Editors on Editing: What Writers Need to Know About What Editors Do (63 page)

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The characters in a romance—particularly the hero and heroine—are the most important element of the novel. None of the writer’s efforts at researching the time period, plotting the story, or evoking a sense of place and time will amount to much if the fictional world she creates isn’t inhabited by believable characters.

The two most common characterization problems I see new writers struggle with are assigning only positive character traits and attaching too many positive personality qualities to their heroes and heroines. Readers will immediately feel distanced from a character with only virtues and no flaws, problems, or mild neuroses; the writer will have created only a cardboard cutout instead of a fully fleshed-out person capable of bringing the reader to laughter or tears. Editors and writers alike should consider the characters they’ve found most memorable in their own reading. Frequently the personalities of the most successful ones are built around only one or two important qualities. In addition, the same quality can be both a strength and a weakness in a character. For example, the writer might have created a heroine who always acts impulsively. On several occasions her quick actions could create amusing and/or troublesome results for her. But ultimately her behavior could cause her to save the day for someone by dashing headlong into a situation that a more careful person would have flinched at or avoided altogether.

Another problem new writers should watch out for is not continuing the development of the characters throughout the entire novel. It’s an easy mistake to create a hero and heroine in the first chapter and then let the story move those two people around for the rest of the book while their personalities remain static. This is a common and always fatal flaw in many romance novels I see: books with great beginnings that become less and less compelling when the characters’ motivations, choices, and evolving personalities stop driving the story. The main characters and some of the important secondary characters must evolve and change because of what they experience during the course of the novel.

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One of the first actions a novel’s characters will take is to say something. Dialogue is immensely important in any novel because it is used simultaneously both to develop characters and to tell the story. It can be particularly troublesome for the writer of a historical romance to establish the right tone. The dialogue must sound true to the time period of the novel and yet not be stiff or full of archaic constructions that sound awkward and contrived to the modern ear. On the other hand, both editors and writers should watch for phrasing that is so modern as to be anachronistic. As far as letting the characters speak in dialect—be warned: I have seldom seen this accomplished in any way that is natural and readable. In one particular case, a marvelous novel I had acquired was somewhat difficult to read because of the heavy Scottish dialect used in most of the dialogue. After a lot of discussion, the author and I agreed that it was best to remove all but
a touch of dialect from the speech of the novel’s main characters and to allow the book’s secondary characters to speak in a slightly heavier dialect.

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The same challenge that applies to dialogue—striking the right balance between historical accuracy and the needs of the contemporary mass-market reader—applies to the overall tone and content of the novel. The writer must decide how much she will adhere to historical realism. If she’s unsure, then I suggest she closely read the historical romances that are currently being published. She must find out how much or how little realism is accepted by the readers and then decide what balance between truth and fantasy works for her.

Writers who want to write within the genre of historical romance must not write a story so filled with archaic constructions that it no longer qualifies as accessible, escapist entertainment. Some years ago I fell so in love with one historical novel I acquired that I ignored completely the fact that the writer had done such a thorough job of re-creating the past that the book in no way worked as light entertainment. It wasn’t until after the book’s publication, when many fewer copies were sold than expected, that I admitted the truth: this was a beautifully written novel by a talented writer, but it was not a fast-paced mass-market read.

Although it may strike some editors and writers as heresy, for many writers a fairy-tale-like approach works best and has won the hearts of many readers. The novels written by these writers frequently have a dreamy “Once upon a time” quality to them. Sometimes these stories seem to belong to no specific year but will embrace instead a modern fantasy idea of the Middle Ages or Regency England or the American West. Generally fast-paced and lighthearted, the action in these romances is often driven by emotion rather than historical events.

If this lighter, less realistic approach appeals to the writer, both she and her editor must still be very careful to be accurate in describing the attitudes and values held by the people of the period being written about.

There is a very thin line between an acceptably relaxed treatment of historical accuracy and characters’ thoughts and actions that are so anachronistic that they render the story totally unbelievable and uninteresting to the reader. In general, the writer should take great care with the characters’ opinions and their thought processes. For example, a heroine in Regency England simply would not have the same casual attitude toward birth control as an American in the early 1990s might, nor to the subject of divorce. The writer must strike the right balance: one that will allow the readers to suspend their disbelief and lose themselves in the world of the characters and the story.

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The world of contemporary romance publishing is a very different one from that of historical romance publishing. Publishers like Harlequin, Silhouette, Loveswept, and Kismet publish various romance series or lines and each line has its own very specific guidelines and reader expectations to meet. To learn how to write for these different lines, writers should read several books in each series and also study and follow the tipsheets, in which publishers tell how they would like books shaped for their lines. To get the tipsheets, writers should look in
Literary Market Place (LMP)
, usually available at the reference desk in libraries, for the names and addresses of the publishers and editors of the series they’re interested in.

The writer of a contemporary romance must excel at many of the same things as a writer of historical romance: plotting, characterization, dialogue, creating the right chemistry and sexual tension between the hero and the heroine, and frequently research. Although the contemporary romance writer does not need to research a historical time period, she will have to find out about the novel’s setting and the careers of her main characters and evoke them believably and authentically.

In order for a contemporary romance plot to be successful it must do three things: satisfy the reader expectations of the romance genre; meet the requirements of the specific line you are writing for; and tell a wonderful, compulsively readable story. Contemporary romance editors should know not only what their own line requires but also how the line they acquire for and edit is different from the other romance lines of their competitors. Various lines differ in length of manuscript, complexity of plot, and approach to characterization. The editors of some lines encourage writers to develop subplots in their stories; in other lines the plots must concentrate more fully on the developing relationship between the hero and heroine.

