PRATICAL ADVICE FROM AN
INTERNATIONAL
BESTSELLING ROMANCE WRITER
This edition published in 2004
Copyright © Valerie Parv 1993, 1994, 1999, 2004
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10% of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.
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National Library of Australia
Cataloguing-in-Publication entry:
Parv, Valerie.
The art of romance writing.
2nd ed.
Bibliography.
Includes index.
ISBN 1 74114 374 8
1. Love stories – Authorship. 2. Fiction – Authorship. I. Title.
808.385
Typeset in 11.5/13.5 pt Granjon by Midland Typesetters,
Maryborough Printed by Griffin Press, South Australia
Illustration: Paul Parv; Plot chart p. 141.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For my husband, Paul,
with love,
and for all the writers who tell me
this is their favourite book on writing.
I wish you every success.
Preface
1 Why romance?
Who reads romance fiction?
Can men write romances?
Chick lit
Romantic comedy
Paranormal romances
Single-title romances
Erotica
Inspirational romances
Mastering the art
Submitting your manuscript
2 Sense and sensuality
People and places
The fantastic hero
Love and sex
Strictly inspirational
Sweet romances
From spicy to erotica
Sexual tension checkpoints
3 Characterisation
Naming the baby
Know your characters inside and out
External profile
Getting inside your characters
Bring on the hero
Internal profile
Character questionnaire
Memory reveals character
Flashbacks
Character checklist
4 Viewpoint
Omniscient
First person
Third person subjective
Multiple viewpoint
Viewpoint as a writing tool
Expressing viewpoint
Which viewpoint should you use?
How to switch viewpoints
Viewpoint checklist
5 Dialogue
Claim the reader’s attention
Allow characters to reveal themselves
Impart information
Add pace and tension, create mood
Move the story along
Variety in dialogue
Stated, averred or declared?
Avoid repeating information
‘She said angrily’
Dialogue presentation
Dialogue checklist
6 Plot and conflict
Old ideas, new plots
Internal or external conflict?
Outline the romance
Some writing hints
Story structure
What happens next?
The importance of pace
Happy endings
Plot checklist
Plot chart
7 Setting
Professions
Getting the facts right
Art brief
8 Query and outline
How to present your synopsis
The proposal
The query letter
Sample synopsis
Sample query letter
9 A pitch in time
Keep it simple
Ten-point plan
Questions to ask
10 To market, to market
How to do a word count
The professional approach
Writers’ organisations in Australia and overseas
Magazines and websites of interest to romance writers
Critique services
International manuscript appraisals
Contests
Some frequent queries answered
Romance-friendly publishers
11 Questions and answers
Appendix I Sample writers’ guidelines
Appendix II How to submit a novel
Select bibliography
Index
Depression and squalor are for those under twenty-five, they can take it, they even like it, they still have enough time left. But real life is bad for you, hold it in your hand long enough, and you’ll get pimples and become feeble-minded. You’ll go blind.
Margaret Atwood, ‘What is a woman’s novel’,
Portfolio, December 1986
This quote appeared in the first edition of The Art of Romance Writing and it remains one of the most eloquent defences of the romance novel I have read, even if Margaret Atwood didn’t have this purpose in mind when she wrote it. Too much real life is bad for you. Everyone needs an escape, a safety valve, where dreams and fantasies can be indulged before we return to the fray.
Romance novels have been fulfilling this purpose since the time of Jane Austen and Samuel Richardson. As the world grows increasingly turbulent, we need an escape from reality more than ever. As well, romances can be the modern purveyors of our ancient myths and legends, making their role an important one indeed.
The publishers of romances still provide the most accessible market for a new novelist. Not that this translates as easy; far from it. Above all, your book must be a great read that keeps the editor turning pages. Every editor says they’re looking for a terrific book. Although different editors have different definitions of what this means, the book must first excite you, before it can appeal to anyone else.
John Boon, grandson of the founder of Mills & Boon, says the London office alone receives between 4000 and 5000 manuscripts a year, and accepts perhaps ten or twelve. Thankfully, I didn’t know this when I started out and was fortunate to be accepted on my first submission. Even so, this acceptance took a year and launched me on a learning curve which continues today, after publishing around 60 romances and twenty non-fiction books. One of the fascinations of romance writing is that it has so many facets that one can never fully master them all.
