“She didn't do lovers”

In our first discussion on conflict in romance novels we learned several valuable lessons, such as internal conflict is different from external conflict, developing emotional journeys takes precedence over developing plot and themes, writing for Mills & Boon doesn't have to be easy, and unexpected pregnancy can sometimes become a situation where feelings arise. Secrets Uncovered didn't stop there, however, and Chapter Two of the e-book continues, dealing with black moments, the pitfalls of plotting, the necessity of grovelling, creating intensity while avoiding threatening the reader and the dangers a romance author faces when tempted to write properly. Before all that, though, we should assume you, gentle reader, remain hopelessly incompetent, and so here are a few of the most obvious mistakes you have probably already made.

The best place to start would be with your opening, the setting of the scene, the introduction of your heroine and hero. There are so many archetypal beginnings to avoid Romance HQ lists them, before explaining that sometimes an obvious first sequence can be rescued with subversion and the correct amount of emotional honesty. Therefore, if your heroine has recently been dumped, found her boyfriend with another woman, or been caught in an embarrassing position in front of her family, or entire office, do not fret, because even though this is lazy writing and too familiar to catch the reader's attention it might be strong enough if your carefully-tailored characters add depth to the potentially superficial incident. 'Acting out of character for the sake of the plot is a no-no. If your characters start bending every which way just to reach your desired conclusion then you are writing puppets, not people.' A romantic heroine is rarely imbued with a credible sense of dignity, but if they are true to themselves the reader will understand why they are single and unhappy, and what kind of belief system they must destroy within themselves in order to enjoy their happily-ever-after.

Every writer receives and then immediately ignores an oft-repeated phrase of advice, show don't tell. Heavy exposition kills the pacing of the narrative and hurts the mood of the prose. The characters and plot should be revealed through actions and responses. This is a common mistake in many Mills & Boon novels, so Secrets Uncovered sees fit to point out the problems caused by bombastic explanation. 'Events that should be front stage are anything that moves on the romance or creates conflict and has its basis in emotion. Anything else is window dressing.' Yet hang on, what about back-story? In Chapter One we were told to write extensive biographies and justify every decision, flaw and misgiving with previous failed relationships and father abandonment issues. Why do that if we can't use it in a lengthy speech to eat up a few hundred words? 'Ah hah! I hear you say – what about back story? The thing is, the most powerful back story is the one the reader sees through your characters’ reactions.' Despite this, your heroine will eventually have the opportunity to reveal all about their father, or that time they were left at the altar by a handsome con-artist, in case their tendencies implied through reactions make them appear insanely paranoid.

Moving on, how do we avoid the usual trappings most published Mills & Boon writers fall into on their way to success and riches?

• 'Choose your set-up carefully'

Do not simply jump in with any old idea, write the first fifty-five thousand words that come to mind and then mail off your manuscript and hope for the best. This tactic is only suitable for authors who have a built-in fanbase and scores of books already on their shelves. For your debut novel it is worth spending time planning the details of your story, and working from a theme, with powerful, unique, grounded and believable characters in a tale familiar enough to attract an audience yet unfamiliar enough to strike for originality. Once you have these fixtures in place any fifty-five thousand words will suffice.

• 'Make sure your characters are driving the plot'

Often romance novels throw their hero and heroine together through unlikely contrivance and push the inevitability of the story to the forefront, leaving the characters powerless to affect change on their lives, locked in as they are to accepting their fates are intertwined and they were born to be together. Fighting their desires, doubts and better natures would be senseless and only delaying what is written in the stars in permanent beams of light. Even though this style is consistent with the genre as a whole, apparently it is wrong.

• 'The reader is interested in reaction not action'

And you certainly wouldn't want to second-guess your reader. After all, the author has spent hours honing their characters and shaping a structure to challenge them, resulting in epiphanies that strengthen and enrich their lives, and sometimes related to that, helping them to find love. Once you have proven to the reader your heroine is a strong-willed, stubborn, feisty, shy, sexually-naïve tourist who coos at babies in supermarkets, and had her meet a conceited Brazilian billionaire who had just happened to have made a bet with his friend that he could buy any woman to have sex with him, what will really interest the reader is why this girl would completely go against all her personality traits and say, 'Sure.'

