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Chapter Three - How to make your story work for you
I want to write for Mills & Boon – but where (and how!) do I start?
In 2010, the New Voices team put their heads together to come up with the top tips on getting started – read on, and feel inspired!
Before you pick up your pen (or settle down at your computer…)
Like almost everything in life a little bit of background reading goes a long way! If you want to write romance you have to love romance, otherwise how will you understand how to bring out the magic from your story?
It really is important to understand the differences between our series, and to know what readers are looking for: each series, although they are all united by romance, have different promises to the reader. For more information check out our category guidelines on www.millsandboon.co.uk and most importantly get reading!
Ok, so I’ve done my research and know what I want to write…how do I make sure my first chapter shines?
Your potential readers are busy women juggling studies, careers, families and time is precious – so you have to grab their attention with a gripping first chapter. This is even more important with the New Voices competition where your first chapter has to work extra hard to impress!
Start at a truly interesting point e.g. when your hero and heroine meet. Don’t waste valuable time telling the reader about mundane, everyday details – make sure you open with a point of change in their lives, an exciting moment, e.g. the discovery that Mr Bingley along with Mr Darcy is returning to Netherfield in Pride & Prejudice!
Captivate readers with your characters and make them care about them! It doesn’t take more than a line to realise that you love Bridget Jones and her diary.
Establish the emotional conflict so they are dying to know how it will be resolved. Think of the scene in Casablanca when Ingrid Bergman asks Sam to play As Time Goes By… This film is a masterpiece in how to feed in back story!
Get the hero and heroine on the page together…that’s what the reader really wants to see!
So, you’re confident starting, but how to make your romance stand out from the crowd? Here are our best tips from New Voices 2010…
If you type cliché and romance into Google, you get thousands of sites dedicated to the world of romance clichés – the clichés we love…and also the ones that make us throw a book across the room!
There are ways for a successful writer to use a conventional theme and twist it, and by that we mean taking the tried and tested plot and turning it on its head to deliver something with real wow factor that will help you knock readers’ socks off (can I get away with that cliché?!). We want to help you deliver something that will blow readers’ minds (see, this avoiding clichés malarkey is harder than you’d think!)
It’s not just about plots either – it’s dialogue, characters, secondary characters and most importantly author voice!
Here’s a quick cheat-sheet:
Plots You’ll often hear editors say ‘we’re looking for fresh twists on classic themes’ and we really are. But what does this mean? Well, first let’s focus on the classic. Romance conventions are a must, they only become clichés when they don’t bring their own personality along for the ride. The trick is to understand the convention before you twist it. How many stories/films/TV series/cartoons etc. feature the Cinderella storyline and how many then go on to twist it? A few examples which work are Pretty Woman, Twilight, The Holiday, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Maid in Manhattan, Working Girl, 27 Dresses, The Wedding Date. All of these featured a less than lucky heroine (or hero!), a make-over and of course a Prince Charming – but all with their own spin!
Characters Your characters are the way you can breathe life into any plot. Our advice is, if you can make the reader believe in your characters they’ll walk with you through the most fantastical of plots! I took Peter Pan to heart when he said Every time a child says, “I don’t believe in fairies”’ there is a fairy somewhere that falls down dead.’ and to this day will not say those words! I want a writer to make me believe that true love really exists. Making characters unique and believable is the key. So your hero is tall, dark and handsome – but what else is he? He doesn’t have to be perfect, but we have to understand why he’s perfect for your heroine.
Dialogue Frankly my dears, we do give a damn! Your dialogue needs to fit with your characters and not be forced. Alpha heroes need to command without being didactic…a look, a gesture, humour to push their point across… Alpha heroes ooze power and exert it in understated ways - not by shouting at heroines whimpering in the corner!
Don’t be scared to read your dialogue out loud, this helps you to see if you’d really say it in the heat of the moment…or passion! Does it make your toes curl – with embarrassment…or with glee ;-)
So when sitting down to write your own romance, don’t forget:
Understand why classic plots and romantic conventions work –then have fun with them!
It’s all about the characters – make them truly yours.
Mills & Boon is about creating fantasy out of reality. Surprise us with your characters, stories and ideas!
Stretch your imagination – let it fly! You just need faith (and a little of Tinkerbell’s fairy dust!)
Clichés are a big no-no but one romantic tradition that never gets old is the first kiss. Editor Anna Boatman fills us in on how to make your hero and heroine’s first kiss truly special…
It Started With A Kiss…
There’s nothing more disappointing than a bad first kiss, whether fictional or all-too-real. I have to confess to once throwing a book (whose author shall remain nameless and definitely wasn’t Georgette Heyer) across a room when, after making me wait for many, many chapters, the first kiss was a fleeting, crushing, non-event.
