The two major pieces of advice the webiste gave me was to acquaint myself with the product and write what I loved the most. So I went out to the library and got a few dozen paperbacks while studiously avoiding the eye of the librarian who’d witnessed many a snicker between my brother and I. I went on Amazon and ordered me a few of those .01 cent romances they have in the used section because I sure as hell wasn’t going to pay full price for supermarket checkout lane reading.
I then settled down to read what was ‘out there’.
‘Out there’ was a strange world. There were a few basics that I understood immediately such as:
1. The girl is pretty. In the rare event she is not jaw-droppingly do-able, then she is sweet, brave, vulnerable, smart and competent. If you’re a dimwit and you have PMS then you must be a tramp. God help you if you’ve ever had an abortion because that’s who it will take to save you from the serial killer/car accident/plague/pestilence/hellfire/etc. that’s coming your way. The heroine, however, because she is pure, will escape said fate.
2. The man is rich. And he is always a man. Not a boy. Young love and blah blah blah but everyone knows the men is where it’s at. It doesn’t matter if he’s ugly as sin because he’s rich and powerful, often physically. He is either manically happy [in case the heroine is depressed about life] or else he’s dark and brooding [in case the heroine has a savior complex]. Also, millionaires are passe. Let’s bring out the billionaires. Oh, yeah!
3. Every man should read one. Women understand women best. It’s true. I almost found out more about sex by reading those things than listening to Sue Johansen [the Sex Grandma anybody?] on the Oxygen channel. Please note that I said ‘almost’. That’s because the Sex Grandma talks about oral sex and anal probes and other fascinating things. In the world of the genteel romance, the former might be euphemistically and briefly alluded to but the latter is frowned upon. Well, I don’t know actually. The word ‘anal’ was entirely absent from all the books I read. I think it comes under Perversions to be Practised Solely by Tramps.
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.