• 'Know what your plot needs to be on the page'

Your plot just doesn't belong anywhere else. The majority of authors know what their book must look like because Mills & Boon have told them. Deviating from plot points such as heroine meeting hero by the end of the first page and declaring their undying love on the last page would be suicidally ambitious. Once you have a solid beginning and a happy ending your job is largely complete, and as long as what happens inbetween these two moments doesn't inexplicably flash-back to Civil War-era Spain you should be successful. In writing that, though, Bewildered Heart cannot be sure what, 'Know what your plot needs to be on the page' actually means.

• 'Your reader will go with any plot if they believe in your characters'

For more on this turn back to the chapter on character we have yet to write about. As long as your principals are consistent in their decision-making yet consistently surprising in their decision-making the reader will read on, hoping these two love-birds get their respective acts together and realise that while he maybe a ruthless tycoon who hates all women she is unlike every other women because of a troubled relationship with her dad, and while she maybe gutsy, proud and desperately fighting to protect her animal sanctuary from closure the tycoon wanting to replace the animals with a shopping mall is caring, rich and strikingly dishy. Throw in an unexpected pregnancy and the reader will have to know how they deal with the news, much more curious about that than why the grizzly bear is suddenly acting so suspiciously.

• 'The characters are going on a journey – think of the plot as a road, not the destination'

Much like driving the destination is often where the journey ends, once the driving has concluded and the driver and their travelling companions have reached where they intended to go. In romance writing terms the analogy is apt. After all, we know where the journey is headed and will end once we get there, as hero kisses heroine, having apologised for the speeding, never indicating when changing lanes and refusing to wear a seatbelt in order to be closer to her. The drama is kept to the trip, how and why they are going, rather than where, and will they stop to eat lunch at a burger van parked in a lay-by? Imagine the greatest road trip you have ever under-taken, the one where you took several wrong turns and discovered an abandoned theme park when you had originally set off to buy a lampshade from a furniture shop. Now reinvent yourself as an emotionally-insecure, yet beautiful twenty-something, and your Sat Nav as a sophisticated, gorgeous, yet heartlessly arrogant billionaire, exchange petrol for sex and the car for life itself and you have yourselves one hell of a novel.

"Arise being the operative word, he admitted grimly"

In time to cash in on the New Voices competition the gals over at Romance Headquarters compiled a handy, free, download-only e-book entitled Secrets Uncovered – Blogs, Hints and the Inside Scoop from Mills & Boon Editors and Authors. There are fifty-five pages of suggestions for improving your story and fulfilling your life-long dream of writing for Harlequin. Those wishing to experience the advice and general frivolity for themselves need only download Secrets Uncovered onto their Adobe software, Kindles, digital devices or e-readers. However, for those neither technologically-aware nor Scientologists allow Bewildered Heart to walk you right through this computerized book from whatever passes for a front-cover online to whatever passes for a back-cover.

As the opening chapter deals with the well-traversed subject of character, we will begin with the equally important area of conflict and the first question a potential author would ask before they begin writing, What is an emotional conflict? According to the official Mills & Boon definition (Mills & Boon have their own official definitions of things) emotional conflict is, ‘The internal battle a character has to overcome something intrinsic to their personality that prevents their happy ending.’ There, when it is that straight-forward how come so many writers have troubled defining it? ‘This could be specific personality traits (lack of trust, a guarded heart) or motivations and aspirations.’

Mills & Boon strongly believe in the importance of internal emotional conflicts, and argue a book simply wouldn't be worth reading without any. Often authors are encouraged to come up with two, one for both heroine and hero. Typically the writer imbues their protagonists with standard neuroses such as vulnerability-refusal, sexual frigidity, arrogance, misogyny or work commitments. Yet occasionally a hopeful novelist will go beyond the archetypal afflictions and create a hindrance of depth and originality, and thus see their manuscript immediately rejected by the publishers.

Once you have explained to the reader that your heroine has been previously betrayed  and your hero is a man you have the necessary arcs to build your plot around, but if you believe your work with emotional conflict is complete your knowledge of writing and life is severely lacking. ‘Emotional conflict can also occur within a relationship, when a specific emotional situation – unexpected pregnancy, an arranged marriage, a curse or a dangerous situation – provides a further barrier to happiness.’ There are no emotional conflicts quite like an unexpected pregnancy, or a gypsy curse enforcing one hundred years of lycanthropy on your billionaire tycoon. However, these suggestions should be seen merely as physical machinations to further strengthen the already embedded dilemmas of the characters. If, for example, your heroine has difficulties with trust, loyalty and losing control imagine the dramatic journey she faces now a witch has turned her potential boyfriend into a werewolf.

