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.
Back in my college courtyard, we kicked the idea back and forth and then laid it aside, too caught up in our 'real' work. But over the last year, I was in an odd position. Drained by my normal work, I still wished to write – if you’ve ever had an addiction, you’ll understand perfectly – but I somehow couldnt get into my existing project. I was still resisting the idea of a blog for reasons unknown and so decided to recharge my batteries with a romance novel.
The first thing I did, as anyone my age would do, is consult my friend Google. It got back to me in a matter of seconds and told me that where there is romance, there is Harlequin. This juggernaut of the romance industry owned the lionshare of the business and with a deep understanding of its market, had set up a website that was shortly to prove very useful to me.
It provided a community for writers, it offered to critique my finished or unfinished work for what it called a reasonable fee, although if I had that kind of money to waste on somebody else’s opinion it is doubtful that I would be writing a romance novel in the first place. It offered guidelines and contact information, it had message boards, writing tips, classes in the nitty gritties of novel writing – in short, apart from the excellent teaching staff, the website almost had more resources than my school and it didn’t cost tens of thousands of dollars. Thoughtfully, I closed the browser and decided not to mention my discovery to my parents, otherwise known as Footers of All Bills.
Article comments
1 - Anna
Great essay!
2 - Amrita
Thanks Anna!
3 - Scott Butki
This is a great piece, Amrita.
4 - Nancy
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!
5 - Scott Butki
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.
6 - Sela
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)
7 - Scott Butki
Not to mention the slash fiction genre.
8 - Victor Plenty
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.
9 - Scott Butki
Always happy to make someone laugh.