How to Write Romantic Comedy, page 8
And I cannot stress this enough ... every single word you write must advance the plot or deepen the characters. I know you've done lots of research into tree felling, but the readers don't care. They don't need to know how you fell an oak, they just want the characters to do it and move on to the next thing.
Yes, it's complicated. Yes it takes work. But your readers want 'chop chop arrrrgh' not a lecture
In fact you need to get your book distilled down to the 'chop, chop, argggh' stage. Cut out all that flabby prosey stuff, where you describe the night sky for four pages. Readers know what a sky looks like, they want to know what is going to fall out of it.
And, as you cut stuff out, you are going to be thinking 'chop, chop ... arrrgh, I love that bit, surely I can leave that in?!' Just think about how important it is to the plot ...
Editing Part III - What’s missing?
Sometimes, if you write ‘short’ - in my case, loads of dialogue with not enough context - then you’ll be doing more tapping things in, rather than chopping. My first drafts are always 10 to 20K shorter than they need to be. I tend to have to go in add details to the description, so that the characters aren’t just floating around in white space, chatting.
If you’re a pantser, you might need another look at the three act structure to make sure you’ve got the beginning, the middle and end in roughly the right place and that the scenes move in a logical sequence. Action A in scene 2 leads to consequence B in scene 3 (or later), if you see what I mean. If they don’t, you’ll have to switch chunks around, even move whole scenes.
This is also a good time to see if there are any recurring motifs or subtle themes within your story. Plot is the sequence of events. Theme is the core idea that gives that sequence meaning. It’s what the book is actually about. When you spot themes, see if you can go back and enter a sentence here or change a word choice there to reflect the theme. If there’s a recurring motif, see if you can use it elsewhere.
You should not be ‘padding’ your story with unnecessary stuff. You should only be adding what is needed for the reader to get a full flavour story.
It can be hard to see what’s not there... because it’s not there. This is a good reason to have someone else look at your manuscript. But only do this once you’ve checked it for story and common sense and all that good stuff first. If you’re getting feedback, you’re better off using someone who has some professional involvement with the publishing industry like a freelance editor. A lot of published authors do structural and content editing work and if things work out, you might find a great mentor or even a great friend from it. We both highly recommend the Romantic Novelists Association’s New Writer’s Scheme. You get to talk to a lot of published romance authors and one of them will read your manuscript in full and give you feedback and market advice. Many of your favourite romance writers will be graduates of the NWS.
Alternatively, of course, you could just get in touch with one of us. We both offer manuscript critiques and one-to-one mentoring.
THE END
Did you enjoy this book? If you did, please leave a review. We’d be ever so grateful. We’ll eat a celebratory Hobnob for each review.
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If we made you laugh, you might enjoy one of our novels.
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Other Books by Jane Lovering
Christmas Secrets By The Sea
Christmas at the Little Village School
The Boys of Christmas
The Art of Christmas
Can’t Buy Me Love
The Little Teashop of Horrors
I Don’t Want to Talk About it
Please Don’t Stop the Music
Hubble Bubble
Starstruck
How I Wonder What You Are
Living in the Past
Falling Apart
Vampire State of Mind
Other books by Rhoda Baxter
Girl In Trouble
Girl Having a Ball
Girl On The Run
Girl at Christmas
Belonging
Snowed In
Please Release Me
Doctor January
Written as Jeevani Charika
This Stolen Life
Christmas At The Palace
Resources
Other books on writing that you might find useful
How Not To Write A Novel - Howard Mittelmark and Sandra Newman
On Writing by Stephen King
Love Writing by Sue Moorcroft
Take Off Your Pants by Libby Hawker (I bought it because of the title. I found it really useful. Please note, it will not teach you how to take off undergarments. I had to learn that through trial and error.)
Into the Woods by John Yorke
Story by Robert McKee
Save the Cat by Blake Snyder (both this and Story are aimed at screenwriters, but what they say is just as relevant to novelists)
Plot and Structure by James Scott Bell.
Novel writing for Dummies
Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud – ideal if you’re the sort of person who is more visually orientated. You don’t have to be a comic book fan to appreciate it.
Books about laughter and jokes that you might enjoy
The Naked Jape by Jimmy Carr and Lucy Greeves (this one has jokes in it)
Laughter by Robert Provine (this one’s quite academic, but interesting)
The Viz book of Crap Jokes - Viz
Useful websites
The Romantic Novelists Association - the best place to find out about romance writing. If you’re unpublished, you can also join the New Writers Scheme, which is one of the best mentoring schemes around. If you want direct mentoring - we both do one-to-one mentoring too. Just ask!
The Alliance of Independent Authors - Excellent curated resources on self publishing options. They offer free contract advice if you’re a member. If you’re traditionally published, it’s still a good idea to check out their blog for marketing ideas.
The Society of Authors - Essentially an author’s union. They offer free contract advice if you’re a member (you can join when you are offered the contract, before you sign it). They have great resources about author’s grants and advice about things like tax.
