Writing Tips #5 - Nicola Cornick's Trade Secrets for Writing Regency Romance

Recently I came across an article I wrote a few years ago on my trade secrets for authors of Regency historical romance. I jotted down the ideas one day when I was critiquing a manuscript and thought it would be useful to have a list of the elements I considered important in a Regency romance. I have updated and added to it for this piece. Obviously the list isn’t totally comprehensive and it is only my opinion but I hope it gives aspiring authors some useful ideas! 

  

Start with a strong hook/story idea – think about the possibility of giving a historical twist to a contemporary situation such as speed dating. This need not be as anachronistic as it sounds. Think about a Regency ball and the amount of time that the partners can actually spend together, exchanging information and getting to know one another. It is time pressured. There are a great many contemporary situations that have strong parallels with historical ones.

If you are keen to use a “standard” Regency idea, such as the hero winning the heroine in a card

game (which Georgette Heyer used in a short story in Pistols for Two), try giving it a new twist. For example the heroine could win the hero instead.

Start the book straight into the action. On her website, award winning romance author Liz Fielding has the following advice: “A great opening to a romance sets up questions in the readers mind… Start with something happening. Get the hero and heroine on the page. Grab the reader’s attention.”

Create strong characters. You need to create a hero your readers will fall in love with and a heroine your readers will identify with. This is a whole area in itself!

Make sure that your plot is sustained throughout the story.  It is important to have a strong plot in a longer-length historical. You need to be working with an idea that can change and develop. You also need a big, convincing conflict to keep the characters apart and not something that could be resolved during one heart-to-heart conversation.

Show the way that a strong relationship develops between your characters. They need to communicate with each other during the story so that their relationship can grow. One of the mistakes that a lot of new authors can make is that they don’t allow their characters really to talk and interact at depth and this can give the impression of a relationship that is stalled for a great deal of the book, only to be resolved rather easily with the HEA ending.

It’s also important to show the characters’ motivation for their actions very clearly. And these motivations must be consistent. Even when a character is behaving “out of character” it has to be believable.  Sometimes it helps to think about motivation in the context of the “GMC” – Goal, Motivation, Conflict. What is that your characters want? What is the logical and consistent reason that your character wants this goal? What is the huge obstacle that is standing in their way?

Hooks at the end of each scene and each chapter are essential. Finish each scene on an “up” or “down” note, focussing on the hero or heroine. (Soap operas in particular use this method to keep the viewer engaged).

Background and setting can be a very powerful tool in creating the atmosphere of a historical novel. You do need to do your research but you don’t want to dump it all on the reader in the first few pages! The language of the dialogue is also subtly different from modern conversation. Love is eternal and the emotions that people feel may be universal, but the society and culture within which the relationships take place change over time. So does the way that people express their feelings. The manners and mores of a particular period have a profound effect on the key players in a story.  The Regency period is a good example of this as the rules by which society operated were codified so clearly. You can take the rules of your particular historical period and use them to your advantage. You don’t need to see them as restrictions. They are opportunities. And even if your heroines are the sort of spirited women who will break society’s rules, setting them within the confines of society and showing them kick over the traces will demonstrate the sort of strong characters that they are.

So in summary the book must have:

An atmospheric setting

 Emotional intensity

 Communication between the protagonists

 Sensual tension

 Humour (preferably)

 Witty dialogue

 A whopping big emotional wallop at the end!

Writing Tips #4: Thinking is Writing Too

Welcome to the fourth post in our series of writing tips. Today, Elizabeth Bailey offers us her top tips.

Writing is not always about sitting at the keyboard and bashing out words. You have to let ideas pop up. When they do, they need to germinate before they will start frothing enough for you to churn out a story.

A writer called Burton Rascoe once said, “What no wife of a writer can ever understand is that a writer is working when he’s staring out of the window.” How true!

Beginning writers generally operate on the basis that “work” is done when they’re actually sitting down and doing it. With writing, this is asking for a miracle and a horribly blank mind. No writer begins a story without having some idea of what it’s about.

Stories on the go have a tendency to jump around in the writer’s head when they least expect it: in the bath, in a car or train, on a walk, even while watching TV or a movie. Also, annoyingly, in bed when you're trying to sleep - ideas can start leaping about and going places. If this happens, let it run - it's all good stuff.

This is what thinking time is, and it’s all part of the writing process. It’s thinking without having to sit and decide to think. It’s that imaginative spark that is set free so it can run without effort. And it won’t happen if it’s forced at the keyboard.

So it’s worthwhile letting your imagination have free rein at any time it starts to generate ideas. In the bath, when I am relaxed, is one of my favourite times for developing stories. I can sometimes be heard talking out loud, as the characters, working out some tricky plot point.

Other people may also spark ideas, but I’d suggest sticking with a fellow writer if you want to bounce ideas off someone. They understand. Non-writers are liable to suggest outrageous plot points that don’t fit your story, or try to persuade you to incorporate elements from their lives that they feel would make a fantastic bestseller. The key thing here is that any offers of plot points need to spark the ideas in your own head, otherwise the story won’t buzz for you.

Here’s the thing, though. Memory is a wayward customer, so I would encourage you to jot down the general points, or make a digital note somewhere as soon as you can once the thinking time starts paying off. I've lost more plot points by not writing them down than I care to remember – because I can’t remember them.

I have filled several small notebooks with ideas, and occasionally I browse through them. Anything used is crossed out, so I can’t use it again. But I’ll jot names, plot points, characters, germs of an idea – anything, just so I’ve got it there when I need it. Because when I haven’t done this, I’ve always come to regret it.

Usually when the plot starts rolling like this, it hasn't got much to do with the bit of the story that’s currently being written (or even another story altogether). That doesn't matter. The important thing is to get it written down somewhere and let it sit there, because it will be growing in your writer’s head without you realising it.

When you get back to writing the story, you will find the plot points you’ve thought about start to get built into the story without any real effort on your part. You might not even have to look at the notes.

And if they don’t get used, they may well be picked up for another story later on. Ideas are never wasted.

One of my heroines is a writer who has trouble controlling her wayward imagination:

An Angel's Touch

Outspoken Verity Lambourn berates the mentor of two lost children, having no idea that the lame young man with the vibrant black eyes is the widowed Henry, Marquis of Salmesbury. When she knocks him flying in Tunbridge Wells, Verity realises she has not been able to get him out of her mind.

Tumbling towards a promising future, Verity must confront the shadows of Henry’s tragic past. Matters come to a head when the children are kidnapped, but it takes a threat to Henry himself to test the strength of Verity’s love and the truth of a gypsy’s prophecy.




Elizabeth Bailey