“It was good he remembered the good times”

For many budding romance writers, naïve to what they are letting themselves in for, the creation of a heroine appears as abundantly effortless as looking in the mirror and then describing yourself using reckless amounts of fallacious narcissism. Without the ability to do this you will never get anywhere in publishing. To concoct a suitable alpha male hero cliches, day-dreaming and photographs of Hugh Jackman should suffice. However, where does this leave you when faced with the further trouble of secondary characters, such as friends, or gasp, a child? What do Mills & Boon authors know about having friends and children? In many cases, the novelist wisely skips over additional characters altogether, but this is a divisive subject among those who like to argue over what makes for a good romance in book-form. Should we bother with a trusted best friend for our heroine, or should we simply assume that her inevitable marriage to the perfect billionaire dreamboat makes her incapable of being liked by anyone female?

Secrets Uncovered has managed to push itself to the forefront of this debate, merely by thinking it up in the first place. 'Not always, but often, a romantic heroine tends to be rather isolated – emotionally, socially, professionally etc. This works because it places the heroine in a space where the hero can truly possess her, and her emotions.' A wise aside, for those mistakenly assuming there was only one kind of her. 'This isolation enhances the sense that the characters need each other, and only each other.' Surely a girlfriend is no match for a sophisticated, wealthy penis, and as a result, authors are inclined to shape their protagonists as outsiders, only to then fail to offer any semblance of an explanation why such lovely, generous, kind people never have anyone to talk to about their feelings.

'In the 21st century, is it really believable that someone would be so alone in the world, and what does it say about them that they are? If you’re asking readers to step into the shoes of a lonely virgin is a best friend hovering in the wings the most useful weapon in your empathy arsenal?!' For Secrets Uncovered and the majority of lonely virgins the answer is, we, or rather they, don't understand the question. How is the assessment framed, by a responsibility to realism or to the wanton ammunition of an empathy arsenal? Is not a novelist's foremost obligation to their novel? Every reader can sympathise with what it must be like to be a solitary waif, innocent of the carnal lessons of passion, but once the writer has given her a close acquaintance won't that rile the jealous bitterness of those who only find companions in the books they read?

Now, say someone was considering adding a confidante to their narrative, what would they hope to achieve from such a character? 'On a positive note, they can offer much needed advice in times of need; they also provide a contrast to the heroine, showcasing why she’s like no other woman and is worth the hero’s attention. Alternatively, sometimes a BFF plays false, forcing the heroine to accept she needs to let go of her past life and throw her lot in with the hero.' Best of all, a contrasting friend offers spin-off value, whereby one novel becomes an entire series, stretching a reader's interest to a sequel long before they have even lost interest in the original. Typically, romance experts advise against using a gal-pal, flatmate or family member as a plot catalyst for obvious reasons. It would be foolish to move the epiphany-having and decision-making away from the heroine, but a sounding-board is preferable to the risible interior monologue most Harlequin exponents continue to insist upon. Furthermore, there are no negative points, so everyone can move down to the next paragraph.

Secrets Uncovered has extrapolated their argument with a handy list of three top tips, useful not only for when inventing an imaginary friend, but also for when someone real comes asking you for insight into their relationship. '1. Make sure the support network is series-appropriate!' Why would your Medical heroine be hanging around a downtown laundrette with a pregnant stripper discussing drag-racing? The very idea is frankly insulting to the reader. Therefore be sure the task of adding a secondary character doesn't make you completely forget who you are and what your book is about.

'2. The reasons behind the friendship need to be believable. Friends with opposite personalities – the quiet heroine and the ballsy BFF – are great as a vehicle to encourage the protagonist to leave her comfort zone, but extra thought needs to go into explaining their connection.' As we have seen in such films as Something Borrowed an unlikely friendship needs a long, tedious sequence for the audience to understand how they became close in the first place in order to comment that history doesn't rationalise why they remain in each other's company in the present. Back-story will not help a reader doubtful of an incredulous partnership. Instead it is more eye-opening to witness the twosome in action, and learn how they compliment and empower the other while doing friendly things such as visiting the gym, shopping for clothing and drinking coffee in brightly-lit locations.

