On Writing Romance (22 page)

Naming characters can be a very important part of developing their personalities. The first question, of course, is whether the name is appropriate for the character. The character we thought was Michelle might in fact call herself Mike — and that's a whole different sort of woman.

Most romance heroes' names are short, and they often start with one of the hard consonants, like B, D, G, J, or K. The firm sound of the name seems to help characterize the hero as a no-nonsense man of action.

Not only can a character's name help to show what kind of person she is, it can hint at the character's history and background. It may even help in a minor way to foreshadow story developments or to push them along. If a character named Courtney is told that her birth father was an attorney, her mother's action in choosing that name takes on significance and helps to convince Courtney that the story is true.

But there are other important factors in choosing names for characters. Consider the look and the sound of a name, and its relationship to the names of other characters. Is the name easy to pronounce? Will it be familiar to the readers? If not, is it spelled phonetically so the readers won't be confused? Does the first name fit well with the chosen surname? Is it so much like the names of other characters that it might be confusing on the page?

Unusual or unfamiliar names or spellings work best for main characters or significant secondary characters — not for characters who appear briefly and infrequently — because an unusual name may be more difficult for the readers to recall. If you use unusual names for both main characters, you multiply the risk of confusion. If you want to use a creative name for one main character, choose a simpler, easily recognized and gender-specific name for the other main character. If in doubt, retreat to basic, long-popular names.

Make certain that the names you choose are appropriate to the time. Brooke and Dakota make fine contemporary characters, but in a Regency romance, they'd be out of place. Hazel or Mildred would be unusual choices for contemporary heroines, and the effect on the readers would be to remind them at every turn that they're reading a story.

And think about the names in your story in respect to relationships between the characters. If you name a mother Jessica and her small daughter Thelma, your readers — who would associate the name Thelma with someone of an older generation — may have difficulty keeping them straight.

It is also wise to avoid using several names that start with the same letter. Readers who are consuming your story in snatches need all the help they can get to avoid confusion, and the repetitive initial may cause them to stumble on each name as they try to recall who's who.

Be cautious of using names that rhyme, like Derrick and Eric; of using unisex names, like Pat and Chris; of using names spelled in such a way that the character's gender isn't clear, like Jeramie; of using names most commonly identified with one sex for a character of the opposite sex, like Jack for a girl or Robin for a boy; of using hero-type names used for the Wrong Man (if there's both a Jake and a Matt, the readers may have trouble keeping them straight, but if you name one of them Gary or Kevin, it's pretty clear who's who); of using names with unclear pronunciations; and of using two names that look very similar typographically, such as Lee and Les.

When you're referring to characters via narrative or describing the action in your story, choose one name or nickname and use it consistently. If you refer to your hero sometimes as Jake, sometimes as Mr. Wilder, and sometimes as the Professor, the readers are going to become confused about who is who and how many people are involved. If you decide to call the hero Jake, use that name consistently in your narrative and your dialogue tags.

In contrast, when characters talk to each other, the names they use will vary. The doorman will call your hero Mr. Wilder, his students will call him Professor or Dr. Wilder, and the heroine might call him anything from Wild Card on down. But in straightforward narrative, he should have one name and one name only.

There are two exceptions to this rule. First, if your heroine is usually referred to as Elizabeth but the hero thinks of her as Betsy, then when you're writing from his point of view, you can refer to her as Betsy in narrative as well as in his dialogue. Consistency is the key.

The other exception occurs early in the book and concerns both the hero and heroine. If they've just met for the first time, they're probably not on a first-name basis. If the first section of the book is in the heroine's point of view, the heroine will probably refer to the hero by both first and last name until a connection begins to form between the characters. If you're writing from the hero's point of view, he may think of the heroine as Melanie Stafford for a while before switching to Melanie or Mel. Once he makes the switch, however, the style should remain consistent.

1. Look through the romance novels you've been studying. How many secondary characters are there?
   

2. Is there a villain? An Other Woman? A Wrong Man? A significant third?
   

3. What purposes do the secondary characters fulfill?
   

4. How much do you learn about the secondary characters themselves? About their private lives? About their opinions regarding the main characters?
   

1. What types of secondary characters will be useful in telling your story?
   

2. Will the heroine have a best friend, a co-worker, a sister? What secondary characters will be most closely involved with the hero?
   

3. How can your secondary characters help tell the story?
   

4. Write a scene in which the hero or heroine talks to a secondary character about the other main character.
   

The love scenes in a romance novel are different from those in other kinds of fiction. Love scenes in romance novels are integral to the plot and to character development, thus they're more important than love scenes in most other fiction. Since the love developing between the main characters is such an enormous part of a romance novel, the physical expression of that love is a crucial element of the story.

Like many components of romance novels, however, love scenes and all their particulars are difficult to sum up in a few words. People who haven't read a lot of romance novels are apt to ask, “Is there always a love scene?” or “How many love scenes are there in the average romance?” or “Where are the love scenes placed? Should there be one in the first chapter?”

The answer to all these questions is “It depends on the kind of romance novel.” There are many varieties of romance novel, and physical affection is handled a bit differently in each one. A wide range of love scenes from many different kinds of romances appears later in this chapter.

