"Then, by an extraordinary quirk of fate, Madison became pregnant..."

In writing classes designed to dupe money from writers unsure over what writing involves, 'Drama' isn't considered a genre. Every story must contain drama to be considered a story. If nothing dramatic happens, what makes it worth talking about? Say nothing in your day was dramatic and someone, probably a parent who worries about you, asks you to describe your day. Would you be able to? Would you have anything to tell him that wouldn't bore said listener to tears? Still, the day happened. Time passed. Did you even get out of bed? Jeez, man. You're wasting your life.

By the nature of the argument, however, other genres such as Western, Sci-Fi and Action are not immediately suggestive of story. They are settings and themes. If the story is connected to the location or time period then you have a Western Whodunit, or a Sci-Fi Romance. Romance stories, as glimpsed in the haughty pages of Mills & Boon, are immediately suggestive of story. Romance is a genre in the truest sense. Therefore Sci-Fi Romance is a compelling fusion, if only for the lurid robot sex. Of course Mills & Boon would scoff at the idea of bridging such gaps between classic genres such as these. Yet romance can take various forms. There are many ways to be romanced, after all, and while romance is a genre, there are numerous sub-genres within romance for the reader to find the perfect way she or her can receive her fictional loving.

The company, like their sister brands, are so aware of customer desires that they now offer a diverse selection of categories such as Crime, Paranormal and Nocturne (which sounds like Horror, but without, you know, the horror). There are plenty of Western Romances, with cowboys and cowgirls and sunsets and trite emotional baggage, as well as Adventure or Action Romance, with cops and guns and chases and trite emotional baggage. More generic, however, are the striking differences in tone, sex quota and colour of the book sleeve. So, depending on the reader's stomach and attitude toward children as supporting characters there are Tender Romances, Modern Romances, Medical Romances, Historical Romances, Blaze and Modern Heat! Perhaps the titles are self-explanatory, but for word count a little elaboration is called-for.

Tender Romances are often tender, focusing on love and tenderness and strong emotional bonds, rather than sex and lust and having lustful sex. Modern Romance brings Mills & Boon into the now, exploring what it's like for a modern woman in an urban setting to become involved in a painfully dated Mills & Boon love story. Medical Romance is like Modern Romance but with doctors and nurses and sick people, for those readers who believe ER and Grey's Anatomy aren't concerned enough with tiresome romantic sub-plots. Historical Romance, still popular today!, sets romance in the olden days where such modern heroes as ruthless property developers and brooding police detectives are replaced by ruthless landowners and brooding knights. Blaze and Modern Heat, on the other hand, are basically the same sub-genre but with different titles and focus on the passionate and constant sex between a couple as they inexplicably forge an emotional bond despite limited conversation.

Remove all these elements, though, and focus on what makes the Romance genre all it is, and you're left with simple stories involving the accustomed archetypes audiences have always been fond of. For example there's the popular cruel oil sheikh and the spirited female who somehow manages to be tricked, blackmailed or forced (not raped, but whirl-winded by sheer magnitude of personality) into the bed of the charming sheik. Classic stuff. So romantic and exotic.

For the more discerning reader, and the more ambitious writer, these stereotypes, settings and plot-lines are tired and warily formulaic. Yet curiously, the predictability and familiarity of the stories, characters and set-ups are all part of the appeal of romance fiction. Strong, feisty women (usually virgins, often twenty-seven) meet and immediately desire strong, alpha males (usually divorced, occasionally thirty-two), who equally desire them. However, a series of easily surmountable obstacles are put in the way of their impending happy ending. The writer must therefore use ham-fisted and repetitive prose to hold back the couple from falling in love, all the while initiating a series of passionate love scenes, in expensive and glamorous locations.

There's a Hollywood film, a Matthew McComedy, entitled How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days. The inexplicable plot runs as such, girl journalist writes a piece on how to get a man to break-up with her in ten days. The guy chosen has to stay with a girl for ten days in order to win a bet with a rival and land an advertising gig. If the film hadn't strived and failed to gain laughs, it would have all the hallmarks of a Mills & Boon, and when considering most Hollywood romantic comedies, or romantic dramas, many follow the same worryingly unambitious structure of this most yucked-over franchise.

What is wrong, then, with Mills & Boon? Is it the calibre of writing, is it the lack of laughs? Is it because they take longer to read than a Sarah Jessica Parker movie takes to watch? Are films such as Failure to Launch and The Wedding Date thought of as laughably as Public Mistress, Private Affair? While the plots are all the same, the characters only superficially-altered from book to book, the amounts of glamour and misogyny troubling and unrealistic in equal measure, it is surely the terrible quality of prose that is most offensive to the objective, critical reader. A deceptively simple style is a necessary requirement in this type of fiction, but never have simple and simplistic been so shamefully confused.