Writing Romance

Need help writing romance?

At the library book sale last week, I picked up an older edition of Writing Romance by Vanessa Grant. Overall, I found Writing Romance to be a great resource for learning how to apply many of the techniques we learn in class to the romance genre.

Grant has some great ideas about developing the hero and heroine to create conflict, researching the setting, and using a computer in planning and revising. She even references Jack Bickham to explain stimulus and response and pacing.

A couple points I found helpful:

• When developing a character, think about how that character behaves in the different relationships in his/her life. Grant says, "A man behaves differently to his sister than his secretary....Looking at how my hero behaves in all his relationships enables me to understand how he will behave in my novel."
• "When your characters fall in love...their vulnerability will cause them to lose their customary mask of behavior, to react more emotionally, with less conscious control of their words and actions."

Grant provides lots of examples although most of them are from her own writing. I would have liked more examples from other authors, but I did find helpful how she walks the reader through her own process of developing characters and plot for some of her novels.

The newest edition is available on Amazon.com for about $12.00.