On Writing Romance

by Leigh Michaels

  When you're planning your story, your first goal is to gather broad, sweeping, general knowledge about a place or a profession. This type of basic information helps you decide what your characters will do for a living, what events the story will involve, and — equally important — what sort of jobs the characters can't do and what couldn't happen in the story.

  This general information typically comes from multiple sources, including many of the following:

  Personal Experiences: The best kind of research is personal experience. There's no substitute for being there — and, of course, observing carefully. Obviously, if you want to write a Civil War novel, you can't go back and live in that time period. But you can go to Gettysburg and walk the battlefield, getting a sense of distance and direction and the way the ground lies.

  If you're using your own experience, make sure it's both accurate and comprehensive. Jacqui Bianchi, editorial director of Mills & Boon during the 1980s, once told of an American author who was so enamored of London during a tourist visit that she set a book there. Her heroine met the hero by tripping over a fire hydrant and falling into his arms; however, in her single week in the city, the author hadn't noticed that London fire hydrants are below ground, with the covers flush to the pavement. Though that's a fairly simple fix — the heroine could fall over any number of things instead, if she absolutely has to fall — some problems are a lot harder to repair after the book is written.

  When it comes to using events from your personal experience — or, for that matter, factual material gleaned from primary sources, case studies, and interviews — it's safe, within certain limits, to have those same events happen to your characters. Just keep in mind that truth is sometimes stranger than fiction. Real life isn't required to be logical, but fiction has to make sense.

  Other People's Experiences: The next best source, after your own experiences, is someone else's personal experiences. Find out what your friends are good at, where they've lived, and what they've done. What jobs have they held? Where have they traveled?

  Cultivate sources like your lawyer and your doctor, the cop who lives down the street, the fireman who wants to sell you tickets to the annual ball. When you have a question for one of these professionals, you'll be able to phone and ask.

  Keep track of what you hear at cocktail parties or the water cooler. Your coworker's reminiscences about his year in the Peace Corps may not fit into a story right now, but there'll come a day when you need specifics, and then you'll know who to call. (And if the person you need to ask already knows who you are, you won't face the problem one writer did when she phoned local drug investigators and asked how much cocaine would fit in a standard adult casket and what the street value of that amount would be.)

  Most people are flattered by requests for information and eager to help, especially when you say you're asking because you want to portray their profession or experience correctly.

  Often the most helpful information pops up when you give your sources a basic scenario you'd like to use, because they'll do their best to tell you what's possible and not possible, and how to bend that specific event to make it work in your story.

  Primary Sources: If you don't know anybody who's been there and done that, look for primary sources — materials written by the people who actually lived through the experience. The best written sources are both original (written by the people who had the experience) and contemporaneous (written at or close to the time of the event, rather than as a memoir years later, when memory has faded).

  But primary sources are useful not only for researching historical novels but for creating contemporary settings. For instance, autobiographies can shed light on today's professions. When a person writes about how he learned to do his job, he doesn't just detail his successes; he talks about the pitfalls and pratfalls as well — the most challenging classes, the tricks played on him by his co-workers. Those details offer fertile ground for the writer's mind.

  Look for accounts of direct personal experience, not speculation by an outsider, interpretation after the fact, or self-serving memoir.

  Case Studies and Interviews: Case studies and interviews, like primary sources, are accounts of real events and real people, though they usually aren't written by the people who actually lived through the events. A case study includes interpretation by an authority or expert. While conducting an interview, a reporter or other interviewer guides the interview subject to share the most interesting bits of information about his experience.

  Case studies can be particularly helpful when you need medical details. If you want your hero or heroine to come down with a disease, look in the library of a nursing school or medical college. You'll find volumes detailing real patients' symptoms, how they were diagnosed, what the treatment was, whether there were complications, and how the cases turned out.

  Textbooks, Guidebooks, How-To Books, and Instruction Manuals: Textbooks can give you a quick survey of an enormous field of study and direct your further research efforts. Browsing through a textbook will give you ideas about what a character who specializes in that field would be good at — or not be good at. New textbooks are expensive, but you can often read them in college libraries or buy fairly recent textbooks at charity used-book sales, where they often go for a dollar or less.

  Guidebooks give elaborate details about geographical locations — how likely it is to rain there in October, how hard it is to get a cab, what political stance is held by the local newspaper, what strange things you might run across in a local museum.

  How-to books can be a great source of ideas for creating action for your characters. If your hero is fixing a faucet while talking to the heroine, a how-to book can give you specific details that make the picture realistic for the readers.

  Instruction manuals give information about a product, which may or may not be useful — but the troubleshooting section is full of ways to complicate your character's life.