'3. Finally, think about how the dynamic of the friendship will reflect on the heroine.' The use of colleagues and companions for the sake of realism is an unnecessary distraction from the driving force of the plotting, yet it is considered perfectly acceptable to surround the hero with a bevy of mates and business associates to further exemplify his magnificence and sturdy hair-line by comparison. Therefore, the writer must be aware of how the reader will react to the heroine dealing with parents, children and the student serving her coffee, their bleary eyes struggling due to the fantastic light scheme. While an arrogant billionaire can order hot beverages with eye contact and a subtle movement of a coiffured eyebrow, the demure secretary who doesn't know her own beauty must remain polite and respectful to everyone, because the reader reads carefully and seems unreasonably judgmental.

With everything neatly explained, are there any additional secrets we should uncover? 'But if you decide a best friend isn’t for you, that’s ok too!' Sure, but who will you turn to in times of need for things you need, possibly over coffee? Not your fictional heroine, because soon she will be married, pregnant and living in a castle. Who knows whether she will be able to find time to spend with you then, and she can't have coffee, due to the foetus with a low-tolerance for caffeine. Meanwhile, back to the matter at hand, what if you decide to ignore this lesson and not craft a best friend for your protagonist? 'The challenge with writing a more isolated heroine is making that aloneness exceptionally convincing, so that the readers truly get on board with it and can still identify with her. Ask yourself, why would this woman be like this? And think outside the box here – what other ways can your heroine be emotionally vulnerable or isolated that doesn’t preclude having no friends/family?!' Some sort of debilitating allergy?

Once the choice of a credible isolated heroine has been settled upon, this direction should form the entire story. Romance authors often commit an early error with a discordant lack of connection between their characters and their plot, as if one has been dreamed up separately from the other. We see themes hinted at by the heroine's back-story, often involving childhood tragedy bringing about a mistrust of others, then squandered as this woman is thrown powerlessly into a marriage of convenience with a forceful Greek sheikh tycoon. Would a contented, settled childhood have someone react differently to being bought by a Mediterranean businessman who slept with her many years ago only to have recently discovered she birthed his baby and then concealed it from him? As this weblog entry concerns the issue of the secondary character representing emotional support it hardly seems like the place to ask.

“It wouldn't do to be caught crying at the rodeo”

When reading through Secrets Uncovered – Blogs, Hints and the Inside Scoop from Mills & Boon Editors and Authors, the opening chapter, concerning character, offered little we haven't regurgitated here at Bewildered Heart previously. Still, we had no intention of letting an opportunity to fulfill the non-existent requirements of our imaginary post quota slip by, merely out of a fear of redundancy. We discuss Harlequin on the internet, without redundancy we have nothing. Now, do not worry, gentle reader, unlike Mills & Boon and the rest of the print and online publishing media we will attempt to find the areas of Secrets Uncovered not touched upon until now. For example, everybody knows what makes for an empowered, empathetic heroine, but why do romance authors keep writing them as weak-willed and unlikeable, and does this attitude reflect poorly on their persons? Will the editors at Romance HQ offer any insight greater than Bewildered Heart's previous advice to give your smart, young, independent, beautiful woman a failing, such as a lack of sexual experience or being easily seduced by the offer of money?

Once you have looked up the word heroine in a dictionary and found the definition vague, seemingly not geared toward the romance market and full of further words in need of being looked up, you should open the free eBook your agent sent you and ask, what are Mills & Boon heroines? 'All sorts spring to mind – the innocent secretary, Cinderella, the pampered princess (figuratively and literally!), the secretary, the single mum…' Yes, every kind of secretary you can think of, including the secretary who is also a divorced or widowed mother, the secretary enslaved by her deeply unattractive sisters and the royal beauty cut off by her father and forced to take temporary administrative work in an office. 'These archetypes can produce amazing results – from heart-wrenchingly vulnerable to endearingly feisty, you name it, we’ve read it and loved it! However, in the wrong hands, these heroines become the worst kind of cliché – spineless doormats or spoilt brats, and nothing else.' Quite right, no one wants to read about the girl who works on reception unless she has emotional depth behind those vacant eyes and disingenuous smile.