This is reliable story-telling formula. Invent a character with a problem to solve, based upon a theme of your inclination, and assemble the narrative around the concept that most strongly challenges this intrinsic flaw, allowing the plot twists to offer genuine conflicts to resolve in order to achieve the most satisfying resolution. For romance fiction the contractual plot points, girl meets boy, a happy ending, are worked into a well-chosen subject matter. Once you're convinced your internal conflicts are powerfully dramatic enough for Mills & Boon what about your external conflicts, such as unexpected pregnancy or a voodoo hex? 'External conflicts – misunderstandings, circumstances or a secondary character's influence – should only be brought in as additional support to develop romance and plot. Allowing the focus to fall on to theme and plot is a common and easy trap to fall into.' Precisely, leave the exploration of theme to the professionals. However, before one begins typing there are a handful of questions you must work out the answers to.

'1. What draws them together?' For a moment ignore the external conflicts that cause your star-crossed lovers to meet, and concentrate on the emotional issues. It is all well and good drawing them together through hackneyed clichés such as one being a nurse caring for a plucky orphan and the other a chauvinistic sheik surgeon single-handedly building a log cabin for the family he no longer has, but what are the personal and physical qualities that cause the initial and ongoing attraction? What do they receive from the contact, and how are the beginnings of a relationship specifically both appealing and foreboding? The reader will be intrigued, unable to see how hero and heroine will ever reconcile their disputes, leave the past behind, find love and save a child's life.

'2. What keeps them apart?' Yes, what are the nagging psychological disturbances they suffer from that prevent them from finding the happiness, stability and mental health only marriage and offspring can bring? She maybe a sensitive, good-natured nurse, but her trusting nature has seen her hurt before, not least by her cruel, distant father and the way in which he treated her mother. How could she possibly fall for such an arrogant sheik surgeon with an icy bedside manner and ridiculously thick eyelashes? Despite her intense physical longing for his touch she must resist him to protect the fragility of her heart and the well-being of a brave, little orphan who desperately needs her attention now more than ever.

'3. What emotional obstacles do they encounter on the way?' Now you have your characters, scenario and location how do you develop the emotional journeys toward a gratifying culmination, rather than letting them meander like a Mills & Boon novel, padded tiresomely with sex scenes and the slow realisation of the sheik surgeon not being mean, conceited or dishonest, but rather misunderstood and a generous lover? How could she have had him so wrong, to think he refused to operate on a courageous orphan because he enjoys watching children slowly die, when in fact through secret, endless bouts of boardgames he had ascertained the kid was not strong enough to survive surgery and first would have to witness the power of love between medical colleagues.

'4. What are the turning points of the story going to be – positive and negative?' How do they overcome their differences, and what epiphanies and external conflicts occur to further the emotional arcs and bring them closer to the inevitable conclusion that they must surpass their doubts, and banish their destructive memories of busted romances and patriarchal abandonment not only for the sake of a gutsy orphan, but also for themselves. Now she has found the man of her dreams and seen him for who he really is, as no one else can see him, shouldn't she let down her defences, forgive her father and finally accept the all-consuming joy of matrimony?

'5. Why will the reader truly care about their happy ending?' Have you won over your audience with characters both credible and worthy of support? Does your hero leap from the page, shouting that despite building the log cabin using nothing but wood, nails and masculinity the empathy of a good woman and the pluckiness of an sickly orphan have proven to him he no longer wants to be a sheik surgeon hermit living alone in a log cabin in the woods, but rather a decent, caring sheik surgeon husband and father who has to sell a log cabin to pay for a three bedroom house, preferably in walking distance of a hospital?

If so far this combination of Mills & Boon insight and Bewildered Heart inspiration has failed to light a fire within you, gentle reader, how about a writing exercise sure to get those creative juices flowing? 'What story would you tell if your characters were trapped in one room for the entire book? Think of the emotional journey your hero and heroine would go on without any outside influences. How would you sustain the tension between the couple, build up to the highs and lows, when all they can do is talk to each other?’

