15 Tips How To Write A Romance Novel Easy And Fast

 The Cute Meet--Have your characters meet in a unique way. This initial meeting should set the stage for your story. When you go to the book store and pick up a romance novel, you will inevitably turn to the first page and read a bit to see if you want to purchase the book. Keep in mind that your readers need an opening that grabs their interest and pulls them into the story. Editors will look for this quality in your work, as well.

The Characters--Your characters must be vivid and believable. This means they will have strengths and flaws that will affect the story you are telling. If you make one character too perfect or another very controversial and flawed, the story will be too one sided. It (the story) won't work and the editor will discard it as too confused. Know your characters and make them clear and concise by defining their strengths and their flaws.

Facts Matter--Do your research and know the time period you are writing about. If your story is set in the old west of the 1820's then you can't have someone arriving on a train as the railroads hadn't been built into that area yet. Get your facts straight. Never make the mistake of thinking that an editor won't check them-- they will! Also, don't get carried away with your history and research info in your story. Remember, your writing a romance, not a history lesson. Less is more when it comes to background information on the era you're writing about.

Past, Present, Future--Pay attention to tense when writing for the romance market. Present tense is very hard to stay in and even harder to sell in this genre. Write in past tense for best results with the editors. Later on, when you are more experienced, you can play around with present tense. Just remember that present tense is hard to write and even harder to sell in the romantic fiction market.

Pace--Move your story along without letting it get bogged down in too much detail. The emotions and actions of the main characters should set the pace and move your romance along to it's desired conclusion. Too much description, history, prose or rhetoric slow the pace of your story causing the reader to loose interest. Always remember that the story should be about two people finding each other. And in spite of their differences, they find love with each other. Move your romance novel toward this conclusion. Keep the pace moving in this direction briskly or your editor will discard it as slow and boring.

    Write a hundred-word outline of your story. You can think about it for a week, but writing it will only take an afternoon. Establish hero and heroine, names (important!), jobs, characters. Set the time and place. Are you going to write sweet, passionate, mysterious, religious, supernatural? Decide. Last and most important, what is the problem that is keeping your hero and heroine apart?

    Recognize what you’ve written. It’s a blurb, the pitch on the back of a book that makes readers want to read it. Or you to write it.

    Start with notes if you like, but write it out as properly connected prose. This is the acorn that’s going to grow into a tree.

    Next step, expand your blurb into an outline of your story, about 1,000 words long. Cover things like the first meeting, the first problem that develops into bigger problems, then the big climactic scene, and the happy ending. Don’t get carried away! Be concise. Your tree is still only a small shoot.

    You should now know how long your story is to be. Do a third expansion — aim at a minimum of about a tenth of the ultimate length. 5,000 word for a 50,000 word book. Or you might prefer to try to write a fifth, 10,000 words for a 50,000 word book. Your choice.

    This is where the real — and most enjoyable — work begins. Divide your story into chapters. And this time you can write in notes. There’s a great temptation to get carried away, to write at full length because ideas are coming so fast. Don’t. Finish the plan. You’re halfway there!

    Now you can start the writing proper and with the detailed notes you have, you’ll find it will roll. No fear of writer’s block. You know where you are going. On a really good day you’ll manage 5,000 words or more. Before you know it, you will have written your first romance.

Readers sympathize with actions. A human being is the sum of her past, her thoughts, and her behavior. So is a character. But readers won’t like your characters on the basis of what they think or what has happened to them. They will only like them on the basis of what they do and what they say. So if your hero is being a complete asshole for three chapters straight, it doesn’t matter why. I can’t love him now, and I probably won’t really warm up to him later. Likewise, if your heroine spends the first three chapters of your book thinking and bathing and writing in a diary rather than talking to the hero and advancing the plot, I will yawn and put the book down. Make them do stuff. Make the stuff they do and say be appealing. This doesn’t mean they have to or should be perfect—only that their actions and words have to reveal their core likability, even if they do so against the characters’ will.

Everyone breaks the rules. Nora Roberts head-hops! Jennifer Crusie rewrites the same scene from two different points of view! Susan Elizabeth Phillips sits her heroine down on the roof of a car and has her Think About the Past for a surprisingly long period of time! But these women write damn fine books, and they earn well-deserved plaudits for them. There are no rules. There are only stories, told better and worse. Tell yours the way you need to, even if that requires some rule-breakage. (But always be prepared to revise.)

A well-crafted beginning has hypnotic power. Susan Elizabeth Phillips taught me this. I read three chapters of Dream a Little Dream, and I didn’t like the hero or the heroine. I didn’t like the set-up. I thought, This book is not at all my sort of contemporary. Too serious, too desperate. Yet I couldn’t put the damn thing down. Man oh man, does Dream a Little Dream ever begin well. It has solid characterization-through-action, useful dialogue, well-timed snippets of backstory and internal monologue, good introductions to secondary characters, excellent pacing, and deft treatment of difficult scenes. It’s a master class in miniature. Even though I didn’t especially like reading it, I couldn’t stop. That’s what an excellent romance novel beginning needs to do. If yours aren’t there yet, it’s time to revise.

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