The challenge for any author, and the most important to overcome, is to find a way to imbue their female lead with credibility and dignity, whilst somehow maintaining her position as central to a romance story. Countless times we witness a protagonist become an empty vehicle for plot machinations advanced by the hero, who, like any good man, wants to be finished with a Mills & Boon as quickly as possible. The heroine is compartmentalised awkwardly, her virtues, flaws, objectives, circumstances and lifestyle a hodgepodge of ideas poorly intertwined into a narrative with little use for personal identification. She has no stomach-churning dilemmas, caught between desire and principle, to make her a compelling and empathetic protagonist. Instead of centering the worthwhile aspiration for reader likeability around the heroine's momentous decisions, Harlequin insist upon simply avoiding perfection with a handful of minor traits that have nothing to do with the defining relationship about to unfold. Instead of beginning with the cornerstone of any great novel, a character with a wanted destination blocked by seemingly insurmountable conflicts brought about by their own moral demons, we are asked limited questions with no stepping off point to work from.

'Let’s be honest here – who likes a perfect woman?' A perfect man? The truth is, readers do not wish to follow the adventures of perfect people in book form, they get enough of that from television and occasional get-togethers with former university friends. However, this is less to do with the difficulty had in relating to them, but rather because there is no direction in which to develop the emotional journey of someone with nothing to learn. Still, surely all aspiring novelists create idealised versions of themselves through their amateurish inability to write, so what hints can Secrets Uncovered offer to avoid this inevitability? 'Recognisably human flaws go a long way towards dissolving the sickeningly perfect stereotype, and making your heroine 100% real. So, is she spoilt/stroppy/too forgiving/dangerously generous? If so, why?! Show us the true character hiding behind her external characterisation and you’ll be able to make any heroine empathetic!' There are far too many exclamation marks in that sentence for it to be taken seriously, but it is interesting to note that generosity can reach a dangerous level, and also that Mills & Boon has trouble thinking of negative personality traits.

'These women might be victims of circumstance, but they aren’t victims in any other sense! Whatever their range of life experience, it’s this strength of character that gives them the power to tame their heroes.' Despite their protestations that anything is possible within the pages of their novels, there is naturally a nurturing aspect to any romantic heroine, whether the story pushes it to the forefront immediately, or bombastically draws it out through the narrative. After all, the goal of every romance fiction player is marriage and babies, and therefore the hero is depicted as powerful to the point of uncontrollable masculinity, leaving the heroine to the task of emasculating him into suitable husband material. 'Does she stick up for herself, proud of where she’s come from or what she’s made of herself? Or perhaps she’s more vulnerable and shy, and it’s up to the hero to teach her how to stand up for herself, whilst she teaches him to look below the surface? Perhaps she’s massively spoilt, and has to learn to reveal her vulnerabilities under the hero’s expert teaching!' The choice is yours, writers, but pick carefully, as these three options are all you will receive from us.

Moving onward into what we are calling the Twenty-First Century and suddenly the contemporary woman is faced with a changing world without even Mills & Boon to fall back on for nostalgic fantasy, because even they are accepting the date on their calenders is not only accurate, but meaningful. 'In the 21st century, we know women can have it all: work, love, and a family. So, if she wants to bag a job, a child and a husband, that’s great, but if she wants to be a stay-at-home mum, that’s fab too! Your heroine can make whatever life choices she wants.' As long as that life choice involves children, because she will end the novel pregnant whether she likes it or doesn't realise she likes it yet. These guarantees of freedom are always tempered by the commercial needs of the publisher. It is liberty within reason, as the veneer of reality is sometimes necessary to have that stroppiness and potentially fatal degree of generosity really hit the reader in the head as well as in the heart. Perhaps Secrets Uncovered sees little point in teaching the heroine element any further because you, the author, would not have taken to this money-making scheme without, at the very least, a main character. Nevertheless, the major pitfall of practically every Mills & Boon novel lies within the protagonist, and as a result of this weak starting point, the rest of the book collapses, no matter how much can be gleaned from the remaining lessons found in an eBook.