Have you ever wondered why some first kisses leave you cold, while others are page-turningly, stomach-flippingly wonderful? Well we at Romance HQ have! We are looking for first kiss scenes to make us sigh with happiness, because when they work there is simply nothing more magical than that first moment when your hero and heroine’s lips meet, whether the hero has grabbed her forcefully after pages of fabulous tension (a general departmental favourite is the first kiss in The Mummy) or the explosion of tension when two friends finally confess they want more (Joey and Pacey from Dawson’s Creek anyone?).
So, how can you aspiring writers make your first kiss between your hero and heroine sizzle rather than fizzle?
First, and most importantly - let the tension build! Anticipation is the key, and without it any kiss can never be more than a simple physical act. If the kissing comes too easily, it just won’t mean as much. Compare kissing the man at the end of a first date who you quite like, to finally getting to kiss the man you’ve been fantasising about since you first saw him by the photocopier! By the time those lips come together, your readers should be absolutely desperate for the kiss and virtually able to hear the hero and heroine’s hearts pounding!
Make the kiss characteristic. Since a great first kiss is the natural result of all the simmering tension between your hero and heroine, make sure that the moment itself reflects the dynamic you’ve been building. If your hero has been fighting himself all the way along, then let’s see in detail the moment when his control snaps and he takes her. Equally, if your heroine has been fighting the attraction out of fear, it can be fantastic to watch her decide to claim the hero for herself - use the first kiss scene to drive both characters forward in their journey.
Slow down! There’s a reason that the camera zooms in at the crucial point - viewers won’t want to miss a single moment, and if you’ve built the tension properly, neither will your readers! Take your time with this scene, give it the attention it deserves and you’ll be rewarded by a kiss scene which does proper justice to your characters.
What does it mean? A kiss is much more than two sets of lips meeting - or it should be! A proper kiss, the kind of kiss that gave the Little Mermaid her voice back, gains its emotional power from its implications. To make the moment unforgettable, show your readers that for both characters, even if they don’t consciously realise it at the time, their first kiss means that nothing in their lives will ever be the same! Whether your heroine is an innocent, trembling Regency beauty, a sassy, feisty vixen who’s never met a man capable of sweeping her off her feet until this moment, or a widow who never thought she’d give love a second chance, the real magic is in seeing that this kiss, unlike so many others, is the start of something special.
But enough with the fiction – it’s time for some secrets…and some gossip! For your reading pleasure, I’ve quizzed, bullied and slightly bribed the M&B editors and they’ve given me some 100% true first kiss stories to share with you all. Read on for the good, the great and the very, very ugly….
We started with some sweet first ever kisses: “On a beach in France, at sunset, with a boy that I’d had a crush on for aaaaages. It was on a year 6 school trip, and, lamely, no other first kiss lived up to it..”
“The boy next door when I was very young (4 or 5 yrs old) whilst hiding behind a small patio wall. Our friends saw and the boy in question (also 4 or 5 I hasten to add!) was mortified ;)”
Then I asked for some horror stories…prepare yourselves… “Aged 13, slightly gagtastic and right before the pre-teen Lothario also kissed my best friend… is working at Romance HQ a subconscious attempt to make up for this horrifying initiation into the world of romance?”
“After having a great night out with a guy he offered to drive me home, I agreed. When he walked me to the door he leaned in for the kiss… I don’t remember for the life of me what I said but he burst out in laughter and a huge amount of green snot came flying out of his nose and onto my cheek, I felt the wetness on my cheek and wiped it away, then stared at my hand in horror! He was so embarrassed he ran to the car and told his friend to drive… I never heard from him again!”
And finally, to leave on a high note, let’s hear some best ever kisses: “My first kiss with my now husband – and I’m not just saying that! Still makes me smile in a gooey way when I think of it.”
“The setting wasn’t special (his car outside my parents’ home) but it just felt like the start of something very special and it was! Can’t improve on that.”
As you can see, first kisses mean a great deal to us all, and hopefully, by this point in the story your readers’ knees will be trembling! However, next base brings new challenges, for one thing can pull readers out of the story like nothing else…bad sex scenes. So, brazen out the blushing and read on to discover exactly what Flo, Romance HQ’s resident blogger, thinks about writing good sex…
Let’s talk about SEX… Posted 1st December 2010 http://community.millsandboon.co.uk/forums/behind-scenes-romance-hq/lets-talk-about-sex
Everything you wanted to know about writing sex, but were afraid to ask!
