"Something inside the princesse changed after giving birth"

To help prepare aspiring authors submit to So You Think You Can Write, Harlequin editors have explained how to construct the perfect novel. While this may have been redundant after the publication of Secrets Uncovered there was much that the how-to bible failed to advise on. Equally important, of course, was judging by the first chapters entered into this year's competition, no one has really learned anything despite the many lessons. For this reason, Associate Editor Rachel Burkot has written, Good Pacing: Better Than a Solid Pair of Spanx. Pacing is so important to quality writing that Mills & Boon rarely mentions it or shows much evidence that they know what the word means. Fortunately, Burkot is here to help with a series of obvious statements entirely unrelated to the topic of pacing.

What is pacing, Burkot asks. Where better to begin than with the pacing found in an instruction manual for building a shed? 'Steps have to be listed in the correct order, otherwise the pacing will be off, and you'll never get your product put together.' This is correct, albeit irrelevant. Without a floor and walls a roof will simply fall to the ground, and will not even be considered a roof. In terms of romantic fiction, the sequence of events must be ordered to best maximise emotional resonance. Traditional romance fiction prefers linear narratives with a couple of sex scenes to pad out the second act and love neither realised nor declared until the final pages often after a misunderstanding or disagreement that separates the pair for long enough for them to see that life without the other is not worth living. This is the classic formula no one wishes to experiment with, and while pertinent to writing for Mills & Boon does not explain pacing. Still, the article has more comparisons. There is an email to an old friend, cement between floors of a house, dental work and Spanx. All either require pacing or are pacing.

Yet, just what is pacing? According to Burkot, pacing romance is especially difficult because the process of courtship is, 'Less transparent, more on-the-page than in other genres, since the characters are meeting, going on dates and falling in love.' While the pacing of much fiction and non-fiction has its pacing off-on-page, Romance paces its stories with words and those words are always within the book, often printed as part of sentences. There is nowhere to hide in Romance and a lack of pacing will reveal itself by every letter appearing together as one large incomprehensible black smudge. Burkot elaborates, 'You can't have characters declare their love on the first date and get engaged on the second. That’s just not reasonable or relatable! Furthermore, the book would end at the second date.' Thus, delaying the inevitable must be what Mills & Boon thinks pacing is.

When it comes to avoiding the trappings of poor pacing Burkot has two issues. She does not want to see hero and heroine fall in love too soon and she does not want stories without conflict. 'If it’s obvious only one-quarter in that the characters are ga-ga for each other and neither hell nor high waters will keep them apart, where’s the hook to keep reading?' she asks. Secrets Uncovered delved deeply into defining conflict as the things that stop the couple from being together. Burkot explains them incorrectly as, 'Plot-wise (externally) and within themselves (internally).' Proper pacing, therefore, must be observed in both the storyline and the emotional dilly-dallying that is also the storyline. Pacing can be found within conflict, but conflict is not pacing. Nevertheless, when writing an essay on the importance of pacing without fully comprehending what pacing is, it seems sensible to stress the importance of things that you do comprehend, just as long as this advice is properly paced.

What are the benefits of including pacing in a story? For starters, there is the illusion of unpredictability. 'If you can make a reader forget that she already knows the ending of a romance for just a split second, you’ve done a fabulous job with pacing!' But what is pacing? With this sentence concluding the article it seems safe to assume that Rachel Burkot does not know either. Nevertheless, there is one valuable lesson that can be learned from favourably comparing speed and rhythm to an American hosiery company. If a romance novel is good it has either been properly placed or has an abundance of pacing. If, however, a romance novel is bad its failure may be the result of either improper pacing or no pacing whatsoever. When pacing a blogpost on the topic of pacing, a Bewildered Heart must include epiphanies at around this point to provide the piece with a reason for existing. Most readers will have skipped down to the final paragraph anyhow, safe in the knowledge that everything up until that point was filler broken up with crude innuendo.

To better understand what is clearly a misunderstood subject, we turn to Writer's Digest and an article by Jessica Page Morrell from Crafting Novels & Short Stories. She begins by asking, 'What is Pacing in Fiction?' Good question. 'Pacing is part structural choices and part word choices, and uses a variety of devices to control how fast the story unfolds.' These choices include sentence length and the use of verbs. Pace can be quickened and slowed by a variety of methods, depending on the nature of the scene. The difficulties for Romance authors stem from their preference towards a leisurely flow to the drama with plenty of stops for emotional gestation, handsomeness-noticing, skin-tingling and neuroses-having. Action scenes are rare and when they do occur they are often interrupted by lengthy summaries of what the reader already knows. Heroes and heroines are afflicted by internal conflicts created in their pasts, and this curtails narrative momentum. Writer's Digest offers an insight into action, suspense and excitement, but these words are rarely used to describe the Romance genre.

