"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.

“Dreams of fairy-tale endings don’t make good bed companions…”

So, you’ve completed your standard list of neurotic compulsions you always go through before you begin writing, you’ve sat down in front of your computer/A4 Pad/iPad, you have your cocktail/painkilling-narcotic/rum/coffee and an hour or so before the children come home to demand their standard post-school cocktail of painkilling-narcotics, rum and coffee… You’ve opened a Word file, and typed Chapter One, then what? Were you, perhaps, a little presumptuous to believe you could make up a Mills & Boon novel as you went along without any prior planning or thought? Sure, most Mills & Boon novels give the impression that this is how they are written, but how does an aspiring author actually go about writing one?

For help we desperately and somewhat foolishly turn to Trish Wylie. You remember our previous dealings with Trish, surely, from her One Night with the Rebel Billionaire to the ongoing joy of her blogging and stubborn defence of romance fiction against mistakenly perceived threats. Beyond that, there is also a series of helpful writing guides on her website with the lessons everyone will need to learn before they can write as successfully as Trish Wylie. Say what you will about the quality of her work, her books have been published, which means she has that special something Mills & Boon look for, but refuse to describe for the rest of us. Perhaps she has a feverish work ethic and the willingness to receive insignificant amounts of money, or a starry-eyed and occasionally offensive attitude towards relationships and women?

Whatever the reason, let us hope the answer can be gleamed from the many articles she has helpfully offered up, including The Blank Page and a Blinking Cursor, for decades the visual trope Hollywood has depended upon when wanting to illustrate a writer struggling. Now, as we have previously established on too many occasions to recall, a romance novel’s plot is set in stone from the beginning. After all, you’d be imprudent to stray even a little from the girl-and-boy-meet-fall-in-love-and-live-happily-ever-after formula, which works so consistently today, to varying degrees of worthiness. Therefore, Trish informs us, her starting point for any new venture is the characters. ‘And I don’t just mean their age, height, hair/eye colour, what they do for a living or even the plot and conflicts that you have in place in your notes.’

You have notes? The article is subtitled ‘Starting a Story from Scratch’ and here you have notes of the plot and conflict seeds? We’re off to a terrible start, but never mind, as the creation of the characters is a foremost concern, and hopefully all that story wadding will work itself out as we go along. How do we create characters, Trish, besides writing ourselves more attractive and have us coo at babies in supermarkets? ‘I name them.’ Huh. Any attempt to explain this bizarre and unnecessary behaviour? ‘Some find that it's better to plot out their story first, some will change the names to match the characters’ personalities as their story progresses, but I find just by choosing their names I discover a little about their personalities.’

Already you get the impression that Trish Wylie was the wrong person to ask, but let us labour on for the sake of updating the blog. Here at Bewildered Heart an aspiring author will find themselves best advised starting with the plot structure and working from there, only giving their characters hilariously inappropriate names as something of an afterthought. However, once you have written twenty or so romance novels, each with an identical storyline, you may find yourself running down a creative dead-end each time a new project needs beginning. Thus, read Trish Wylie out. After all, fans must fall in love with the hero and want to be friends with the heroine. They are the emotional centre and main selling point of your novel and you can’t just endlessly reproduce the same tall, black-haired, dark-eyed, square-jawed, arrogant, powerful billionaire with only a name change to separate him from the million others.

In terms of developing these characters then, Wylie’s next job is to find a photograph to use as a visual reference point, and has handily uploaded pictures of famous actors onto her website for the aspiring author to browse at their leisure. Scroll through and find your favourites! Bewildered Heart sees no sense in disowning Hugh Jackman now, so if we pair him with whoever this Pippa Black is, rename them Jack Hewman and Philippa White, before you can say, ‘This won’t work’ we have our two protagonists.