In honour of Monday’s 2010 Literary Review’s Bad Sex in Fiction Awards – what wouldn’t I give to be on that judging panel! – this week’s blog is going straight to the heart of how to write an earth-shatteringly amazing love scene.
Mills & Boon books promise readers the ultimate in female fantasies – from marrying your childhood sweetheart to a night of multiple simultaneous orgasms with a gorgeous stranger. And whether your series of choice stops at the bedroom door (Cherish) or invites you right into bed with the hero and heroine (RIVA), what unites them all is crackling, emotionally engaging sensual tension. So, whilst sex on the page is by no means essential to a Mills & Boon, this week’s blog is dedicated to everyone who likes their writing hot!
A great love scene is unputdownable – emotional, sexy, and exciting. But a bad sex scene can be the kiss of death for your story, and your characters – how can we fall in love with your hero if his between-the-sheets behaviour fails to satisfy?! In fiction, as in life, bad sex is boring, and the last thing you want is for your readers to skim over those sex scenes you worked so hard on.
So, to ensure your sex scenes are less ‘Like a lepidopterist mounting a tough-skinned insect with a too blunt pin he screwed himself into her’ (one of the sentences that clinched Rowan Somerville’s first place prize on Monday – and I think we can all agree it’s a gem!) and more scorching, I’ve quizzed the experts on fictional sex: namely Romance HQ’s very lovely editorial department! After some blush-inducing, I-can’t-quite-believe-I’m-talking-about-this-for-work conversations, here it is…
The Naked Truth: Romance HQ’s Tips for (Fictional!) Bedroom Fireworks
Sex needs an emotional context Good love scenes happen within the emotional development of the relationship, and can be a key turning point for the couple. Extended scenes of gratuitous sexual description that don’t develop the relationship in any way – i.e. sex for sex’s sake – are boring! Sexual attraction with no emotion is just lust: that’s a great starting point for a sexy romance, but it needs to develop into something more. So, use sensual encounters as an opportunity to delve into the emotional reactions of your characters, particularly the heroine.
Less is ALWAYS more! Don’t be afraid to leave details to the imagination: in some of the hottest books, the actual consummation scene is only a paragraph. Remember, nothing you write on the page will be nearly as erotic as what your readers can dream up…particularly if they read a lot of romance! So, why take that pleasure away from us?
FYI, this maxim applies on a more practical level too…! A beautiful sex scene can easily be ruined by the less sexy aspects of sex – disposal of condom, wiping down the heroine, even (I can’t quite believe I’m typing these words) the dreaded wet spot. It may be realistic, but it’s also a massive mood killer.
Anticipation heightens the experience: foreplay is everything (Yes, even for a really sexy quickie!) Too often we see stories where there’s little-to-no focus on the developing attraction and then, suddenly, the hero and heroine are ripping each other’s clothes off. Any sex without anticipation is bad sex – because whilst zero-to-orgasm in under twenty seconds is a nice idea, we all know it doesn’t often work like that (sorry guys). Get those heroes to put some effort in!
Remember, highly-charged dialogue counts as verbal foreplay, and a clever author can use this to build the temperature in both heroine and reader. What’s more, don’t forget the importance of kissing and touching! Lips, neck and ears, lower back, inner thighs and forearms etc. Because, not to get too personal (although I’m thinking that boat might already have sailed?), but isn’t it the men who move in straight for the grope – boobs and below – that are the biggest turn-off?
So, where does Romance HQ really stand on euphemisms? Simple: the less flowery the descriptions, the better. Sometimes you just need to be able to call a spade a spade. Or in this case, an erection an erection – not always a throbbing member/hard shaft etc! We’re not talking graphic descriptions of the porno variety but don’t shy away from being direct – after all, what’s the point in writing about something you’re not comfortable describing?
Beware the oversexed hero! Let’s spare a thought for the hero who can’t control what’s in his pants. Twitching members in reaction to a simple smile for a heroine, erections springing to life from a mere brush of a hand, near-constant hard-ons… Everyone loves a virile hero, but this lack of control over his body risks making him seem juvenile, not jaw-droppingly hot! A little manly restraint can go a long way, ladies.
Finally, winner of the editors’ most-hated sex cliché award is… The booby prize goes to the heroine’s instant nipple hardening/ tightening/ peaking/ pebbling on seeing the hero! (After two years at Romance HQ, I am well on my way to developing a complex because this doesn’t happen to me on a regular basis.) So, let’s see some other ways to demonstrate her sexual attraction!
So, there it is. The things that work for Romance HQ, and the things that really really don’t. Phew – after this tiny insight into what it must be like to write steamy scenes, I’m filled with even more admiration for everyone doing it! Hope this has given you all plenty to think about…!