Nevertheless, what would be so bad about inventing a new form of modern romantic fiction employing some of the suggestions made by Writer's Digest? Readers would be swept along, not by wondering why the world's sexiest and most sensitive billionaire is still single, but by an author skilled at story-telling. Of Morrell's seven tips the most significant is action. 'Action scenes are where you “show” what happens in a story, and contain few distractions, little description and limited transitions.' Were Romance novels to have plot development this insight would be invaluable. The traditional Harlequin output struggles with pacing due to deeper, inherent difficulties with structure and story. A gentle pace is used to mask what is lacking. Once an aspiring author has mastered the basics they can begin to consider technical adjustments, and thus we await Rachel Burkot's next article, which will hopefully explain what the basics are.

"When her boss said Leonardo Valente was untouchable, she had accepted the challenge with enthusiasm"

The twenty-five finalists of the first final section have been clipped down to the ten finalists that make up the penultimate final section. Bewildered Heart has barely had time to gloss over the first chapters, and now the public has been tasked with reading ten complete manuscripts in a week before the next deadline. Of those previously mentioned and immediately rejected, three women-in-peril have made the most recent cut. They are Fire and Iron, Violation of Innocence and Wanting the Detective. The other seven include the Christmas-themed (Eep!) Kimani Mistletoe Mischief, the crowd-pleasing American Love For Sale and the hard-to-believe-it-is-not-already-a-Harlequin Resisting the Sicilian Playboy. Either making up the numbers or likely to win are Belfast Belle by Karin Baine, Paradise Found by Katie Meyer and T.R. McClure's A Perfect Match. You may remember T.R. McClure from such romance novels as Never Too Late and A Silver Lining.

Each of the ten finalists belong to separate imprints, which is presumably a coincidence, and although the differences between subgenres are negilible at best, some of the novels have been written for genuine niche markets. Medical™, for example, is a far cry from the likes of Modern. In the latter, the heroines have careers through which they meet handsome, wealthy tycoons, CEOs and, on occasion, pirates. Medical Romances make their heroine's careers related to medicine, while the heroes are handsome, wealthy doctors or surgeons. So You Think You Can Write has one such offering, entitled Belfast Belle. What fate lies in store for its inexperienced heroine, Lola Roberts? As she begins work on the ward she comes into conflict with her sexy French registrar. He sees Lola as a pink princess, which may be a technical term, and does not want the hassle of his job or sex with a beautiful woman. Despite this, sex is inevitable, but like all Frenchman Henri believes himself undeserving of happiness. What is a night of passion without a happy ending? Perhaps Lola can answer that through a combination of sex and maybe some technical jargon about a stethoscope.

The pitch for Paradise Found is classic Mills & Boon, perhaps explaining Katie Meyer's decision to aim for the Special Edition imprint. An orphan wants to save the community of Paradise Isle from a ruthless property developer. Nic Caruso, of Caruso Hotels, drives his rented car, wearing his rented suit, on his way to his rented room in Paradise Isle. This is no vacation, however, but rather a working vacation, which sounds a lot like work. He is here to tear down this idyllic small-town community and replace every building with a corporate hotel, ski resort, sunbatheing lounge, business centre, retail district and sixteen banks. Driving towards a bridge he spots a badly injured dog, dying on the side of the highway. After a great deal of philosophising he saves the dog. Dropping her in at the veterinary clinic he meets technician Jillian Everett and what follows appears to be foreseeable.

Few aspiring entries sounded more like a Mills & Boon novel than Amanda Cinelli's Resisting the Sicilian Playboy. It is as if the title has been pulled from a marketing meeting of marketing experts intent of finding the most clichéd words possible in the least amount of time. There is implied exoticism, a playboy and a playboy's favourite trait in a woman, resistance. The pitch begins as a reader might assume, 'Dara Devlin needs Leo Valente’s help if she wants to keep her job and plan the wedding of the year.' Not her own wedding, of course, although by the end of the book it will be. Everything is in place for a classic tale of romance, with a woman blackmailed into bed by a foreigner. Their no-strings affair takes a turn for the problematic, however, as Leo falls in love. But wait! That's not the end? It sounds like the end. 'Dara cant have children and vowed never to marry,' Cinelli continues. There is more than just an apostrophe missing for this unhappy couple. Will Leo prove to Dara that her pledge is silly and cure her infertiity with his magic penis? Does Leo happen to own a small orphanage filled with his illegimate offspring? What kind of resistance involves sleeping with the Sicilian playboy? So many questions.

