Thoughts on “6 Ingredients of a Good Sensual Romance Novel”

In “6 Ingredients of a Good Sensual Romance Novel” Tom Retterbush lists, I think, what are the pretty standard elements of, well, of a sensual romance novel. Check out the article for details, but the summary is:

1. A very strong, sexy hero.
2 A spunky, spicy heroine.
3. A sensual plot.
4. Red-hot scenes.
5. Teasing, bold dialogue.
6. Ecstatically satisfying ending.

In other words, if you can fill in the blanks and write well, there you go. Well, that’s not what he’s saying, but that’s one way to read lists.

I always have difficulty with lists. On one hand, it’s all true. For me the first reactions is often something along the line of, 1) can I get away with going slightly off-perfect examples to make it more interesting? Like a hero that doesn’t seem strong at first? Or a heroine who is excessively spunky, but later changes or was being misunderstood? Or any other way of sneakily appearing to not fit the perfect structure?

And then, for me, I go to 2) If I do follow the rules, how can I make it my own? This usually means creating another entire structure that runs parallel to the given elements of the “assignment”. Like taking the given elements but making the story as much as anything a representation of ethical issues surrounding euthanasia, or an exploration and comparison of mental health issues by having a character with anorexia and another with drug addiction.

Or just twisting things in a simple way. Make the hero/heroines gay but only one openly so? Or go the other way; one is trying to appear gay but in truth is not? Maybe the hero tries to give the appearance of being gay because he’s striving to become a fashion designer but he’s actually hetro?

I dunno; but it generates fodder for thought anyway.

Review: Digital Fortress

Just fnished reading an old Dan Brown novel, Digital Fortress: A Thriller. For those who don’t know, Dan Brown is the author of The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons which spawned the  movies of the same names.

Some months back I had read another of his earlier books (of which “Digital Fortress” is another, lest you rush out hoping it’s a new Dan Brown novel) all of which have found renewed interest and reprinting as a result of the big ones and the movies. What became more and more obvious to me is that he is a writer of plots, without a lot of character development or straight ahead writing ability. If you read “The Da Vinci Code” you get a sense of this, but it really becomes obvious when you take a step back and read some of his earlier books.

I don’t know whether he got better as a writer by the time he wrote “The Da Vinci Code”, or he just got a better editor who improved his books more as time went on. In any event, I sped through “Digital Fortress” by reading only the first line of each paragraph, and later on by only reading the first lines of the first two paragraphs in each chapter.

Nice plot, not particularly well written, not particularly interesting charaters.