A Formula for Romance… Novels
Critics of romance novels often cite a long list of problems with the books and one of the most frequently used is that the books are formulaic. Some authors embrace that idea and give a guide to what they think of as “the formula” such as Paula Graves or Rita Clay Estrada and Rita Gallagher. Others like Anne Gracie heartily reject the idea. Harlequin calls it a format and insists that all genres use such a tool.
I tend to agree with Harlequin. A format just means readers can know what to expect when they pick up the book. Most of my favorite writers produce works that meet a certain expectation. For example, I read Sarah Addison Allen expecting lyrical writing with a touch of magic woven into an otherwise everyday story with lots of heart. When I read Susanna Kearsley I know I will get a lovely blend of past and present. For many years I read Suzanne Brockmann knowing that her Tall, Dark and Dangerous and Troubleshooters novels would make full use of her amazing ability to write the military hero. But while reading Sandra Brown’s latest I realized that there are expectations and then there are formulas. And formulas aren’t necessarily a bad thing.
Mean Streak is the story of Emory Charbonneau, a really great gal who seems to have it all: good career, nice looking husband, great friends. That’s the surface. Beneath the surface we see that Emory has begun to question her marriage and wonders if she has really made the right decision there. Events conspire to prove she didn’t and bring her to the man she should have been with all along.
The courtship with her new love is anything but typical. Emory is on a run, training for a marathon, when she feels a blinding pain in the back of her head and fades into oblivion. When she awakens she is in an unfamiliar cabin with an enigmatic man who takes excellent care of her but essentially keeps her prisoner while refusing to tell her anything about himself. They are joined in this awkward situation by a nasty cast of characters who quickly have them depending on each other for survival. Along the way they find themselves solving the mystery of what happened to Emory on her run as well as falling in love.
I’ve read this story before. Oh, not the exact same tale but something very similar in Brown’s Envy. There we have the story of Maris Matherly-Reed, head of a publishing house and married to a man who once wrote a bestselling novel. He hasn’t produced anything since. When Mavis gets a package with a novel that tells the chilling tale of a murder, a stolen manuscript and a double cross something within her begins to ask questions. Following up with the author of the novel leads her to discoveries that change her life and bring her a new love.
The same scenario plays out in Chill Factor, Play Dirty, Fat Tuesday and The Witness. In all of these books we have a wife who finds herself with a hero of seemingly dubious character who rescues her from her bad marriage. Typically, they bond while running from some pretty nasty people. It’s a plot that Brown uses to excellent effect, changing it up enough to keep us turning the page but keeping it familiar enough that it seems like re-visiting a cherished friend.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips has a formula that turns to romance magic in her hands. I call it ditz + alpha = bliss. In It Had to Be You she combines Phoebe, whom even her own friends call a screw up, with Dan, a testosterone driven, hard edged, go for the gold football coach. Phoebe’s sexy, sweet nature, sassy repertoire and savvy business mind were exactly what Dan wanted from life, even if he didn’t at first know it. He gives her the no holds barred love that has been missing from her life forever.
Flighty Daisy Devreaux from Phillip’s Kiss An Angel has a choice between prison or marriage to the man of her father’s choosing. She chooses marriage to Alexander Markov, who wants the union even less than she does. Daisy is just what Max needs, though, to heal from wounds of the past. He is just whom she needs to show her how to grow up and take control of her life. It’s a sweet love story with some unforgettable moments.
Annabelle Granger is the family screw up but now that she has inherited her grandmother’s match making business she is on course to change that. Heath Champion is a shark of a sports agent, determined to find the perfect woman to fit his image. So how is it that he finds himself drawn to the impulsive, emotional woman who is supposed to find him his perfect mate? Match Me if You Can shows that sometimes what we’re looking for is the opposite of what we think we want.
Not all Phillips’ novels utilize this formula but when she does pull it out of her repertoire it works to great effect. I think that is part of the secret to good formula usage – it can’t be the only trick in your book. Brown also writes books with very different plots but she revisits the unhappy wife + enigmatic hero = love device fairly regularly.
