Inspired Romance
by Gail Gaymer Martin

How Many Times Can a Heart Flutter?

He held her in his arms, her heart fluttering against his chest. How many times have you heard that line or a similar one? Finding ways to show the emotion of the growing romance is the bane of romance writers. Trying to be original in a genre that produces the largest number of popular paperback books in the country is difficult, but you can work to find a new way and new phrases to express the character's emotions.

Authors sometimes find it too easy to fall back into a comfortable pattern with phrases like her heart fluttered and she drew in a deep breath. One of the best techniques to use is the "find and replace" feature on your word processing program. As you read your manuscript, notice the words that seem to be reoccurring. You will be surprised to see how many times you use the word or a derivative of the word — flutter, fluttered, fluttering. Readers can become bored with the repetition and it can pull them from the story when they see the word for the third or fourth time within a scene or chapter.

The problem can be helped by finding another word, but avoid words like pounded or thundered as well, because those, too, are common. Try words like: wavered, oscillated, shook, vibrated, trembled, twittered, quivered, tossed, shivered, quavered, twitched, rippled, shuddered, or undulated. This adds variety and interest to your story.

Perhaps the word heart is overused in your work. In Christian romance, you can say chest—her chest tightened or her chest rippled, for example. No matter how creative we are, so many of these phrases are overused and our only recourse is to find new ways to express these romantic feelings.

Books can be purchased that help authors be more creative in showing romantic emotion, but if you pause as you write these things and dig into your imagination, you can often find something original within your own experience. Though this line uses heart, notice the freshness. His gaze met hers, and her heart turned over in response. Other examples show a more novel method of expressing a feeling. His look was as tender as his caress. A tingling rose in the pit of her stomach. His touch rekindled memories. She smoldered with longing. Without using too many cliches, the emotion is evident in these lines.

Emotion is a must in romance as it is in any novel. It's what the reader relates to, so making it vivid and unique is a must for writers. While heart, chest, pulse and stomach are common means to express emotion, you can find new ways to express it by using word images or poetic devices. What are these devices? Poetry, besides rhyme and structure, is a combination of word pictures using similes, metaphors, personification, alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia, and allegory.

Explaining Poetic Devices

A simile is a comparison of two unlike things using "like" or "as." His heart jolted like a jackhammer against his chest, or The black dreams rose like demons. A metaphor is also a comparison without the clue words "like" or "as." Frozen with the frightful possibility, Jordan faltered, spitting the words into the dump-yard of his mind. Notice how vividly these poetic images heighten the mental picture and emotional content.

Personification is another kind of comparison, giving inanimate objects human characteristics, for example: The moon danced on the water, the tree's fingers grasped at the fleeting clouds, the wind whispered in her ear, and as Mary raced through the dark woods, the branches clutched at her clothing. The word pictures clarify and give fresh images to the reader.

Create A Unique Tone

Alliteration, assonance, and onomatopoeia reflect the various word sounds. Alliteration refers to the repetition of the initial sound of words. Notice this is "sound" and not the alphabet letter itself. Pay attention to the soft and hard sounds of the letters since the tone can also create mood: muted melodies moved through her mind. These tones feel soft on the lips and on the ear, creating a more romantic, gentler quality. Hear the harder, sharper tones often used with suspense, anger, or humor: the sudden sharp snap startled her.

Assonance is the repetitive tone of the vowels giving a melodic feeling to a line of dialogue or narration. The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain and the rolling, tolling, golden bells. Onomatopoeia is a word that resounds like the word it describes. His hand smacked against his leg, the iron bell clanged the hour and the snake hissed as it slithered past. These types of poetic devices help to create an emotional feel without over using the physical responses of fluttering hearts, quavering breaths, or tightening stomachs.

Using Poetic Devices in Romance

In my Love Inspired novel, Upon A Midnight Clear, you can find elements, such as simile, metaphor, and alliteration in one sentence. What could she do to help this child, now bound in a cocoon, to blossom like a lovely butterfly? Notice alliteration in "b" words: bound, blossom, and butterfly.

From the same novel, this scene depicts an extended metaphor as well as alliteration.

Trance-like, he followed the prints that wove through the evergreens and around the elms. In an open area, he paused. On the ground, he stared at imprints of angels. Heads, wings, and bodies pressed into the pristine snow. But, sadly, all adult angels. No seraphim or cherubim. No Nattie.

He looked again at the fanned angel impressions at his feet. He pictured the young woman, flinging herself to the ground, flailing her arms and legs to amuse his silent child. Callie's laughter rang in his mind. Angel? Yes, perhaps God had sent a human angel to watch over his daughter.

Here you see the alliterative words that add a melody to the line—fanned, feet, flinging and flailing—and earlier the P words do the same. Language choice can add so much to arouse emotion in your book.

The important idea is to vary your emotional passages using fresh word pictures and language to create emotion without falling into too many cliches. Certainly some "tried and true" phrases will appear in your work, but don't over do them. It's worth taking the time to seek alternatives even if it means using a thesaurus to locate synonyms for the words you overuse. Emotion connects the reader to your story so you want to avoid anything that bores them or jerks them from the plot. Expressing emotion creatively makes your novel stand out in the crowd.