Love for Sale is a Harlequin American Romance by the patriotically named Chase Ewing. There are few things less Yankee Doodle Dandy than a retired rodeo champion and Love for Sale offers Luke Crawford as its hero, a retired rodeo champion turned single father and ranch-owner. Still, even the characters of Harlequin American have felt the pinch of the economic meltdown and Luke is faced with the ultimate decision. Does he cash-in on his child or his home? By choosing the latter he meets ambitious estate agent Katherine Hastings. A lifetime of love seems relatively straight-forward at this point, but first Kate must find a buyer. Will Luke want to sell now that he has found a new and improved wife and mother for himself and his kid? With a title that promises solicititilation and a pitch that fails to deliver it, the enticing combination of ranching and property management makes Love for Sale a strong candidate for victory, assuming the voting public are lovestruck estate agents with a penchant for Westerns.

Fighting the good fight for Heartwarming is A Perfect Match. 'When east coast event planner Lacey Hoffmann first lays eyes on the tall, dark and dusty cowboy standing between her and her morning coffee, sparks fly.' Presumably because he has got dust in her beverage, but as this writing competition has been keen to illustrate, cowboys are the ultimate female desire, especially when they couple their aesthetic with a well-paid career. In this case, Clay McDaniel is a horse clinician from Texas. Not one for east coast coffee houses, he and Lacey head for his ranch. Still, the course of true love really only runs smoothly on the pages of romance novels, and even these two must overcome some problems. She fears her parents will divorce. He owes a debt to his brother. These sound like external conflicts. Internally they are, in so many ways, opposites and they live in different parts of the country. Might she relocate, given her preoccupation with cowboys? After all, despite their numerous differences they appear to be a perfect match. We know this because A Perfect Match is the title of the book.

Kimani Romances feature the African-American and multicultural characters that are not allowed to appear in the other imprints due to old-fashioned values such as racism. Making up the numbers for reasons of political correctness this year is Mistletoe Mischief by Carolyn Hector. Threatening the status quo even further, Mistletoe Mischief adds a non-white Christmas and a possibly homosexual Santa Claus to the mix. When the aptly-monikered Duke Rodriguez reveals Santa to not be a real mythical fabrication he seeks to put things right with assistance from Macy Cuomo, an over-worked holiday decorator. The holidays are always busy for holiday decorators, but Duke and Macy find time to gaze at one another and speak. As their attraction becomes more palpable, so, the reader might hope, will some kind of plot. So You Think You Can Write has achieved its objective of finding ten passable novels. If history is anything to go by, every author will be contracted, but one must be rewarded as the champion, because Mills & Boon insist upon happy and predictable endings. That'll be Superromance Man Maid then.

"Who would name their son Heathcliff and Rhett in this day and age"

The twenty-five finalists of So You Think You Can Write can be helpfully separated into ill-fitting categories. This allows Bewildered Heart to deal with them in groups, and the first group will be known as Women-in-Peril, due to their thriller overtures. There are two from the Harlequin Intrigue subgenre, Remembrance by Tanya M. Burnstad and Wanting the Detective by Leah Maser. There are two Historicals, Agent of Desire by Katherine Dane and Fire and Iron by Autumn Shelley. Representing Harlequin Romantic Suspense are Violation of Innocence by Jeannie Hall and In Desperate Search of Peace by Analiesa Adams. Finally, there is Impulse, by Ison Hill and for the Kimani™ imprint.

Where better to begin than with Remembrance, a mystery thriller featuring a hunted heroine suffering from amnesia, a retired Special Forces soldier and their mutual attraction that might just save both of them for reasons that aren't initially apparent. The first chapter begins with several unnecessary adjectives and the introduction of the psychopath who wants Sarah Morgan dead, much against her own wishes. After an opening light on plot but heavy on words, the story switches to something else entirely, and the reader is left to guess at what might be happening, thus fulfilling the secondmost important duty of the Intrigue subgenre. To call Remembrance somewhat incoherent would be too straightforward a sentence, and therefore would not do justice to Burnstad's prose.

Wanting the Detective, meanwhile, sounds suspiciously similar to every other mystery thriller ever written or filmed. This time, however, it is the heroine with special in her job title, as Lucy Reynolds is a Special Agent visiting Atlanta to track down her missing sister. Her personal investigation only brings her into conflict with Kurt Milton, the sexy police detective already on the case. Lucy will do whatever it takes to bring her sister home, but Kurt doesn't play by the rules when lives are at stake. She's enigmatic. He's untamed. Together they sound objectionable. Will sparks fly? Will a human trafficking ring be burned to the ground? Will that leave any evidence with which to prosecute? The first chapter begins promisingly enough in the location all romance novels should start in, a sleazy strip club, where the feisty heroine accidentally arrests her future husband, a cop claiming to be there working undercover. Still, at least they have a charming anecdote about how they first met to tell the grandchildren.

