Coloring Inside The Lines

rules_imageI like to think of myself as a pret­ty good per­son. I fol­low most rules. (Except that dumb one about speed­ing.) Maybe this is why I’m strug­gling with my lat­est Work in Progress.  There are some rules, whether writ­ten or just under­stood, about romance nov­els. Must have the rela­tion­ship as the main com­po­nent to the plot (obvi­ous­ly). Must be writ­ten in the hero­ine’s point of view for the most part. (I like a 60% 40% rela­tion­ship myself.) Must have a hap­pi­ly ever after(HEA). (Some pub­lish­ers are hap­py with a HFN-Hap­py for now though) Main char­ac­ters must be intro­duced with­in the first two chapters.

This is where I’m strug­gling with my work in progress. I just start­ed chap­ter three, and am only now intro­duc­ing my hero. Will read­ers put my book down at the end of chap­ter two, dis­gust­ed because they haven’t met Fabio? Should I care about the rules? Aren’t they tried and true, test­ed on mil­lions of read­ers? Should one romance author from Lit­tle Town Wyoming real­ly be the one to buck the sys­tem? What if I just go all out and make my hero into a pot-bel­lied home­less man who is ugly as sin?

I’ll just keep writ­ing. If it gets reject­ed for pub­lish­ing, then I guess we’ll know for sure. I’ll keep you updated.

2 thoughts on “Coloring Inside The Lines

  1. You have just writ­ten an almost iden­ti­cal to my own thoughts post. I had this same issue with my Roman god Regency. We see the hero­ine’s life and strug­gles up until mid chap­ter 3 when final­ly tragedy ensues and she meets the hero. I have always won­dered if it would be set aside by read­ers sim­ply because it took a bit of time to get Mer­cury into the sto­ry. Same with my newest sub to LSB it takes about three chap­ters before the first sen­su­al scene, there isn’t even a kiss before it either and I wor­ried myself over it for weeks final­ly decid­ing to send it and see what comes of it.

    This is not a bor­ing post at all Alan­na. I can sure­ly relate and am glad some­one else thinks about it too.

    Don’t know about the pot bel­lied hero though. I sor­ta like your hot­ties. Spe­cial­ly with­out a shirt.
    Christa

  2. Haha, yes, there is real­ly no way I can write about some­one I would­n’t fall for in real life. I can’t even pic­ture a cov­er with the pot­bel­lied guy on the front, scratch­ing his holey tee shirt­ed navel. Some of the rules I don’t mind fol­low­ing at all 🙂

Whadd'ya think?