Dictionary.com and Theasaurus.com - these are self-explanatory. They are an online dictionary and thesaurus.
TV Tropes - this is a great place to find out about tropes. It’s useful to know whether you’re writing a trope (chances are, you are, even if you don’t know it) and how you could change things up a bit.
They fight crime Very silly site that suggests unusual crime fighting duos. Included here only because I love wasting time there. Sometimes their suggestions can spark an idea (not the idea they suggested, because those are bonkers). For example
“He's a leather-clad shark-wrestling firefighter on a mission from God. She's a provocative mutant advertising executive descended from a line of powerful witches. They fight crime!”
Acknowledgements
This book started out at the RNA Conference 2014, when we gave a talk called ‘Writing Funny – from dialogue to situation’. Jane dressed as a penguin and we got a bit worried that one of the audience might actually do themselves an injury from laughing when we talked about ‘pink parts’ in the writing sex section. The feedback from this talk was so great that we collected up all the questions we got and answered them in a follow up talk a couple of years later getting into the weeds of comedy theory and ‘how to write funny’. People still come and talk to us about those talks.
Someone suggested we should write it all up as a book. We looked at all the emails we had from planning the talks and thought ‘why the hell not?’. So, here you have it. The book of the talks. All that’s missing is the penguin onesie.
There are lots of people to thank. We raise a Hobnob to our families, obviously, for putting up with us... they have to, I guess, but it’s still nice of them; to Kate Johnson, Vienna Johnson, Kathryn Kendall, Liam Livings, Alison May and Mark Stay for reading early copies and giving us quotes (and feedback) that we can use. Thanks to the RNA for being such a supportive organisation. Thanks always to the Naughty Kitchen for encouraging us to embark on this crazy side project and for all the discussions we’ve had whilst milking the wine goat.
And of course we’d like to thank each other. ‘Cause we’re nice like that.
Cheers!
Jane and Rhoda
About Jane Lovering
WINNER - ROMANTIC NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2012 with PLEASE DON'T STOP THE MUSIC (Choc Lit publishing), RoNA ROSE (NOVELLA OF THE YEAR) 2018 with CHRISTMAS AT THE LITTLE VILLAGE SCHOOL AND FANTASY ROMANTIC NOVEL OF THE YEAR 2019 with LIVING IN THE PAST
Jane was, presumably, born, although everyone concerned denies all knowledge. However there is evidence that her early years were spent in Devon (she can still talk like a pirate under the right conditions) and of her subsequent removal to Yorkshire under a sack and sedation.
She now lives in North Yorkshire, where she writes romantic comedies and labours under the tragic misapprehension that Johnny Depp is coming for her any day now. Owing to a terrible outbreak of insanity she is now the minder of three cats and an insane terrier - just as the five kids showed signs of leaving home, and she has to spend considerable amounts of time in a darkened room as a result (of the animals, not the kids leaving home).
Jane's likes include marshmallows, the smell of cucumbers and the understairs cupboard, words beginning with B, and Doctor Who. She writes with her laptop balanced on her knees whilst lying on her bed, and her children have been brought up to believe that real food has a high carbon content. And a kind of amorphous shape.
Not unlike Jane herself, come to think of it.
She had some hobbies once, but she can't remember what they were. Ask her to show you how many marshmallows she can fit in her mouth at once, though, that might give you a clue. Go on, I dare you.
You can find out more about Jane (should you wish to, of course) from her blog and website at http://www.janelovering.co.uk
About Rhoda Baxter
Rhoda writes contemporary romances about smart women and the men who love them - no alpha males here, thanks. She especially likes it when they make her laugh. She is fond of cake, British comedy and Lego Stormtroopers.
Once upon a time, she used to be a microbiologist, which might give you a clue about where her name came from.
She is British-Sri Lankan and she sometimes writes multi-cultural fiction under the name Jeevani Charika. She finds being two people really confusing.
Rhoda is a member of the UK Romantic Novelists' Association and the Society of Authors. Her books have been shortlisted for the RoNA awards (2017), the Love Stories awards (2015) and the Joan Hessayon award (2013).
Rhoda is an excellent procrastinator, so you can find her wittering on about science, cake and comedy on Twitter (@rhodabaxter), when she’s meant to be writing. If you fancy a free novella, you can find out how to get that on her website www.rhodabaxter.com.
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[1] Dunbar, R. I. M.; Baron, R.; Frangou, A.; Pearce, E.; van Leeuwen, E. J. C.; Stow, J.; Partridge, G.; MacDonald, I.; Barra, V.; van Vugt, M. (2011). "Social laughter is correlated with an elevated pain threshold". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 279 (1731): 1161–1167
[2] Gervais, Matthew; Sloan Wilson, David (2005). "The Evolution and Functions of Laughter and Humor: A Synthetic Approach". Quarterly Review of Biology. 80 (4): 395–430.
[3] Carlson, Humor - International Journal of Humor Research 24(1) · February 2011
Jane Lovering, How to Write Romantic Comedy