The woman-in-peril subgenre works well in the Historical imprint, as those were the days of damsels, where distress lurked around every corner. We begin with Fire and Iron, set in the classic Midwest, not far from John Wayne country. Incomprehensible sentences aren't the only thing troubling US Marshall Brit Tracey. There is too much murder going on in the town of Jennings, Wyoming and he is directly responsible for much of it. He shoots first, as half the saying goes, and the second half of the saying doesn't really apply to him. After what seems like a great deal of scrolling down the reader is introduced to both the plot and the heroine. "Crazy Mollie", otherwise known as 'Irish' Margaret Shannon O'Shea, is a cattle thief and convicted killer. Brit must transport her across country, all the while falling in love with her and bringing them both closer to the man who framed her for murder. Fire and Iron is not your typical romance. It is told from the hero's perspective and the opening chapter features many more references to urine than readers will be accustomed to. Still, completely ignoring the structural instructions the publisher suggested and making references to urine has never hurt an aspiring author previously.

Katherine Dane begins her pitch in confident mood. 'Perfect for the Harlequin Historical Series, Agent of Desire is a sexy historical romance filled with intrigue.' If only Harlequin Historical Intrigue Romance was a genre, then this would be just right. Agent of Desire may sound like a perfume you wouldn't buy for your grandmother, but if this competition has taught us anything it is that titles can be deceiving. Hampstead Heath, London. The year 1817. Lord Crayle meets Sari Trevor. Trevor, known for wearing a distinctive Asian drape, is not your standard historical heroine, according to the pitch. She robs carriages, and as the story begins, she is about to rob the carriage of Lord Crayle for all its jewels, money and the Lord's mother's ability to tactfully approach difficult subject matter. When judging the quality of writing, a prospective novel must pass the opening line test. Does, for example, the opening line make sense? Agent of Desire begins, 'Sari rubbed her gloved but frozen hands together painfully as hid among the beeches lining the London road.' Next.

From Harlequin Romantic Suspense comes Violation of Innocence. 'Raised in a cult and forced at twelve to marry its leader,' the pitch begins, pessimistically. Things improve, however, as some years later Lynea Kreig escapes to a college town and falls for her professor, an accident-prone expert on cults. Working together love is kindled, but somewhere lurks her husband, with homicidal vengeance on his mind. Violation of Innocence is either a retread of Sleeping with the Enemy or a powerful redemptive tale of a husband sacrificing everything to win back the beautiful woman he has loved since she was a child. The first chapter gives little away, too busy introducing numerous characters who may or may not be important and who may or may not soon be murdered.

Speaking of thinly-veiled retreads of Sleeping with the Enemy, In Desperate Search of Peace sees Lisa Hill flee her crazy ex-fiance, who has turned his back on engagement to focus on his new passion, drug addiction. Much like Lynea, Lisa finds love in an idealised small town, Lake Duchess, on the Washington coastline, but still adjacent to a lake named Duchess. Sheriff Ryan Jacobs takes a shine to the mysterious newcomer, but his work is, 'complicated by his growing feelings her.' In a world where not even sentences make sense, how are emotions supposed to? Still, author Analiesa Adams should earn credit for the most unexpectedly romantic line of dialogue thus far. 'Don’t hide from me. You fucking whore, get out here. Stop this shit.' What has happened to our once sweet and innocent romance genre?

Impulse imagines the greatest obstacle any hero faces when attempting to win the heart of the heroine, a restraining order. Payton Jordan may be unable to spell her first name, but she has a successful career as a news anchor for Channel 6 Detroit. She has good looks, a trademark smile, the ability to read, skin and hair, everything a television personality requires. Still, nothing says celebrity more like a demented stalker, and Payton has one of those to boot. The opening chapter splits its time between Payton at the police station, and the stalker watching his favourite show, the news. Where is the hero, as mentioned in the pitch as criminal psychologist Sterling Hughes? As it happens, he doesn't appear to be anywhere, unless he turns out to be the stalker, and that seems unlikely. The pitch says Payton will escape to the relative safety of Atlanta, apparently the human trafficking centre of the United States.

All of these seven first chapters appear suitable for Harlequin, given their complete indifference towards editing. If they make it through to the final ten and their full manuscripts are offered to the public there are pitfalls each will have to avoid. Women-in-peril, as plot devices, appeal to author, publisher and reader. For the writer it affords them more than just the woman-meets-man formula of Romance to inform their structure. The case brings the hero and heroine together, gives them something to talk about and pushes the story-line forward even while the romantic plot inevitably sags. While providing momentum, the thriller aspect breaks up the scenes of feeling-having and family history-sharing with sequences of possible excitement.

