This is it! The magic key that we’ve all been looking for — the romance novel formula that blockbuster author Georgette Heyer used to produce dozens of best-sellers. Thanks to in-depth research by Heyer biographer Jennifer Kloester, we can now see the exact technique this astoundingly prolific and popular author used to build her writing career, and, if we follow the steps exactly, can surely be on our way to fame and fortune through the power of the pen.
Are you ready to kickstart your writing career and start raking in that sweet romance cash? Read on for Heyer’s simple nine-step romance novel formula!
The Georgette Heyer Romance Novel Formula for Success
Step 1
Induce your publisher to hand over at once a sum of money grossly in excess of what the book is likely to be worth to him. This gives one a certain incentive to write the thing, and may be achieved by various methods, the most highly recommended being what may be termed as The Little Woman Act.
Step 2
Think out a snappy title. This deceives the publisher into thinking (a) that he is getting the Book of the Year; and (b) that you have the whole plot already mapped out. The only drawback lies in the fact that having announced a title you will be slightly handicapped when it comes to hanging some kind of story on to it.
Step 3
Brood for several weeks, achieving, if not a Plot, depression, despair, and hysteria in yourself, and a strong desire to leave home in your entourage. This condition will induce you to believe yourself to be the victim of Artistic Temperament, and may even mislead you into thinking that you really are a Creative Artist.
Step 4
While under this delusion, jab a sheet of paper into your typewriter, and hurl on to it Chapter I. This may give you an idea, not perhaps for the whole book, but for Chapter II.
Step 5
Introduce several characters who might conceivably be useful later on. You never know: they may take matters into their own hands.
Step 6
Assuming that he has been properly trained, read over what you have done to your husband. His extravagant enthusiasm may lead you to think you’ve perpetrated something good and this will inspire you to churn out a bit more.
Step 7
Think out a grand final scene, with the maximum number of incongruous characters massed together in some improbable place. Allow your sense of farce full play. This will, with any luck at all, make the reader forget what the rest of the book was like.
Step 8
Try and work out how and why these characters got together, remembering that it is better to “gloss over,” by technique (which if you haven’t learned in thirty years you ought to have leaned), than to put your head in the gas oven.
Step 9
Book a room in a good Mental Home.
And there you have it. It’s just as easy to write a romance novel as you always thought!
Although I’m posting this on April Fool’s Day, these are Heyer’s words as Kloester reports them. Heyer is, after all, known for her wit and comedy!
For the additional three things not to think about while writing, as well as a helpful list of phrases for your spouse to use in Step 6 (“Haven’t you anything more to read to me?”), please see Georgette Heyer, by Jennifer Kloester. You will find this helpful formula, which Heyer set down in a letter to her publisher when she was 70K into The Grand Sophy, on pages 272-273.