When I started writing romances, there was almost no practical information available to new writers. Most learning was of the ‘hands-on’ variety and, most painful of all, trial and error. In an attempt to help other writers short-cut this stage, I wrote the first edition of The Art of Romance Writing. Since then, the popularity of romance novels has grown around the world, and the genre now encompasses a variety of sub-genres such as chick lit, inspirationals, romantic comedy and erotica. All of these sub-genres provide new and exciting markets for would-be romance writers, and each demands a careful study of their specialised requirements before submission.
With a readership of millions around the world, romance writing is worthy of your best efforts. More than the much-vaunted financial gains to be made is the satisfaction of knowing that readers in countries as far apart as Iceland, Turkey, Japan, Korea, Russia and Brazil are reading your words, learning a little about your favourite backgrounds and sharing your treasured fantasies.
It may encourage you to know that you’re in excellent company. Mills & Boon didn’t start publishing romances until the 1930s. Its stable of authors reads like a ‘who’s who’ of the writing profession. Hugh Walpole and P.G. Wode-house, Jack London, Georgette Heyer, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Rosamund Pilcher (of The Shell Seekers fame) were all published by Mills & Boon. One of its first works was the English translation of Gaston Leroux’s Phantom of the Opera.
I recommend using this list as inspiration when the going becomes hard—as it always does at some point. Every writer suffers from insecurity, fear of failure, writer’s block and a myriad of other frustrating conditions. We write in spite of them. I was once asked, ‘How do you know when you start writing that you can do it?’ The answer is that you start writing to find out if you can do it. There’s no other way.
In the creation of this edition I owe thanks to a great many people, certainly too many to mention individually. Paul, Leigh, Des and Margie, your support is still appreciated a decade on. My students at various writing courses over the years have taught me as much as I have taught them. My editors have further rounded out my literary education, starting with the legendary Jacqui Bianchi; and my agent/manager, Linda Tate, continues to be a tower of strength on my creative journey.
Also, thank you to my fellow romance writers in Australia and around the world for generously letting me quote from your books and your experiences; to all at Harlequin Mills & Boon and Silhouette for your support; to the members of the romance writing organisations mentioned in these pages—new writers can do yourselves no greater favour than to join one or more of them for encouragement, support and professional development; to the published and aspiring members of eHarlequin.com, especially those in the dark reaches of the Bat Cave; and to Patrick Gallagher and the team at Allen & Unwin, notably Alex Nahlous and Annette Barlow, this book’s godmother twice over.
Valerie Parv
Canberra 204
‘My daughter wants to write romantic fiction,’ said the voice on the phone. ‘Can you tell me the formula so I can pass it on to her?’
I’ve been asked this often enough to wish that there was a formula I could give them. It would be easier than trying to explain that romance novels of the type published by Harlequin, Mills & Boon and Silhouette are not as easy to write as they are to read. There is no recipe which will guarantee fame and fortune. The so-called formula is merely a set of conventions which differentiate romance from, say, thrillers or detective novels. Within the conventions, detailed in this book, you can write your own story. In fact, publishers urge you to write the book you would enjoy reading, rather than slavishly imitating what’s already on the market.
It’s a lot like baking a cake. Just as a number of cooks may start with the same ingredients and all produce different results, you can take the basic ingredients for a romance novel and work them into an original story. The reader may know from the beginning that the characters will live happily ever after but you should make them worry that maybe, this time, they won’t get together. The course of true love certainly should not run smoothly—as in predictably—from beginning to end. In many contemporary romances, particularly the longer single-title novels, it’s often sufficient to provide a satisfactory resolution,rather than a true happy-ever-after. Marriage proposals are far from a necessity. In the chick lit sub-genre, editors talk about Mr Right for Now, rather than Mr Right.
Romances are not all alike any more than spy stories, westerns or science fiction novels are all alike. They are grouped together because they offer the reader certain common elements; hence the description genre fiction, meaning fiction of a certain kind.
American author Jayne Ann Krentz says,
At the core of each genre lie a group of ancient myths unique to that genre. The most popular writers in those genres continue to mine those ancient myths and legends for the elements that make their particular genre work. Westerns and mysteries incorporate the old chivalric tales. The horror genre relies on the gut-wrenching myths of the supernatural that have been around since the days when people lived in caves. Science fiction uses the myths of exploration and fear of the ‘other’ that have long fascinated an aggressive species bent on conquering new territory. At the heart of the romance novel lie the ancient myths that deal with the subject of male–female bonding.
Stories become myths because they embody values that are crucially important to the survival of the species. There is no subject more imperative to that survival than the creation of a successful pair bond. The romance novel captures the sense of importance and the sheer excitement of that elemental relationship as no other genre can.