That sounds as if it could be worth a try, but if you can only contemplate the fall-out of two people trapped in a room trying to find a way out of the room and wondering how they are trapped inside a room and whether anyone is coming to rescue them you are under-taking the assignment incorrectly. ‘We’re not going to lie, it’s a tough challenge – but no one said this was supposed to be easy,’ Secrets Uncovered reassures us. Yet that is not true, Romance HQ, everyone tells us that writing a Mills & Boon novel would be incredibly easy and haven't we been talking about writing one for nearly a year and a half already, so where is it, Bewildered Heart, where is this mythical novel you seem to always be on the verge of beginning? It is as if these helpful guides we keep reading, reviewing and learning from aren't helping at all.

"Drax frowned his dark, arrogantly slanted eyebrows over an equally arrogant aquiline nose"

Last month when searching for helpful pieces of advice for the upcoming New Voices competition we took the advice of Penny Jordan, legendary Mills & Boon novelist and author of some two hundred romance books (including Passionate Protection and Passionate Possession) in a prolific career spanning five decades. As part of her Arabian Nights series Jordan offered up excitement in various forms, such as first love with a sheikh in The Sheikh's Virgin Bride, pleasure with a sheikh in One Night with the Sheikh, passion with a sheikh in Possessed by the Sheikh, sexual harassment with a sheikh in The Sheikh's Blackmailed Mistress and sand everywhere in Prince of the Desert. Bewildered Heart preferred the feel of the more mysterious sheikh, rattle and roll of Taken by the Sheikh, a modern romance with a very modern twist on what exactly Penny Jordan believes a sheikh to be, and where exactly Penny Jordan believes a sheikh comes from.

Welcome to the sultry, exotic lands of Dhurahn, an oil rich Middle Eastern state governed by Prince al Drac'ar al Karim and his brother Vere. Drac'ar al Karim, Drax to his friends (Hi, Drax!), has returned from a business trip to London when he learns some frightful news from the leaders of Dhurahn's neighbouring states. The Ruler of Zuran wants Vere to wed his youngest sister, while the Emir of Khulua wishes Drax marry his eldest daughter. While the twin brothers are both thirty-four they are not yet ready to settle down in matrimony, even if it will strengthen the ties between the three countries. There is only one way to resolve this problem and save them from a marriage of convenience. How about, Drax proposes, a marriage of convenience? They will find two innocent, virginal ladies glad to wed and foolishly compliant enough into accepting a quickie divorce without any sort of financial compensation. The sooner they find their prospective brides the sooner they can decline the Ruler and Emir's proposals without causing offence and accidentally creating an international incident. Do women such as this still exist, asks Vere. Did they ever exist, asks the reader. Furthermore, where will you find such a creature, lost, confused, penniless, local, a virgin, and willing to sacrifice all of the virtuous personality traits that made her that way for a misogynistic sheikh with arrogant eyebrows and a suspicious job offer?

Meanwhile, in nearby Zuran City, capital of Zuran, Sadie Murray has been fired from her vague job description by the cantankerous Madame al Sawar. It seems Sadie was unwilling to trade sex for business agreements and her employer's company was solely successful because clients were rewarded with sex for agreeing to business deals. Sadie is thrown out without pay or the means to return to her home in the United Kingdom. Things look bleak for intelligent, morally responsible, virginal and selfless Miss Murray when who should walk through the gate but the Madame's noble and kind husband and his friend, the devastatingly gorgeous and overwhelmingly masculine Prince Drac'ar al Karim. Sadie has never felt physical attraction before, but suddenly her womanly senses are tingling and her throat is dry for a reason besides the humidity. She does not recognise Drax, of course, because the reader can only assume she is as politically ignorant as the writer has made her well-educated and politically knowledgeable. She hurries away, bound for the city airport or British Embassy, defeated by Madame al Sawar's cruelty and reluctant to accept Professor al Sawar's help. None of this goes unnoticed by Drax, however. His manly desires are stirred by Sadie's silky hair, reminiscent of his horses, her honourable pride, reminiscent of his falcons and her other features, probably all comparable to an animal Drax owns.

With only the merest few touches of contrivance all the pieces needed for the plot implied in the prologue have been laid within the opening two chapters. Drax quickly gallops after Sadie in his luxurious, yet unassuming, town car and finds her walking on the dust that passes for pavement in the State of Zuran. In her rush to escape Madame al Sawar Sadie dropped her passport and forgot her hat, rendering her with a nasty case of heatstroke and the embarrassment of reaching her destination with identification. Fortunately for her, the hunky piece of royal goodness has found her passport and has an unopened bottle of cool water in the car. If only Sadie would climb aboard with Drax she could reclaim her valuable documents and not die as a result of dehydration and over-exposure. Drax has an entirely different kind of exposure in mind for this pale beauty and he will stop at nothing to convince her to stay, including refusing to return her passport and locking all the doors once she is in the car. With her attention now finely tuned to his passionate sexiness and in-no-way-revealing dishdasha Drax lays out the whole truth over hurried mouthfuls of thirst-quenching water.

