One Editor's Top 7 Revision Notes by Harlequin Senior Editor Victoria Curran

Happy seventh birthday, Seekervillians (if I may call you that)! I’m delighted to be here to help celebrate the occasion. I was pleased to see one of our Harlequin Heartwarming authors, Roz Denny Fox, here a month or two ago, and she discussed a lot of the specifics about our series. Me, I’m thinking in sevens, so I’ve decided to share my top seven recurring revision notes, which are the same whether I’m editing sweet romances, inspirational or something a little hotter.

Disclaimer: I’m deeply aware that I have never written a novel and I have a huge respect for those of you who can create a story that’s thousands of words long and has a beginning, a middle and an end…let alone obstacle and romantic tension and self-motivated characters who take an unpredictable journey to that predictable happy ending!

Heartwarming Romance, October Release

In my 11-plus years at Harlequin, I have some advice I seem to repeat and it relies heavily on seven resources (see how I worked that in again?):

     Robert McKee, STORY

     Renni Browne and Dave King, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers

     Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style (which one of my copy editing colleagues tells me is out of date but I refuse to believe her)

     Donald Maas, Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook

     Stephen King, On Writing

     Christopher Vogler, The Writer’s Journey

     EL James, Fifty Shades of Gray

#1 Resist the Urge to Explain (RUE).

Thank you Renni Browne and Dave King for this invaluable acronym. Trust readers to get the point faster and say what you’re trying to say in much less. It’s more satisfying to get from A to Z without hitting the entire alphabet.

However, I think this is probably a case of not having the time to go back over the books and pare the words and ideas…or to gain objectivity from the work…enough to see the instances where you’ve shown something well and don’t need the accompanying internalization that explains it, or when a scene seems to be active, opening in the middle of something, but then stops to provide the backstory that led to this moment. (I’m big on need-to-know only, please.)

Credenza Pete, one of Victoria's cats...  How much do you love this picture????  How cute is it?
Stinkin' cute!

Stephen King wrote in his book On Writing that it wasn’t until he was finished writing a story that he knew what it was about and then he rewrote it based on the discovery he made by the end of his first draft. At the pace of romance publishing, I’d love to meet the author who has that kind of time!

#2 Never use tummy when stomach will do.

In this Strunk & White rule, the idea is cute word choice can call attention to itself. I am a huge advocate of using words that serve the story rather than pull us out of it to think about the words. (A little brogue goes a long way, as they say in Historicals!) And while we’re at it, I confess I don’t even know what a cliché is anymore. As long as the words and ideas don’t pull me out of the story, they work well.

Heartwarming Romance October release 

#3: Let’s rough your characters up more.

From tracking research our readers have told us: “If you know from the first page the lovers will end up together it spoils the story. There has to be conflict, not too much sweetness…. I hate predictable reads that are flat, lacking in highs and lows.”

Rules #2 and #3 seem to go arm and arm. My authors know I don’t like the term “sweet romance” since, even though it’s recognized in the industry as meaning a romance without sex, in practice it propels writers toward kitten and puppy dog plotting, flowers and sunshine: a polite journey to a predictable happy ending…when we’re looking for stories that make readers wonder how on earth the pair will ever get together. Clean stories need to be as exciting as edgier sexy ones.

I am one of the biggest animal lovers out there, proud caregiver to four cats, but as an editor, I like to see stray kittens or puppies when they have a reason to be in the story beyond their sweet factor.

Will Feral 

A former Superromance author of mine also wrote for Love Inspired and they were some of the darkest, redemptive romances I’ve ever had the pleasure to edit. Yes, please: go there!

#4 Let’s find ways to eliminate the coincidence.

Find the misunderstandings and coincidences and imposed plotting and turn them around so they’re driven by the leads. For instance:

*What if, instead of the ex-boyfriend entering the story near the end to ratchet up the tension (predictable external device usually because inner obstacle is gone), why not let the heroine call him in? Instead of imposing plot on characters, motivate them to provoke the action.

