Following the debatable success of New Voices Mills & Boon have returned with a different occasional competition, named Fast Track and dedicated to discovering the unearthed talents toiling in the field of Medical™ Romance, a subgenre Bewildered Heart shall now lay claim to an understanding of. In 2010, when the previous call for submissions was announced, Romance HQ received one hundred and seventy-four entries, promising to read and respond to each within the month. From the deluge of opening chapters submitted five new authors saw their novels published and their pseudonyms in print. This June Mills & Boon hope to repeat the trick, and so send the call out to all disillusioned healthcare workers with vacation-time and hazy dreams of frustration and embarrassment in a poorly-paid industry. Send a first chapter and a two-page synopsis to Richmond, London and the publishers promise a prompt rejection. It is just that easy!
Naturally the masses of frantic writers chancing their arm at literary doctors and nurses cannot go into this opportunity blind to the demands of Medical™, and therefore two handy guides have been written and posted online. The first is a simple list of top ten hints, borrowed from the numerous other top ten hint lists, but now with words such as medicine, surgeon and bedside replacing those beloved standards blackmail, billionaire and bedroom. For help we turn to a Thesaurus and novelist Fiona Lowe. Having read the submission guidelines in preparation for Neurosurgeon... and Mum! many of the insights are predictable and short-sighted, but surely a seasoned professional like the author of The Playboy Doctor's Marriage Proposal can conjure up some much-needed wisdom. 'Having your hero and heroine work together is very important because it keeps them on the page together and avoids “token” medical scenes. Your reader wants to see the relationship growing and it’s a lot harder to show this if they don’t work together.' The sheer number of times the word together was used in that statement suggests the aspiring author's couple must be paired in close proximity throughout the story. Keeping your leads apart, even in separate countries without the means to communicate, often results in a stunted development of their affections. This alternative also forces the narrative to rely on arbitrary sickness to fill the quota of health scenes, allowing the plot's momentum to flag even further, as we witnessed repeatedly throughout Kate Hardy's novel, published by Mills & Boon.
'Dare we say it but our medical heroes are divine and a little bit different from other category heroes. They’re strong, independent and focused, but they have compassion, heart and a bedside manner to die for.' Not literally, mind, because this publisher does not take kindly to displays of irony or death. Nevertheless, the adjectives not related to their job description are consistent with all romance alphas, thus this piece of perceptive analysis should not be considered useful by anyone planning their potential competition attempt. 'Due to the huge variety of specialisations in medicine, this opens up a huge array of settings... the outback, flying doctors, ER, small town, big city, drop-in centre, the White House, Africa, sports medicine, surgery, midwifery and complimentary.' Yes, as Mills & Boon have reminded their readers and authors beyond the point of repetition, anything is possible and acceptable. The only limitation is your imagination, but before you allow that to wander off to levitating surgeons healing the President's tennis elbow by unorthodox means, there are a few more hints to consider that might well destroy the credibility of that earlier sentence.
'Popular themes in medical romances are midwifery, paediatrics, surgery, secret babies, miracle babies, bachelor dads, Mediterranean docs, new-found families with young children, – families with young children, billionaire and posh docs, playboys docs, royalty, aristocracy, sheikhs – duty to patients or title?' The list is endless if you are willing to repeat the same phrase ad infinitum. From the inception of romance fiction the interests of its readers have not changed beyond the gradual approval of foreigners. Medical™ taps into universal common ground and the combination of finding love, prolonging the lives of the elderly, babies being adorable and technical language has solidified the subgenre as enduringly fashionable. The next step, Harlequin mistakenly claims, is to find methods to reinvigorate classic themes while remaining true to the much-loved, recognisable archetypes. However, all Fast Track asks for is the opening chapter, so it is more advisable to forget any grand notions of reinventing hospital love and concentrate on the second essay, How To Set Our Pulses Racing... assembled by the very editors who should know what they are looking for.
The points found here never stray too far from reminding the potential author that they must not display utter incompetence at the art of writing. Therefore we are told to capture the reader's attention from the first sentence, not use clichés, think before typing, focus on the characters, make the hero handsome and the heroine nice as well as medical professionals, and finally sow those conflict seeds to give the reader something to read while they stare absent-mindedly at the book. There is one additional argument tailored to the particular category romance. 'Immerse your reader in the medical world. Some insight into the community in which your hero and heroine work is part and parcel of the series.' A passing knowledge of the industry may stand authors in good stead, therefore, but cutting and pasting from Wikipedia should suffice if not. After all, Medical™ just wouldn't be medical without medicine, and there remains an implication that while anyone with a pen or computer can write for Modern, Cherish, Nocturne or Spice, this subgenre requires specific life experience. There is more to this than a simple tale of hero and heroine over-coming emotional conflicts through the redemptive power of love while happening to be doctors.
Nevertheless, no mention is made of how to construct a Medical™ Romance beyond the usual meaningless, contradictory revelations that a novel must put character before plot while revealing personality subtly through actions allowing empathy with their decisions and interactions, and insight into their thoughts and feelings without resorting to telling the reader instead of showing. If not that exactly, then words to that effect. How in-depth into terminology should the writer go? Surely if readers did not want a veneer of expertise there would be no need for making medicine a speciality romance when other occupations are not catered for in the same manner? Why must both leads be professional colleagues when this necessitates the creation of patients as secondary characters that Mills & Boon tells us should be kept peripheral? Is this inept lack of vision and clarity the reason the previous Fast Track yielded a success rate of less than three per cent? Be that as it may, there is little choice but for our Bewildered Hearts to fill in the gaps, which is what working for Mills & Boon basically amounts to anyway. We begin by combining elements of the most popular themes, a sheikh performing surgery on a secret Mediterranean baby in Africa for a midwife with Royal blood, throw in a complicated description of an incubator and a subplot involving emotional extortion and there we have a contest submission bound for glory. We can worry about what happens in the following eleven chapters in July.