While Dhurahn enjoys a fair amount of wealth from its oil reserves the country's main resource has been the river that runs through it and its verdant, fertile land. Dhurahn's strongest industry is its produce, but the ambitious twin brothers have greater plans than this and yearn to create a financial centre within the country to rival those of New York, London and Hong Kong. Both Drax and Vere have been travelling regularly to England for the meetings necessary to create a financial centre worthy of competing in the money market, and Drax has learned that such a venture will require people with an understanding of financial services to work in the buildings he will eventually get around to constructing. Therefore Dhurahn has begun searching for suitable candidates for such a prestigious role, perhaps those with a degree and an MBA, who happen to be nearby and looking for a job. A likely story, thinks Sadie, who wisely deduces that when a man offers a woman employment it always turns out to be an elaborate scheme to trick her into an arranged marriage with his brother. She turns down the opportunity, finding Drax's claims to the Dhurahni throne incredulous, but Drax smartly reacts as any Prince would, with the offer of a ride on his private jet. There the third chapter ends, Drax convinced he has found Vere's bride despite his own inexplicable physical attraction to her, and Sadie unsure if heatstroke has reduced her to a gullible idiot with a degree and MBA.

With relations between Western opinions of Arab businessmen and Arab businessmen at an all-time high, as they were even back in 2007 when the world made sense, Penny Jordan struck and Taken by the Sheikh is classic Mills & Boon escapist fantasy, spoilt only by hackneyed plotting, ludicrous characters, inept sentence structuring and a worryingly blasé attitude towards Middle Eastern geography. Jordan rehashes the story of every previous Modern Romance with lazy similarities to the likes of The Billionaire's Housekeeper Mistress and the wager prologue of The Millionaire's Indecent Proposal. Not that Penny Jordan can be blamed, as those novels were written after this one, but the similarities to the former are glaring. The timid virgin fired by her mean-spirited bully of a boss only to be rescued by a suave billionaire who only offers a job as a means to seducing her. One of the many obvious faults with The Billionaire's Housekeeper Mistress is that Australian billionaires are less popular than Arab Princes and housekeeping will never be as appealing as business management. How have sheikhs proven so popular in romance fiction when they are nothing more than a means to produce a new series of books by swapping out billionaire, or cowboy, for sheikh and leaving the majority of the other words alone?

Nevertheless, the predictability of the narrative and the generic formula are no match for Jordan's amateurish writing style. Whereas the  unchallenging simplicity of many a Mills & Boon can infuriate for its lack of nuance and skill the authors are at least aware that they must maintain character perspective over lengthy passages, and not tally back and forth sentence to sentence. This may keep the reader on their toes, as Penny Jordan might believe, though angry at the assertion from an unknown weblog that she is mistaken, but while Bewildered Heart knows Jordan has written many books before we would counter that the effect is comical and slows the pace to so glacier not even the sizzling chemistry of the characters can melt the ice and drown the reader in a flood of emotion and competent writing.

Vere would have his own story told a year later in the series, so we can rule out his participation from Taken by the Sheikh. This leaves us with Drax and Sadie. One needs a wife and has been celibate for too long, while the other is a virgin who desperately requires a job and her passport back. For Drax the prognosis is obvious, he should sleep with Sadie and convince her to marry him to avoid the arranged marriage to the Emir of Khulua's eldest daughter, only to then fall in love with Sadie before she discovers there is no work in the financial sector and she is being used and lied to. Then Drax is merely one impassioned speech away from eternal happiness. For Sadie she is a handful of unlikely sequences away from hearing an impassioned speech and having a husband and a well-paid job in the financial sector of what is clearly a deeply-troubled and openly corrupt nation where the indulgent elite of two princes rule. We can only forlornly hope Jordan sees fit to develop a backdrop of topical and blood-thirsty revolution. With the chances of that seeming as incredulous as anything else that has happened thus far only one question remains, who will the titular sheikh turn out to be?