Keeping It Real

I recently attended the RT Booklovers Convention in LA. This was my first time at this particular convention and it was an eye-opener in many ways.

For starters, let me admit that I'm not as steeped in the romance-writing and reading world as many in publishing are. Even though romance accounts for at least half of all the books published in the US, my areas of concentration have leaned more toward "boy" books.

That said, a good book is a good book and as a Consulting Editor for Forge Books, an imprint of Tom Doherty Associates, I worked on a few titles that fell into the romance category. As an agent, I've represented a few titles that also fell into romance. My take on romance is pretty simple, actually. I look for well written books that happen to have romance plotlines. Because, in the end, it's all about the writing.

Working with Author Coach clients, I've found that many authors seem to get the need for a good romance, but sometimes they fail to make their romance believable, and I think that's a pretty big error. Even the broadest plots (e.g., US Navy SEAL saves woman from terrorists and carries her off into the sunset) need to have enough reality thrown in to allow the average reader to "buy in" or have a willing suspension of disbelief.

So when writing your romance, ask yourself if your story has enough realistic elements to make it work for readers. Because if it's just about a forty-five-year-old woman running off to the islands with her twenty-year-old boy-toy, my guess it may not.

Z