We don’t expect our romances to work out as well in real life as they do in novels, any more than fans of crime fiction expect every crime to be solved. We read romances, as Krentz says, to reinforce the goals and values associated with our survival as a species.
This closeness to our history may explain why romance novels are so often denigrated. All of us, male and female, want to be loved and appreciated by someone special. It may be such a deep need that we trivialise it rather than admit how important it really is to us.
Lofty ideals? Perhaps. But surely there are more rational explanations for the worldwide popularity of romance novels than the usual one of escapist entertainment. Entertainment value alone hardly explains why almost half of all the paperbacks sold today are romances. According to one editor, an Australian paperback novel can expect to sell between 3000 and 5000 copies. Romance publishers traditionally pay low royalties (between 4 and 6 per cent of the cover price) but worldwide sales can number in the millions.
More than 200 million women a year read Harlequin books. This is ten times more than the entire population of Australia. It’s a market which boggles the imagination.
It’s a common misconception that romance readers belong to one age group or socioeconomic background. Harlequin’s research shows that women of all ages read romances, and that half of them are aged between 25 and 44. A third are employed full time; 22 per cent are single and working; a third are housewives; and the rest are students and retired people. In other words, romances are read by women of all ages and backgrounds. Many are well educated with high family incomes. Twenty per cent read a book a day and 40 per cent read a romance novel every two days. Australian author Dorothy Cork credits the women’s liberation movement with helping to bring romance reading ‘out of the closet’. These days, readers don’t care if they are seen reading Surrender in Paradise rather than Paradise Lost. As another writer observed, there’s no safer sex than a romance novel.
With such a discerning readership, you can’t afford to be cynical or tongue-in-cheek in your approach. A Silhouette editor points out that those who read and enjoy romance novels often make the best writers. I would go further and say that if you can’t find genuine enjoyment in reading romance novels, you will have a hard time writing them at all. I still read several new titles every month to keep up with trends.
These days there’s a vast choice of sub-genres, single-title novels and imprints known as ‘lines’ (branded ranges of books such as Silhouette Desire or Harlequin Intrigue) catering to different readerships. Read a variety of books until you find one you feel comfortable with. This is probably the kind of book you should initially try writing.
While reading, look for differences such as the level of sensuality, whether the background is exotic or only mentioned in passing, how many viewpoint characters are used, and whether the focus is entirely on the romance or includes other story elements. I suggest you read each book twice, once for entertainment and again to analyse structure and content. What are the ages and occupations of the characters? Are there any suspense or mystery elements? Do the characters make love or does the action stop at the bedroom door?
You can learn a great deal from the books you dislike. Which parts bored you? Why? Was the story predictable? How might the author have avoided the problem? Did the characters irritate you? If you were the author, how would you have handled the characters to avoid irritation?
Analysing the books you don’t like can be as fruitful as studying those you do enjoy. When you find an imprint you like, check inside for the publisher’s name and address, usually located after the title page. Write or email the editor of your chosen imprint and request the publisher’s writers’ guidelines—also called tip sheets, particularly in the United States. An example of a tip sheet is included as Appendix I to give you an idea of what to expect. The tip sheet usually sets out basic requirements such as length, acceptable backgrounds, preferred age range of hero and heroine, desirable viewpoints, use of secondary characters and subplots, and the level of sexual involvement between the main characters.
Some publishers leave such choices up to the author, and others spell out whether the characters may have sex before marriage. Incidentally, the traditional ‘marriage of convenience’ plotline, in which the hero and heroine marry for practical reasons and gradually fall in love with each other, which appears in so many older romance novels, was often a way of allowing the characters to make love within the moral framework of the time. It is still used to this end where sex before marriage is unpopular with a certain readership. The publishers don’t make these rules lightly. They have usually done their market research and established what their readers want, so it’s better to write for an imprint which suits your personal style than to expect it to change to accommodate the book you want to write.
Men can and do write romances successfully, although usually under a female pseudonym so their work isn’t prejudged on the basis of their gender. Men also suffer from discrimination, sometimes.
One of the best-known male writers was the late Tom Huff, who wrote as Jennifer Wilde. Several married couples share pen-names, giving a nice balance of male and female viewpoint within their books. For a man to write romance successfully, he has to train himself to think and feel from a woman’s point of view. Editors say that male writers tend to use harsher vocabulary—words like pushing, pulling and tugging—in their love scenes; a woman might write of stroking, caressing and enfolding. A male writer must be able to focus on the woman’s feelings during a love scene.
