90% of romance readers are women. Romance novels make up approximately 38% of all books published and purchased. Romance writers are not among a minority group. New romance writers are constantly being sought out and signed for publication. Romance sells.
On this website, my desire is to delve into the world of Romance Writing and supply some pertinent information on creating your romance novel. Each month, I will highlight a different romance author. If you have any suggestions on topics for discussion or author to highlight, please, fill in the comment form at the bottom of the page. Thank you, for your interest in this page, and in romance writing.
PLANNING YOUR ROMANCE NOVEL
Just like baking a wedding cake, a romance novel starts with select ingredients. This week, we will take a look at what we need to have in our romance writing larder.
Romance novels fall into two specific categories -- category and single-title. These are set by the way they are marketed by their publishers.
1. Category Romances - Category romances are marketed monthly under imprints readers have learned to associate with romance -- Harlequin Presents, Kensington Ballad, Sihouette Special Edition. Each book bearing the same imprint carries a distinctive cover design its readers will recognize.
All books in the line will have a fixed page length. They are printed in a block. This reduces the publisher's costs.
Each store selling the line agrees to accept a fixed quantity of each title on a monthly basis. In addition, many category romance lines are marketed by publisher book clubs. Harlequin, for instance, markets a large quantity of their books through book clubs, who's members automatically receive the next book in the particular line on a monthly basis. Kind of a "book of the month club".
Readers expect these books to be romantic, have happy endings, and that the themes will be empowering.
When a writer sells to a category market they get the advantage of knowing that their book is going to be widely distributed by way of grocery stores, drug stores, and book store which deals in the category market, as well as widely distributed through various book clubs. Their work will automatically receive wide exposure without the writer having to take on taxing marketing work or expense.
In the category market, the writer is able to make good money with her first novel. As her name becomes popular with the readers, she stands to make even more as her work develops a following.
2. Single-title Romances
Single-title romances give the writer more flexibility as to the number of pages. It does not, however, give the writer the comfort zone of automatic mass marketing. Each title is sold on an individual basis. The reader must examine the spine of the book to identify the publisher. In other words, with this genre, the publishing house is not as important as the name of the writer, to the reading public.
Some publishing houses that deal with single-title romances are:
*Avon*Ballantine*Bantam*Berkley
*Kensington Publishing Corp *St.Martin's Press and *Warner Books
An author's income is generally based on royalties paid as a percentage of the cover price of the books which are sold. Because most buyers buy single titles, and are not tied in to a mass lot of several titles from the publisher, they look for familiar names and titles, this genre is a gamble for the beginner writer.
There are so many variables involved in it getting sold and read.
*the publisher has to push the book
*the booksellers have to stock it
*the readers have to be drawn to purchase it
Still, many single-title romances do very well. As with the category romance, the single-title author's sales may increase as she writes more books and builds a following of readers.
Readers are fickle, though. It only take one disappointing book for them to be turned off of an author. If anything, the author has to strive to raise the bar as far as their writing is concerned. The quality has to remain consistent, or improve.
An excited and satisfied reader is a repeat reader.
INGREDIENTS OF A SUCCESSFUL ROMANCE
1. A Story Question
A good romance novel begins with a stirring question in the reader's mind: the story question.
The nature of the question depends on the type of novel you decide to write. In the romance novel, it is something like: Will the hero ever get over his fear of commitment and find a gal to settle down with? The story question must remain the focus throughout your story. It should remain completely unanswered until you reach the end of the novel. As those of us who have been in the entertainment business would say, "keep 'em wanting more."
2. An Empowering Story
The best love stories are those which enable the reader to enter the fantasy of a world where there are deep emotional values concerning love, family, friendships and partnership in marriage.
The value of love always triumphs. Even if there is not, particularly, a happy ending, the value of love remains consistently high. The hero and heroine will come out, in the end of all the emotional battling, as either meant for each other and united, or will come to realize that they are not meant for each other and separate. Either way, they do not compromise their quest for true love. Both will come out the end of it all as people who are more emotionally strong than how they entered the story.
3. A Sympathetic Heroine
The reader wants to identify with the heroine, care about her, and believe in her.
The heroine does not have to be beautiful, talented, or even be the most likeable person. But, she must be endearing. She must pull the reader into her heart from the very beginning of the novel. Even if she is behaving badly, the reader must care about whether she will straighten out, conquer her demons, and become the woman that they know she can be.
