Have you ever?

Have you ever picked up a book and started reading it only to realize you’d already read it? Have you ever picked up a book and started reading it only to realize you’d read ten others just like it? That’s one of the complaints I hear about romance novels…if you read one, you’ve read them all.
That’s just not true.
Romance novels, despite the reputation they’ve suffered over the years are NOT all the same. They’re different because the people writing them are different. Take five romance novelists and put them in a room together. Give them each the name of a hero and heroine and a situation and they’ll give you five very different plots with those two people and that situation. Don’t believe me?
Here’s an example…
Meet Mary and John. Mary is a twenty-something with a good education and wealthy parents. She doesn’t know exactly what she wants to do with her life, but she’s happy with what she’s doing right now, working in her family’s business. John is an early thirties ex-military man with a good education, a scattered family of which he’s only really close to one brother. He knows what he wants out of life and what steps he has to take to get there.
If this was an historical romance, Mary might be an heiress rather than working for a living. She’s had at least one “season,” but is under no duress to marry. She would be attending balls and enjoying her life. John would be a former military man, possibly a spy. He’d be the ‘second’ son who has a good relationship with his older brother, the heir to the family title. They’d meet at a ball, become involved in some sort of scandal, have to marry and then discover that they loved one another.
If this was a contemporary romance, Mary might be working in her family business, at an executive level, but not running the company. She’d be fighting to gain attention from her father or some other senior level executive. John might be the new ‘hotshot’ executive brought in to bring the company forward in some way. They’d clash at first, but not be able to deny the physical attraction between them. They’d flirt, maybe have a brief relationship, something would happen to pull them apart and possibly they’d have a big argument before they wound up back together again.
If it was a romantic suspense, Mary might be a police officer or private investigator working on a case involving John in some way. He’d either be her number one suspect or her ally in some form. They’d have to work together, rescuing one another in one way or another before sharing an explosive night of passion and discovering that they were meant for one another.
If it was a paranormal, Mary might be a shapeshifter trying to make her way in the human world. John might be someone who doesn’t like shifters and who hunts them down when they break the law. He’d be attracted to Mary and yet repelled by her shifting. They’d have to work around that problem before being able to move on to have a relationship.
So there you have the same couple in a variety of situations. The common theme is that romance is at the heart of the story and they all end happily, and that’s what makes a romance.
So no, you can’t pick up one romance novel and think you’ve read every other romance novel out there. They’re different, and there’s something out there for everyone, no matter what type of story you like to read.

What sells...

There’s always talk at the annual RWA conference about what’s hot and what’s not in Romance fiction. Paranormal romances are on an all-time high right now. In case you don’t know, that means witches, vampires, shape-shifters, elves, faeries, anything magical or “other-worldly.” Erotic Romance is on the rise (no pun intended), too. We also hear that historical is “dead,” though I refuse to believe that! I, for one, LOVE historical romances – though I don’t know that I would have the patience to do enough research to write one, even though I minored in history in college. {g}

Publishers frequently try to predict what the next big trend will be. Sometimes they’re right and sometimes they just miss the mark. Lines open and accept submissions one day and the next you don’t know where they went, what’s happened to those stories, those authors…case in point, the Bombshell line from Harlequin. If you aren’t familiar, think Lara Croft, Tomb Raider – the main character is a female who takes no crap, dishes out a butt-kicking if needed and who knows her way around guns, boats and cars. The Bombshell line was going great guns (from a non-publisher standpoint, anyway) and then we heard it was folding. The sales just weren’t there, apparently.

What will be the next big trend? Who knows? There’s a writer I know who did her research on a particular line from Harlequin – she found out what kind of stories they’d sold in the past with great success then set about tweaking her manuscript to include most, if not all, of those elements in her novel. It worked – she sold that manuscript.

Romantic suspense is hot. Romantic comedy is hot. Erotica is hot (again, no pun intended). Paranormal is hot. Sweet romances are still big sellers and Medical Romances are always on the shelves…

In other words, I don’t think it matters what you write as long as the story is GOOD and well-written. Trends come and go, but good books will always sell.

Skimming off the fat

Writing is an exercise in discipline.

When you sit down with an idea for a story, you know all there is to know about your characters. Occasionally they'll surprise you and come up with something you weren't expecting, but generally you know where they've come from, where they're going and how they're going to get there. You also know where your story is going. You know (sort of) where the black moment will come in, you know where the tension will be, you know where the love scene or tenderness will come in. That's plotting, right? Well, here's where the discipline comes in.

Since you know everything there is to know about your character, you want to share that with the reader. However, the reader doesn't want to know that the reason your character doesn't eat salads is because of a food fight when they were 13 that resulted in them wearing ranch salad dressing stained shoes for a week. That's just an example, but NOT telling your reader that is definitely skimming the fat from your story.

I have a tendency to do what's called an info dump. There's just so much I want you to know about my character and their life up to this point that I tend to toss it all into the story. You, the reader, don't care about that. You want to know what's happening NOW. I've had to be very conscious of NOT doing info dumps in stories.

George Santayana said, "Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it." I'm trying to avoid that in my writing. Yes, it matters to me that the main character won't eat salad, no it doesn't matter to you the reader. You'll simply think I'm showing you a character quirk and you won't delve into the "why."

So, I'm skimming off the fat in my current writing. You'll never know the entire history of the character you're reading about unless you write to me specifically and ask me about that character...even then I may not share it all.