For example, few women think of their breasts as their most attractive feature yet a male writer may have the heroine think about ‘her beautiful breasts’ during a love scene, taking the reader out of the heroine’s viewpoint.
Not only male writers make this mistake. In my early books, I used to write about what ‘they’ were doing, taking the all-seeing, godlike point of view rather than focusing on what my heroine was thinking and feeling at that moment. Now I write ‘she’ instead of ‘they’. The chapter on viewpoint explores this important technique in more detail.
Mike Hinkemeyer writes suspense novels under his own name and romance novels as Vanessa Royale. He says he tends to dwell on the darker side of human nature, while his alter ego, Vanessa, is more trusting. Mike says he is the sort of red-blooded male who would appeal to Vanessa.
A useful book for exploring female sexuality is Women, Sex and Pornography by Beatrice Faust. This Australian study shows in academic terms how women’s view of sexuality differs from men’s. In a chapter entitled ‘King Kong had XY chromosomes’, Faust compares the body traits which men imagine that women admire with those they really do admire. Twenty-one per cent of men in her study said that a muscular chest and shoulders was most admired. Only 1 per cent of women chose this body feature, while 39 per cent chose a man’s buttocks, specifically when they were described as small and sexy.
Beatrice Faust says that a woman watching a sexy movie tends to imagine what it would be like to change places with the woman in it, even changing the story a little so it meshes with her own life and becomes more credible. She might also feel she is learning lessons she can put into practice in her own romantic life. A man, on the other hand, ‘objectifies. He takes the girl down off the screen and has sex with her on the spot’. The danger for male romance writers is clear. While male viewpoint is generally welcome, you must avoid putting yourself exclusively in the hero’s place. You are writing for a largely female readership who want to vicariously fall in love with the hero.
Among many other useful books which can help both male and female writers to create strong, believable characters are The Psychology of Romantic Love by Nathaniel Branden, Why Men Are the Way They Are by Warren Farrell and any of the Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus series by John Gray. I am endlessly intrigued by the different ways in which men and women view the world. There’s no need to fear running out of story material.
According to former film producer, teacher and broadcasting manager, Valerie Gray, now editor of MIRA Books:
The interesting thing about romance fiction is that the number of sub-genres is growing by leaps and bounds. Chick lit, kick-ass women, inspirational, romantic fantasy, paranormal are some examples of the kinds of interests our readers have—and we are responding to that. I think we will continue to see books that feature strong, independent women who lead interesting lives, and by interesting, I don’t mean that they are super-rich or super-gorgeous or super-lucky. Mostly our heroines are people just like you and me—ordinary people who are capable of extraordinary things.
So what are these sub-genres that are growing ‘by leaps and bounds’? The most radical is the sub-genre dubbed ‘chick lit’, shorthand for chick literature, because it is primarily read by young women in their 20s and 30s.
Inspired by the 1996 bestselling novel Bridget Jones’s Diary (Fielding), the chick lit sub-genre is ‘setting the pace for an otherwise struggling fiction industry’, according to American ABC news journalist, Heather Cabot. ‘In the $23 billion US publishing industry, chick lit books earned publishers more than $71 million in 2002.’
Initially, the books followed the Bridget Jones pattern of single women working their way through the modern minefield of careers and personal relationships with varying degrees of success. Readers typically say they enjoy the books because they reflect the reality of their everyday lives. Now chick lit itself is fragmenting into ‘mummy lit’ and ‘baby lit’ where the characters explore themes like motherhood and parenting, while still maintaining the true-to-life narratives and humour of the originals. Former publisher and manuscript assessor Brian Cook added ‘biz chick lit’ to the list, which he describes as chick lit set in a high-powered business environment.
Chick lit and its derivatives are not simply category romances featuring a 20-something heroine and lots of brand name-dropping. The sub-genre has its own distinctive language and characteristics reflecting the lives and times of its readers. Most are written in the first person, although this is not a requirement. The language must be intelligent and witty, with plenty of self-deprecating humour. Also, the grammar police have to learn to relax and enjoy the creative use of language and the capitalisation of everyday nouns, turning them into labels such as Helen Fielding’s Smug Marrieds in Bridget Jones’s Diary. These narrative touches help to differentiate chick lit from more traditional forms of romance.
But make no mistake, they are still romances. Bridget and her counterparts are still looking for Mr Right, even if life forces them to settle for Mr Right for Now. And Bridget Jones in her turn is a modern incarnation of Jane Austen’s Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice.