Those looking to Romance HQ for help are in more trouble than Romance HQ can save them from. Furthermore, those having read any example of trite romantic fiction will have assumed the task is blissfully straight-forward, simply because the publishers consistently line their shelves with books that do not take heed of the information revealed in the guidelines and blog entries posted online. Due to these inconsistencies, brought about by myopic greed and an insatiable public hunger, there are no signs of improvement from Mills & Boon, while their profits rise and their stable of writers grow increasingly irked by outsider criticism. Everyone deserves better from the traditional arrangement where books last one month, authors hurry out three or four titles every year, worried only about hitting their word count, and readers buy blindly, unable to discern quality from a purposely homogenised product. Meanwhile, Bewildered Hearts watch on, optimistic yet eternally bewildered, wondering how a business model can escape a rut when a rut is all it has known. An empowered, empathetic workforce would be a fine start, more time spent crafting character and plot would be appreciated, and a semblance of competence in the art of literature would solve many of these problems, and might perhaps teach people how to love each other and themselves, no longer willing to view frizzy hair and naïve kindness as humanising weaknesses.

“Just stop blaming her for getting that tropical fever and dying”

During the last entry on this very weblog we decided to learn more about the Harlequin Medical™ subgenre, and having found the Mills & Boon website's description predictably unhelpful, we chose as a random example the 2010 effort Neurosurgeon... and Mum!. Throughout her typically prolific career, author Kate Hardy has switched between Medical™ and Modern Heat, allowing herself to indulge in sizzling romances with and without doctors in them. However, the reader can tell no such raunchy antics will take place within the pages of Neurosurgeon.... and Mum! because her hero and heroine are damaged people going through the various stages of grief, there is a child involved and the story takes place in Norfolk, England, where the only sexy things to happen are most likely illegal everywhere else. Sorry, Norfolk.

Amy Rivers has had a tough few years, although the details have yet to be fully revealed because the writer will need something to flesh out those nagging central one hundred pages. Firstly, her distant, academic parents moved to the United States, and secondly she fell in love with a single dad and became surrogate mother to his kid, only for he to reconcile with his ex-wife and take Amy's new family with him. Furthermore, while doing some neurosurgery she made a catalogue of errors on her best friend's husband of a patient, destroying at least two relationships in the process. As a result, and at the behest of her clearly Irish supervisor, Fergus Keating, she has decided to take a sabbatical away from London and go where, only to her beloved Aunt and Uncle's house in Norfolk, where she spent many a happy childhood experience. Naturally for Amy things go awry, as Cassie and Joe are off to Australia to see their real daughter, who is pregnant and therefore more successful than Amy. Despite this minor setback Amy heads north regardless, to stay at the house with a visiting village doctor, who has also taken time away from the big city to deal with tragedy.

For the charming, decent Tom Ashby the last few years have been tough. Now his distant, academic wife has perished from the obvious dangers of being a doctor without any life-saving borders, Tom has taken his infant daughter Perdita (Perdy to her father. Hi, Perdy!) to a small village in Norfolk, for mawkish befuddlement and bonding. While Perdy remains withdrawn and in a constant state of mild terror, Tom enjoys the rural pace of the countryside, and he and Perdy seem to get along with the Rivers' potentially important dog, Buster. While Joe had warned Tom about his new house-guest Doc Tom had not expected to find her so instantly beguiling, even though that is the sort of thing that happens in romance novels. Equally, Amy's attraction is only tempered by the assumption that Perdy is Tom's wife, not his daughter. Once they are introduced, however, she reacts poorly and serves to under-mine the child's already shattered self-confidence. Still, after what happened with her previous relationship she is reluctant to become involved with a single dad, even though this one is at least a widow and therefore without external plot devices.

