S.A. Snow Shares His Thoughts on Believable Characters @BooksBySnow #WriteTip #SciFi

How to Make Your Characters Believable

There is a reason why people love Jane. There is a reason why she’s so curious, so forthcoming, so hot, so workable and so likeable. She’s a character, and she’s believable. The issue with Jane Butler was not that she wasn’t well-rounded or interesting. It was that often times she was far too interesting, and I was taken with her.

In order to make a character believable, for the reader to fall in love with them (even if they’re not the greatest person around), we have to make them complicated. There is nothing like a complicated person that attracts readers, particularly in genre fiction. They have to have faults, they have to have quirks, they have to have fears and dreams and sometimes those need to shatter in the course of the story.

One aspect of Jane I adore is that she’s ridiculously self-confident when it comes to her sexuality. Which, I might add, is nothing I have ever experienced. To play in the mind of a woman who oozes self-esteem and rarely ever thinks twice about herself in the eyes of another person was uplifting and breathtaking. I’ve been told that’s why many female readers will love her. I’ve also been told that is why many may dislike her.

But what isn’t believable about that? Who is honestly liked by everyone? And who is honestly disliked by everyone? I think it should be a pretty equal balanced of the two, if not more heavily weighted on the liking side, but not all people and not all characters are likable. And that is believable.

You just have to make yourself believe if. You have to write it like you’re talking about your best friend. Get into the characters head and figure out why they do certain things, what makes them tick, what makes then jump when something scary happens, what do they crave with they get the midnight munchies (if they’re even up beyond midnight). As long as you figure out all of these things, then the character will be believable. It’s in the details, in the fine print, in between the lines of stuff the reader hardly ever sees. If the author knows it, if the writer knows it, if the character knows it--it becomes believable.

Jane expected six months undercover to be hard; she expected it to be lonely and bleak. She didn’t expect to find love. 

Jane Butler, a CIA operative, is assigned the task of infiltrating the Xanthians and determining if they’re a threat to humanity. Going undercover as a Xanthian mate, she boards the transport ship and meets Usnavi—her new mate. After spending six days traveling through space, Jane is ecstatic to explore the Xanthian station and soon sets out to complete her mission. The only problem? Usnavi—and the feelings she is quickly developing. 

Fumbling their way through varying sexual expectations, cooking catastrophes, and cultural differences, they soon discover life together is never boring. As Jane and Usnavi careen into a relationship neither of them expected, Jane uncovers dark secrets about the Xanthians and realizes she may no longer be safe. When it becomes clear she’s on her own, Jane is forced to trust and rely on Usnavi. Simultaneously struggling with her mission, her feelings for Usnavi, and homesickness, Jane faces questions she never imagined she would have to answer.

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Genre – Blended Science Fiction, Erotica

Rating – NC17

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Forty 2 Days (The Billionaire Banker) by @GeorgiaLeCarre #erotic #romance #amreading

‘Dishonest little Lana,’ he murmurs, his breath hot against my skin.  He runs his hands down the smoothness of my neck into the collar of my blouse.

I begin to tremble.  He watches his own fingers slip a button out of its hole and then another.  He spreads apart the joined material so my throat, chest and the lacy tops of my bra are exposed.  His cold furious eyes return to mine.  The breaths that escape my lips are suddenly shallow and quick.  He smiles possessively.  He knows the effect he has on me.

‘You were by far more when you squeezed into that little orange dress and your fuck-me shoes, and went looking for money.  Look at you now; you’re flapping around inside a man’s jacket.  Two hundred thousand and you don’t even buy yourself a nice suit.’

He tuts.  ‘And this…’  He raises his hand to my hair.  ‘This ugly bun.  What were you thinking of?’ he asks softly, as he plucks the pins out of my hair and drops them on the blue carpet.  Bit by bit my hair falls around my shoulders.  Without moving his feet he reaches back to a box of tissues on the table.  Takes one and starts wiping away my lipstick.  Meticulously.  From the outside in.  He throws the stained tissue on the ground.

‘That’s better,’ he pronounces.

I stare wordlessly up at him.  He looks as if he wants to devour me.  All the time we have been apart is wiped away.  It is like we have never been away from each other.  This is the man I belong to heart and soul.  Without him I have been an empty shell going through the motions.

‘Lick your lips,’ he orders.

‘What?’  I am horrified by the cold command, and yet electrified by the sexual heat his order arouses in me.  My nerves scream.

His jaw hardens; his eyes are steely.  ‘You heard me.’

The tension in his body communicates itself to me.  It simmers between us. Desire ripples through me.  My thighs clench tight with excitement and my heart flutters like a crazy thing. This is how he is in my recurring fantasies.  Demanding, possessive, taking, raging with sexual need.

I lick my lips slowly.

He eyes the journey my tongue undertakes avidly.  ‘That’s more like it.  That’s the mercenary bitch I know.’

