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  The break from one scene to another within a chapter is marked typographically by an extra blank line—a white space that alerts readers to expect a change in time, place, or point of view. (Adding a few crosshatches or asterisks to the blank line ensures that it will not be overlooked in editing or typesetting.)

  Chapters

  In many kinds of fiction, each scene is simply assigned a number, and no matter how long or short, the scene functions as a chapter. The book might have dozens of chapters, some a page or two long and some running to fifteen or twenty pages.

  In category romance, the rules tend to be a little more rigid, with the book divided into roughly equal chapters, each of which contains one or more scenes. The average length of a chapter in category romance is 5,000 words, though that's not a rule.

  The number of chapters varies according to the romance category, and some are more definite in their guidelines than others. Typically, a short romance will have ten to twelve chapters, while long contemporaries might have seventeen to twenty, and historicals might have twenty-five or more. Single-title and mainstream romance novels, like general fiction, vary widely in the number and length of their chapters.

  While each scene is a well-defined unit of time, location, and point of view, a chapter can be much more expansive. A single chapter that includes several scenes might cover a span of days or even months.

  The chapter is a convenient, if somewhat artificial, unit of storytelling. Each chapter is another step in the characters' upward climb, another section of the story. Unlike nonfiction, in which chapters are neatly constructed packages and each is independent of the others, in fiction each chapter ends with another twist in the plot, leading into the next chapter and making it difficult for readers to put the book down. In romance, that chapter-ending twist usually relates to both main characters.

  Important Action

  All of the important action in a story should be shown directly to the readers through scenes, either as it occurs or through the characters' later discussion or reflection. Crucial events should not happen in the white space—the time that passes between the book's scenes (so called because of the literally blank or white line that indicates the scene change).

  Important action should not be summarized. Many writers come up to a moment of high drama and then dodge it, writing something like, "Later, when things had settled down. ..." It's usually far better to show crucial action as it happens, moment by moment.

  Conflict is uncomfortable for most people to observe and to write, but the hard-to-write, action-filled, uncomfortable moments are the memorable ones that make the readers feel they're really there.

  Structure

  Though scenes and chapters aren't equivalent, they have certain things in common, like the need for an attention-catching beginning and an intriguing end.

  The start of each scene and chapter is a mini version of the beginning of the book. With each new segment of the story, you must once more set the stage and get rapidly into the action. The best start for a scene focuses on emotion or character rather than description.

  It's generally better to start a scene with action rather than summarize what's happened in the white space between scenes. So if you're going to show Jason at work, it's better to start with him doing something:

  Jason set his coffee on the desk and pulled his chair around so he could reach the top envelope in his overflowing in-basket.

  It's much less effective to simply tell the readers all about what's happened to Jason since they left him in the last scene:

  After taking some time off during Christmas break, Jason had spent the last two weeks trying to catch up on his work. He'd spent day after day digging through the piles of paperwork, skipping lunches every day except one, when he'd seen Angela for the only time since Christmas. But despite all his efforts, his in-basket was still overflowing when he came to work on that Tuesday.

  Starting the Scene

  The first paragraph or two of each scene must accomplish several things:

  • Establish the time and place where the scene occurs.

  • Clearly identify the viewpoint character.

  • Hint at the mood of the scene.

  • Capture the readers' attention and not allow them to put the book down.

  Start your scenes and chapters with action. Don't summarize what's happened since the last scene, and don't begin the scene with the heroine parking her car in the company lot if the action doesn't get going until she walks into the conference room at mid-morning.

  In the start of this short scene from Jackie Braun's sweet traditional category romance In the Shelter of His Arms, we see the homeless heroine after she's broken into her boss's bar through a restroom window in order to spend the night where it's warm:

  Morning came before Roz was ready for it, but then she was used to running on only a few hours of sleep. She'd bunked on the floor of a small storeroom off the kitchen, using her duffel bag as a pillow. Now, with sunlight slinking through the window, she realized the room also doubled as Mason's office. ... Her stomach growled, reminding her that it hadn't forgotten it was empty.

  In just a few words, Braun has told us the place and time of the new scene, as well as how much time has passed since the previous scene. She's also made clear the main problem of this short scene—Roz is hungry—and she's set up the next difficulty for her character, as we'll see when we read the end of this scene below.

  Ending the Scene

  The last paragraph or two of each scene should intrigue the readers into turning the page and going on to the next one. To do that, you can use one or more of the following techniques:

  • End a scene with an intriguing twist. Reaching the end of a scene is like pushing the pause button on a DVD player—if you pause at a boring moment, the viewer may be sidetracked by another activity and not come back to watch the rest of the show. The best example of how not to end a scene or a chapter is with the heroine drifting cozily off to sleep without a care in the world.

