“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.

“Laughing with him was way too easy... and that scared her more than any terrorist ever would”

Every so often when touring the seedy alleys of a local library Bewildered Heart discovers a book that we know we shouldn't read, but cannot seem to draw away from, the musty, weathered pages only adding to the illicit thrill. Despite Mills & Boon's predilection for archetypal characters in archetypal situations an oddity will escape the publishing daddies that aspires to shatter any allusions an experienced reader may have grown to expect. And thus, placed innocently in amongst a row of Harlequin Blaze titles there was The Domino Effect, by Julie Elizabeth Leto. Domino Black is a spy as only politically clueless, paranoid people can imagine them for popular entertainment. She wears tight-fitting outfits, has cool gadgets and kills terrorists and third-world dictators for a shadowy organisation named The Shadow, a top-secret government agency that officially doesn't exist. Oh, book. Your readers have already abandoned any hope of you being pleasurable and disease-free, but what the hell, we are feeling frisky. Go on...

Her tough-talking handler sends Domino undercover into the suave and sophisticated Club Cicero, owned by the sexy and mysterious Luke Brasco, a man the government believes is about to sell classified documents to terrorists, revealing the names and locations of spies around the world. She must murder the sonofabitch for the sake of democracy. But wait! For this is the United States and they have a sworn policy to only kill morally-heinous evil-doers. They can't just go around shooting people who might have anti-American agendas. And so it is up to Domino to infiltrate the nightclub and investigate Luke, and by investigate we mean find the truth, and find the truth by whatever means necessary, and by whatever means necessary we mean have sex with him.

Will this enigmatic and emotionally-cold woman slowly warm to a man she may have to kill, before their growing bond forces her to reject her life's work and renege on the operation, only for it to turn out the guy is not the traitor, but someone close to him who she will have to kill, thus revealing her true self and destroying the love between the man and she, until an extremely unlikely plot contrivance brings them back together where they forget everything that had happened up until that point, leaving the poor and foolish reader with those memories and hoping for a plot contrivance so they too can forget about everything as well? Although a predictable ending is part of a romance novel's appeal, for anyone who yearns for change a thrilling plot running parallel to the romance sounds as if it could be an intriguing ploy. We know Luke is innocent and he and Domino will end up together, and yet we remain in the dark about who the real villain is. Might it be one of the other characters in the story? we wonder aloud to concerned onlookers on the bus. After all, besides Luke there are only three possible suspects and two of those are quickly ruled out. Looks as if we shall be reading until the end this time to find out what we already knew before we had begun.

Not only does The Domino Effect have a mystery complicating the emotional journey of the characters, it also offers an entirely redundant and inane secondary romance. For the first time in our Mills & Boon reading there were other characters engaging in adulterous acts, their sordid actions having no bearing on the main story. Club waitress and sexy bombshell Sienna Monroe wants Mikey something Italian, the muscular club security chief. The only thing standing in her way? Mikey is married and his wife is pregnant with twins! Well, that certainly is a stumbling block. Furthermore, Mikey loves his wife and doesn't want Sienna. Soon enough, of course, Mikey has had too much to drink and Sienna has put his penis in her mouth and there's really only one result from that situation. By the time our story has wound to an end Sienna is missing, Mikey is begging his wife for forgiveness and the twin babies are facing a sad future which will one day end in their own broken marriages and a lonesome vodka Christmas. Why did Leto deem it necessary to add these brief interludes? Was it because she guessed the traitor plot was too engaging and she wanted to infuriate her readers with lengthy and pointless asides? Is there a message buried in there, suggesting no matter how happily married a man is he will still cheat and voluptuous twenty-year-old coquettes always get what they want while the rest of us wonder why they wanted it in the first place? No one on the bus knew either.

Further removing The Domino Effect from your typical Harlequin fodder is the lead character. When she reveals her name is Domino, Luke replies, 'Like the game?' She says yes, but the reader should assume they were confusedly referring to Dominoes. Miss Black has committed hundreds of murders without showing signs of remorse or thought. She is unwaveringly loyal to imperialistic greed and she finds herself sexually attractive. “She'd always loved the way she looked,” the narrator tells us, as Domino grows more empathetic by the word. In her introductory notes, Leto tells her excited readers that she is, 'exploring the good girl/bad girl dichotomy in (her) heroines,' and, 'Domino is perhaps (her) edgiest heroine to date.'

