Ever Wanted to Write a Romance Novel?

If you'd like to know more about Writing Romance check out my 7-week online course at the Professional Writing Academy - which kicks off again on 24th February!

Less Is More: How to write a Short Romance Story

I love writing short stories and novellas and it just so happens that this summer I got asked to write TWO in the space of a few weeks by Harlequin Mills and Boon.

The first was a 2k-word story for Mills and Boon's Places to Fall in Love campaign, which was celebrating the top ten best places to fall in love in Britain. The brief: my story had to be set at #8 in the poll, The Minack Theatre in Cornwall...

The second story had to be 1k words or less (eek!) and was going to be added to an exclusive 3-in-1 for ASDA supermarket next Valentine's Day. The brief: it had to be set on or around Valentine's Day!

Now obviously, you don't always get a brief for a short story. But the challenge of a short story, in romance as in any other genre, is always the same, managing to fit a whole story arc in the space of a few words. With romance that means managing to have an inciting incident, emotional turning points, a black moment and a resolution however many words you have! A popular misconception with short stories is to believe that they're easier to write because they're shorter... Umm, no. If anything the short word count makes them harder. But the really great thing about them, for any aspiring writer - or even a seasoned one like myself - is that they require you to focus on the best of your craft, while also letting your imagination run wild. Structure, pace, Point of View shifts, characterisation, setting, etc all have to be tightly controlled in a short story, but you mustn't allow that to limit the story you tell, quite the opposite really, your craft should help you pack in all that emotion and relationship dynamic in a powerful way...

My Pinterest Board for The Fundamental Things!

So here are my suggestions for figuring out how to do that while deconstructing a 6k-word story I wrote several years ago called The Fundamental Things for the Romantic Novelists Associations Truly Madly Deeply collection.

When attempting to write a short story or novella in the romance genre, the most important thing to do first of all is make sure the story you want to tell is suitable for a shorter word count. That's really the main guiding principle. Ask yourself several key questions: How much do your couple have to resolve? Can you establish and resolve those conflicts convincingly in a shorter word count?

So, for example, you could go with a shorter time frame (eg: my ASDA story takes place in a super-market check-out queue). Or simply finish the story at a positive place so the reader knows this couple will sort out their existing conflicts because they have the will to do so...

But don't think that means simplifying or lessening your couple’s conflicts, in fact the reverse can be true.

Here's how I developed The Fundamental Things structured around that principle: The first thing I decided to do was have the story happen all in one scene - so literally over about thirty minutes in real time - and in one location (so no need for lots of lengthy setting descriptions!). I didn't want any other people involved, because I wanted to keep my couple totally focused on each other, so that led me to the idea of using a 'forced proximity’ narrative - basically I had them get stuck in a lift together... Now obviously, if this had been two strangers it would have been very hard, if not impossible to tell a whole story arc in half an hour, so I decided to give them a massive back story to resolve! Namely they had been lovers as teenagers - which was 20+ years ago now - she had gotten pregnant, they'd agreed she would have an abortion, but he had left her at the clinic and then he had never responded when she told him she had decided to have the baby. And they never saw each other again, until they get stuck in the lift and much to her horror he recognises her. What she doesn't know is that he was shipped off to Italy by his mother and never got any of her letters (luckily this would have been the early 90s so no social media, email, mobile phones, etc - which was why I put them in their late thirties!!) so he doesn't know she's had the child or that he's a father! So when they got stuck in the lift together - her thinking he'd deliberately abandoned her and rejected their child and him still feeling guilty about the abortion he thought she'd had which he hadn't supported her through - it led to LOTS of things to resolve. But it could be convincingly done, because of course once the misconceptions were cleared up, and they'd both gotten over the initial shock, all the feelings they'd had as teenagers for one another, before that 'accidental betrayal', could be revisited but with their newfound maturity and the newfound knowledge of what had actually happened between them. He hadn’t deliberately abandoned her or their child – in fact, the reason he left the clinic was because he couldn’t bear to be there during the termination. The hero, of course, actually had more to resolve than the heroine - having always wanted to be a father (his marriage had eventually broken down several years before when he came to the realisation he wanted children and his wife didn’t) - to discover he is one and has been one for 20 years is both shocking and devastating and wonderful all at the same time. By the time they're let out of the lift, we know he's going to meet his now grown up son, and they do share a tender kiss which gets a bit heated, so there is also the suggestion that they still desire each other, but obviously there's still a lot to work through, because she's been a single mum all these years, she lied and told her son his father was dead because she didn’t want him to know his father hadn’t wanted him but also because it was too painful for her to talk about that betrayal, he doesn't know his son and has missed his son’s whole childhood, etc. But I left them in a place where hopefully the reader knows that they will both work really hard to make the most out of what they have found together again...

The important thing to remember with this example is that the more conflict you have, the easier it can sometimes be to keep the story focused and emotionally intense – which will also lift pace and reduce the need for long descriptive passages, lengthy examinations of internal thought, etc.

In other words, the most important thing is to construct a story that will benefit from that shorter word count, not be confined or restricted by it. Don’t attempt to concertina a story which needs more exposition, internal thought, secondary characters, etc into a shorter format or your story will feel rushed and incomplete.
 