  • End your scenes and chapters when the action ends. If the hero walks out of the heroine's store, that's probably the end of the action—so don't have her turning to greet the next customer unless that customer has something important to add.

  • End with a surprise event or announcement. Perhaps the character has made a decision about future action, leaving the readers wondering what the outcome will be.

  • End with a question that the readers want answered.

  • Stop in the middle of the action, or at a moment of tension, or with the character at risk.

  You must play fair, however. If you end a scene with a hint of the action yet to come, you can't conveniently forget to carry through. If you ask a question, it has to be answered sometime during the story. If you opt for a surprise, it has to be genuine and meaningful, not manufactured or coincidental.

  Here's the end of that short scene from Jackie Braun's In the Shelter of His Arms-.

  The ham caught her eye and her mouth watered. Protein, and not in the form of a beer nut. She nearly wept.

  She was cutting off a thick slab of the smoked meat when she heard the locks on the front door begin to rattle. Roz didn't wait around to wonder who it was. She stuffed the rest of the ham back in the fridge, tucked the bread and slice of meat she'd hacked off down the front of her shirt and hightailed it to the rest room. Through a crack, she watched Mason walk in, a pretty woman close behind him. ...

  Quietly she closed the door and climbed atop the heat register. She was out the window and standing on the wooden palettes before she remembered her duffel bag was still in Mason's office.

  Roz is busted—and it's a rare reader who doesn't turn the page to find out how long it takes Mason to realize that his new employee is a break-in artist, and to see what he's going to do about it.

  1. Review the romances you've been reading. How does each author use details to show the story? How many details do you need to picture this setting in


  your mind?

  2. Does the author use flashback? How did he handle the flashback? Were you able to follow the timing of the action?

  3. Was the narrative easy to follow? Did the author use exposition and summary?

  4. What settings and backgrounds has the author used? What kind of details, and how many details, did the author need to make you able to see and understand the setting and background?

  5. How many chapters were there? How did the author begin and end scenes and chapters? Did you want to turn the page and go on to the next part of the story?

  6. Did the author use past tense, present tense, or past perfect tense in telling the story?

  1. What is the primary purpose of this scene?

  2. What else can I accomplish with this scene?

  3. Which characters do I need to bring on stage?

  4. Which characters don't I need?

  5. Which characters are possible point-of-view characters?

  6. What unit of time and place does this scene represent?

  7. Why does the scene begin at the moment it does?

  8. How can I best capture the readers' attention in the opening paragraph or two?

  9. How can I establish time and place within the first few paragraphs?

  10. What are the dozen events that could happen in this scene?

  11. Can I use this scene to foreshadow future actions or events?

  12. How can I use this scene to build suspense?

  13. How does this scene lead into or set up the next or subsequent scenes?

  14. How does the end of this scene draw the readers into the following scene?

  By the time you actually start writing your book, you'll have already developed your hero and heroine, and they'll remain the most important characters throughout your entire story. But your main characters don't live in isolation. With few exceptions (such as a book in which the hero and heroine are marooned on a deserted island), your main characters will be surrounded by other people— families, friends, coworkers, authority figures, opponents, and enemies.

  SECONDARY CHARACTERS

  These people are the secondary characters in the book, and together they can act as a framework, a background, a contrast, and a sounding board for the main characters.

  The limited length of many romance novels allows little time or space to fully develop secondary characters and subplots. Even in the longer books—historical romances and long contemporary category romances, in which subplots and secondary characters are encouraged—it's important to keep the emphasis on the main romance, the main plot, and the central characters.

  Because there are fewer restrictions on the personalities and behavior of secondary characters, they are often less difficult (and more fun) to write about. They can actually become more fascinating than the hero and heroine for the readers and for the writer.

  This is especially true in sequels; characters who were previously at the heart of their own book appear in another character's story and sometimes want to take over. Beware of spending too much time bringing your readers up to date on recurring characters, because the readers who picked up that earlier book want to read this story.

  Creating too many secondary characters—filling the landscape with friends and co-workers and neighbors—is a common problem for new writers. Every secondary character takes time and space and attention away from the hero and heroine. Before you create another character, think about those who already exist and ask yourself if one of them could take on an additional role. I sometimes think, "If this were a movie script, would this part be worth hiring an actor to play? Or would I assign the lines to someone I've already agreed to pay?"

  If your heroine has two best friends, can you combine them into one? If she has four kids, do you really need them all, or can you show her as a mom with one or two?

  Types of Secondary Characters

  Romance novels don't have a standard cast of supporting characters. In many books, the heroine has a best friend in whom she can confide, but there's no requirement to construct such a character. There are some types of secondary characters that appear frequently, however. Each type offers potential for the story but can also detract from the main romance.