The challenge for the writer is in finding a balance between high-octane thrills and saccharine sentiment. Romance comes before intrigue, after all, as there are plenty of other bookshop shelves for readers seeking action and adventure. The tonal shifts require a nuanced touch to give credibility to complex emotional responses to life and death danger and candlelit dinner in an Atlantan restaurant. Given the stakes of the subplot, attempts at levity and romance can display a flippancy that is not consistent with the severity of the situation. After all, is it in poor taste to end a novel with a couple kissing on a pile of corpses?

"He kissed her softly, slowly and very thoroughly"

So You Think You Can Write has narrowed down its several hundred entries to a short-list of twenty-five. These can be perused, commented on, analysed thematically, rated and shared with friends and enemies over at the official website. After all, it is up to the public to shorten the short-list even further, down to the ten best which will proceed to the next round of judging. Amateur critics should hurry, however, because there is a great deal of reading and thinking to be done before the fast approaching deadline. Meanwhile, every first chapter that the judging panel considered is online, thus allowing the curious and the masochistic to enjoy the many pieces that were deemed not good enough for Harlequin Mills & Boon. There is truly something for everyone. Like your romances with a modern technological gimmick, then try Tweeting with the Bachelor or Nicey – An iPod Love Story. Prefer your titles with a typo, then how about In the Hundt or Held for Randsom?

Perhaps you only read novels with titles so ludicrous your only option is to read on? Well, the suspiciously named Ashley Joy Lowell Emma has offered up Undercover Amish, a story concerning a police detective returning to her former Amish home to solve a murder and maybe find love with a cabinet maker. If not those, would you care for a novel that finally tackles the alphabet scandal? If so, there is The ABC Controversy, which may or may not do that. The Barlow Springs Series The Elizabeth and Grey Wolf Adventures Book One: Bound By Love sounds ambitious, but lacks punctuation. Butterfly Coffee could be just about anything. How about the possibly euphemistic A Season for Plums? If fruit doesn't appeal, then there are presumably heroines named Time and Over in Doing Time and Do Over. I Might as Well Become Rich From My Misery seems to show an author accepting their future in romance fiction. What’s Better Than A Book Boyfriend? may ask an important question while Quarterback Casanova manages to say more than enough with those two words.

There are manuscripts that already sound like Mills & Boon novels even the publisher would consider derivative. It is hard to believe, for example, that Playboy Sheikh, Forbidden Heir or The BIllionaire’s No-Strings Marriage or Resisting The Sicilian Playboy do not already exist. Still, the fear of repeating themselves has not stopped Harlequin previously, and the publisher has proven this by constantly stressing that authors should not write what they believe editors will want at the cost of their own originality. Despite this, Resisting The Sicilian Playboy has made it as far the public vote along with all kinds of odd titles such as Fire and Iron, Love For Sale and When the Bus Stopped. Harlequin will no doubt change these to something more marketable before publication, but for now the romance readership can respond with mouseclicks, bringing to an end decades of misogyny and exotica for a future of pretentious references to nothing.

A cursorary glance of the submissions indicates some authors researched more heavily than others. A keen understanding of Harlequin's portfolio is always advised, but adhering too closely to the model is unwise. Chopstick Thursdays by Stella Steele introduces itself with, 'Poppy Merlot is not your typical heroine.' Uh oh, Chopstick Thursdays. First of all, what is a typical heroine? A feisty virgin, perhaps, with a quirk that isn't particularly quirky? Just how subversively unique is Poppy Merlot?  'She is a free spirited, audacious and sexually naïve mechanic whose favourite guilty pleasure is ordering Chinese food every Thursday.' Many of those words require closer scrutiny, but with time of the essence and another four hundred first chapters to review it would be smarter to just move on. The last thing the Romance genre needs is an audacious mechanic. By the way, is it possible to buy a bottle of Poppy Merlot from the same shop that sells Butterfly Coffee?

Some entries were rejected for reasons immediately apparent. Z.A. Zombies Anonymous, for example, a Nocturne entry by Jo Rohrbacker, is hardly suggestive of idealised romance, 'The zombie epidemic has consumed the planet. However, the underground world of pimps, prostitutes,“zombie fights” and the grotesque practice of “zombies-for-hire” doesn’t stop the human heart from falling hopelessly in sappy love.' To Rohrbacker's credit, she appears to have found a way, but for a MIlls & Boon editor hoping to whittle so many first chapters down to twenty five anything with zombie in the title is not going any further. Using a similar form of discernment, stories told in the first person are simply ruled out, as are those that have been written on a drunken whim, such as Janet Lee Nye's Man Maid, 'She runs the hottest cleaning service in town. He’s an undercover private investigator hired by her competition to find some dirt. When the truth comes out, it’s going to get messy.' On second thought, with this many puns Man Maid is an early favourite for victory.

