Forty-five novels ago I set out to find a romance in the thrill. I wrote a thriller called Hard Lift and tried to run a romance right up the middle of it. I'd written love stories before, even had a contemporary romance that still sells very nicely a decade later (the 5 novels and 3 stories in "Where Dreams" series set in Seattle's Pike Place Market).
But I wanted something more. I wanted something that would grab me the way a good thriller did. A story that not merely forced me to stay awake to finish it because I was so enjoying it, but something that put me on the edge of my seat while doing it.
What I achieved, is just what I said above, a thriller with a romance up the middle of it. To make Hard Lift into a romance required a skilled editor and two massive revisions.
(A side note on revisions: My story changed very little. It was the same story. It was the same characters. It was the same voice at the end of the two big revisions that it was at the beginning. What had changed was the balance.) That change of balance caused the American Library Association's Booklist to name it a "Top 10 Romance of 2012." An honor that still startles me.
Oh, you may know it by a different title:
Including spin-offs and side series, that book launched twenty novels and at least as many short stories. Both the Firehawks and the Delta Force series have earned the same accolade.
So, what lies behind that?
The answer for me harkens back to my first-ever writers conference, Romance Writers of America National Conference in 1996. I attended a session on cross-genre books. This was back before Paranormal Romance was considered a genre--though vampires were already heating up the pages. I asked about my newly released first-ever novel (actually, due to poor planning by the publisher, it released the week after the conference). "At what point does a fantasy become a romance, and at what point is it still a fantasy?"
The presenter (whose name I've regrettably long since forgotten), gave me a wonderful answer that I've lived by ever since:
"If you can peel the romance out of the story, and it still stands, it's not a romance. If you can peel the fantasy out of the story, but the romance still stands, then it is a romance."Cookbook From Hell: Reheated does not pass that test. The love story, while important, is not integral to the story. So while it makes the story richer, it is not a romance.
However, I've learned that the extension is also true:
"If you can peel the romance out of the story, and it still stands, it's not a romance. If you can peel the suspense out of the story, but the romance still stands, then it is not a romantic suspense."
To be a romantic suspense (or as this month's theme calls it: a romantic thriller), both elements must be essential to the story. The romance collapses without the suspense element and the suspense element collapses without the romance.
The two must interact as clearly as characters throughout the book.
Sometimes they support each other, when the suspense slams the heroine and heroine together unexpectedly. At other times the suspense blows them apart. Also, the way they get through the bad times is their growing love for each other. The key that solves the suspense, must also be involved in solving the romance, and the same in return. It is only together that our hero and heroine can triumph against the danger that threatens.
Because I write military romantic suspense, all three elements must be essential. My romances wouldn't work if there wasn't the suspense and they weren't military. Likewise, my suspense is so tightly wrapped about the military, that it too is inseparable from character and story.
From the first moment to the last, these elements must interact--must depend on each other.
Hero, heroine, military, and suspense. Now this isn't near the final problem that they must face together, but it is a good example of what I mean as well as an introduction to them that is going to escalate throughout my latest title. Romance, military, suspense—all wound together. Whether it is vampires, shapeshifters, detectives, CDC doctors, or any of the myriad others, the tighter the pieces are wound together, the more readers you'll be keeping up at night and sending to work exhausted.The low hill, shadowed by banana and mango trees in the twilight of the late afternoon sun above the Venezuelan jungle, overlooked the heavily guarded camp a half mile away.But that wasn’t his immediate problem.Right now, it took everything Duane Jenkins could do to ignore the stinging sweat dripping into his eyes. Any unwarranted motion or sound might attract his target’s attention before he was in position.From two meters away, he whispered harshly.“Who the hell are you, sister? And how did you get here?”“Holy crap!”He couldn’t help but smile. What kind of woman said crap when unexpectedly facing a sniper rifle at point-blank range?“Not your sister,” she gained points for a quick recovery. “Now get that rifle out of my face, Jarhead.”Ouch! That was low. He wasn’t some damned, swamp-tromping Marine. Not even ex-Marine. He was ex-75th Rangers of the US Army, now two years in Delta Force. And as an operator for The Unit—as Delta called themselves—that made him far superior to any other soldier no matter what the dudes in SEAL Team 6 thought about it. That also didn’t explain who he’d just found here in the perfect sniper position overlooking General Raul Estevan Aguado’s encampment.
Wild Justice - a Delta Force romance
launches on Tuesday 10/17
- M. L. Buchman: 50+ novels, 3x Booklist "Top 10 Romance of the Year", NPR and B&N "Top 5 Romance of the Year."
- M. L. writes: military romantic suspense, contemporary romance, F&SF, thrillers, even more short stories than novels.
- M. L. has: bicycled solo around the world, designed and built houses, worked too many years as a corporate project manager, rebuilt and solo-sailed a fifty-foot sailboat, flown and jumped out of airplanes.
- M. L. also: quilts!?!
- Find out more at www.mlbuchman.com.
5 comments:
I love it when I learn something that I use over and over and over again when writing. I've also heard and use the "if you can take the romance out of the story and the story still stands then it isn't a romance." I call those gems "Author Gold" because when we remember and use these pieces of wisdom, our writing is always better.
Absolutely. I gather and nurture those wherever I can.
Nice concise explanation. I wonder if there is military romance without suspense. They seem tied together for most authors--whether it's current military or former military members.
Do you find when you are writing contemporary romance that you have an itch to add suspense? That's happened to me in my last novel--not in the full blown suspense novel way but in the I'm-letting-the-external-plot-drive the-climax way. :)
Love your books, M. L. because you have strong, smart women who are equals to the men in the story.
Thanks, Maggie. Glad you enjoy them. I'm trying to write the world that I wish my wife had grown up in and the one I hope my daughter does.
No, I've run into plenty of military romances that aren't suspense driven. They wrap around military (or more typically ex-military) issues, but the "suspense" is more closely related to the tension built in any contemporary romance. Hmmm... If I had to find a way to say it, I'd say that the suspense element is external and the romantic tension is internal to the H/H. Most of my contemporaries (not all) have very low suspense, but I do everything I can to ramp up the tension. If that makes sense.
Interesting post, Matt!
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