Janet Wellington has always been in love with words and with books.  She is published in both short contemporary and paranormal romance, and her current novel is DREAMQUEST (available May 2004 from Dorchester Leisure Books). 

Janet grew up in the Midwest spending wonderful childhood summers checking out ten books at a time every week from the neighborhood library.  Her lifelong dream of becoming a published author came true with much hard work, perseverance, positive thinking, and a great deal of assistance from other writers, from attending many writing workshops and conferences, from taking online writing classes, and especially from ongoing education via Romance Writers of America.  She currently resides in southern California with her own full-time hero, Jim, her always-reading-a-book mother, Ann, and three rescued felines: Grease Spot, Max, and Gracie.  Readers are welcome to visit her website www.janetwellington.com.

 

 

GETTING TO THE HEART OF A ROMANCE NOVEL

By

Janet Wellington

 

In her inspirational writing book “Bird by Bird,” author Anne Lamott warns us:

 

“Becoming a writer can also profoundly change your life as a reader.  One reads with a deeper appreciation and concentration, knowing now how hard writing is, especially how hard it is to make it look effortless.  You begin to read with a writer’s eyes.  You focus in a new way.  You study how someone portrays his or her version of things in a way that is new and bold and original.  You notice how a writer paints in a mesmerizing character or era for you, without your having the sense of being given a whole lot of information, and when you realize how artfully this has happened, you may actually put the book down for a moment and savor it, just taste it.”

 

If you’re interested in genre romance, particularly if you want to sell to the Harlequin/Silhouette conglomerate (Harlequin Enterprises), you need to know each line’s writing guidelines (www.eharlequin.com) and you need to really get the feel of the line you’re targeting.

 

First step: read, read, read.  Whether you love the sweet romance of the Silhouette Romance line or the suspense of a Harlequin Intrigue, your best bet is to read and analyze books in your targeted line until the pacing and flow becomes hard-wired in your writer’s brain.

 

Here’s what works for me....

 

Get your hands on at least 10 recent editions of the line you want to analyze.  Read them all once just for the pleasure of it.  Now, get ready to destroy your reading experience!

 

Gather: different-colored highlighters or colored pencils.

 

You’re going to concentrate on the first 3 chapters of each book.  Remember, that’s what goes into your proposal, right (cover letter, synopsis, first three chapters)?  If you can tailor your first three chapters to give the editor that feeling of familiarity, your chances are probably going to increase for a request to send in your complete manuscript.

 

First, decide what traits you want to analyze.  Maybe your first pass through you decide to concentrate on dialogue.  How often are the hero and heroine actually talking to each other or to others?

 

Pink for her dialogue.  Blue for his dialogue.

 

And, if you have 3 chapters completed of your own romance, go ahead and mark up your manuscript as well!  How does your work in progress compare?  Too little dialogue?  Do the hero and heroine talk to each other enough?  Do all 10 sample books have a similar amount of dialogue?  ***Remember, though, there are always exceptions to the rule--your goal is to identify a kind of average, so don’t feel you have to follow them exactly!

 

What about emotion?  Use green to isolate emotional words and/or emotional scenes.  And you may need to make a vertical green line in the margin if you’ve already highlighted the words within dialogue, or if the dialogue itself is an emotional scene.

 

Now, purple for action.  Red for description.  Other things to analyze might include: introspection, setting, secondary character’s dialogue.

 

After you’ve finished, do you have a better idea of what’s different or the same in each of your sample book’s first three chapters?

 

Here’s an example of a scene where a runaway bride--still dressed in her wedding gown--has ridden her “getaway bus” to the end of the line, and now’s she’s sitting in a cafe in the Chicago suburb where she grew up

 

The fresh zing of caffeine coursed through her veins as Angie leaned forward to sip the last of the icy granita.  As she was considering ordering another, she glanced up to see a man strolling toward her.

Her cheeks heated in a blush and she quickly turned her head to avoid his eyes.  Then she sensed him slowing down as he reached her table.  Oh, God.  Don’t stop. Don’t stop.

“Excuse me, but I assume you’re the one who dropped this?”