Neurosurgeon...and Mum! has all the hallmarks of Cherish, the imprint perhaps known better as Tender, Special Moments or Romance. Unlike the straight-forward Modern, or Modern Heat, here Hardy can avoid the foreseeable narrative techniques employed by her colleagues in other subgenres. Tom Ashby is no standard alpha male. He is sensitive, he has a troubled daughter, he wears thick-rimmed glasses, he spends his days tending to the disgusting ailments of the elderly and he may have murdered his previous wife. Meanwhile, Amy Rivers is no catch either. She is under-skilled at her work, has not been eating properly and has a boyish haircut, which only serves to emphasise her fine bone structure. Neither character has any problems marriage could not fix, and their emotional turmoil does not seem to have stemmed from their own failings. It is not Tom's fault his wife died, we can only presume, and Perdy is merely going through a phase all children go through when they are uprooted unexpectedly to Norfolk shortly after their mother passed away. On the other hand, Amy cannot be held accountable for her mistakes during Ben's operation, because neuroscience is complicated and she is only a woman with love to give but no one to give it to. Saying any different would be misogynistic.

While Amy and Tom seem to enjoy brief conversations of vague biographical insights and silent disapproval of leapt-to conclusions their shared, uncomfortable silences and mistreatment of Perdy must come to an end. At first Amy disappears upstairs to busy herself with her great-grandfather's medical casebooks, but eventually she joins Tom and his daughter for a series of dinners and before she can realise she is becoming sentimentally-involved with a temporary surrogate family she has offered to babysit Perdy while Tom conducts his business of being a doctor. After a flippantly undertaken background check father is convinced to allow this apparently psychologically-fragile stranger to take his child to an isolated field to pick strawberries. There the third chapter ends and Hardy has either set her protagonists up for a gratifying romance or a sinister race-against-time thriller, perhaps starring a young Rebecca De Mornay. Canny readers will have already guessed the former, however, based on the novel's title and the fact it has been published by Mills & Boon. Well done to you, canny readers.

For Medical fans surprised at the lack of frenetically-paced action and emotional intensity promised by the Harlequin promotional material, Hardy has at least managed to offer a scene where the kind doctor calmly breaks the news that Max Barton's tiredness, plaster-wearing and ongoing night urination can be explained by type two diabetes, which can be controlled through diet and exercise. Max is relieved that it is nothing more serious and medicine followers will delight in reading a superficial description of the inability to utilise glucose in the modern, middle-aged male. In an earlier chapter Doctor Ashby saw an old lady with an ulcer above her ankle, a sequence to make you cry out for the gripping dilemmas and high-octane excitement of Grey's Anatomy. As a resident of coastal Norfolk, Hardy's choice of East England village may have spoken to her own interests, but so far there is little sign of emergency and a controversial use of a stethoscope. In fact, we have nothing more to look forward to than The Dad Next Door with a series of narratively distracting health scenes.

At this early stage the appeal of Medical™ remains a mystery. When Mills & Boon began this enterprise their stories focused on the entirely out-dated set-up of male doctor and female nurse. Nowadays such a sexist scenario would not be consistently tolerated, even by romance readers, but the chance of a powerful female doctor meeting an enamoured male nurse would seem at odds with the publisher's mantra. Unless Hardy is able to weave in a satisfying medical subplot her novel will be marred by clumsy cutaways of Tom being nice to old people, for the benefit of the reader and the infirm, but not helpful in furthering the central concept concerning Amy, Perdy and a happy ending.

Possibly because of the subgenre's strategic attempt to exist in a politically-correct age both Amy and Tom are doctors, but the heroine's career has stalled to allow a plot to accelerate. As female fantasy goes, Neurosurgeon... and Mom! lacks the fairytale aspect of an arrogant, yet brilliant, doctor hero who is skilled with his hands, but not with his heart. Hardy instead settles for heart-warming simplicity using Tom's profession as a diversion. It is difficult to believe fans merely want their regular romances with some unnecessary pages of technical jargon involving bladder infections. Nevertheless, while Tom worries about his daughter, finds his new house-mate attractive while knowing he cannot enter into a relationship with her and mourns his late wife he still finds the time to fret over Mrs Poole not drinking enough tea. How many billionaire tycoons masquerading as bell-hops at a supposedly haunted Colonial hotel would do that? All of them? Still, this is an entirely different genre from the ones where billionaires masquerade as bell-hops at supposedly haunted Colonial hotels. For those, try The Secret Billionaire's Chambermaid Bride, published under any of the other Harlequin imprints, unless either the billionaire or the chambermaid is also somehow a doctor.