*Currently the hero’s faced with falling off the wagon, thinks about the heroine and how good she is and how much she has changed him…and doesn’t drink. But the heroine sees him in the bar and thinks he drank. This leads to hero not confronting her but leaving town in a petulant reaction to her misunderstanding.  Well, what if the hero did take the drink, and then we cut to the heroine finding him over the empty bottle and him seeing the disappointment in her eyes before she walks out. Then her concerns are real, and the hero must redeem himself in her eyes. Motivation that was surface becomes deeper.

#5 Motivate your characters and then let them act based on those motivations.

Most writers create fresh, interesting characters and an intriguing premise to launch a story…but too often the characters soon cast off the constraints of their motivation and act in ways that are mysterious to them based on their “unexpected” attraction to the other. Well, it may be unexpected to them, but it’s clichéd and predictable to the reader. If a story stays true to the rich characterization, the characters will drive the action and I probably won’t be able to predict each step, which is fantastic!

From our tracking research: “Characters with strong identities/personalities save a story from cliché every time… I prefer it when characters grow through action and reaction rather than too much deep soul searching… “

#6 Is this scene really about what it appears to be about or is there something else going on here?

As McKee tells us, “‘If the scene is about what the scene is about, you’re in deep [trouble].’"…

Writing this, for example: Two attractive people sit opposite each other at the candlelit table, the light glinting off the crystal wineglasses and the dewy eyes of the lovers. Soft breezes billow the curtain. A Chopin nocturne plays in the background. The lovers reach across the table, touch hands, look longingly in each others’ eyes, say, ‘I love you, I love you,”…and actually mean it. This scene…will die like a rat in the road.”

There’s a section in Donald Maas’s book about the tea scene and how, if it’s only there for BFF support and for the heroine to rehash the romance, cut it. But if there’s something else going on between the two characters in that scene, really flesh out what each wants from the other. Because even the BFF needs to want something.

#7 How can we raise the stakes in the romance?

The highest stakes, according to McKee is that by choosing love the hero and heroine stand to lose that one thing they want more than life itself.

I can usually tell what the hero and heroine have to gain in choosing love. It’s much less often I see a strong obstacle to love that takes the entire book to get past. And that’s sometimes when the villain steps in to mess with the hero and heroine, providing the tension and stakes. That’s traditional storytelling. But contemporary romance readers want the tension and stakes to come from between the hero and heroine as much as from the external plotting. They want love to cost the leads and for them to have to struggle to earn the happy ending.

I can’t resist quoting McKee: “Pressure is essential. Choices made when nothing is at risk mean little. If a character chooses to tell the truth in a situation where telling a lie would gain him nothing, the choice is trivial, the moment expresses nothing. But if the same character insists on telling the truth when a lie would save his life, then we sense that honesty is at the core of his nature.”

We all know this, right? But that’s where Fifty Shades of Grey taught me a lesson in stakes. In choosing love, the heroine risked death at the hands of a man who warned her he would hurt her, and she has no idea how far he’ll carry that threat. How much harder is it for a contemporary clean romance writer to achieve that level of high stakes!

I’d love to find out from the authors on this blog if you have any advice on how to ratchet up the romantic tension when sex is not an option. And to readers checking in, please tell me if you agree with my editing advice or whether I should read some more how-to-edit books because you want those kitten and puppy dog tummies!

Best wishes,

Victoria

Ruthy here! 

Victoria, thank you for this gold mine of straightforward information... I love it! 

Folks, feel free to pepper Victoria with questions and/or toss your ideas out there! She's cute, funny and very approachable! This is your chance to explore a fun, different, fresh form of fiction for today's reader... and even though I'm excising KITTENS from all stories, (that's totally untrue, I just wrote some barn kittens into a book... SIGH...) 

"Lucy"

I think you'd love working with this woman! 

Coffee's inside, maple cakes and apple fritters, too, and we've got BOOKS
to tempt you into examining Heartwarming more closely! 

Victoria has brought 2 4-packs of Heartwarming Romance's October releases....

and we're offering SEVEN FREE HEARTWARMING E-BOOKS of your choice! Leave a comment (and yes, ask questions!) to have your name thrown into the very clean cat dish!!!  :)

And Victoria, thanks so much for being with us today, and giving us a great look at "Heartwarming" and one of the wonderful editors behind it!