Forcing a neutral expression, she turned to look up at the man and stared into dazzling blue eyes.  A strong jawline and chin framed his perfect, white smile as he raised one honey-colored eyebrow waiting for her response.  It was the construction hunk she’d just seen outside.

She blinked, swallowed hard, then pushed her eyebrows together.  Something about his face....  Then a little puff of air escaped his mouth and his smile deepened as their eyes locked in simultaneous recognition.

“Haven’t seen you in about twelve years, Angie Fletcher.”

Her cheeks blazed hotter.  Jason?  Jason MacDonald?  “Just promise me you won’t ask me what’s new.”

“Yours, right?”

Angie watched Jason’s gaze drop from her face to her bare shoulders.  Impulsively, she brought up one hand to cover her cleavage, then looked at what he was holding.  From one finger dangled her headpiece, a wreath of delicate pale pink silk roses, its long frothy white netting almost touching the shiny hardwood floor.

“Or did you mean to leave it on the bench outside?” he asked as he lowered himself into the empty chair across from her and set the headpiece on the edge of the table.

“Do you still live in Blythe?”  More than anything Angie wanted to simply melt into a white puddle and slip under the table and away from his questioning blue eyes.

 

This technique should help you to visualize what at least seems to be working in books that have sold -- and identify where you might want to make some changes in your own manuscript.  Or, it will help give you a feel for the dialogue, the amount of description or action that is expected, how much emotion is expressed, how much or how little internal dialogue appears in a particular line, etc.

 

But, there’s more you’ll need to analyze in order to get the pacing right. You’ll find some of these in the first three chapters, but some will happen throughout the book--but they’ll be critical to your own plotting and well worth the time you’ll spend analyzing.

 

Are there a lot of scene breaks?  Only a few?

Where are the point of view changes?  At scene breaks only?  Within scenes?  Chapter breaks?

Where is the first description of the hero?  The heroine?

Where is the first mention of internal and external conflict?

When do we learn each character’s goal?

When are secondary characters introduced?

When is the first touch?  First kiss?

Are there love scenes?  How many?  Where is the first one?

 

For this type of analysis, I cut up sticky-notes, decide what I’m looking for, find it and then write it on the sticky-note.  Now, compare your sample books and your work in progress.  Are you on the right track?  Is your pacing similar?  Are you seeing a pattern in the line as to when we first see sensual tension?  Learn about each’s story goal?

 

Another element worth studying is the way chapters end and new ones begin.  These are called hooks and grabbers.

 

Have you heard of the phrase: it was such a cliff hanger?  And the concept: always leave them wanting more?  There’s a reason for that.  Think about your own reading habits.  When do you put a book down?

 

When you fall asleep?

At the end of a scene?

At the end of a chapter?

 

The astute writer knows this and builds in reasons to NOT PUT THE BOOK DOWN.

 

One way is by beginning a chapter with something that hooks the reader, and ending a chapter with something that grabs the reader and makes them want to know what happens.

 

Now, go through your sample books and see what kinds of hooks and grabbers the author used to keep you turning the pages.  You’ll notice that not every chapter has both, but I’ll bet you’ll find at least one or the other.

 

Return to your work in progress and check it.  And if you’re just starting a story, you especially want to plan ahead to build in a cliff hanger for the end of your Chapter Three because, again, that’s as far as an editor typically reads of a proposal.  Did all of your sample books have a cliff hanger at the end of Chapter Three?  Hmm....seeing a pattern, here?

 

When you learn to thoroughly analyze a romance, you do lose some of the pleasure of the reading experience, but it’s one of the best ways to isolate the ebb and flow of a particular line.  It will be much easier to tailor your own manuscript so it has that familiar feel to the reader.  And never forget, your first reader is the editor!

 

My goal is always to tell a good story, but as a new writer I had another equally important goal:  to write a story that would sell.  And part of that is knowing what the editor expects.  Analyzing books is one way to help you write a marketable book, and a book the reader will enjoy.

 

The highest compliment I’ve ever gotten from a reader is when she said, “I stayed up ‘til two in the morning -- knowing I had to be up at seven -- because I couldn’t put your book down.”

 

Happy reading...and happy analyzing!

 

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