One moment he is standing there cold and insulting, and the next he has thrust a rough hand into my hair and pulled my head back.  I gasp with shock, my eyes wide, his dark.  Like a desert storm he descends on my parted mouth.  There is no time even to pull one’s cloak about oneself.  So sudden.  So unexpected.  He tastes wild, the way the first drops of rain in the desert taste.  Full of minerals. Bringing life to all it touches.

He kisses me, as he has never done.  Roughly, painfully, violently, purposely bruising my lips, his mouth so savage that I utter a strangled, soundless cry.  The change, the extent of his anger, is impossible to comprehend.  He is different.  There is no longing.  Only an intense desire to hurt and have his revenge. This is not the same man.   My actions have unleashed something uncontrollable.  Something that wants to hurt me.  Alarm bells go off in my head.  It occurs to my fevered brain that he is ravenous, starving.  Then for some strange reason an image of him eating thin, almost transparent slices of cheese on biscuits flashes into my mind.  How civilized he was.  Then.  Before I betrayed him.

I taste the fury in his kiss: blood.

And my mind screams—this is abuse.  A moan gets caught in my throat, struggles vainly, and then escapes.  My hands reach up to push him away, but my palms meet the stone wall of his chest, and as if with minds of their own, push aside the lapels of his jacket and grip his shirt.  I know what once lived beneath the shirt and I want it.  I have always wanted this man.  As if my hands splayed across his chest have communicated my total submission, the kiss changes.  His tongue gentles, but demands more surrender.

The fingers grasping my hair hurt my scalp.  I feel the pain vaguely, but more than that I feel myself begin to drown in that vortex of sexual desire.  The violent, throbbing need between my legs finds its way into my veins and flesh.  Every cell in me wants him inside me. I am on fire. One year of waiting has made me hungry for him.  I want him.  I want him thrusting that enormous dick of his deep inside me.  For a year I have dreamed of him inside me, filling me.  I know how good he can make me feel.  My body tries to burrow closer to him, but I cannot get closer; his grip on my hair is relentless.  Desperately I push my hips towards him towards what I know will be delicious hardness.

As if that is some silent signal he puts me casually away from me.  And I am thrust back in a shitty back office in Kilburn High Street.  What the fuck am I doing?   He casually props himself against the desk, folds his arms across his chest, and looks at me calmly.

I cannot return the insult.  I am a mess.  I stand there frustrated beyond belief, breathing hard, the blood pounding like an African drum in my head.  My knickers are wet and between my legs I ache and pulse for him.  With every weak and trembling part of me I want him to finish what he started.  I want him so bad it is shocking.  I clench my hands at my sides and try to get myself under control.  I look at him, how cool and collected he is, as he watches me struggle to regain some measure of composure.

Then he smiles.  Oh! Cocky.  He shouldn’t have done that.  I feel maddened by the taunting smile.  How dare he?  He just wanted to humiliate me.

And then I see it.  Not so fast, Mr. Blake Law Barrington.

I take two steps forward, reach my hand out and put a finger on that madly beating pulse in his throat.  It drums into my skin.  The frantic beat is carried away by my blood up into my arm, my heart and into my brain.  Years later I will remember this moment when we are connected by his beating pulse.  We never break eye contact.  His eyes darken.  Now he knows that I know—my need may be obvious and easy to exploit, but he is not as unaffected as he pretends to be.  He was testing his own limits of control, but it hasn’t been as easy as he expected.

‘Is it sex when I want to see you come apart?’ he asks bitterly.

A breath dies in my chest.  I take my finger away from his throat.   ‘What do you want, Blake?’

‘I want you to finish your contract.’

Beyond the seductive power of immense wealth lies... Dark Secrets

Devastatingly handsome billionaire, Blake Law Barrington was Lana Blooms first and only love. From the moment they touched his power was overwhelming. Their arrangement quickly developed into a passionate romance that captivated her heart and took her on an incredible sexual journey she never wanted to end.

The future together looked bright until Lana made a terrible mistake. So, she did the only thing she could... she ran.

Away from her incredible life, away from the man of her dreams, but she should have known a man such as Blake Law Barrington was impossible to escape. Now, he's back in her life and determined that she should taste the bitterness of his pain.

Shocked at how rough the sex has become and humiliated that she is actually participating so willingly in her punishment, she despairs if she will ever feel the warmth of his touch--the solidity of his trust again? And even if she can win his trust, loyalties are yet to be decided, and secrets to be revealed--secrets that will test them both to their limits.

Will Lana be able to tear down the walls that surround Blake's heart, and break him free of the brutal power of immense wealth?

Can Blake hold on to Lana's heart when she discovers the enormity of the dark secrets that inhabit the Barrington family?

Lana has always believed that love conquers all. She is about to test that belief...

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Genre – Erotic Romance

Rating – PG-18

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