Nora Roberts formula also involves the matching of characters but it doesn’t involve hero and heroine but heroine, heroine and heroine. Her series are often made up of three friends (or sisters) who are a certain type. The relationship between the women is every bit as important to the stories as their relationships with the heroes. The types? There is the calm, cool, and collected character like Brianna Concannon from Born in Ice, Kate Powell from Holding the Dream, Dr. Sybill Griffin from Inner Harbor, Jude Murray from Jewels of the Sun and Rosalind Harper from Black Rose. Then there’s the feisty heroine such as Maggie Concannon from Born in Fire, Darcy Gallagher from Heart of the Sea, Margo Sullivan from Daring to Dream and Hayley Phillips from Red Lilly. And then there’s the regular gal. The mix of cold and fire such as Shannon Bodine from Born in Shame, Brenna O’Toole from Tears of the Moon, Grace Monroe of Rising Tides, Laura Templeton from Finding the Dream and Stella Rothchild from Blue Dahlia. Each of the ladies above are unique manifestations of the character style they represent but the trilogies seem to follow a familiar pattern. The formula works because the mix of characters provides a tremendous amount of room for diversity. But it is also a formula because like in any good recipe the key ingredients are always the same.
I’m sure I have other favorite authors who write a certain formula very well and I am certain you do too. Who are your favorites and what are their formulas?
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I agree with Maria D that “”all writing follows some kind of formula no matter how much the writer wants to be different”” because we’ve been using the same human themes over and over throughout human history, no matter the names, faces, dress, settings, etc. when it comes down to basics. I think what matters in the end is that an author carries out the particular human themes s/he has chosen to write about well. It’s also inevitable that some readers won’t be as drawn to some themes as others.
As for non-fiction, I agree there as well. While any author may have a voice of her/his own, there are only so many styles and approaches one can take. For instance, I stay away from the overly pedantic as well as the dumbed- down approaches and just look for good, clear writing from a writer who communicates well without lecturing or hectoring. Wit is always a plus in any kind of writing, for me anyway.
It’s funny, b/c you mention two of my favourite authors: Sandra Brown and SEP. The thing is that, although I’ve seen SEP’s formula for years, I didn’t realise there was a formula in Sandra Brown’s books.
I think it could be that although certain points in the characters can be common, they do not permeate to the whole book, they don’t determine the plot as they do in SEP’s books.
The former has suspense as the main point of the plot, so you cannot stop reading b/c of that tension, to know who did it or why he did it.
Whereas in the latter, the conflict comes from the fact that the majority of her heroines are plain girls with bad taste for clothes and the heroes are (usually, not always) professional athletes who are rich, famous and as sexy as models.
I think the fact that this is a favorite formula for Brown but by no means the only trick in her sleeve that keeps it from being easily recognized. Adultery tends to be a hot button issue for me but Brown writes it well enough that I still love her books. That’s probably why I picked up on this particular recipe.
I’d say that the reason It Had To Be You works better for me than SEP’s other riffs on the theme is that Phoebe isn’t actually a ditz.
Yep, Phoebe is such a powerful character that, when she appears in other books, she outshines the rest of the characters.
When anyone makes the claim that romance writing follows a formula, I suggest that they don’t have quite the right word—romances follow a recipe, not a formula.
A formula implies much more rigidity than a recipe.
Anyone who cooks (even as little as I do) knows that you never get exactly the same result each time you follow a recipe (unless mechanized—processed foods). Each instance of using a recipe will produce something recognizably similar to each other instance, within the limits of the skills of the cook, but each cook adds unique touches.
I like this distinction.
I like the distinction as well. The only thing that gives me pause is the role of the distributors, i.e. publishers and how heavy-handed they can be when it comes to churning out a product. Fast food industries have perfected automation and consistency of product and some might argued that micromanaging publishers can do the same with their product and reduce the individual author’s uniqueness down significantly :(
I would add that not only is it a recipe rather than a formula, it is an Upper Midwest Lutheran recipe, where measurements and instructions are vague and open to individual interpretation (add some flour and enough butter, and mix until it feels right).
I definitely inherited some recipes like this!
I think all writing follows some kind of formula no matter how much the writer wants to be different – I think a good author knows that though and works their magic in character development and by providing the readers with a plot that works for the characters – I’ve been reading mysteries lately and they definitely have a formula – romance certainly does and even historical fiction has a formula to an extent because there’s almost always some kind of conflict between good and evil rulers/leaders. I would even go as far as saying that non-fiction has a formula – different formula but formula just the same (think memoirs and biographies)
Interesting. Not sure I’ve seen the formula in non-fiction. :-)
I thing good authors are those who excel at exploring variations on a theme. One of my favorite authors, Agatha Christie, was masterful at taking about 5 basic plots and then mixing it up and coming out with different resolutions.
In romance, the journey is the important thing, not the outcome. I think this is true for most fiction.
