I cracked the code of romantic suspense about a year ago, but I have to admit it didn't happen in one of the many seminars and classes I've taken on the topic. Although I regularly kneel at the altars of Brockmann, Howard and Roberts in my effort to improve my writing, my personal ah-hah! moment occurred while playing Barbies. Yes, mothers of young girls do this. Sure, we act like it's such a chore, such a distraction. Must I dress Brunette Barbie again? (What an oxymoron that name is.) Do I have to line up all those precious little shoes and pick which ones Velvet Red Barbie (whom I secretly call Stripper Barbie) should wear for her night out with Roller Skating Barbie? (Ken hasn't arrived at our house yet.)

While coiffing Velvet Red's long blond tresses one day, I was doubling my parenting efforts by trying to teach my daughter how to braid. As I explained the concept and struggled to manipulate her little fingers, I had a romantic suspense breakthrough. And frankly, it changed my work. It took my stories from high potential to publishable.

Romantic suspense is exactly like braiding.
With every scene, the writer must interweave three or four strands of story lines so neatly that the reader never even realizes that she is moving from one to the next. As she journeys from murderous suspense to developing romance to family reconciliation to light subplot, she should be lost in the beauty, simplicity and utter elegance of the braid. One that starts with three or four disparate strands but ends with a neat twist, tied up with the perfect bow. In essence, it should be impossible to pull out one strand and maintain the overall effect. All along its flowing length, the lines twirl and loop with no stray hairs sticking out at odd angles and no single strand ending too far in advance of the others.

Once I applied that braiding concept to my manuscript, I no longer wrote scenes that didn't take the story forward. I no longer felt that I was "stuck in the romance" and nothing was happening to propel the suspense. And I realized with tremendous clarity that romance and suspense alone are not enough. If they were, all you would have is two overlapping and twisting strands, not the beautiful intermingling that results from the weaving of three or more separate threads.

Unfortunately for those who prefer "fly through the mist" writing, it is difficult to complete a romantic suspense without detailed and arduous plotting. It would be like braiding in the dark without a comb, a generous amount of gel or the right ribbon for the end. Plotting is critical because at some point, you have to know who your villain is and you'll have to know how that body came to be dead or else your heroine and hero will have a heck of a time trying to figure it out. (And, yes, you really should have a dead body or the threat of one.) You need to present clues to the resolution of each story line so that the reader believes all is plausible. And, finally, you must ensure that the process of resolution itself is carried out over several scenes and chapters and doesn't all happen on the last page. Save that page for the bow.

Plotting is a sophisticated form of braiding.
When I realized this, I changed my plotting process. I still go through many different iterations of an outline. They include a traditional numbered outline that can usually take me through five chapters in detail and ten with vague bullet points. Then I write the Suzanne Brockmann-type of 20 page outline. I also make a list, cleverly titled "Things That Need to Happen." These are as many as 25 or 30 action points that will tell the story. They range from "h/h make love" to "h/h find body." I plan for each to be a scene, although the best scenes combine several points in each.

Then I go to a plotting board. I have divided my plotting board into 20 blocks for chapters. I may have more chapters, but this works to partition my story into four major sections and allows me to incorporate a turning point at the end of each quarter. Somewhere near the halfway mark, I know I need two 180-degree turns, one to kick up the suspense to heart pounding level and the other to intensify the romance to, well, a heart pounding level.

I "braid" scenes on my board with colors. First I assign a "type" to each scene. It is a romance scene, a suspense scene, a subplot one scene or a subplot two scene. A scene, of course, can deal with one or all of the above, but it is usually weighted‚ toward one or another. Each scene gets a colored Post-It note: pink for romance, green for suspense, yellow for first subplot, blue for secondary subplot. Then I lay out my scenes as far in advance as I possibly can. I can rarely plot beyond five chapters. But I do have that trusty list of things that need to happen‚ so I make Post-Its for each and throw them all over bottom of the board with no rhyme or reason. As I reach the end of what I've plotted and written, I take those colored squares and braid them into the remaining chapter blocks.

Although I rely on my gut instinct to answer the question "What feels like it should happen next?" I also depend upon the visual effect that my colors offer. I stand back and look at the board. It should literally look like a weaving of the colors, no single one far outweighing the others. (Of course there will be more pink and green, but the blue and yellow have to balance them out.) It's easy for me to tell when a scene doesn't advance the story because I have difficulty assigning it a color. If it doesn't address one of my four story threads, I don't need it. Each scene must continue the long and elegant braid that the reader is following. If it doesn't, no matter how clever the dialogue or how mercilessly it tugs at the reader's heartstrings, I cut it.

When it is finished, the braid is a thing of beauty. Twisty and smooth, flowing gracefully and catching different lights with each movement of its owner. Tumbling down to Barbie's two-inch waistline and accented with a delicate pink bow.

To many beginners, this process is as difficult as winding those silk tresses around clumsy three-year-old fingers. It can be frustrating as one strand falls loose and another, oddly enough, ends before you want it to. Of course, if you're stuck, you can always take a trip to Toys R Us for some inspiration from Mattel. Next time, I think, we're going to pop for an uptight, conservative Ken doll, plunk him in the pink Corvette with Stripper Barbie and see how long it takes for them to get tied up in knots.