Harlequin insider Grace Thiele talks you through bringing those wonderful secondary characters to life! Bonjour, aspiring authors! It’s my pleasure to be returning to Romance 101 – and I’m so excited to be writing about the use of secondary characters! In short, this is any character aside from your hero and heroine. These feats of the imagination…
Category: Harlequin Editors
Write Your Romance in 150 Days!
By Senior Executive Editor Birgit Davis-Todd I’ve always been a numbers person. For me breaking down a task by the number of hours or days needed to complete it helps me achieve my goal successfully. You can take the same approach when writing a book. Most authors need around five months—or 150 days!—to write a…
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My Secret Crush: Keanu Reeves
By Anonymous In the Harlequin office lurks a worshipper of Ted, Jack, Neo, Shane, Matt, Julian, and most recently John Wick. Over several decades, Keanu has shown us the depth needed in any romantic hero. He chills, he thinks, he studies chemical compounds, he builds houses, he chases Dracula, he crashes cars, and he confounds us…
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Advice from the Archives–Make Them Suffer: Why Conflict Is Necessary
This week, Susan Litman, Editor for Harlequin Special Edition, shows us why we should make our characters suffer! “They met. They fell in love. They lived happily ever after. The end.” Sounds…pleasant, doesn’t it? Nice…but not very exciting. When I see a pitch like this, I always ask the same question: “Where’s the beef?” In other…
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Advice from the Archives: The Black Moment: How to raise the romantic stakes before the HEA
By Patience Bloom, Senior Editor, Harlequin Romantic Suspense What is a black moment? In a romance novel, the black moment occurs when the hero and heroine lose all hope in love. Their lives might be in danger, too, or another crisis might wrench them apart. But the main issue is that their happily-ever-after may not…
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Dear Editor: Should I Attend a Romance Writers Conference?
Dear Editor, I am almost done writing my first romance. At this point, I don’t know what to do next. I go online to see how I should publish my book, but this doesn’t seem to be enough. Is it worth the time and money for me to attend a conference? –Solo Samantha Dear Samantha,…
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My Celebrity Crush: Chris Evans
by Megan Broderick I know I’m not alone in this one but I have to say I am completely in love with Chris Evans. Don’t tell him that, though, it would be awkward. But, I bet he would still be super nice about it! Honestly, it all started a few years ago when I read…
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Advice from the Archives: The Who 101: Creating Memorable Characters
If the clothes make the man, then characters make the story. If you don’t have fleshed-out, fully-realized, believable characters, you don’t have much of a book, no matter how earth-shatteringly great the prose may be. Just think of your favorite book from childhood or adolescence. Perhaps you were (still are) a great devourer of anything written by Jane…
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Why I hate La La Land
by Victoria Curran Senior Editor Victoria Curran’s pre-Oscars rant…with lots and lots of spoilers! Yeah, yeah, yeah: It swept the Golden Globes. It’s stylish, entertaining and romantic. Emma Stone is adorable. It’s an “homage” to the classic age of the Hollywood musical. I get it. How could anyone not love the romantic musical “La La…
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Advice from the Archives: Top 10 Reasons Why We Reject a Project
By Patience Bloom Do you live in fear of the rejection letter? Maybe you’ve received a few and spend days trying to decipher the strange editor language. Just between us, we don’t really like writing these letters. In fact, we’d rather be buying new authors and showing off your amazing stories! But to be helpful,…