Ahead of typing and dreaming of Torstar pay-cheques there remains the conundrum of story, the reason for two beautiful people to come together and mate, besides their obvious physical and emotional attraction. Wylie calls this sequence of contrivances the outside conflict, which serves to, ‘sustain the story, draw (Jack and Phillipa) together when they'd rather be apart, maybe even throw them together under one roof to heighten the tension.’ Yes, true love needs time and misunderstandings to bloom, but how do we create such a set-up? Perhaps the answer can be found in the next section of handy advice, the aforementioned importance of setting. For example, as Trish Wylie did with One Night with the Rebel Billionaire, she took a photograph of Allison Mack, one of Jensen Ackles, named them Roane and Adam, made the girl a timid virgin, the guy a ruthless, powerful billionaire, put them in a mansion on a beach and then sat back and let nature take its course.

For we discerning authors, hoping to revolutionise the Mills & Boon genre, however, more studious thought is required. We are above such writing techniques as throwing a bunch of archetypes into a bucket and stirring. Yet at this point Trish abandons us to stare at black and white photographs of Keanu Reeves, and calling it ‘research’. Therefore, Bewildered Heart turns to Lynette Rees, author of the e-book Crafting the Romance Story, and assorted proof that she holds a position of authority on the matter. Rees sets out a simple guide to cultivating a plot, even throwing in such essay clichés as dictionary definitions, a Do’s and Don’ts list and the Asking of the Following Questions:

1. What do I want my novel to say?

2. Which character is best able to say what needs to be said?

3. How can this message be conveyed to the reader?

4. Where is the action going to take place?

Best to start with the easy one and the answer is we want our novel to say words, and to be more specific between 50,000 and 55,000 words. Rees, however, has an even loftier response, involving the crucial element of theme. What is our romance novel about? What is the message, the over-arching philosophy we, the author, wish to suggest to you, who in this case is also the reader? Any devotion to the romance novel should be foremost in the creator’s mind. After all, there is no money to be made in this industry, and no acceptable acclaim or appetising fanbase to enjoy. There is a soulless abyss of artistic bankruptcy, but that would be preferably pursued in the far more lucrative fields of crime thrillers or television.

Perhaps what Rees is not quite asking is why we would want to write a romance novel in the first place, besides the misguided delusion that it might be a lark or that through this oft-maligned genre we may reinvent love and save humankind. Reading the article, however, it becomes clear such philosophical ponderings have no place in writing guides, as Rees suggests a suitable theme is loss, whereas Bewildered Heart would suggest romance. So ignore all those pressing issues over whether you are wasting your life and start to think about an ideal location for your book concerning love, and maybe loss, with a pilot and an air stewardess soaring to new emotional heights at ten thousand feet.

‘Who? Why? What? Where? When? How?’ asks Rees. Good questions, but not necessarily in the correct order. Still, if you can answer all of those you are ready to write your book. Suddenly, ‘When all seems lost [the black moment], there needs to be a sacrifice made by the person who has the most to lose. Finally, they are triumphant, a victory is won.’ Bear in mind, then, at one point, at the end of the second act, there shall be an instance so terrible and dark that it can only be spoken of within the safe confines of brackets. Yet don’t worry, gentle reader, for usually the hero is the one to make a sacrifice, such as discarding his entire identity, to live ever after with the heroine who sacrifices nothing, thus giving your romance the contractually obligated happy ending, because, frankly, a victory being lost just wouldn’t feel like a victory.

“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.

"They say they want romance, they say they want true love"

Some people say, 'Romance is dead,' but it remains more likely that romance was murdered, and its body hidden where the world will never find it. Now, Bewildered Heart has said out loud, to no one in particular, and written on these very pages, again to no one in particular, that a Mills & Boon novel practically writes itself. After all, the story structure is set in stone and all a writer must do is fill in the small gaps between obvious plot points. Every story should be personal, ideally. The main character should, at some point, wage everything they have on the outcome of their journey. Otherwise the story lacks dramatic weight and the reader will think, 'Isn't there someone more compelling I could be reading about?' Naturally, any reader who asks that question won't be leafing the pages of a Mills & Boon at the time. Mills & Boon fans are never so discerning.

Still, as our parents taught us, even idiots deserve some form of entertainment, and with this in mind, we set our structure out, thus: Our protagonist is a strong, independent woman whose goal is to meet the man of her dreams and become subservient to him for the rest of his life. You go, girl! Before she can become subservient to a man, however, she must learn subservience, because that kinda thing isn't taught in schools anymore. Thanks a bunch, liberals! There is a journey worth telling in there someplace. The deft skill used to master these sorts of stories is to burden your character with a hang-up, a hang-up being an emotional problem that forbids someone happiness, or more likely, the feeling that they deserve contentment.

