How Do I Get Started Writing a Category Romance?

How do I explore an idea?

First off, you have to have a dream! You have to be passionate about reading category romance, if you are to write category romance!

Before I got started, I’d read a lot of Mills and Boons that my mum used to have stacked beside her bed, but I very quickly realised I preferred the Medical Romances. Medical Romance is one of the lines that is owned by Mills and Boon, one of the publishers of category romance. But there are other publishers out there, too! For example, Entangled Publishing has a variety of lines, suitable for category romance. (Such as August, Bliss, Brazen, Indulgence, Lovestruck and Scandalous!)

I’ve always preferred medical stories. I grew up watching Holby City, Casualty, Grey’s Anatomy, Scrubs, ER, Chicago Hope and anything set in a hospital or doctors. It made sense to me that I should write for the medical line. It was a fit for me and so it’s important to understand what you gravitate to when you read, or consume stories, whether that be on television or between the pages of a book.

You may like historical fiction. You may like regency romances, or viking romances. If this is what gets your blood pumping and turning the pages feverishly, then perhaps this is what you should aim to write?

It’s important to understand which line you want to aim for, if your writing is going to be successful. You need a clear idea of characters, too. Do you want to write about older characters? Do you want to have stories set in a paranormal world? Are your characters going to be LGBTQIA+?

It’s important to know yourself and what you want to specialise in, before you even put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard. Once you do, you’ll be more successful having a clear idea of what you are trying to achieve moving forward.

So, how do you brainstorm ideas?

For my first book, The Baby That Changed Her Life, I thought about a subject that fascinated me first. And that subject was surrogacy. I’d always been fascinated by the concept and I knew I wanted to feature a surrogacy story. So, idea chosen, I had to come up with characters to fit my idea.

Category romances are escapist fiction and they need to be filled with emotion. Emotions and an emotional journey are what the reader of a category romance book is looking for. They want to enjoy the roller-coaster of emotion these short little romances create, so I knew I couldn’t pick two characters who would have an easy ride of their surrogacy journey.

I chose a heroine who was sure she didn’t want to have children of her own (for reasons I didn’t yet know, but knew I could flesh out later, once I had the bare bones) but was willing to carry a baby for her best friend who was struggling to conceive. And then I made her best friend a guy. The hero of my story. Who is in a marriage at the beginning of my story.

So, instant conflict, right? My hero is already married to someone else at the beginning of my story! He’s trying to have a baby with the woman he’s married to. And then I thought, what a twist it would be, for the heroine to discover the positive result of her pregnancy test, right after the hero has arrived at her front door to tell her that his wife has left him for someone else.

Because that would leave my heroine in a predicament! She didn’t want to be a mother, but she was happy to bring it into the world believing it would have one. But now this baby wouldn’t have one? And I realised this meant a great deal to her. It was important to her that this baby had a loving mother and there was no turning back now. She couldn’t stop the ride and get off. The baby would have a loving father, but would that be all? And she’s the best friend to the father! Wouldn’t she see this child growing up? Knowing she’d given it up? Knowing she’d carried it? Knowing she’d felt like its mother?

More conflict!

As I kept adding elements to my story, it kept adding more and more conflict. As I explored the backstories to my hero and heroine, I could add in elements that helped add to the conflict in the front story.

I explored why my heroine didn’t want to be a mother herself and discovered a whole horrible childhood relationship with her own mother, that gave me plenty to work with. I explored why my hero had married his wife and what having a child meant to be him, too. What his backstory was. What his childhood had been like and why it was important to him that his child had a mother, too. But more importantly, I explored the friendship between my hero and my heroine.

This was key. They already had a history. This story wasn’t introducing two complete strangers and making them fall in love. My hero and heroine were best friends. So why had they always been friends and nothing more? Did one of them secretly harbour feelings for the other? Had there ever been a nearly-kiss? A date? Anything?

To expand my idea, I simply kept asking myself questions about them and wondering if the answers would add to my conflict that I had begun to build? I wrote copious notes and snippets of conversation that I liked and slowly the story began to take shape. I knew what my start would be - finding out the heroine is pregnant as the hero discovers his marriage is over. And I knew what my end would be - the hero and heroine together raising this baby, completely and utterly in love. All my questions, my backstory, my conflicts, my questions, all helped fill out the middle.

And once I knew how to start and how to end and what a few middle peaks and troughs were going to be, I began the writing.

You might need more than this to start. You might be a pantser and need to know nothing! But this is how I began. This is how I always start. I think of what topic or theme or trope I would like to use and then populate it with characters that will be conflicted over that topic or trope.

So, what fascinates you? Regency rogues? Secret babies? A marriage of convenience? Enemies to lovers? Highlander warriors? Secret royals? Tortured souls? Pick something you like. Something you feel strongly about. Something that fascinates you and that you want to explore and then start to populate that idea with people. Who would be the worst hero to get involved in a marriage of convenience? Who would be the worst heroine to carry a secret royal love child? Explore who they are. Something made them that way and it’s up to you to find out what and show the reader how they overcome their barriers to loving another.

You need to take your reader on a journey, so do that. Only don’t make it an easy journey from A to B, where the issue could be dealt with by having a simple conversation. Torture your romantic leads! Put barriers in their way. Make them fight for what they want, not what they need.

Ask yourself What if…?

Ask yourself Why …?

And then begin to write their story.

Why not share with me below what the initial spark was for your current story? What idea, what theme gripped you into exploring it? What question are you trying to answer in your story?