Author: Emily Gaudette / Source: The Content Strategist
When I was in college, my favorite writing professor told us romance novelists have exceptionally difficult jobs. The students around me rolled their eyes. Most were hoping to write a moody, allegorical novel at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and the comparison felt like an insult. What do romance paperbacks have to do with great writing? Some woman is betrothed to a man she doesn’t like, and she spots a brooding, muscular guy who works on a farm—that’s it, right?
My professor explained it this way: Imagine if everything you ever wrote, from a sales pitch to a marketing newsletter to a novel chapter, had to be read by an audience of persnickety experts in your field. Readers who habitually enjoy romance paperbacks don’t have patience for a milquetoast protagonist or an overdone setting on a pirate ship.
The romance genre, as several novelists told me, can be broken down into hundreds of sub-genres, each with their own outspoken, passionate fans. Whether you’re writing romance through speculative sci-fi, historical, high fantasy, or the often-maligned paranormal (most people think Twilight first), the writer constantly battles to keep the audience engaged. If not, readers can easily set your work aside and pick up one of the thousands of options created by your competitors.
If you’re in the business of content, an oversaturated market for attention might sound familiar. Romance readers tend to tear through one book per week, and Harlequin Books alone publishes 120 new romance novels per month. So how do romance writers succeed?
Defy audience expectations right away
Maria Vale, author of the romance series The Legend of All Wolves, began her first book by immediately pushing against tropes. Cognizant of joining the crowded canon of paranormal romance, Vale said, “I wanted the reader to say, ‘Oh, I’ve never seen this before.’” Since she wanted to tell a story about werewolves, she began with an alpha female, rather than a domineering male character.
In fact, Vale said powerful women in romance have become increasingly popular in recent years. “Nothing bothers a modern romance writer more than that phrase ‘bodice ripper,’” Vale said. “People make Fabio jokes too. First of all, bodice ripping is a romance trope from the 1970s, and Fabio was from the ’80s, so both points are outdated. Second, romance readers have been talking about consent for a long, long time.”
“So what’s an author to do? We have to make readers care.”
In another corner, Stacey Keith, author of Kensington Books’ Dreams Come True series, said she rejected the pattern of giving a heroine a gaggle of lesser female sidekicks. “You know the ones—they’re besties with the heroine,…
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