  A particularly helpful resource for most romance writers is an old etiquette book. Editions from the 1920s and earlier go into elaborate detail about things like running a big household, giving dinner parties, following courtship rituals, and training servants. That information can be useful not only for authors of historical novels but for those writing contemporary romances that involve wealth, glitz, and glamour.

  Children's Nonfiction Books: If you're looking for a quick way to familiarize yourself with a subject, look in the children's or young adult section of the library. Nonfiction books written for young readers tend to be well organized, specific, and factual, giving the main points without drowning readers in details. If you want to set your book during the Revolutionary War but you're not sure exactly when and where, the children's section of the library is a good way to get an overview.

  The children's section won't offer all the depth you need, but you can find out the basics in a short time. Once you figure out which direction you want to take, it will be easier to locate the specific materials you'll require.

  Fiction: Some authors of fiction are so meticulous with detail that they could write the handbook for their subject or historical period. Others aren't nearly so reliable. If you've picked up some general knowledge from reading fiction, don't count on the author being correct — check everything out yourself.

  Other Media: Details from audiotape and film can give your readers a realistic, I-am-there feeling that can increase the emotional impact of your story. Remember, though, that video and film are only as good as their source material and editing. Whenever possible, go the extra step to check that the producers got the facts right and that they reported the entire story.

  One problem with using tape and film is that, without elaborate editing equipment, it's more difficult and time-consuming to find a particular moment, picture, or quotation on tape than to simply look something up in a book index.

  The Internet: The Internet is a phenomenal resource, one that can be overwhelming to the researcher. Unless you strictly limit yo
ur searches, you're apt to be buried in references. Most of the references will be less than useful, and all will tempt you to surf instead of working. But if your search terms are precise, the Internet can be the best place to find arcane, specific detail. It's less useful, however, for the sort of general exploratory research you need to do before starting a story.

  As with film and video, material on the Internet is only as good as the source. Make sure to check out the data before assuming it's correct. There are many professional-looking but inaccurate Web sites.

  The Internet can be an excellent way to borrow personal experience. Putting out a question on a bulletin board may bring back precisely the detail you need about a job, hobby, or geographical area. Again, consider whether the source is knowledgeable and reliable.

  A comprehensive list of interesting and useful research links is available on www.leighmichaels.com.

  Specialized Research Strategies

  It's easy to get so caught up in study, trying to learn everything there is to know about a subject, that you never get your story off the ground. That's why it's best to save the more detail-oriented research until after you've done the general research and started the writing process. Specialized research strategies enable you to search for specific facts or bits of information you may not realize you need until you're deep into your story. What might prompt you to dig a little deeper? Check out the following:

  REAL (AND NOT-SO-REAL) PLACES

  Choosing your own surroundings for your setting can be a great benefit.

  Since you already know the setting, you don't have to search out the essential details that evoke the location for the readers. It's one less thing to look up, one less thing to distract you from the story you're writing.

  Writing about your own surroundings can also be a big disadvantage. Since you already know the setting, you may find it difficult to step back far enough to see the important, telling details that the readers will want to know.

  It's often a good idea to fictionalize your own surroundings if you live in a small town. If you want to set your story in a small New England town, make it an imaginary one. Then you can draw on your experience of living in a small New England town without being limited by the reality of your particular town.

  If the city you live in is large enough that nobody knows every main street, important building, major business, or neighborhood, you don't need to fictionalize the setting. (In practical terms, that means you should fictionalize any town with a population of less than about a hundred thousand.)Even when using larger cities, however, it makes sense to fictionalize any element — such as a street, story, or building — if details about the real thing are hard to get or easily proven wrong. If you want to use a famous skyscraper as a setting, getting pictures of the interior for realistic descriptions may be difficult, and anybody who's even vaguely familiar with the real layout will know if you're faking it. Creating your own skyscraper leaves you free to visualize the real one while arranging apartments and offices exactly as you like.

  If you're setting your book in a large-scale fictional location, like a made-up country, consistent and realistic details can make your entire story — and inconsistencies or gaps can break it. Modeling a fictional country on a real country (or a combination of countries) usually results in a more convincing setting than making up a nation out of thin air. You can know a great deal about how your fictional government operates, or how your royal family ascended to the throne six hundred years ago, without sharing all that detail with your readers. But figuring it out — even if it doesn't apply to the specific story — will help you avoid inconsistencies and make your story feel more real.

  Laws, Legal Issues, and Established Traditions: Many romances deal with legal issues — ownership of property, child custody, lawsuits, inheritance — so familiarizing yourself with legal basics early in your writing career may prevent you from wasting time and effort on impossible plots.