Fair enough, but let us examine her comments. Domino has no virtuous qualities. She is edgy, perhaps, if you are willing to misuse the word, and she does test the reader's own moral code. Usually the insipid, anaemic beauties of romance fiction deserve their loving lot because everyone deserves a shot at happiness and some folk are easier to please than others. Domino, however, is a step too far. Now, no one worth speaking to considers Mr. & Mrs. Smith a good film, but the one lesson the viewer can learn from that error in judgement, besides never share your film's title with a Hitchcock movie, is that assassin is an unsuitable profession for a romantic lead. Domino proves the point. Even if we take the novel's hilarious political rhetoric at face value there is still the fact she displays no emotional connection to anyone throughout the book. She alienates every female character because of her beauty and curt manner and she alienates the reader for more than those two reasons. While she and Luke enjoy a rigorous and healthy sex life there are few romantic feelings shared between them. Domino can light a bunch of candles and she can even fall asleep on his elbow but their entire relationship is built around a façade. Luke's only personality trait appears to be his zero-tolerance toward criminal behaviour, thus making Domino an unlikely partner.

Furthermore, if the United States requires a top-secret unofficial branch of international and domestic espionage then what are the chances this outfit is committing acts of pure altruistic heroism? Why is Domino being asked to undertake such a simple assignment which a regular and existing law enforcement agency could have easily looked after, she constantly asks herself and the author? We never find out, a glaring omission in a book of glaring omissions. Domino is an arrogant, bitchy, self-obsessed, unrepentant mass murderer. She doesn't have a change of heart when she desires to give her work up for the love of a man. Oh no, it's only a logistical nightmare to continue killing for the government while under-taking an honest relationship. She doesn't change anything but outward appearances. She doesn't even learn a lesson. She is not deserving of a novel and she is not worth reading about. It is not edgy to expect a reader to want to see how she turns out. It is obnoxious. The Domino effect is mostly rage.

“For a second she convinced herself she could feel her womb clench”

When creating your very own Mills & Boon romance novel the author is best served beginning with the most basic element, their protagonist. The story's driving force, the warm and fuzzy emotional centre of the plot machinations and the reader's window into the world of the book. This character is the heroine. However, when searching for hints on how to invent such a lady, an author is more likely to find pages and pages explaining how to create the hero.

Well, search no more people who are searching for this information who aren't me, because I have decided it is time we explore this problem ourselves. Go, Bewildered Heart! This blog is named Bewildered Heart.

The truth is, of course, that Mills & Boon readers are predominantly female, and Mills & Boon writers are predominantly female too. Therefore, the female of the story becomes a challenge of credibility and likeability, someone we can relate to and don't mind living through. While the hero can be an idealistic creation of feminine fantasy, without a strong and interesting lead the book won't stand up and will fall under the death knell of being published by Mills & Boon and read by millions.

According to Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies, readers want to see themselves reflected in their reading choices, or as they describe it women who are 'accessible, real, interesting and emotionally complex.' Readers see themselves as being these things. They seek something aspirational and yet familiar, an escapist world they can become absorbed by while still seeing themselves represented, if only as stunningly attractive twenty-seven virginal types with successful and glamorous careers and lifestyles, who by the end of the book are happily contented.

Here we are then, as the Dummies sets forth the five rules for creating a believable heroine.

#1 Realistic Responses. Good spot. Believability just wouldn't be believable without realism. “She's certainly going to experience things in the course of the book that most women never experience in real life,” says Dummies, providing clear evidence as to why their novel was repeatedly rejected. “Make her respond as the reader would. If a woman would be scared or shocked in real life, let your heroine feel that way, too. Her realistic response to an unrealistic situation will make sense to the reader and keep her caught up in your story.”

Sound advice. While unexpected reactions might be narratively compelling they're just so much more tricky to rationalise. We have to make the world around our girl larger than life and have her as the wide-eyed ingénue struggling to comprehend the sudden and unpredictable changes in life a new romantic interlude can bring. We fall in love through our protagonist and because of her, her attraction made all the more empathetic because we understand her thought processes, or in the case of Mills & Boon, the lack of them.

#2 Conflict Seeds. Ah, yes. Planting those seeds of conflict and watching conflict grow, with the occasional watering of communication breakdown. “The sparks of all conflict come from your characters, and the best conflict is emotional. Your heroine's the key character, so root the novel's conflict in your heroine's emotions. When the heroine's emotions feel real, her emotional conflict also feels real.” This is more related to plot, but it's certainly worth bearing in mind as we create our fair lady. Make sure what happens has an emotional effect on her.

