After she formally accepts the challenge issued to her last week, Caro starts making adjustments to her stream interface, with a word counter located above the chat window. Once that is done, Caro feels her blood boil as she reads a resource given to her by Sampoong in a DM about how much sports content is too much in a sports romance.
“I’ll show them that I can fit the transactional aspect of hockey into a hockey romance!” Caro lets her bitterness show in her tone of voice. “I’ll probably read the last book recommended to me, and the rest of the time will be devoted to reading more of these resources as Capitolium and now Sampoong gave me!”
This also means that, as much as I would love my male lead to take the female lead to a game, that game should set up the opponent as a possible trading partner down the road! And also have the male lead dread the trade deadline, too… especially since I want team B to be out of the playoff picture by that point, but the resulting trade to be win-win, she starts thinking, while Capitolium sends her the link to register for NaNoWriMo.
Which then causes a bulb to flash in her mind. But at the same time, it leads her wondering about Capitolium’s participation. She asks him about it in a Discord DM:
Caroline: Now that I accepted the challenge, I might be wondering if you’re taking part in it
Capitolium: NaNoWriMo? Yes, although I’m not writing about a professional player
Caroline: Are you talking about major junior or college hockey?
Capitolium: Major junior
Caroline: Why did you keep quiet about NaNoWriMo until you gave me the link to register for it?
Caro is talking about life once in the NHL, while I am talking about the road to get there. From being a star player in major junior or in college, to the draft and then the AHL affiliate of the team that drafted the player, Capitolium reflects on what he wants out of his own hockey romance. Found family, and I want my male lead to hit on the daughter of the billet family.
Capitolium: After all the stuff that happened last year with the organization, I didn’t want it to be mentioned explicitly on air
Caroline: I guess it must be really bad...
Caro then adds another word count tracker on her stream interface to reflect Capitolium’s. And then resumes reading about other things specific to writing romance books. About what it’s really like to be a WAG (a player’s wife or girlfriend) in the NHL.
And, of course, what the MMC must do to earn the respect of his new teammates. Which would then make him improve his game. At the end of the night, she starts wondering if there’s anything missing from her plan for the month. Like her FMC being a little... flat.
Last night, you were implying that characters who were nothing without their traumas were flat! Caro hears Glitter’s voice from a previous stream. Which causes her to ruminate, and also causes her headaches to mount. I was so focused on my male lead’s growth as a player that I forgot about fleshing out my female lead! I can always fixate C later, but I think I could get the first plot-bearing game to pit A against B, and I would need to determine what cities A, B and C are.
Yet, Caro’s struggles don’t end when she falls asleep. Her own viewers appear to her in a troubled dream:
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Five ghosts flew in a circle above her bedroom. Glitter came down first:
“Caro, by now you know that so many in the romance world tend to focus on conflict internal to either the characters or the relationship!” Glitter’s ghost self screamed at her. “Please, fill out a character questionnaire for your FMC!”
Lagado came down right after Glitter. “Because Capitolium didn’t give you enough time to adequately learn about the craft, I’m afraid that you’re condemned to write an epic mess of a manuscript! Please reconsider!”
Sampoong added another word of caution. “Given how little time you have left, you can’t just resume binge reading hockey romance books! You must choose carefully the books, based on the kind of relationship dynamics you feel would fit your project!”
“Probably oblivious to love would be my best bet, especially given the hectic schedules of hockey players!” Caro retorts.
“Better a third-act breakup based on an external conflict, as you’re doing, than due to a miscommunication or an argument, but you started plotting from the third-act breakup onwards! You were so bogged down in planning the lead up to the trade deadline that you forgot to flesh out the female lead and her life outside the relationship!” Maridun scolded her.
“The average hockey romance book that isn’t a slow burn or insta-love seems to follow a set pattern of story beats, down to the percentage of page count! Don’t go around thinking that you can just add more hockey if your word count is a little low!” Capitolium warned her. “You already have a lot of hockey in your plan, heck, you built your MMC’s plot line around hockey!”
Usually, it goes like this: first kiss at the end of the first quarter to third, first sex scenes around 50-60%, the final conflict is introduced around the 70-80% mark, and the happy ending. But there are those books where you can just take out the third-act breakup-induced arc and the happy ending would be unchanged, Maridun kept quiet about how formulaic a lot of romance books are, beyond the endpoints.
“You complained about the neglect of life outside the relationship on air! However, think of the FMC’s life outside the relationship!” Glitter implored her.
Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.
Caroline’s oneiric self sighed. “She should long for him and cherish what little time she could spend with him, hence why I feel like oblivious to love is the way to go! Very tempting then for her to be the brains, the voice of reason in the couple, but at the same time, not make the male lead dumb! Because I want him to return to team B by team C not matching the offer sheet, he must be a pending RFA and fall within a certain range of ages!”
“That’s bordering on too much hockey, my dear Caro!” Sampoong screamed at her. “While I might have learned a lot from you about the transactional aspect of hockey, a hockey romance book is NOT about showing the inner workings of the hockey world!”
“And certainly not about what you call the transactional aspect of hockey!” Maridun yelled at her, before Caro wakes up.
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Once again, Caroline, destabilized by her bad dreams, seems to be unable to get anything remotely resembling a good night’s sleep. She feels like that bad dream has given her a lot to think about.