Analysing every entry is a difficult and exhausting task, and the results might well be misleading. Many applicants have offered novels they believe stand a good chance of winning, tailoring their first chapter to the manner of the publisher. Others have written the romance novel they wish they could read, twisting conventions to create an original spin on a well-worn formula. Some have awkwardly tacked on a relationship to their mystery thriller in the hopes of finding a home at Harlequin. The twenty-five lucky chapters available to read and recommend are not necessarily representative of the entries as a whole. The shortlist has been selected by Mills & Boon editors, chosen for their qualities as strong examples of what Mills & Boon seek out. Nevertheless, the transparency of their process is admirable, although the hundreds of chapters and pitches left unselected have been given no reason as to why. We may never know just what was so unpalatable about Butterfly Coffee.

"When would she realize the folly of opening up her heart to men who wanted no part of it?"

Every year Harlequin Mills & Boon scours the world for new aspiring authors whose dream of being published by Harlequin Mills & Boon is not sufficiently ambitious enough to be considered a dream. As we approach the final few months of whatever historians will call this year the details of So You Think You Can Write have been announced. Much like the trials the publisher traffics in the path to the greatest reward is an arduous battle against tedium with easily surmountable obstacles, at least one arrogant businessman and what at first appears to be a lifetime of happy winnings, but is in fact a series of increasingly miserable compromises. Unlike previous years, however, this year will be slightly improved, albeit largely due to inflation. Not only will there be a weeklong conference and the usual parade of corporate buzzwords masquerading as events, but 2014 introduces the Ultimate Author's Publishing Prize, which really is the ultimate prize an author can receive in publishing.

Those dubbed Best Author in bygone years have had to make do with the indignity of winning a competition for Romance Fiction. This year's champion will instead be honoured with the single largest and most wide-ranging grand prize ever offered for this global contest. This one lucky writer will land a two-book series contract, a series-specific editor, marketing and PR support, as well as social media training and a summit meeting with a creative team. At last, no more will they amateurishly update their Facebook profile and post photographs of their cat on Twitter like an idiot. No, before long they will pow-wow with their imaginative entourage atop mountains. But wait, because just when the prize seems large, wide-ranging and exhausting Mills & Boon will also throw in a gift card for a champagne dinner for two, which will not pay for the meal entirely, but will certainly help.

Before aspiring authors begin to fantasise about the clinking of glasses and endless meetings there is the conference to suitably prepare writers for the challenge. Thankfully the event lasted from the 15th to the 19th of September and has therefore finished. The opening date for entrants is the 22nd and manuscripts can be submitted until November 10th, at which point authors must wait an entire year before this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity again becomes available. For those interested in pursuing their ambition of entering a writing competition the rules are simple. First, write an opening chapter, with a maximum of five thousand words, and a 100-word pitch of what happens during the latter twelve or so chapters, offering greater detail than happily-after-ever and a smiley-face emoticon. Last year there were seven hundred participants. This year the total number of however many entrants can be bothered to enter will be whittled down to twenty-five by the unpaid interns of professional Mills & Boon editors. These qualifiers must then submit a completed novel to be evaluated by the personal assistants of the professional editors. After this second round of judging the twenty-five will become a short-list of ten. These ten books will be posted on this very internet for a public vote over the course of the first week of November.

Last year sixty thousand fans voted, and selected Tanya Wright as their favourite, sending her on the way to wherever she is now. A mere seven or so days after the public voting begins the public voting ends and the grand winner is announced. The next day the victorious writer will sign his or her two-book contract and be jetted to the highest point of their respective country to meet their public relations expert, their stylist, their Twitter-twitterer, their new editor, the Queen of Romance and the amateur model who will stand in for them at photoshoots. The whirlwind nature of this sudden rise to stardom is presumably deliberate, and seems appropriate for the reality of typing and obscurity that is the life of a Mills & Boon author. Tanya Wright was not the only writer to have their life changed marginally by So You Think You Can Write. In fact, seventeen other entrants were signed up by Harlequin. A simple sum of mathematics would suggest that a writer does not even have to make the final round of voting to be considered talented enough for Mills & Boon. This bodes well for anyone considering throwing together the first three thousand and one hundred words they can think of.