It's important to understand that a love scene isn't the same as a sex scene; a love scene in the romance novel can be any physical expression of affection between the main characters. A kiss, a hug, a touch between hero and heroine are all love scenes on a smaller scale. Even a look can sizzle with sensuality, and a foot massage — if well written — can be as arousing for the readers as a sex act.

Relatively speaking, sex is a very small part of love, and romance novels — even those toward the erotic end of the spectrum — are love stories, not sex stories. While it's hard to picture two people falling in love without displaying any physical affection at all, a romance novel might include nothing more than a touch of the hand here and there, and a single chaste kiss on the last page. Or it may include mind-bending and intimately described oral, vaginal, and even anal sex in every chapter.

Physical attraction between the characters is important, of course, but when their attraction is deeply emotional as well, the love scene will be far more involving for the readers.

To be effective, love scenes have to fit into the course of the story and heighten the tension and conflict. Even if the actual love scene is a calm interlude in the conflict between the two main characters, the act of loving should lead to increased difficulties later. Every love scene should have a purpose in the development of the overall story, not just be there to titillate the readers. If the love scene can be removed without destroying the story, it shouldn't be there in the first place.

Two people who have slept together are going to behave differently afterward. They will not hop out of bed the next morning acting as if nothing happened the night before. Their actions have changed them and the situation — and, inevitably, the rest of the story. Once your lovers have kissed, touched, or made love, they may try to pretend it never happened — but they, and the readers, can't forget.

In many beginning writers' stories, love scenes are like frosting on a cake. Frosting is applied to the surface, and it adds nicely to the taste. But essentially it changes nothing — the cake is still the same underneath. A good love scene is more like applying heat to the cake batter — once it has started to bake, the cake gets a lot tastier, and there's no way to reverse the process.

The most sensual romances aren't necessarily those in which there's a lot of sex, but those in which there is a high level of sexual tension. Beginning writers often mistakenly consider foreplay synonymous with sexual tension. The characters do not need to be touching in order to create sexual tension; they certainly do not need to be kissing or in other intimate contact.

Sexual tension is the unsatisfied attraction of the hero and heroine for each other. The key word here is
unsatisfied
. Why can't they act on their attraction to each other? What's keeping them from getting together? The stronger the reason, the more emotionally involving the story will be.

Sexual tension begins at the moment the main characters meet, with their first awareness of each other. They might be angry, interested, wary, or tense, but their heightened sense of awareness of the other person provides the first stirrings of sexual tension.

In her sweet traditional
The Billionaire Takes a Bride
, Liz Fielding uses the conflict between the characters — and a slow cleaning of a pair of glasses — to increase the sexual tension:

If Rich weren't hesitating to get closer because he found Ginny trying to break into his desk, Fielding's scene would be flat — because they're pretty obviously attracted to each other.

In this passage from Nicola Cornick's historical novella
The Season for Suitors
, her hero is ostensibly teaching the heroine how to avoid being taken advantage of by an unscrupulous man:

Notice that the only touch is his gloved finger to her cheek; there's not even skin-to-skin contact. Cornick has used the rules of society — which at the time forbade an unmarried woman to be alone with a man — to build sexual tension. If the Duke had gone ahead and kissed Clara, much of the tension in the scene would evaporate, because we'd no longer have to wonder what that kiss would be like and wait for it to happen.

In her erotic contemporary novella
Out of Control
, Rachelle Chase uses a great deal more touching, but the sexual tension is increased because of what the couple
doesn't
do:

If Astrid had given in and asked the unnamed hero to kiss her, Chase's couple would have been well on their way to admitting their attraction, and we'd have been cheated out of the fun of figuring out why she can't or won't surrender.

Three very different styles — traditional, historical, erotic — and in all three cases, withholding a kiss creates much more interest and tension in the scene. But it's not just that the hero and heroine
don't
kiss; the sexual tension is increased because there's a real reason they don't.

One of the easiest ways to dissipate sexual tension is to let the lovers admit their feelings too early in the story. Once the readers know that he's wild about her (and he knows it) and she's wild about him (and she knows it) —
even if the hero and heroine haven't told each other
— the sexual tension evaporates. The resulting warm, cuddly feeling is highly desirable at the end of the book, but it's murder if it happens halfway through.

Another way to lose the sexual tension is to let the lovers consummate their relationship too early in the story. The unwritten rules of the romance novel don't allow casual sex, and the readers know those rules, even if they can't enunciate them.

Even in chick-lit, which technically allows the heroine to make love with more than one man, it's a rare heroine who actually does. In chick-lit, if there is more than one man, sex with the wrong one is perfunctory, ho-hum, even clinical rather than enthusiastic. With the hero, the heroine has meaningful, emotional, special sex that indicates that a serious and lasting relationship has begun.

Erotica, too, is a special case. In erotica, the characters are making love — or at least having sex — frequently throughout the story. The most effective erotica presents characters who, though they are liberated sexually, have good reasons to avoid permanent commitments, so the readers are kept uncertain about how the couple will end up together.

Because of the no-casual-sex tradition, once the hero and heroine have made love, the readers know that at some level they're committed to each other, even if they're still shown as having doubts about their relationship. So the sexual tension is reduced, and only a very strong conflict will keep the readers' doubts going at that point.