And yet, even if I could somehow give her a profession that could be credibly require some intelligence, and make them both oblivious to love for a while, I STILL don’t have a meet cute! Is it a good idea to start writing a book from the ending, or at least from the trade deadline onward, going through 3 of the most important moments in a season for roster building? At this rate, I feel like the trade will take place earlier than a typical third-act breakup! Caro then peruses Amazon for romance books about the leads being oblivious to each other’s love. But here I feel like I can go beyond hockey romances alone since being oblivious to love can be readily adaptable to what I want out of my very own hockey romance. I still need to do is read about that, though.
Especially since her past experience with hockey romance taught her that often, hockey romance has little actual plot space devoted to hockey, hockey is just a plus this time around. Yet, knowing that time is short before the start of the challenge, she skims blurbs and reviews before deciding on a fourth book to read. And, of course, potential trope lists at the end of blurbs, if any.
Oh boy. Thank goodness that some books are not about hockey! At work, people often talked about hockey on the days after games, be it Canadiens or Remparts ones, it’s just that a temporary break from hockey beforehand is welcome to me, especially since I’ll have an entire month to be engrossed in it, she then makes a one-click purchase of a book that seemed promising to her. All the while knowing that she mustn’t put too much stock on a collection of book reviews.
And man does it feel refreshing to her. Because the new reading doesn’t seem to be nearly as heavy thematically as, say, her tentative project, it doesn’t seem to be very thought-provoking. So she focuses on her main item of interest: how being oblivious to love would feel.
So far, the most natural way I found to fit that in would be to have the FMC work some job where she might have to work long hours but not necessarily all the time, or perhaps some job where happy hours happen regularly, Caro keeps thinking about her own project as she reads a scene where the couple has their very own one-night stand in a hotel room. In the early stages of the book, and said one-night stand begins with a happy hour.
And she is somehow reminded of the cold, hard truth of what happens to players who are claimed off waivers: they sleep at a hotel until they can move in with a teammate, or find their own place to live.
As pages fly by, she realizes that, even if she understands the dynamics of being oblivious to love better, there is still a gaping hole down the FMC’s characterization. She still has a lot of fleshing out to do, starting with her attitude towards hockey.
However, fatigue sets in and she deems it good to stop reading the book for the night before her brain starts malfunctioning. At that point, she feels the urge to go to sleep, and, hopefully, be fresh upon awakening a few hours later. She prays for her sleep to be, well, better than in previous nights.
On Tuesday night, as she battles through the various modes of the game she usually streams, for weekly battle pass points, as well as the daily ones, it seems like the bitterness has gotten the better of herself. With, of course, Capitolium being the first to get into her voice chat every night she streams.
“Don’t forget, Caro, NaNo is a marathon, so I wonder what did you do to prepare since last stream?” Capitolium asks her on voice chat.
“It seems like the more preparation I do, be it under the form of reading about creative writing concepts, or other books featuring what I feel makes sense for my own story to have, the benefits decrease…” Caroline rants on air, feeling frustration in her voice. “Like being oblivious to the leads’ feelings towards each other, and less so later on! But preparing for this challenge affected my sleep!”
Glitter enters VC. “That’s huge! And your initial plan made me feel like it was going to be about the MMC’s evolution as a player driving the plot, with the FMC along for the ride!”
“Even if they are oblivious to their love for each other, each new idea plunges me deeper into new rabbit holes! I only feel marginally more prepared now than I did two days ago!” Caro whines on air.
Lagado enters the voice chat in turn. “I understand that you want to give your best shot, be it in-game or in in writing, and it served you well in your previous gaming experiences, but you seem to have gotten more neurotic since you accepted the challenge!”
I guess, I should wait and see how Caro executes the non-hockey bits of her book. I might just tune her out for the rest of the month if it turns out that she let hockey overshadow any relationship building, Sampoong feels like Caro is a little deranged, especially given that she appears to be “speedrunning” this week’s weekly battle pass. And it seems like a certain order must be met for that “speedrun” of this week’s battle pass to actually entertain the viewers. Especially those who play the game themselves.
“And two hours and seventeen minutes later, I finished all the weekly battle pass quests! Now I can resume reading this book on air, and I assure you, there is no hockey, only lovers that are initially oblivious to their love!” Caro signals the end of the first half of the stream.
She resumes reading the fourth book on air from a point past the initial one-night fling. Where they go around living life on their separate ways. So it seems like I now have a foundation to build a couple oblivious to love, and then grow from there. But is that the same as slow burn? I’m not fully convinced yet. However, it’s one of the main mechanisms that make a slow burn, well, a slow burn.
“What is this about? A one-night fling that could fizzle out?” Glitter asks.
Maridun, on the other hand, prays that Caro ends the stream before she gets to any signs that a third-act breakup is coming in this fourth book.
“It’s too early to tell whether I will like the whole relationship even having a chance to grow, only that it will” Caro answers her viewer before that book’s characters seize an opportunity to meet again.
Because she can sense her viewers want her to at least read through their second encounter, she seems happy to endure up to that point. And then dismiss their feelings as being spur-of-the-moment things, but it becomes increasingly harder to do.
I guess, I must build my writing experience somehow, so I feel like I can only prepare so much, Caro ruminates before she decides to cut the stream. It isn’t much, but better that than no preparation at all.
“I think I have done enough reading on air for tonight, and I will review it when I’ll stream next, so good night”