I'm reading "Writing a Romance Novel for Dummies" (WRND) by Victorine Lieske, and wanted to bring you my thoughts as I go through it.
Victorine Lieske is a self-pub writer of romance who capitalized on the indie boom of 2010, so she represents roughly the same generation of success as Theodora Taylor whose book "Seven Figure Fiction" gives you the skinny on the world of online romance writing without hiding anything.
Today I'm going to look at one of the points Lieske makes that doesn't ring true for me as a Wattpad Dummy.
Lieske heartily advises to meet the readers' expectations, which is solid advice...providing we all agree what these expectations are.
This was when I had a couple of 'but Wattpad is not like that, Ma'am' moments.
Moment #1 was when I discovered that Lieske is even harder in pursuit of the Happily Ever After than even the venerable Romance Writers of America (Wattpad aligns with RWA's guidelines more or less in the Verticals).
Are you aware of this issue?
If not, the gist is that the romance must end happily for the main couple to be considered a romance, as opposed to a love story, drama, tragedy or general fiction. This is something already hard to digest to someone who grew up believing that Romeo and Juliette is the biggest romantic hit of all times or gobbled down Fault in Our Stars, but it is about meeting the expectations for an average romance reader.
Lieske (along with the RWA) pictures this reader to be in search of a comfort read, where Good Guys win, and they get married (get married=Happily Ever After, HEA). RWA, however, allows a bit of a wiggle room, because they agree that well, HEA might be just a little restrictive. HFN (Happy For Now) is, therefore, acceptable. The lovers, for the moment, are together, even though they might still be in turbulent waters.
What totally blew my mind is that Lieske insists on HEA. Even if we don't hear the wedding bells in the book, we must walk away from the romance novel firmly assured that the lovers will stay together till the death do them part.
And she is not kidding about it. This leads to a couple of directions that would potentially sink your boat on Wattpad.
First, Lieske distinguishes between standalone romance novels (Mainstream) and serialized romance novels (category). So far so good, right? We do this on Wattpad too, all the damn time.
But once Lieske applied her rigid HEA rule to the ending of a romance novel, she comes to a logical conclusion that would blow into your face if you are writing romance series on Wattpad.
I am quoting here (pg 28 for those who want to check):
If your couple doesn't have a happy ending at the end of book one (in the series), you aren't writing a romance novel.
Lieske's solution to having an HEA and writing a serial too is to switch your main couple, while keeping the brand/spirit/formula to maintain the series.
I want to emphasize that this can be a successful approach on Wattpad. But! The nature of the Wattpad audience is such that they become attached to the main couple and would demand the sequel where they follow that same couple.
Every damn time.
Even when they are interested in a spin off.
And what comes to our rescue in this case is the HFN Lieske rejected so hard. Basically, guys, HFN and the same couple is a bigger win on Wattpad. Of course, there are exceptions. There are always exceptions.
There are more potentially negative consequences to following Lieske's HEA Rules! rule while Wattpading...but I guess I will have to save it for my next post.
Until then, keep writing!
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