How NOT To Write A Romance - Part 3

Okay, here's the last of the list

12.Travelogues – or ‘I’ve been to Greece/Spain/Italy . . . you know'
Background detail should always stay in the background
The romance novel is not a travelogue, or a history lesson
Don’t use novel as polemic – to preach a cause you believe in, however deeply.
It’s a romance – the story of a relationship

13.The unbelievable Other Woman
I've mentioned her briefly above - but if you are going to go ahead with the overworked and overwritten 'Other Woman' then:

If your heroine believes the hero has another woman, give her good reasons for doing so – not just because :
She see them together for one moment
They were together in the past – but she will need evidence in the present
The other woman says she is
Seeing them together when he said he was somewhere else
Other people say she is
Because she’s icily beautiful and a bitch – does this man have no taste ?


14. Too much
Too much trauma trying to mean emotion
Too much of scenes with friends/mothers/aunts/ etc
Too much narrative
Too much description – food, clothing etc
Trying to use every hook all at once

15. The Incredible Disappearing Hero
Long sections with the hero and heroine apart - this is usually when she spends page after page talking to her friend/mother/aunt etc (see above)
The hero who never explains where he’s been
The husband/lover/one night stand who wasn’t there the next day –but we don’t know why - and of course she’s pregnant

16. Point of View problems
I don't mind 'head-hopping' - changing POV in a scene - or more than once in a scene at all
What I do mind is a change that isn't signalled in anyway - where the reader has to pause and work out 'who thought that' or 'who said that?'
And if you are going to put in a hero's POV - please make it sound like it might be the POV of a man.
Would a man really think that 'her eyes were the blue of the pattern on Delft china?'
If you let your reader in on what your hero/heroine is really feeling - make sure you also tell them why he/she isn't the other character that

And don't show a hero coming to realise just why he loves the heroine in long narrative passages of his thoughts - but neglecting to explain this to her. And then when he suddenly announces that he loves her she just accepts it.

17. Watch your language
Don’t write the sorts of clichés that mocking critics like to pick up and declare are easily found in romance novels – avoid things like :
Heaving bosoms
Fainting heroines
Heroes who say ‘You silly little thing’
His throbbing thighs
His pulsing/throbbing/ anything manhood
Rosy tipped peaks
His surging man root (!!!)

And yes, I have seen all of these in genuine manuscripts - one poor heroine fainted so often I was convinced she had a brain tumour at least - but then the way she behaved left me convinced she didn't have a brain to have a tumour on.


Can I remind all would-be NWS entrants that the closing date is 31st August this year - not September.