On Writing Romance_ How to Craft a Novel That Sells - Leigh Michaels [46]
• Follow the ten-page rule. Never let your hero and heroine be physically separated for more than ten pages at a time. Sometimes this is stated as the five-page rule, or even the three-page rule; the point is that your hero and heroine can't interact if they're not in the same location (or at least in contact, perhaps by phone or even e-mail). If you have a scene in which one is on stage alone or with secondary characters, follow it up with a scene in which both are involved.
• Tweak the plot to keep the hero and heroine together. When one of them is involved in a given situation, how can the other be brought in as well? If the hero is a ranger out to catch poachers, give your heroine a reason to be out in the national forest near the hero, instead of safely at home. Is she painting calendar art of the wildlife? Studying flowers for her botany class? Maybe she's got a deadline, so not only has she disobeyed his request to stay out of the danger zone, she's brought his kid along. (Now there's a potential conflict.)
• Keep the hero and heroine alone together whenever possible. Keep the focus on your couple and their relationship by sending the kid out to play or having the friend excuse herself. If the hero and heroine are in a crowded room, have them move off to a quiet corner. The dialogue will be better, as well as easier to write, and it will help you keep the relationship at center stage.
• Show the hero and heroine in a variety of settings and moods. Your romantic couple shouldn't always be at each other's throats. Real people (the ones we want to be around) aren't angry all the time, and your characters shouldn't be either.
• Use dialogue between the hero and heroine to insert action or information that is important to the plot but tangential to the romance. If the
heroine and her friend make an important discovery that seriously affects the plot action, you can show the two women at that moment. Hut it might be
better for the story if, instead, you wrote a scene in which the heroine tells the hero what they've discovered.
• Put your hero and heroine in a situation they can't escape. Create a situation that requires them to deal with each other, no matter how much they'd like to just walk away.
Think about the romance novels you've been studying. How did each hero and heroine feel about each other on first meeting? At what point in the story did you know that the heroine wanted a lifetime relationship with the hero? When did you know that the hero wanted a lifetime relationship with the heroine? At that point in the story, were there still problems that made you wonder whether the two would be able reach a happy ending?
How did the author balance attraction, awareness, and conflict? What steps did the relationship go through between first meeting and happy ending? What evidence did you see of the couple's growing attachment to each other?
1. What character traits does your heroine find attractive in your hero? What character traits does your hero find attractive in your heroine?
2. How do they feel about each other when they meet? Why do they feel that way?
3. How do their feelings for each other change? What incidents make them see the other person differently?
THE RESOLUTION
How are you going to resolve the issues you've created between your characters? How will you find solutions to their difficulties and disagreements?
If you're dealing with characters whose core values—the things they find most important in life—are wildly different, you'd be wise to figure out how they'll reach a compromise before you get into the story.
If he's a mink rancher and she's an animal-rights activist—and each has tried to convince the other to think differently all through the book—how are you going to solve that problem in a believable way? There's not much room for compromise in that situation—if