A Day Worth Remembering

 by Mary Ellen Main from the May 20, 2022 issue

Tagline: The last thing military widow Pam is expecting at the senior center is a second shot at love...until a handsome stranger shows up in the lunch line.

Observations: I didn't think it was possible to write a romance related to such a somber holiday, but Main succeeded. I liked Pam's posse of friends at the senior center. They were adorable. And notice that only one of them was named--Georgia. It's not necessary to name every person who appears in your story. 

The time you use to describe characters should be in direct proportion to their importance to the story, and this goes double for Woman's World stories. For instance, waiters, fellow passengers, people in the elevator, these "movie extras" needn't be named or described unless necessary. You only have 800 words. Best to use them developing your story. Even the main characters probably don't need much description. (Pam didn't get any at all.)

Here's what we got about the hero, Kevin:

Thick brown hair with a slight wave stood atop his broad,handsome face and his arm rested across his mom's shoulder, creating a picture of warmth that made Pam's heart glow. As he took his place in line, his deep brown eyes, crinkled gently at each corner, caught Pam's.

It makes sense that she took sometime to create a picture of him in the readers' heads. This is the man we're going to vicariously fall in love with. 

However, if you need the space to develop the love story and the emotions and the character arcs, I would absolutely choose to use the words for that over a physical description of the characters. You can usually get away with just mentioning that they have brown hair or green eyes. :)

Photo by Denise Krebs via Flickr Creative Commons License