“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.