  The Significant Third

  A good many modern romances involve a very specific kind of secondary character, one who falls into a gray area between a main character and a secondary character. This significant third character is far more important than other secondary characters. Typically, this person is the cause of the conflict, or the reason for the story—she's central to the action. Because of this character's important role, there is generally only one significant third in a story.

  The significant third character is most often the child of the hero or heroine, though she can be a parent, sibling, or friend who plays a very large part in the story. If the hero and heroine are together only because they've been named guardians to an orphaned six-year-old, the child is the significant third character. If the hero needs the heroine to provide care for his very sick father, and much of the story happens at the old man's bedside, the father is likely to be the significant third character. If the story is a psychological thriller in which the hero and heroine know exactly who's chasing them, the villain is often the significant third character.

  It's a challenge to keep this character in her proper place—at the edge of the main story, not in the middle. It's easy to get careless and drift away from the main characters toward the significant third, particularly when this extra character is a child. We're almost programmed to put a child's needs before those of adults, and that carries through in odd ways when writing about a child. The result—anything from a textbook on child raising to a dictionary of baby talk—isn't a romance.

  Many a romance novel has been destroyed by a significant third who became too important. The romance must remain firmly fixed on the two main characters.

  Even if the most troublesome problem between them revolves around the significant third, it is the tension between the two main characters that is important.

  In the first chapter of Penny McCusker's long contemporary Noah and the Stork, the significant third character appears just as the hero, Noah, and the heroine, Janey, are about to say good-bye after their first meeting in nearly a decade:

  "I guess I should head out," he said, but instead of leaving he had the audacity to step up to the fence and offer his hand.

  Janey was going to take it, too. There was no way she'd back down from the challenge she saw in his eyes, no matter what it might cost her to actually put her hand in his. She took a step forward, then stopped short at the sound of her daughter's voice.

  "Mom," Jessie called, racketing out the front door and down the steps, jumping the last three as had become her habit. ... "Mrs. Devlin called. They're riding out to bring in the spring calves this weekend, and she asked if I want to go along. ..."

  "Mom?" Noah said, his jaw dropping. Not that he couldn't see her as a mom; he couldn't think of anyone who loved children more or would be better at raising them than Janey. It was only that, in his mind, she was still seventeen, still carefree and single, not a grown woman with a kid eight or nine years old. ...

  Jessie turned around then and Noah found himself looking into a pair of green eyes, the kind of green eyes he'd seen every morning of his life, staring back at him from his own mirror. ...

  They stood that way for a moment, eyes locked, nerves strained, enough emotional baggage between them to make Sigmund Freud feel overworked.

  The kid came to everyone's rescue. She glanced up at her mom, then confidently stepped out of the shelter of Janey's arms. She stopped halfway between the two adults, fixed Noah with a stare that was almost too direct to return, and said, "I'm Jessie. Are you my dad?"

  Once Noah knows about his daughter, he's no longer in a mood to shake hands and walk away; he's furious, and he's determined to have a part in raising his child. The rest of the story happens only because of Jessie. Yet
, though we see Jessie interacting with each parent, the majority of the story is about Noah and Janey, with their daughter remaining on the edges of the action.

  The Villain

  Not all romance novels have villains, and in the ones that do, the villain may be important enough to be considered a significant third character or he may he a secondary character, less crucial and less well developed. The villain's goal is usually not directly connected to the romance. He isn't trying to break up (he couple; they're just standing in his way as he's trying to get revenge, acquire money, or eliminate a threat. So the classic villain is much more likely to appear in single-title or mainstream books, historicals, or long contemporary

  Creating too many secondary characters—filling the landscape with friends and co workers and neighbors—is a common problem for new writers. Every secondary character takes time and space and attention away from the hero and heroine. Before you create another character, think about those who already exist and ask yourself if one of them could take on an additional role. I sometimes think, "If this were a movie script, would this part be worth hiring an actor to play? Or would I assign the lines to someone I've already agreed to pay?"

  If your heroine has two best friends, can you combine them into one? If she has four kids, do you really need them all, or can you show her as a mom with one or two?

  Types of Secondary Characters

  Romance novels don't have a standard cast of supporting characters. In many books, the heroine has a best friend in whom she can confide, but there's no requirement to construct such a character. There are some types of secondary characters that appear frequently, however. Each type offers potential for the story but can also detract from the main romance.

  The Significant Third

  A good many modern romances involve a very specific kind of secondary character, one who falls into a gray area between a main character and a secondary character. This significant third character is far more important than other secondary characters. Typically, this person is the cause of the conflict, or the reason for the story—she's central to the action. Because of this character's important role, there is generally only one significant third in a story.