With a fair amount of trepidation, I recently attended the San Francisco Writers’ Conference, held the weekend of February 13. After all, I’m not a “real” writer, just a wanna-be, intimidated before I arrived with thoughts that my recently completed novel wasn’t worthy of rubbing elbows with some of the top agents and editors of the publishing world. I was pleasantly surprised to find everyone genuine and helpful.
There were many workshops to choose from, and it was difficult to decide which ones to attend. Since my novel is about a woman who faces many changes in her life, I thought I would attend the workshop on romance writing. This, even though my book is not what you’d call a romance novel – it’s dark and goes places most people wouldn’t want to visit – but I was a writer looking for a niche.
I have to admit here that I do occasionally read romance novels. Call it a guilty pleasure, like my occasional binges on Godiva chocolate. The books are especially handy to have on long airplane trips, because they are usually in paperback, are small and easy to read. I can dust one and a half romances off in the time it takes for me to fly from Detroit to California.
The term “romance novel” has long suffered a negative connotation. The term conjures up legions of bored housewives looking to spend an afternoon reading about a heroine who is saved from distress by someone who looks amazingly like Fabio. (That’s how he started the modeling game, posing for book covers. Personally speaking, Fabio has way too many muscles for me. I like my men scrawny but smart.) Romance novels are known for their "trashy" covers showing men and women in the midst of lustful frenzy.
Romance novels have been pooh-poohed as being literature not worthy of reading. They were deemed hastily written and shallow. While it may be true that some prolific writers pump out three novels a year, it’s a false assumption to think that the modern romance novel lacks depth and character. In fact, it may be more difficult to write a good romance novel, since the story has to move along at a rapid pace.
What qualifies as a romance novel? Well, there’s a woman, a man, and plenty of conflict. Something keeps the two apart, even though what they really want to do is tear each other’s clothes off. This could be a real conflict, or one in the woman’s head, and some force that keeps the two apart. All romance novels end the same way, there’s a happy ending and a hook up. There doesn’t have to be marriage, and if the hook up is absent, then there must be a promise of a future in the distance. Optimism is what romance novels are all about. Romance novels are seldom over 120K words, and most hover between 75K and 90K words.
Article comments
1 - Marcia
Linnea Sinclair already writes intergalactic, and I'm pretty sure Christine Feehan and J.R. Ward have had some interspecial (depending on what you'd categorize as a species).