Romancing the Blog | Romance Authors and Readers Who Blog

by Mari Cody

We all know of the fallacy that writing Romance is easy. I would dare say that there are many in the field that found ourselves thinking it in the past.

It seems to me that the belief stems from the impression that Romance writers only have to have one plot and somehow one plot is easier than having to juggle a bunch of sub-plots. I know that it is wrong and a small part of me always has, but the misinformation was there in my mind.

The learning started when a few friends had a bit of drama in their lives. The events that occurred struck me as good for a story. I have been working at publication in the Fantasy field and have studied to that end. Before I ever thought of writing Romance, I was reading this blog (good writing advice doesn’t depend on genre). Now I found myself with a story that, after some tweaking, spicing and separation from real events, would be best suited to Romance. It was
an idea that I felt I had to write.

I knew I had to relearn several things. I am not really sure where I got the impression that this would be easy, but I think it came from the above mentioned fallacy. I am sure that it is not the only generic misinformation in my head, but I am quite open to being wrong.

The path to writing Romance started simply enough. It seemed to me that my first step would be in hunting down publishers, checking out the imprints and reading the guidelines for each. I knew there was more than one type of Romance and that having a ‘target audience’ would help with shaping the story beyond an idea. I had not realize there were so quite many.

I started with one publisher and their list of imprints. From that one source I found 17
possibilities (having knocked out Historical and such as not being appropriate to the story). I had thought that there would be a simple grouping of Historical, Modern, Classic and Erotica. I could feel the water rising around me.

I scratched out the BIG imprints, the ones that don’t even list guidelines because if you have to ask then you are barking up the wrong tree. There were still too many on my list, but I read the guidelines on them all.

I realized that I needed to better define my story before I could move much further. That’s when I came across my second hurdle.

My story has four main characters, or two main and two major secondaries. Each one is integral to the overall story, but it seems just having this many shrinks the list quite a bit. Add to that the issue of most the guidelines asking for a clear, sympathetic heroine. A cast of four does not lend itself to such simplicity.

I had another problem now. My Romance story idea was turning out to be quite wrong.

I mentioned writing in passing to a coworker and found that she used to write Romance, though she never reached out for publication. I had found no writing group in my area for SF/F, but it turns out there is a long running group here for Romance. The world of Romance was opening before me and I was learning it was relatively widespread and stable. Members may not all get along all the time, but they are always out there and ready to help a newcomer.

In the end, the decision was made to split the story up. Two of the four characters are female and, although their story is shared, they have a vast difference in their point of view. Writing the two stories will both be practice and experience. Pending the results, the whole story may be put back together and rewritten as a SuperRomance.

Now I have three novels two write, instead of one. I have a support group and lots of possibilities. I stumbled into the field and have learned a lot so far, but there is always more to learn.

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