Worderella Writes

Book: The Grand Sophy

The Ombersley house is in a turmoil. Cousin Sophy Stanton-Lacy has been left by her father, Sir Horace, to find a husband…the problem is, Sophy cannot do any such thing until the house has been put to rights. After all, cousin Cecilia is in love with a foppish poet who has no concept of reality, cousin Charles is about to marry a prosy prig, and no one is doing anything about it! That is, not until Sophy walked through the door…

Read this book to see how an author can make a manipulative character the hero, keep the pacing fast, give each character definition, and write a snappy love story where the two main characters don’t fawn over one another (they actually argue the entire book).

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Romance Writing Tips

A Fine Romance
It’s stating the obvious, but romance is vital to any romantic fiction and needs to be central to your story. You can mix in other themes and genres, such as a mystery to solve or a pointed commentary on modern living, but it’s the passion between two (or more!) people which takes precedence. Don’t short-change your readers by starting out with what appears to be a romance, but ends as a political thriller.

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On Writing Romance

Here is an interesting essay about writing romance that I found at the BBC - Get Writing website.

Writing Romantic Fiction
by Katie Fforde

A Broad Genre
The Brontës, Sophie Kinsella, Phillippa Gregory, Helen Fielding and Jane Austen - they all write or wrote romantic fiction. It’s a large and generous genre but while many books have a romantic element, they can’t all be classed as romantic fiction. For example, The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk has a wonderful thread of romance running through it, but the romantic aspect isn’t what the book is about.

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Book: A Mankind Witch

Cair Aiden, one of the Redbeard Raider brothers, a pair of corsair seacaptains, has washed ashore in Norseland and made a thrall (slave) of the Telemark kingdom. This is a new phenomenon for him–Cair has always been master of his own fate, and just because he is now a thrall doesn’t make him believe differently. Studying his surroundings and the internal politics of this little kingdom of Telemark, set in the 16th Century, Cair manipulates his way into being the personal thrall of the Princess Signy, who is unknowingly at the center of an immense plot to throw the Christian oath-bearers out of the country and allow dark magics to reign supreme.

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Book: Once Upon a Marigold

The hook on the front cover of this book reads Part comedy, part love story, part everything-but-the-kitchen-sink. This book is actually a young adult fantasy, and I didn’t realize that until I found the book in that section of my local library, but hey. I have loved Ferris ever since I read her Rosie & Raider trilogy (Into the Wind, Song of the Sea, and Weather the Storm). …I can’t believe I remembered the characters and titles without looking them up. Seriously, I read these books when I was thirteen. Anyway, Once Upon a Marigold is about Christian, a little boy who runs away to live with a forest troll, and spends his developmental years roaming the forest and reading every book he can “borrow.” All the while, Christian uses his foster father’s telescope to watch the goings-on in the royal castle across the river, and subsequently, falls in love with the “ugly duckling” Princess Marigold. This is a time when p-mail (aka pidgeon-mail) is modern, when Queen Mab of toothfairy fame is losing control of her business, and when a curse may not be a curse after all.

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Book: Green Rider

Karigan G’ladheon has been unfairly kicked from school because she, the daughter of a mere (if rich) merchan, insulted a spoiled heir in a sword fight. Instead of facing the suspension board, Karigan decides to run away from school and make her way home. Seems like a good plan, until a rider dressed in green with two black arrows in his back blocks her path and asks that she finish his mission by sending an important message to the king. Being the spontaneous girl she is, Karigan accepts, and thus begins the typical fantasy story about the journey from being an innocent, ignorant, yet fiesty, schoolgirl to an experienced warrior who may not know what her future holds, but at least knows she has the strength to withstand just about anything.

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Book: The Slightest Provocation

In the tradition of Romeo and Juliet, Mary Penley and Kit Stansell of the Regency feuding Penley and Stansell families elope, after nourishing a secret friendship from their early teens. Their first year of marriage is one long honeymoon night, if you get my drift, but when Kit is teased by his club friends for only lusting after his wife (how provincial!!), he dallies with an actress and catches a disease such that he can’t go to bed with Mary for a year. This doesn’t stop him from going to other actresses, however, and to get back at him, Mary allows Kit’s best friend to seduce her. Of course, Kit walks in on them, and that’s just the backstory.

When the book actually starts, Kit and Mary have been separated for nine years, during the Napoleonic Wars. Napoleon is finally defeated, and Kit and Mary are returning to England, worried by rumors that there is an insurgency threatening their homeland.

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Sweet vs Spicy

Recently, a friend and I were discussing trends in the romance industry. She would like to see an upswing in historicals, specifically, Victorian-set historicals. “But,” she says, “historicals seem to have gone either super-sweet, or super-erotic. I want something in the middle, like they used to be.”

The previous was taken from the most recent blog post at Romancing the Blog. On the one hand, I’m glad to see I’m currently writing something someone is looking for: a Victorian-set historical which could be categorized as sweet. And so my topic for this entry emerges…

Why is sweet romance looked down upon as immature and YA (young adult) only?

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Book: Bright Arrows by Grace Livingston Hill

Bright Arrows by Grace Livingston Hill is one of her many “feel good” inspirational romances. I first read Hill in seventh grade, after being told that Out of the Storm (originally written under her pseudonym Marcia Macdonald) was a “Worderella book.” Hill’s plots are simple yet elegant, if slightly dated because she was writing at the turn of the century until her death in 1947. All of her books have a definite message: all paths lead to God. Whether you agree with that or not, and whether you can get past the often-quaint plots, Hill is a pretty good read.

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