I’m tired of other writers, and people who “read one once” telling us that romance is formulaic, that all the stories are the same. It happened again this week on a writer’s forum.

You don’t read it, that’s fine. But what would a murder mystery be if everyone didn’t gather together in a room at the end so the detective could reveal who did it?

It’s called genre for a reason, and the more I read genre fiction, the more I realize that it’s not about plot, it’s about character. And characer development. We don’t read Agatha Christie for the mystery, we read her for Poirot. We don’t read Clancy for the story, we read it for Jack Ryan.

The only requirements in genre romance is that the romance (ie the story of the developing relationship) is at the centre of the story and that there’s a happy-ever-after or a happy-for-now. In category romance there are a few more requirements like heat level, a powerful alpha hero, and certain tropes, like secret babies or revenge. But the story isn’t about that. It’s about the characters. In a way, using the tropes enable the writer to concentrate on the characters more, and get them right.

Writing one of the books that have stricter requirements is actually very difficult. Because the publishers still require originality and a distinct authorial voice. If the characters don’t come to life on the page, then you might as well forget it. And there should be significant character development. So some writers will use ‘busyness’ and plot to try to fill in, but that’s a fault of many writers beginning in the romance scene, and it was certainly mine. Over time my plots have become simpler, and my characters fill out more of the story. To call it romance is to simplify it too much. In the best kind of romance, it’s about character development, and synergy. The one plus one equals three syndrome (and I’m not talking babies here).

In the best kind of romance, he provides something unique to her, and she does the same to him. They make each other better. So in a revenge story, she might persuade him that revenge isn’t worth it, if she stands between him and his revenge.

I suppose I’m getting thoughtful because I tried my hand at a Harlequin, and my, is it hard! I loved doing it, but the challenge of working to stricter guidelines than I’m used to really got the creative juices flowing. It was tempting to make my characters larger than life, to make their development more obvious, but although there’s a little of that, I hope I kept it this side of believable. Anyway, we’ll see.

Meantime, I have a new release next week, a historical, out on Tuesday 21st October over at Samhain. “Alluring Secrets” a historical, and thank goodness there are people better than me at titles, otherwise you’d be reading “Penelope’s book.”