Tips for Writing a Romance Novel
Ideas to Begin Writing in the Romance Genre
According to research the romance novel is still one of the most read genres. People, particularly women, enjoy reading about characters they can connect with and barrack for. Then there is the emotional experience for the reader. In the current climate of economic down turn, threats of terrorism, gang wars and people going on shooting rampages, readers look for escapism. There is no better way to escape then by reading a good romance.
Who Publishes Romance
Most of you will have heard of Mills and Boon who are one of the largest publishers of romance novels. They now fall under the umbrella of Harlequin. If you visit their website you will get specific examples of their sub categories and what exactly they are looking for. Other publishers include the Penguin Group (Berkley, Jove, NAL) and Harper Collins (Avon Books). The Harlequin and Mills and Boon publishers publish what is called category romance, which means that it has specific restrictions with respect to style of story and length of book. People buy these books mainly because of what they know what they will get instead of a particular author. Although the author is still important.
However, major publisher such as Berkley, Banta and Avon publish romance novels where there is not the restriction on style of story and length of book. The key ingredient still is the romance between a man and a woman but the stories are longer, have plots and subplots and can be in a variety of formats.
Things to Remember when Writing
- Readers and editors look for characters that they can care about;
- The characters need to be worth caring for;
- The hero needs to be larger than life and the best at what he does;
- The heroine needs to be someone the reader can feel for or identify with;
- The story needs to take you away from the dreary every day live;
- A really story - really funny, or really thrilling or really exciting;
The importance of Premise
When writing a romance novel you will need to know what it's premise is. That means that you should have a sentence that identifies the premise and each scene is based around this premise.
A premise is what the story is about.
According to Bob Mayer a premise is "to have something that will send a shiver down someones spine". That shiver may be a shiver of excitement, anticipation or exhilaration.
A premise may be: A business man hires a prostitute for the weekend as a companion and finds it difficult to walk away at the conclusion of the weekend.
This could turn into a murder/horror story - she becomes his stalker and finds the wife and threatens to kill her/expose his weekend activities and or kill him. Or it could turn into a happy ending romance.
Conflict
Another important ingredient is conflict.
According Jery Cleaver the more conflict in the story the better. A reader will identify with a character that faces battle after battle. Readers do not want to read about happy lives.
In it's simplest form a story is:
- conflict
- action
- resolution
This means that your character will always be faced with a problem (conflict) and then struggle (action) to come up with a win or loose situation (resolution). Each scene in your romance novel will have these element to them.
You may feel a little daunted in the task of writing a romance novel. Don't be. Read widely and see what appeals to you. Make a list of things you think you would be good at writing about and then just go for it using the above as a guide.
Happy writing.
What do you think about this article?
More in Writing & Publishing
Latest Articles