As Zareen Jaffrey, editorial assistant for chick lit line Red Dress Ink, points out, you still need to write a novel all your own. Publishers want distinctive voices, not clones of Helen Fielding. You need to create a heroine with real-life problems, and show readers how she works through them. Dating may not be her whole concern. She may well be married with a career and even children, provided she is on a journey to her future that readers can share.
Readers should recognise themselves and their lives in your character’s personal qualities and life concerns. The story will be complex and the ending unpredictable. That’s probably the main difference between chick lit and traditional romances. The men and the roadblocks you place in the heroine’s way should keep editor and reader guessing as to how it will all work out—or even if it will.
A further development from chick lit is the ‘kick-ass’ heroine and storylines found in lines such as Silhouette’s Bombshell. These are female action–adventure novels of 80 000 to 90 000 words in which a strong, savvy heroine saves the day.
The heroine may find herself in dangerous, often high-stakes situations and has the ability to get herself and others out of trouble by using her own skills. While the books contain romantic subplots and the heroine does get her man in the end, the romance is secondary to the action–adventure elements. The conclusion needs to be satisfactory and ‘take the relationship to the next level’ but does not necessarily end in marriage. Like chick lit, the action–adventure romance has evolved to reflect the needs and concerns of contemporary readers for whom marriage is an ideal, but not necessarily attainable or sustainable.
Rosie Koop, Publishing Manager of Harlequin in Australia, says that it’s important for chick lit and kick-ass books to have ‘the wow factor’, an attention-grabbing concept which is both original and provocative. Characters should be empathetic and engaging, and the situations you place your heroine in must resonate with the reader as reflective of their life. Publishers seeking chick lit submissions include Red Dress Ink, New American Library (NAL), Kensington Publishing Group, Pocket Books and Random House Australia.
This has been emerging as a sub-genre over the last few years with mainstream publishers such as St. Martin’s Press and lines like Harlequin’s Duet line, and its successor, Flipside. Inspired by the success of television shows and movies like My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Will and Grace and Friends, romantic comedy novels place fun and likable characters in real-life dilemmas, while still maintaining a fairly traditional romantic core.
The difference is in your handling of the narrative. The mood is usually fast-paced, with little in the way of introspection. There is room for writers to develop non-traditional plots and secondary characters provided they complement the central romance.
While specialised lines may be devoted exclusively to romantic comedy, it can also be found within more traditional lines. Harlequin have created a subcategory called Tango, as a home for category-length romances featuring less traditional elements such as humour. An example is Liz Fielding’s City Girl in Training. In mainstream fiction, authors such as Jennifer Crusie have made a specialty out of romantic comedy with titles like Faking It, described on the cover as ‘bright, funny, sexy and wise’, and Stephanie Bond’s Our Husband, also described as ‘fresh, funny and sexy’, has the characteristic elements of romantic comedy.
According to Romance Writers of America, these are ‘romances containing other-worldly elements such as magic, mystic characters or fantasy and science fiction elements’. Time-travel books, where characters travel between past and present or present and future, are also included in this sub-genre. An example is Merline Lovelace’s Somewhere in Time. In this book, an air force pilot brings her jet down in a bizarre windstorm and finds herself living in Roman times two thousand years in the past and falling for Lucius, senior centurion of the Roman Empire.
Author Kristin Hannah says, ‘The future of these books is as unlimited as the future of romance itself. Our readers love epic fantasies, dark Gothics with a supernatural twist, time travels, futuristics. The more of these that are written and published, the greater the demand.’
As with all sub-genres, you should only write them because you enjoy their special challenges and requirements, rather than trying to fit market trends. Reading widely in the areas that interest you is the best way to start. Identify the conventions that make paranormals work. How do the authors make magic believable, for example? In a time-travel book, how long does the time-shifted character spend adjusting to the change before getting on with the story? How is the time shift achieved to make it convincing? How is the romance resolved to everyone’s satisfaction? Even time travel and magic require rules and, once established, they must be consistent.
Your paranormal elements must be integral to the plot, and should not be able to be removed without damaging the story. In Nora Roberts’s series The Donovan Legacy, the books would not have worked if the lead characters had not been witches or, as she termed it, had elvan blood. Imagine J.R.R.Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings being set anywhere but Middle Earth? Or Anne Rice’s books without the vampire elements. You aren’t writing an ordinary tale where the characters just happen to be vampires or time travellers. The paranormal elements must enhance and enrich the story.
