I Write Romance
Published March 19, 2006
A couple of years ago, my friends and I were standing in the courtyard of our college, getting lung cancer from second-hand smoke, talking about breaking into the publishing world, and how difficult it is these days. We were all writers, hence the conversation and the smoke. And then Brian, who is probably the most talented person I have ever been privileged to attend a workshop with, said, "I've thought of writing a romance novel."
There was a moment of silence as we all tried to get our heads around the idea of Brian, composer of the most lyrically disturbing prose about death and betrayal, writing a fluffy little novel about some girl too cute to say "Boo!" to a goose and the Prince Charming who bravely manages to make it scram and thus wins her heart. And then the sheer genius of it struck us.
There we were, paying through our noses to formally understand what came most instinctively to us and playing around with structure and language - we couldn't just write 200 pages of a love story; we were overqualified for it. And God knew, the romance market might see swings just like any other in the publishing industry but it's one of the most stable markets that exist. Women make up the majority market in most cases anyway, but add a little romance and you have yourself a success story.
Brian got the idea from working at a bookstore - he'd see the women march past with a stack of paperbacks, all of them with dark-eyed Italian men who sweep English roses off their feet, or American cowboys dishing out some down home lovin' to the prissy city girl in her shiny new Macy's boots. I was in a position to reinforce his observation - my brother and I had been wiggling our eyebrows at each other in the library for years as we watched one auntie after college girl stagger out of the Mills and Boon aisle with 10 or 20 slim books. I could well remember the day when my own aunt had decided that it was time I began to read some grown-up literature - and bought me a copy of my very own Barbara Cartland, which nearly robbed me of my parents as they tried hard not to die laughing.
Digression: for those of you poor mortals who have no idea what I'm talking about - Dame Cartland was an old lady much addicted to Romance. Not only in her work but in her own life too. She stared out at her readers from the back of her 8,000-word "novels", which she churned out by the dozens every year and which eventually turned her into the most published author ever, dressed in frothy pink with some unfortunate canine midget dressed in a jewelled collar lolling around on a daybed in some drafty mansion in cold England. Her books were all about the most improbably named heroines, blonde if they were English, red-haired if Scottish and brunettes in rare cases. They would all get into trouble, usually of the financial or sexual kind, be rescued by a titled gentleman, frequently a Prince from some unheard of, tiny, Balkan kingdom and then after marriage were "taken to the Sun and the Moon and the Stars." Insert your own orgasm joke here.
- I Write Romance
- Published: March 19, 2006
- Type: Opinion
- Section: Books
- Filed Under: Books: The Writing Life
- Writer: Amrita Rajan
- Amrita Rajan's BC Writer page
- Amrita Rajan's personal site
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Comments on this articleComments
This is a great piece, Amrita.
Good article!
My best friend is absolutely addicted to romance novels. She must have thousands of them. She could probably open her own specialty bookstore some day & live lavishly off the proceeds of out-of-print Rare Bodice Ripper titles that other women will be ripping each other's bodices off in order to grab for themselves. I personally can't stand them. Betty Neels. Ugh! If I ever come across a similarly hackneyed, trite author again - her and her obnoxious studly Dutch surgeons, talk about your 'Mary Sue' novels - I'm going to hurl. And Babs Cartland! God, that woman ought to be hung as a disgrace to literature of any kind - except fortunately she's dead. I think. But considering the last photo of her I saw, that might be in question.
What I hate about these things is that in general the quality of the writing & the plots are SO BAD. I mean, they REEK. They're the stuff of the wet dreams of 14-year-old girls. And as the Greek philosopher said, there's nothing new under the sun, especially in the realm of romance novels.
That said, Amrita's right: they're a HUGE business, and any aspiring writer with a more realistic POV than artistic hubris will swallow their pride & set to work to make it into the writers' stable of one of these very successful publishing houses, especially Harlequin, the creme de la creme. AFTER you've made your first million with nasty Dutch surgeons, you can be true to your artistic impulses; in the meantime, start writing those romances.
Same, BTW, goes for cover artists. Are you good at painting portrait gowns, godlike swains, and heaving bosoms? Then start submitting to the romance publishers!
I don't think I could stand to read romance books, let alone write them, because they seem so formulaic.
Which is, I guess, part of the appeal - you read it knowing what you will get.
One woman told me she reads romances to make up for the romance missing in her marriage.
I followed a link to this article and am alternately pleased and dismayed. Pleased that at least someone discovered that writing romances IS hard work! And dismayed that some still think they get churned out by a machine.
I'm a romance writer and reader. Happily married, thank you very much. I think where folks sometimes get the impression of rote writing is by only reading "category" romances, which is where Harlequin/Silhouette is unsurpassed as an industry giant. While they make up a huge chunk of the romance market, there are hundreds of titles that come out each year from major publishers such as Kensington, Dell, Avon and others. These "single title" romances have a much larger and varied scope than is possible to explore in the category books, which have very strict guidelines.
Before you dismiss all romances, please expand your reading list. Right now, many varieties of cross-genre novels, i.e. sci-fi romance, fantasy romance, and romantic suspense are very popular.
Enjoy getting to the HEA! (That's romance jargon for Happily Ever After)
Not to mention the slash fiction genre.
Excellent comic timing there, Scott. I already knew your line was coming up; it was what drew me into reading this thread in the first place. But when I arrived, its perfect placement made me bust out laughing anyway. Well done!
Of course, it helped that the rest of the conversation turned out to be interesting reading in its own right. Maybe I oughta read some romance novels to learn what women are looking for.
Then again, since I'll never be a billionaire, and I'll never look like Fabio, all I'd really be learning is precisely why, in much greater detail than ever before, what women are looking for isn't me.
Always happy to make someone laugh.
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Great essay!