What is next for those prospective novelists? The task of putting words on a page is arguably one of the most fundamental aspects of beginning a career in writing. As soon as the competition was announced the deadline for applications approached. Anyone just finding out about this might want to think twice about entering, considering a fifty-five thousand word novel will be expected in about six weeks time. Naturally, for adept romance fiction writers six weeks should plenty. Jill Shalvis could write a perfectly satisfactory Jill Shalvis romance novel in the time it takes to read this sentence. Despite the race against time element, So You Think You Can Write is an opportunity difficult to resist. When else can an aspiring author have an unsolicited manuscript read by a Harlequin editor?

Before excitement threatens to overtake good judgement there are a handful of doubts worth fretting over. Not only does your book have to convince interns, assistants and editors, but it must also manage to impress the notoriously discerning Mills & Boon fanbase, even before publication and the financial windfall. Then there are the other several hundred novels up for selection, some offering debonair sadists, pouting vampires or original archetypes women have not yet realised they have loved since forever. How will niche sub-genres fare against more mainstream, populist offerings? Do authors of the unconventional, the cult or the literary submit their novels to Mills & Boon? Probably not, but that experimental, stream of consciousness romance featuring the disfigured hobo and the world-weary prostitute should probably wait for a more progressive chance of a big break regardless.

For the company behind So You Think You Can Write there is only positive publicity. Naturally, they release the news with a politically-correct statement of betterment. 'Harlequin and Mills & Boon editors believe that by engaging aspiring writers, showcasing the tremendous appeal of the romance genre and offering expert insights into crafting the perfect story, they can help promising novelists hone their skills and achieve their dreams of writing for one of the world’s leading publishers of books for women.' Write on! Admittedly, Bewildered Heart takes issue with dream as the correct choice of word, but the aspiration of the publishing giant, now backed by News Corporation billions, gives them every right to falsely claim an idealistic purpose. The challenge has been challenged, the gauntlet has been thrown down. If you, dear reader, believe you have a romance novel in you, or preferably a romance novel in your desk drawer, now might be the time to dust that thing down, change the name on it from your own to that of a True Blood cast member and start looking up local restaurants that serve champagne and offer gift certificates.

"Though she was still hurt and angry about his lies and deception, all of that was forgotten in an instant"

The slow progress that is reading The Prince's Cowgirl Bride, and the use of the word progress is misleading, has revealed an insight so obvious Bewildered Heart has never given it much consideration, due to redundancy. Still, the one remarkable issue with the novel is its formulaic approach to character, story and whatever else constitutes a novel. Over the years Harlequin Mills & Boon and its loyal stable of authors have dismissed the notion of a set formula to which their product must adhere. There are no rules and no structures. There are, however, a series of rules and structures that serve as a guide to what will be published. This is not so much a formula as a system of orchestrated parameters that leave authors with little creative freedom to branch out in surprising directions and alter the formula that does not exist.

Romance fiction is not renowned for subversive risk-takers hellbent on overthrowing the norms of the genre, and thus the norms have remained safely in place, with new aspiring authors ready and willing to feed in the same ingredients that led to the novels they were inspired by. Secrets Uncovered insisted that what takes place on the pages of a manuscript is solely up to the writer, limited only by the constraints of imagination, but an overview of a handful of the company's books suggest there are clear identities to romantic heroes and heroines and a series of predictable story structures those characters find themselves within and unable to change. This isn't necessarily the fault of Harlequin. Romance has certain requirements as much as any other genre. No one complains about all the murdering that takes place in crime fiction.

Nevertheless, The Prince's Cowgirl Bride is eye-opening in its dreary parade of requisite scenes. Harlen begins as she means to go on, with the most archetypal of all heroes, the dark, enigmatic, muscular, sensitive, tall and masculine Mac Delgado. He works with his hands, but understands the needs of women. He also happens to be a Mediterranean Prince. Opposite him is Jewel Callahan, who, despite being ten years older than her husband-to-be, is the clichéd, naïve young women of romance, fiercely independent, sexually-inexperienced and nothing without a man. She also has unresolved father issues. There was an opportunity for The Prince's Cowgirl Bride to explore the potentially interesting ramifications of the older woman younger man dynamic, but by making Mac a confident, womanising playboy and Jewel the lonely maid with a short romantic history the characters revert to type. Jewel maybe a business owner, fighting chauvinist clients and the spectre of her successful dad, with Mac her mere employee, but the plot does not play out appropriately. Even the Mills & Boon title implies male ownership, and all the suggested social superiority Jewel has over Mac is a lie, because he is really a Mediterranean Prince.