The heroine must gain the sympathies of the reader. She must inspire them with her courage. Whether physical, emotional, or mental, she must have at least one nontrivial weakness. The writer must develop her as a character with fears, weaknesses, a personal history that includes hang-ups, hopes and dreams. She should begin the story at a change or crisis point in her life then move through the story getting her ducks back in a row.
4. A Hero She Can Love
Your hero must be a man your readers will believe the heroine can love.
This does not mean that he has to be lovable, just that she finds something in him to love. Although the stereotypical hero is strong, macho, taciturn and stubborn, many romance novels feature heroes that do not fit into this group. Maybe he is a nerdy computer programmer, or maybe he is the extremely passive and gentle guy who owns the flower store on the corner.
Like the heroine, the hero character has to be created with strengths and weakness; with a history, hopes and dreams, and a few hang-ups. The rounder you create your hero, the easier it is to write him as someone that the reader will want to see the heroine end up with.
He should also start out at some crisis point in his life which causes him to move out of his comfort zone.
5. An Interesting Initial Conflict or Problem
Good books start with an immediate problem or conflict to get the characters and action moving.
This writing device is called the "lead" or "hook". It is meant to draw your reader into the story, right away, and keep her turning the pages. The main conflict does not have to be immediately clear, but there has to be something going on that has moved the heroine and hero out of their comfy little lives and on the path that will eventually lead them to one another.
There should be more than just the main conflict to keep the reader's attention and interest from page one to the end of the novel. There must not be, however, conflicts and scenes that do not in some way do one of the following:
*Move the characters forward towards the ultimate goal
*Cause some change in the characters that makes the final goal possible or sets the stage for the main conflict
*relate to the or set the stage for the main conflict
*or set the stage, add props, character, etc. to put things in place for the main conflict to occur
Adding things, just to have more in there, is not a good reason. The reader will notice how disjointed things feel. A skilled writer never makes her reader feel confused. Even those scenes that do not immediately make sense must show logical proof of the need for their existence by the end of the book. Leave nothing unresolved...except if you decide to end with a lead to the next novel, which is a story for another day. Literally.
NEXT WE WILL ADD A FEW MORE INGREDIENTS TO OUR ROMANCE RECIPE
Once upon a time there was a little girl who had a dream. Yes, the little girl was me. But no, the dream was not to be a writer. The dream that never varied from the time I was 8 or 9 was to run an orphanage and have 12 kids. I can't say why it was such an unerring, unchanging thing. But it was. And in a way, my dream came true. I married, had 4 homemade children, adopted 10 and lived (at times endured) my dream.
Our adopted children came with lots of baggage that unfortunately did not go away with love, discipline or any other tool we had at our disposal. During one of those time when the dream seemed more like a nightmare, when several of the kids were teens and acting out in weird and awful ways, I got invited to a meeting—a writer's meeting. I sat with other people. I can't say if they were like-minded or not. I doubt it. We listened to a tape telling how to organize our thoughts into chapters and write a non-fiction book. It all sounded so ...so controllable. I went home, picked an idea—I can't even tell you what the idea was. I think it was something about my early childhood. And I started to write.
From the beginning I was hooked. I had found a world I could control. Although I hadn't planned to write, I had always made up stories in my head, often late at night when I couldn’t sleep. I thought everyone did the same thing. To this day I can remember one rancher hero I created—tall with a rolling swagger and a smile that didn't end.
I credit my writing with keeping me relatively sane through that difficult time when my life seemed out of control. I still find my fictional worlds often make more sense than my real world. Am I the only one who feels this way? Or is this why we read and/or write?--to find a world that makes sense where people act in ways we can understand because we are privy to their thoughts and motivations.
I share my life with my ever-patient husband (yup, the rancher of my dreams), a paraplegic-double-amputee client for whom I provide personal care, a grown son who lives at home, and a yappy African grey parrot who knows far too many insults. I have an open door policy to my large family, which means special occasion family dinners for twenty or more, visiting grandchildren, crisis counseling (let's talk to Mom about it) and generally sharing the joys and trials of my children's lives. All of which provides me lots of research material for my historical and contemporary books, which have a recurring theme of foreverness, commitment, the power of faith and the joy of family.
