Taking You Out of Your Comfort Zone

I get that from my readers many times. Over the years as I’ve written, I fascinate myself of the process I go through to get from 0 words on the page to over seventy thousand words of twists, turns and romance. The first time I ever looked at my own process was when I was twenty-nine, trying to look for a thing for my daughter and I wandered upon my second published book, Stone’s Revenge, that had been handwritten when I was sixteen. I forgot about looking for the thing and begin to read what I had written before I even knew what love was, let alone a love scene and had never experienced a day of abuse. Yet, I was able to bring forth a character named William Stone, who was just the most beautiful Hispanic man this side of the Mississippi, but with a father as a serial killer. I don’t know how or where this man came from, but he was complicated and needed love, but didn’t know how to obtain it. That’s where Abigail McPherson came in, who was the daughter of the prosecuting attorney that was William’s nemesis. (I told you I have twists and turns).

From analyzing that experience as I rewrote the book, which was very little from its original concept, I found that I had a knack for taking ordinary people going through the same things you and I are going through and making their lives extraordinary.

How? By taking my reader out of their comfort zone. I found that in order for the reader to accept the situation that I thrust my protagonist in, I had to make them like something that shouldn’t be right.

How? For example, (and I can’t go into real detail without giving away the story), in my newest book, Mistaken Identity, I took a twin, who was jealous of her sister – rich fiancé, beautiful house, and wonderful life – and once the reader sympathize with this jealousy, it was alright to allow the protagonist to sleep with her brother-in-law. Of course there are a lot more twists and turns in the story and one reader said it’s the crying game of erotic where no one will tell the secret ending (LOL), but when I published Mistaken Identity my fear was that people would just say, “Sylvia, you’re nasty.” (Which I was about to call this post) .

Yet, people who have read the story say, “I was uncomfortable, but I couldn’t stop reading.” I like when they say that, because that means I’ve accomplished what I set out to do, give you a good story by taking you into my world, made you accept it and enjoyed yourself. I hope to do this with each and every book.

So let me take you out of your comfort zone.

http://sylviahubbard.com/

Your Author, Sylvia Hubbard