  For instance, if you're writing a story in which your hero and heroine get married on two hours' notice, you'll need to know which states permit that and which don't. If you don't know before you start writing, you're apt to set your story in a state that requires blood tests and a waiting period, and you'll have a big job of revising to make the story fit the facts.

  If you're writing about a divorce attorney, you'd better know right up front that she could lose her license if she starts dating the client she's representing, or you're apt to create a story scenario that simply won't fly.

  If you're writing a Regency and you have the duke leave his estate and title to his younger son because the older one's a brat, then you're violating the laws of the time, as well as turning off readers who know about those laws.

  Those big issues need to be investigated before you develop a story, so some general reading is a good investment of time. Smaller details — like what identification the couple needs to present to actually get married, or what the divorcing couple might argue over, or exactly what a younger son could inherit — are safe to leave until later, when you know more about the precise picture you want to create.

  The larger the legal element is in your story, the more research you'll need to do. If one of your main characters is an attorney, consider reading biographies or autobiographies of attorneys in order to familiarize yourself with the backgrounds and thinking styles of real lawyers.

  There are a number of good law reference books, written for laymen, that provide basic background; many list specific information as well. Though your local bookstore may not have a wide range of titles on hand, a quick search through Internet bookstores such as Barnes & Noble (www.bn.com) or Amazon (www.amazon.com) will bring up many useful books. For instance, keywords like law for the layman and legal rights will bring up books such as the American Bar Association Legal Guide for Small Business, Know Your Legal Rights, and many titles dealing with specific areas like real estate and child custody.

  Your public library will have general legal references, though they may be somewhat dated, and can order specific books from other libraries through interlibrary loan.

  For quick and up-to-date reference, the Internet is hard to beat. A Google search for marriage requirements and states returned thousands of sites listing the details of the current marriage law in each of the fifty states. Among the top three sites was http://usmarriagelaws.com/search/united_states/, which includes (along with a wealth of other information) the requirements in each state for getting a marriage license. Another good site is www.findlaw.com, which has archives of basic information on every legal issue you can think of.

  If possible, cultivate the acquaintance of an attorney or two. Many of them love puzzles and will happily argue both sides of a hypothetical legal question while you take notes (especially if you offer to buy lunch, bake them a pie, or dedicate the book to them).

  Medicine: Researching medical questions so your character's health problems are realistic can be as easy as checking www.WebMD.com or as complex as spending days in the library of a medical school reading case studies. Some good basic reference books include home medical encyclopedias — especially those that index symptoms as well as diseases — and nursing textbooks. Medical-surgical nursing texts are amazingly detailed about common and obscure illnesses and treatments. Nursing schools frequently update their texts, so last year's editions can often be found in charity book sales.

  Professional Codes of Ethics: Most professions have ethical codes, written or understood, and those rules affect how characters in those professions can behave. There are, for instance, many ethical considerations in how doctors interact with their patients and their patients' families. If a relationship starts to develop between a doctor and a patient, the doctor may be required to remove himself from the case. There are ethical considerations governing when a doctor can treat members of his family and when he should step aside.

  The important point is that, even if the doctor you've created doesn't actually follow the rules, he
knows about them. If he violates the ethical code and has a relationship with a patient, he might feel guilty, or sly, or proud — depending on the sort of person he is — but he'll feel something. If you don't know about medical ethics, then no matter how your doctor behaves, he isn't going to be believable to the readers who do.

  If in doubt about ethics, ask a member of the profession about what's acceptable and what's forbidden. Can't find someone in the profession? Search the Internet for a professional organization or union and contact the public relations office. Professionals want to be portrayed accurately and realistically, so they'll help wherever they can.

  FAST-CHANGING FIELDS

  Some professional fields — medicine, technology, computer science — change more quickly than others. Computer-centered plots are not well received by publishers for this very reason. That doesn't mean you shouldn't use fast-changing fields in your story, but if you do choose to use them, proceed with caution. Select details with care, and don't be so specific that rapid change will make your story obsolete.

  Researching Historical Romances

  An amazing number of people decide to write historical romances without knowing much about the time period they're interested in, and some write without even having a preference for one period over another. Others, in contrast, have done so much research that they have to fight the temptation to write a history text or a sociology study or a language manual rather than a romance.

  No matter what the historical period you choose, it's important to know enough about it to portray it realistically. Small, everyday matters usually present the greatest difficulty. Research books don't often go into detail about domestic routine, and chasing down the fine points of how a gown would be trimmed or what the heroine would have worn underneath can be time-consuming. However, including such detail is helpful in creating the picture in the readers' minds and keeping them absorbed in the story.