According to single-title and Superromance author Brenda Novak, the main difference between single-title novels and romances written for a particular line is reader expectation.
Lines have traditionally indicated the kind of experience the reader can expect. Thus a book flagged ‘sweet’ can be assumed to contain very little explicit sex or pre-marital lovemaking. Single-title romances are not so readily defined. Each book stands alone on its own merits. As Rosie Koop says, ‘The brand name is the author.’
Marketing of single-titles is also approached differently. The books are more likely to be issued in trade paperback size, may be promoted more extensively by publishers, and tend to stay on bookstore shelves longer than the average one-month shelf life of category romance novels.
Single-title books, sometimes grouped together as ‘women’s fiction’, retain romance as a central element, but will also contain subplots and well-developed secondary characters. Says Koop, ‘The depth and complexity must be larger.’ However, the differences between category romances and single-titles is narrowing all the time.
Short romances range from 50 000 words to 85 000, whereas single-titles start from 90 000 to 150 000. This gives you room to explore more complex themes and subplots, and to experiment with more detailed settings and edgier storylines.
However, it’s not a good idea to take your rejected category novel and try to ‘stretch’ it to fit a longer line. Adding subplots for the sake of them can make the story confusing. The subplot should be integral to the main story, demonstrating different aspects of the main characters, or otherwise adding depth (not just length) to the story.
Secondary characters should also enhance the main action, adding complexity and interest to make the story more interesting.
Single-titles can encapsulate everything from historical romances like those written by New York Times bestselling author, Stephanie Laurens, to quirky contemporaries in the Jennifer Crusie mould. There is also room for multicultural themes, romantic comedy and fantasy/paranormal elements. In a recent Harlequin acquisition, the hero is a statue come to life, Koop says.
Most of the publishers listed in this book are open to submissions for single-title romances. In the case of Harlequin’s HQN line debuting in late 2004, no agent is required and authors are invited to submit a synopsis and three sample chapters, as specified in the writers’ guidelines available from Harlequin or on the web.
Years ago I taught a workshop on romance writing at Sancta Sophia College, Sydney University. Apart from an interesting juxtaposition of subject and venue, I was intrigued to hear one of the other tutors tell students that in a romance novel ‘you don’t even get to kiss the horse’.
Aside from why the heroine would want to kiss a horse when there’s a hunky hero on hand, this statement reflects a basic misconception that, until recently, romance heroines have all been chaste and virginal.
This hasn’t been true for the whole twenty or more years I’ve been writing and studying the field. Romance writers have been pushing the envelope of what’s permissible at about the same rate that society has been doing so. My earliest romance novels encapsulated premarital sex, abused wives, war neurosis and adoption issues, so they are far from new elements.
These days, depending on the line you’re writing for, there are almost no taboos or language that can’t be used somewhere within the vast panoply of romance fiction. Naturally, if you’re writing a sweet romance, your characters must meet reader expectations of language and morality. Premarital sex is rarely an option, although the characters no longer need to be virgins. Rather, as Harlequin once phrased it, the question simply need not arise.
At the other end of the spectrum is erotica, such as Harlequin’s Blaze line, and books published by Ellora’s Cave. The latter defines their books as Romantica, a trademarked term meaning ‘any work of literature that is both romantic and sexually explicit. Within this genre, a man and a woman develop “in love” feelings for one another that culminate in a monogamous relationship.’
Up to this point, there is little difference between traditional romance fiction and erotica. However, true erotica, even Romantica, is likely to be expressed in more earthy and frank language, and the characters’ sexual experiences are likely to be more adventurous than your average category novel.
Some taboos still remain, however. Most publishers of erotica will not consider books dealing with paedophilia, crude descriptions of bodily functions, and practices that most reasonable adults are likely to consider perverse. This is the main point of difference between erotica and true pornography which has almost none of these limitations. Ellora’s Cave also says it will not consider strict erotica without romance.
Called ‘romance without the blush’ on the Spacecoast Authors of Romance website, www.authorsofromance . com / inspirational.htm, these novels reflect nondenomi-national Christian values and beliefs.
Romance Writers of America defines inspirational romances as ‘a romance novel with religious faith as a significant element of the story’. Publishers include Steeple Hill Books, Barbour Publishing, Harvest House, Tyndale House, Warner Faith and Zondervan. Details of these and other publishers of inspirational romance can be found in the chapter, ‘To Market, To Market’.