Literature: middle or upper class characters who all come to a horrible end and learn A LESSON.
Mystery: group of people who become involved in a crime and some chief “”investigator”” who finds out who done it by the end.
Military Space Opera: band of misfits who get together to thwart evil overlord/empire/alien invader.
Romance: characters meet and work their way to joining their lives for ever/right now.
I could go on and on. I don’t think I’ve ever read any fiction work that didn’t conform to some template.
Guardians of the Galaxy was my favorite film of the summer and it TOTALLY fit this template. Humor and a great soundtrack set it apart from the rest.
I always thought LaVryle Spencer used the same formula: a man and a woman who are totally opposite and different and could never get together, but then they do. Nonetheless, I enjoyed her books because that was a good formula.
Now that you mention it, I see the formula but before that I hadn’t. I think a good author can vary up her formula until it is invisible to most readers.
You know I like formulas within a certain limit. However, once I start thinking oh, this book is just like this one its more or less the kiss of death — it might take a while for me to quit the books, because it is difficult to give up a favorite author but eventually I do.
The books change from highly anticipated to comfort reads and then to I’ll read if I don’t have anything else to read, and then I quit them.
To me there is a difference between the formula for happy every after to writing the same plot and same heroine –same authors even have
I think it depends on how much room the author leaves in the formula for change. Brown doesn’t use her formula over and over and she has lots of room to switch up the plot etc.
OTH, I was with Robyn Carr from the beginning of her career to halfway through the Virgin River books. I read one from her new series and quit. I don’t know if she has a formula but I sure felt like I was getting the same book over and over and just couldn’t take it anymore. So I totally agree that at some point an author needs to pull something besides a rabbit out of the hat or I have to quit.
I have become over the years more and more drawn to the ideas of literary theorist Roland Barthes, who, to paraphrase very roughly, argued that most literature succumbs to social expectations and provides a relatively conservative ending. And so, he argues, it is in the middle of the book where we find possibilities, and those possibilities can be exciting and innovative, even within genre writing. When I look at this concept in conjunction with romance novels, I know that the main couple will end up together in what readers like to call the “”happy ever after.”” But in a good romance, I’m struck so often not by the end result but by the process, the how. How is a romance author going to get us there””? In Sherry Thomas’s books, conflict and even flat-out antagonism sometimes render the HEA highly improbable, and so I become fascinated by the middle parts where possibilities are explored. What has to occur in order for her couples to unite? Are the couple’s conflicts resolved believably or is conflict brushed under the rug to make way for a happy ever after? Good genre writing does not usually feel boxed in by the happy ever after if the author explores conflict believably.
To me this is like real life. Many couples met the same way my husband and I did, they got married and had kids and bought cars and houses same as we did. But talk to several of us and our journeys, beliefs, relationships are all different. A good author knows there is a lot of ground between the meeting point and the HEA to tell a unique story.
I always say that I have absolutely no problem with formulaic – provided it’s done well and has other things to recommend it as well, like good writing and strong characterisation. I agree with Harlequin’s assessment, too – many people are drawn to particular authors and/or genres because they have a pretty good idea what they’re going to get. Sometimes, this can be rather like a straightjacket – look at the movie industry, which takes the formulaic to the extreme and rarely does it exceptionally well. But it works differently with books, which have the time – even within shorter formats – to explore more concepts in depth in a way that a film rarely does.
As you know, I exist almost entirely on a diet of historicals these days, because in romance, I’ve found it suits me more than any of the other sub-genres. It’s rare that an author comes up with a brand-new plot, so as long as they offer me something else to enjoy, then I’m okay with the formulaic.
I think of a good writer being the same as a good cook. They take a recipe and make something wonderful out of it, adding personal touches along the way to give it a unique flare. An average cook delivers a decent dish based on strictly following the outline – but they put in some fresh ingredients and at least stand at the stove and sir a bit. Then you get those who are like Hollywood – no fresh ingredients, and the formula is simply freeze dried and thawed from the last time they used it.
Ending cut off: So I agree, so long as they come up with something you can enjoy they are doing a good job with the formula.
Eva Ibbotson’s formula: 20 yo naïve and innocent heroine, 30 yo very experienced hero, evil other woman, a form of art involved in the plot (music, dance or theater), unusual and beautiful locations. It’s so well written that it works magnificently.
I hadn’t even realized Ibbotson’s formula till you pointed it out. Yes, it does work wonderfully.