A powerful emotional hang-up might be dignity. Therefore, the plot must revolve around a girl who suffers such a blow to her self-respect she is ready to fall in love with a brawny jerk who thinks feelings are a feminist myth. This idea, sadly, is too derivative of Katherine Heigl movies to work as an original concept, and we certainly don't want to appear derivative. Otherwise, a suitable obstacle on the path toward marriage is hope. Hope especially afflicts the youthful, who believe life is full of opportunities, happiness and wonder, and there is plenty of time to experience everything the world has in store for them.

Say, a bright-eyed woman goes to college and gets a corporate job and meets people and learns the effects of capitalism and rents a small flat with a heartless bitch who really isn't her friend, but saves a little money to get on the housing market, while along the way getting successively screwed over by a series of tactless and moronic men so she begins to drink after work in order to feel something, just anything, increasingly seeking distraction from the drudgery and pain through shopping and cocktails, all the time looking up at the city lights for a role model who isn't Carrie Bradshaw... Once she has done this and stared her thirty-year birthday in its smirking face she has succeeded in ridding herself of hope and will be able to marry, have children and move to suburbia. This must be what Mernit refers to as 'Joyful Defeat', if we assume Mernit misuses the word 'joyful'.

Authors should be advised to avoid plots that concern careers, as everyone has a career and when they are asked what they do for a living they answer, but deep down they know that what they do for money isn't as important as what they will do once they have it. A Mills & Boon book concerning work sounds tedious and dispassionate and, why, without passion, what are we? English? Now our aspiring novelist has built up many emotional hang-ups why tie them to a job, unless the job is symptomatic of the girl's troubles? For instance, she could be an environmental lawyer, beginning to see her idealism and hard work is for nothing.

There yet appears to be a Harlequin with this basic outline, so for now it seems to be the most viable option to move on with. We have developed our character (Heigl in a wig, and without the perkiness) and have given her a career and a journey toward a destination worth reaching. For the sake of dramatic intensity, a writer should always attempt to make such a journey as challenging as possible for their protagonist. The heroes and heroines of Mills & Boon are not regularly required to surmount difficult or exhausting trials and tribulations to earn their happy ending. This is a large problem for the stories of the series. Is it possible to set such a great challenge for a protagonist that the formulaic and predictable ending already agreed upon by author and reader can seem distant and even improbable? After all, is it not imperative to the plot-line that we, the reader, doubt the outcome and are compelled to read on to discover if everything will work out? Surely the fact that we know everything will end happily should not have to matter. Would such a huge overcoming of impossible odds render the giddy joys of eternal love all the more wonderful and satisfying?

When writing a Mills & Boon the author would be best served not fighting against the restrictions they are working within, but embrace them as disciplinary tools. For example, say you have a girl, a twenty-something virginal type, who is looking for the love of her life. We accept that in the first chapter she meets this man, and by chapter fifteen they have poured their hearts into each other and become one, forever. You cannot keep these characters apart, physically, as Hollywood might, by war or e-mails, and each chapter should bring these characters closer to what they have known all along, they are perfect for each other and in love.

The challenge might seem under-whelming, but in fact the challenge is over-whelming if only for the reason you have to stretch out a five hundred word short story into a fifty thousand word novel. However, this is the trap lesser writers have fallen into and you, dear author, are not a lesser writer. So let us begin by constructing an entire story around an ending, a happy ending of life-affirming love, and with an emotional journey suggested by this, we build the development of our heroine into accepting and embracing this love. After all, a Mills & Boon is about love, not the politics of relationships, as the two can be so easily confused. Therefore, the obstacles we throw in the path of our beautiful girl in search of love should all be related to love. Her goal shall not shift and her life will not be reevaluated, because her love is pure and her will is strong. Katherine Heigl in a wig and without the perkiness wants love and if you cannot maintain loyalty to this idealistic pursuit what good are you? And, jeez, if she can't find her perfect man, what chance do the rest of us have?