When actually writing your story, the shorter the word count the more you need to keep a handle on your craft, make it work for you. But here are a few of my top tips to keep you focused on telling your story in the most focused way possible:

• Make sure you start on a point of action, so you're not wasting words on lots of back story or internal thought or scene setting.
• Only tell the reader exactly as much as they need to know, ie: they don’t have to know everything you know as a writer about your characters, they just need to know enough to understand their goals/motivations/conflicts.
• Remember less is more when it comes to description. Hone your writing to make those passages really pop in the reader's imagination. ie: – if the setting is integral to the story, find ways to describe it in concise evocative ways using more than just what it looks like. How does this place smell, sound, feel, too? Use dialogue and physical cues wherever possible to get your characters establishing and confronting and resolving their conflicts through their interaction with each other rather than in their internal thought.
• I find it's easier to use a shorter time frame for this format - having the action take place over a few hours, night, a weekend, a few days, etc. - because it keeps the action intense and focused. But that's just a personal preference of mine (and because I always like to make things as easy as possible for myself!)

Interestingly, many of these tips also work for a story with a longer word count, too. And explains why attempting to write a short story or novella is such a great way to hone your craft as a writer...

I once asked bestselling romance author Linda Howard at a conference lecture she was giving about her career how I should go about making the break from writing series or category romance books (ie: books with a 50k word count) to longer Single Title books – something she had been remarkably successful at. Her answer was simple but succinct: ‘write a bigger book’. But what she meant was, not write a longer book, but write one that requires that longer word count. Write a book with a bigger story to tell. Because the most important thing to remember when writing any type of genre fiction, whatever the word count, is that no words should be wasted, each and every one of them is important and should be doing something within your story, no matter how many, or how few of them, there are. For that reason, when writing a short story, you are also learning how not to waste a single word!

If you are an author interested in writing in the romance genre and would like to learn more about the skills required, wherever you are in your writing journey, I tutor Writing Romance, a 7-week online course for The Professional Writing Academy. We do weekly sessions covering everything from how to craft effective dialogue, writing compelling scenes of intimacy, to handling emotional turning points and much more using reading extracts and writing exercises. You'll be learning in the PWA's innovative online classroom with a group of other writers, getting lots of feedback from them, while also getting specific focused feedback from me on your work each week. And we always finish the course with a longer piece of writing - which can be a short story! I love teaching this course, because it gives me so much insight into this fascinating process, as well as sharing the love with other writers. Our next course kicks off on February 25th so why not treat yourself for 2019? 

Happy New Year and a Happy New Look for Mills and Boon!

So I hope everyone had a fabulous Christmas and you're all settling in for some equally fab New Year celebrations... Or if you're in Oz you're already hunkering down to work off that hangover!

I had a busy and exciting year in 2017 writing-wise. Managing to publish my first classic Presents, Vows They Can't Escape, in Feb was a major milestone for me. In March I joined up with wonderful authors Kaylie Newell, Kate Hardy, Patricia W Fischer and Jeannie Moon to write the Men of Marietta series for Tule - which kicked off with my book Tempting the Deputy! And then in July I had the digital release of my second longer women's fiction book for HQ Stories, Summer at Willow Tree Farm. In September my second classic Presents, The Virgin's Shock Baby was out and then in October and November, I enjoyed tutoring Writing Romance, my seven-week online course for The Professional Writing Academy, for a new group of writers. With all that going on I'm actually kind of amazed that I managed to finish two more books for Presents - one is due out next April - Captive at Her Enemy's Command is the sequel to The Virgin's Shock Baby - and I've just finished revisions on the second which is scheduled for release in September. I'm still waiting to hear back from my poor over-worked editor on my Nano-Sheikh story which I completed during NaNoWriMo! Needless to say I have big plans for 2018, to hopefully write at least three more Presents, another book for Tule (a rodeo cowboy this time!!) and I'm exploring ideas for several longer women's fiction books I want to write.... And we're also doing another run of Writing Romance kicking off on February 5th, so if you've ever wanted to write romance yourself, or are already a romance writer who is struggling to get your writing to the next level and want seven intensive weeks of writing and learning with a group of other like-minded authors and tuition and feedback from a USA Today bestselling author, then start the new year right and sign up....

Wow! I'm exhausting myself just thinking about all that. But that's the way it should be, having new projects to look forward to is always the best place to be if you're a writer.

But enough about me! Also in the new year is the long awaited Mills and Boon Makeover in the UK... Mills and Boon authors learned all about the new look for our books in September at a top secret meeting after our annual author lunch. I'm not gonna lie, I LOVE the new look. Clean, cool, and fiercely contemporary, the new cover design says everything that needs to be said about Mills and Boon in the 21st century – that while it may be a heritage brand with a long history that authors and editors alike are justifiably proud of for supplying readers with that shot of escapism from their every day lives – there's nothing old school about the content of these little books with a big heart! We write smart, sexy, fiercely contemporary stories for today's readers, so I'm super excited that the look of the books will now reflect that. I hope it will attract a whole new readership to our stories who've never realised before now how much they are gonna love these stories!! Because seriously, what's not to love about reading stories where women (and men) get what they want and, perhaps more importantly, what they need out of positive, empowering relationships? Life can be hard in today's world where everything seems to move so far, so fast, and it sometimes feels like there's not nearly enough compassion, enough empathy, enough kindness (especially on Twitter!). So why not take a break from all that real-life angst and enjoy watching two other people work out their problems knowing they are guaranteed to get their happy ever after (if they work hard enough for it) and you don't have to lift a finger!! Do feel free to tell me what you think in the comments.

I'm so excited about the Mills and Boon makeover I'm putting my money - or rather one of my author copies - where my mouth is and giving away a copy of my first new look book on Goodreads. Call Me Cupid is a By Request 3-in-1 featuring stories by me, the lovely Fiona Harper and the lovely Nina Harrington.

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Call Me Cupid

by Heidi Rice

Giveaway ends January 05, 2018.
See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

Good luck to everyone who enters.... And whatever happens have a wonderful 2018! Full of love, light and great reading.