Naturally the masses of frantic writers chancing their arm at literary doctors and nurses cannot go into this opportunity blind to the demands of Medical™, and therefore two handy guides have been written and posted online. The first is a simple list of top ten hints, borrowed from the numerous other top ten hint lists, but now with words such as medicine, surgeon and bedside replacing those beloved standards blackmail, billionaire and bedroom. For help we turn to a Thesaurus and novelist Fiona Lowe. Having read the submission guidelines in preparation for Neurosurgeon... and Mum! many of the insights are predictable and short-sighted, but surely a seasoned professional like the author of The Playboy Doctor's Marriage Proposal can conjure up some much-needed wisdom. 'Having your hero and heroine work together is very important because it keeps them on the page together and avoids “token” medical scenes. Your reader wants to see the relationship growing and it’s a lot harder to show this if they don’t work together.' The sheer number of times the word together was used in that statement suggests the aspiring author's couple must be paired in close proximity throughout the story. Keeping your leads apart, even in separate countries without the means to communicate, often results in a stunted development of their affections. This alternative also forces the narrative to rely on arbitrary sickness to fill the quota of health scenes, allowing the plot's momentum to flag even further, as we witnessed repeatedly throughout Kate Hardy's novel, published by Mills & Boon.
'Dare we say it but our medical heroes are divine and a little bit different from other category heroes. They’re strong, independent and focused, but they have compassion, heart and a bedside manner to die for.' Not literally, mind, because this publisher does not take kindly to displays of irony or death. Nevertheless, the adjectives not related to their job description are consistent with all romance alphas, thus this piece of perceptive analysis should not be considered useful by anyone planning their potential competition attempt. 'Due to the huge variety of specialisations in medicine, this opens up a huge array of settings... the outback, flying doctors, ER, small town, big city, drop-in centre, the White House, Africa, sports medicine, surgery, midwifery and complimentary.' Yes, as Mills & Boon have reminded their readers and authors beyond the point of repetition, anything is possible and acceptable. The only limitation is your imagination, but before you allow that to wander off to levitating surgeons healing the President's tennis elbow by unorthodox means, there are a few more hints to consider that might well destroy the credibility of that earlier sentence.
'Popular themes in medical romances are midwifery, paediatrics, surgery, secret babies, miracle babies, bachelor dads, Mediterranean docs, new-found families with young children, – families with young children, billionaire and posh docs, playboys docs, royalty, aristocracy, sheikhs – duty to patients or title?' The list is endless if you are willing to repeat the same phrase ad infinitum. From the inception of romance fiction the interests of its readers have not changed beyond the gradual approval of foreigners. Medical™ taps into universal common ground and the combination of finding love, prolonging the lives of the elderly, babies being adorable and technical language has solidified the subgenre as enduringly fashionable. The next step, Harlequin mistakenly claims, is to find methods to reinvigorate classic themes while remaining true to the much-loved, recognisable archetypes. However, all Fast Track asks for is the opening chapter, so it is more advisable to forget any grand notions of reinventing hospital love and concentrate on the second essay, How To Set Our Pulses Racing... assembled by the very editors who should know what they are looking for.
The points found here never stray too far from reminding the potential author that they must not display utter incompetence at the art of writing. Therefore we are told to capture the reader's attention from the first sentence, not use clichés, think before typing, focus on the characters, make the hero handsome and the heroine nice as well as medical professionals, and finally sow those conflict seeds to give the reader something to read while they stare absent-mindedly at the book. There is one additional argument tailored to the particular category romance. 'Immerse your reader in the medical world. Some insight into the community in which your hero and heroine work is part and parcel of the series.' A passing knowledge of the industry may stand authors in good stead, therefore, but cutting and pasting from Wikipedia should suffice if not. After all, Medical™ just wouldn't be medical without medicine, and there remains an implication that while anyone with a pen or computer can write for Modern, Cherish, Nocturne or Spice, this subgenre requires specific life experience. There is more to this than a simple tale of hero and heroine over-coming emotional conflicts through the redemptive power of love while happening to be doctors.
Nevertheless, no mention is made of how to construct a Medical™ Romance beyond the usual meaningless, contradictory revelations that a novel must put character before plot while revealing personality subtly through actions allowing empathy with their decisions and interactions, and insight into their thoughts and feelings without resorting to telling the reader instead of showing. If not that exactly, then words to that effect. How in-depth into terminology should the writer go? Surely if readers did not want a veneer of expertise there would be no need for making medicine a speciality romance when other occupations are not catered for in the same manner? Why must both leads be professional colleagues when this necessitates the creation of patients as secondary characters that Mills & Boon tells us should be kept peripheral? Is this inept lack of vision and clarity the reason the previous Fast Track yielded a success rate of less than three per cent? Be that as it may, there is little choice but for our Bewildered Hearts to fill in the gaps, which is what working for Mills & Boon basically amounts to anyway. We begin by combining elements of the most popular themes, a sheikh performing surgery on a secret Mediterranean baby in Africa for a midwife with Royal blood, throw in a complicated description of an incubator and a subplot involving emotional extortion and there we have a contest submission bound for glory. We can worry about what happens in the following eleven chapters in July.
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