflict and drama, it often provides for terrific character growth and makes your MCs more relatable to the reader, which is always a good thing. And if you’re a romance writer, you can console yourself that your MCs will get a happy ending and all this sturm und drang will resolve itself somehow.