#3 Identifiable Traits. “Give your heroine character traits that feel real. She often has a job or lifestyle that your reader will never have.” This is where all that reading Mills & Boon's came in handy. We've read of a Chef, office worker, public relations girl, nurse, unemployed, student, vague but possibly admin related and an actress... But in all these cases these women had character traits, they were feisty, virginal, strong-willed, innocent, free-spirited, sensitive, emotionally-retarded and sometimes a combination of two of those. “On the surface, she may seem too far outside the reader's realm of experience for that crucial sense of identification to occur, but a few well-chosen character traits can change that. Maybe she likes to drive too fast or is always playing with her hair. Maybe she has a soft spot for stray dogs or coos at babies in the supermarket.”

Oh, I see. You mean quirks that identify her as reckless, fidgety, maternal or dog-liking. Sorry. Go on, “Something small and human can resonate with the reader and make her realize that, for all their differences, she and the heroine aren't so dissimilar after all.” There is nothing objectionable about that statement, and while people do like dogs, cats are probably better when you consider the target readership.

#4 Complexity. Because character traits can feel gimmicky and meaningless, an author is well-advised to make her heroine interesting and human. Too many boring protagonists have only “whatever character traits the author decided were necessary for the plot — curious, lonely, and intelligent, for example — but that was it. They don't seem like real people who have quirks, contradictions, and layers worth uncovering.”

Seeing as how a book and its hero need something to do for the 55,000 word count stipulated in the contract, some uncovering of emotional issues is useful once you've used up 10,000 or so words on the uncovering of her clothes. However, Dummies is quick to suggest that, “a mass of tics, insecurities, and disconnected enthusiasms” would be a mistake. Remember, the heroine must remain, “strong, admirable and intelligent.” So there you have it, strong, admirable, intelligent and coos at babies at the supermarket. Your heroine is born.

#5 No Mirrors! Whenever I read a guide on creating female characters one thing is usually stressed time and time again. While men constantly check themselves out in mirrors and windows and shiny pieces of metallic plating women are neurotic creatures who only see flaws in their reflection. Even the beautiful ones, and so, “Don't let your heroine realize she's beautiful.” That may sound cruel, but she won't know unless you tell her. Beauty should be seen only through the eyes of the hero. “Giving her a flaw or two doesn't hurt, either. Maybe her hair has a tendency to frizz in the humidity, or maybe she needs glasses to read. Little touches like these make her more human and easier for the reader to empathize with.”

Glasses to read? What a freak! No one who requires reading aids can possibly be considered physically alluring. Suddenly our hero has gone from dream hunk to weirdo with a spectacle fetish.

Imperfection is important and that brings us nicely onto the next section of this article, imperfection. “An imperfect heroine makes a perfect heroine,” says Dummies. “So if you make your heroine perfect, without flaws, fears, or vulnerabilities, your reader won't feel the bond that keeps her inside the heroine's head and turning the pages. By introducing weaknesses and vulnerabilities, you let the reader create that all-important bond with the heroine.”

This seems to be less of a necessary element, but imperfection also allows for growth and character development. The love between the leads should feel life-changing and not just because the two characters will soon have to find a new place to live. Love should embolden a character and help them overcome their fears and vulnerabilities by having someone else love them completely and for all they are. Self-confident leads meeting and falling in love makes for demoralising reading. The only thing worse, passivity. “As the plot progresses, you need to make your heroine develop, change, grow, and discover things about herself and her abilities — especially how to love and live with her hero.”

“Part of what makes a couple right for each other is that they complement each other; they need each other, and bring out the best in each other. The same must be true of your hero and heroine, so the reader believes they belong together.” Yeah, Dummies. Yeah. If a book written to help 'representations of human figures for the displaying of clothes in store windows' can come to this conclusion then why can't more romance writers?

Most of these pointers aren't particularly helpful, with the general consensus being fanciful, and yet realistic, but there is no roadmap for the ideal romance novel. All heroines are basically the same in the world of Mills & Boon and originality is not the vital ingredient for success. Culmination is the key. The pieces must come together for maximum fulfilment with your heroine's journey emotionally tumultuous and ultimately rewarding. You'd be wise to base her on yourself, and then exaggerate all the elements for dramatic effect, and then in my case, also make her a woman.