On Writing Romance_ How to Craft a Novel That Sells - Leigh Michaels [22]
paying closer attention than usual as they try to figure out the rules of your universe, they're more likely to notice if you slip up and violate your own logic or laws.
Once you set up a rule for your world, that rule becomes like a law of physics and you have to live with it—the rule can't come and go depending on how convenient it is to the plot. Once you've set up the conditions that make your time machine work, you can't have it stop working under those same conditions just because you don't want the heroine to time-travel at that exact moment. If your vampires need to seek out a victim with a matching blood type, then you can't later have them ignore that rule unless you have a convincing explanation for why it's no longer necessary.
Your Research vs. Reader Perceptions
Sometimes you'll know your material cold—and you'll be absolutely correct— but your readers' previous experience disagrees. You may know there were cattle drives in sixteenth-century Scotland, but your readers are equally sure you must have been thinking of Texas instead. You may know that in big-city children's hospitals, neonatal doctors work regular shifts and are never more than thirty seconds away from a preemie's incubator. But your readers in West Podunk, where there's a ten-bed hospital and one pediatrician on call in the next county, can't imagine it. It's not much comfort to be right if your readers toss the book aside because they're convinced you're talking through your hat.
In cases like that, the burden of proof lies with the author. You not only have to show the cattle drive or the neonatal doctor, you have to convince the readers that you know what you're talking about. You can do that by making the picture so plain that it's impossible not to believe you. Or you can do it by bringing up the doubts yourself—maybe have a visitor in the neonatal unit ask how long it will take to get a doctor—which gives you a reason to explain.
Your readers may still think you're making it up, but at least they'll know you didn't create the scene out of ignorance.
1. Look back at the romance novels you've been reading. What aspects of the stories do you think the authors needed to research?
2. Where might they have found the information they drew on to write the books?
3. What research sources will you need to consult before you're ready to begin writing?
4. What sources might be helpful during the writing process?
Even if you're a seat-of-the-pants, explore-as-you-go sort of writer, there are a few things you need to know about your story before you start seriously writing chapter one. Unsuccessful romances—especially the many that writers start but never complete—stall out because the writer didn't know enough about the basic framework that holds every romance novel together.
Though it's nearly impossible to have every detail worked out ahead of time, if you don't have a pretty good idea of your framework, you'll be apt to wander in frustration with a story that goes nowhere. Or you'll write chapter one over and over, trying to make it work, until you're heartily sick of your characters.
So what are the basics you need to know up front?
Let's review the definition we established for the romance novel: A romance novel is the story of a man and a woman who, while they're solving a problem that threatens to keep them apart, discover that the love they feel for each other is the sort that comes along only once in a lifetime; this discovery leads to a permanent commitment and a happy ending.
This definition summarizes the four crucial basics that make up a romance novel:
1. a hero and a heroine to fall in love
2. a problem that creates conflict and tension between them and threatens to keep them apart
3. a developing love that is so special it comes about only once in a lifetime
4. a resolution in which the problem is solved and the couple is united
These things are the girders that hold up your entire story. Like the steel skeleton of a skyscraper, each piece depends on the others. If one is weak or flawed, the whole structure