A romance editor must be able to recognize when a writer’s ability to tell a story and convey emotional depth outweighs writing flaws that can be corrected either in revisions or when the novel is edited. “If I feel that the writer is delivering the emotional depth I’m looking for then I might acquire a novel that needs a bit of plot help,” says Leslie Wainger, senior editor and editorial coordinator for Silhouette Books. “Sometimes I’ll get very involved in brainstorming about the story with an author who I know can make the love story work. On the other hand I might turn down a novel that tells a story that’s more appropriate for my line, but that didn’t convey the emotional intensity I’m looking for in a romance novel.”

Kate Duffy, editor-in-chief of the Meteor Publishing Corporation, the company that produces Kismet Books, a line of contemporary romance, says that she needs to be confident that what needs to be fixed in a manuscript
can be fixed before she’ll acquire a writer’s work. “If the writer has a good idea but no ability to execute it, then nothing would compel me to buy it,” said Duffy, who was the first editor-in-chief of Silhouette Books.

Because these books have a modern setting, real cultural and current events affect the contemporary romance world. “Because of Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill we’re having trouble acquiring and editing books where the hero is the boss and the heroine is his employee,” says Duffy.

However, the fact that it generally takes from ten to twenty months to publish a book after it’s acquired has an important effect on how up-to-date a plot can be. According to Wainger, “We can’t be too current because the publication schedule can’t keep up with the timelines. It’s most important that the novel work as a romance. If an author seems to be giving a speech on a subject or issue, then it’s up to the editor to take it out. We can’t cross too far over the line between reality and romantic fantasy when romantic fantasy is what the readers are coming for.”

Sensuality is an important element of the romance novel and is what many people think of first in connection with romances. However, it’s a mistake to think that the writer can substitute a few fractious conversations and several sex scenes for authentic sexual tension and sexuality between the hero and the heroine. If a novel doesn’t communicate the necessary emotional intensity without the sex scenes, then adding them will not achieve the necessary depth of feeling.

Leslie Wainger says that one of the main differences among the contemporary romance lines is the sexual intensity and explicitness of their books. An example of this can be found in Silhouette’s tipsheets. The guidelines for the Silhouette Romance line read, “Although the hero and heroine don’t actually make love unless married, sexual tension is a vitally important element.” Compare this with their suggestion for the Silhouette Desire line: “The characters don’t have to be married to make love, but lovemaking is never taken lightly.”

Writers are frequently unsure about how graphic the sex scenes in a romance should be. While a certain minimal level of sensuality is expected by most romance readers, it’s up to the writer how far she goes. To become familiar with the various levels of sensuality currently popular, once again I suggest that writers read a number of romances. Always make sure that the sex scenes are emotionally well motivated, that they never feel as though they were gratuitously and arbitrarily inserted into the novel. It’s essential that editors and writers remember that sex is merely one element of what gives the romance novel its tremendous appeal.

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At the heart of every romance novel is a subject that is of enormous interest to a lot of women: how a relationship between a man and a woman develops into love. Most successful romances explore in various amusing, exciting, and dramatic ways the problems men and women have communicating with each other and negotiating their roles within a relationship. At their best, these novels can make the reader believe for a few hours that the couple they’re reading about is falling in love and experiencing all of love’s excitement, frustration, sadness, and joys. Everyday life, of course, often fails to equal such an exhilarating slate—and from that gap between dream and reality springs the power and appeal of romance novels. Or, as Kate Duffy puts it, “If romance were as common as rudeness, I’d be unemployed.”

Greg Tobin

Just previous to becoming the editorial director of the Book-of-the-Month Club’s Quality Paperback Book Club in August of 1992, Greg Tobin was an associate publisher at Bantam Books, where he directed Bantam’s frontier and historical publishing program under the Domain imprint, and was also publishing director for the Doubleday western program. He acquired fiction and nonfiction for both hardcover and paperback
.

An editor and publisher, Mr. Tobin has been a member of Western Writers of America since 1981 and is the author of several westerns under pen names and his own. His latest novel written under his own byline is
Big Horn
(Ballantine, 1989)
.

Mr. Tobin sees category fiction (mysteries, westerns, SF and fantasy, war, romance, adventure, etc.) as addressing “the tastes of voracious readers who are looking for an exciting reading experience within a specific type of story but outside the norm: escape from boredom to exotic and dangerous places, identification with heroic but very human characters, clear choices and challenges in the realm of adventure and romance that make a difference, often a life-or-death difference
.”

Mr. Tobin believes that the disciplines imposed by category writing “expose the writer’s shortcomings and bring out the best that is within him,” and as a result “category fiction is the
cause
of good writing as much as it is the beneficiary of good writing
.”

Category fiction, Mr. Tobin writes, “is a means by which many new authors break into the business, get their first one or two or three books published—get the kinks out of their writing, learn the fundamentals of the storyteller’s art. If an author brings some talent and ambition to the party
,
if he focuses on the story rather than on the money he is not making, if he reads and learns from other books and authors in the same category and is aware of what the marketplace can support—then I am very interested in those words on the manuscript page
.”

Mr. Tobin describes the editorial, sales, and marketing factors that made him take on a new action series, shows how he worked with the author to develop its editorial content (the writer had never written book-length fiction before) and how he created a publishing program to support it, and examines the causes of the series’ decline and eventual cancellation. In another instance, he reveals how he used his editorial and marketing expertise to discover “fresh means to address established markets”—specifically frontier fiction
.