There is a subsection of the genre that uses secret identities as a central concept. As a result the structure is easy to map out. In other cases, most notably The Truth About the Tycoon, the heroine meets a perfectly eligible bachelor and falls in love with him. The author spends one hundred and eighty pages convincing the reader that the love shared between the couple is real, passionate and eternal. The twist that instigates the third act revolves around the discovery of the lie, betrayal and realisation that the intimacy, honesty, love-making and ever-lasting devotion was, in fact, fraudulent. The reader has been in on this from the beginning, however, warming to the hero, empathising with his reason to lie and shouting at the heroine to open her heart and let him in, whoever he is. But wait! For there is one final twist, as it turns out the man's actual persona is an improvement on the fake one. He isn't a hunky fireman from the wrong side of the tracks, but a billionaire property tycoon who loves saving kittens from trees. Most importantly, of course, the only thing the hero didn't lie about was being single. This leads to a happy ending and further defeat for feminism so straightforward it hardly needs putting into words.

In The Domino Effect, the tables were turned, with the heroine being allowed a secret identity that allowed her to fall in love and murder her prospective husband's mother. Unlike The Truth About the Tycoon, or The Prince's Cowgirl Bride, Domino Black had to entirely reject her actual personality as an unrepentant killer in order to be accepted as wife material. She retired from being an international spy for a top secret branch of the federal government and that seemed to be the least she could do. The Domino Effect might appear to be a victory of sorts, with the heroine taking the role usually afforded to the hero, but whether the failure of Julie Leto's novel was due to this twist or the utterly abject writing is debatable. A character can be redeemed if their dishonestly is a byproduct of a noble objective, such as thwarting terrorism, shirking regal responsibility or sex, and often the guilt the liar feels as they develop feelings softens the extent of the mendacity. After all, if a woman is unable to comprehend that you are lying to them for their own good they are no doubt one of these modern, enlightened women who authoritative CEOs know not to marry.

Another popular standard sees the heroine blackmailed, tricked, bribed or prostituted into a sexual relationship. Typically the hero is a ruthless tycoon, arrogant billionaire or conceited sheikh, which is largely consistent with the genre as a whole. Their power, wealth and success in every field but one, their devastating good looks and personification of charm rather undermines the need to blackmail, trick, bribe or prostitute women into sexual relationships, but the heart wants what the heart wants, and sometimes blackmail is the best means to convince a woman to accompany you to dinner, and perhaps a movie. At first the heroine is flattered by all the attention and is willing to overlook the morally-dubious subtext of the mutually-beneficial transaction due to her attraction to her buyer and a dim understanding of how blackmail works. Slowly the story develops and she has second thoughts, as all the sex she has been bought or blackmailed into having has had negative effects on her self-worth. This allows the author to reach the third act where the heroine walks away from the contract and/or verbal agreement and the hero reconsiders his ways and agrees to continue the relationship, but without the financial compensation. Numerous novels have followed this formula, including Fifty Shades of Grey, The Billionaire's Housekeeper Mistress, Bedded at the Billionaire's Convenience, The Millionaire's Indecent Proposal and the vast majority of books published by Mills & Boon.

The appeal of Solicititilation for a writer is the appearance of extreme obstacles. Typically, buying or renting a lady is not a romantic way to begin a relationship and love rarely blossoms in such circumstances. Therefore hero and heroine have a great distance to travel before their blissful resolution. Why Harlequin authors present themselves with such a challenge is a mystery, but perhaps they believe Pretty Woman made it look easy. If an alpha male is supposed to begin their journey selfish and unable to form a committed union this can be achieved by behaving in a manner not dissimilar to male characters such as Ethan Cartwright and Franco Constantine. After all, if you begin a plot with a woman being blackmailed into sex to save their parents from destitution the reader will assume her knight in shining armour is not going to be the blackmailer. Still, there is nothing so ambitious as the bold, logic-defying attempt of the hero's romantic redemption or the heroine's weak, intelligence-insulting acceptance of a story dictated by her man.

What would a romance novel be without simultaneous character arcs showing two people helping one another to become even more perfect than they were originally? This is the formula Mills & Boon denies and also favours. Most often the hero is unwilling to settle down, due to the regularity in which women throw themselves at him. The heroine's afflictions are singledom and controlling her hair in humidity. As her story begins and she ponders what to do with all these wedding invitations that she won't send out due to Marcus being a rake, a man wanders past with a tin of pomade and a desire to tear down the wildlife enclosure she inherited from her single mother. A tender courtship ensues, allowing him to recognise the many flaws that made him successful, wealthy and universally adored and cure the heroine of not being married and pregnant by marrying and impregnating her. This structure can be experienced through reading the likes of The MacGregor Grooms, The Dad Next Door, Under the Millionaire's Influence, One Night with the Rebel Billionaire, Romantics Anonymous and any other Mills & Boon book that doesn't have a title implying ownership. What makes the standard formula so appealing is the illusion of competence. Here characters grow and change, just like human people, affecting the course of events through their burgeoning personalities, all the way to the happy ending that was never in doubt from the start.