Some excellent advice here from lovely Romance writer Nikki Logan. She’s an author who writes deeply emotional yet fresh stories, with unique characters yet still delivering on that mills and Boon promise.

It’s so easy as a wannabee Harlequin Mills & Boon writer to tie ourselves and our characters in knots trying to follow “the rules”. I’ve done it so many times, and ended up with a dead, wooden story and cardboardy characters straight out of Cliche Central Casting.

Nikki says-

My characters have struggled with agoraphobia, OCD, infertility, physical scarring. What a miserable list!

But the key is in moderation, a light hand and in giving the characters as much joy in their present as misery in their past. I’ve had a hero pee in his wetsuit; I’ve locked a heroine in a car with four farting dogs; one hero got himself arrested kicking down the heroine’s door; another woke on the beach to find hundreds of tiny crabs marching over his prone body; and a third faints at the sight of blood.

All of it organic and serving multiple purposes in the story. Nothing should be off limits if you write it intelligently, credibly and with a balanced hand.

Easier said than done of course, but the main thing I take from that is not to make characters quirky just for the sake of making them quirky. Characters will have quirks because their quirks are part of who they are, the way their past experiences have shaped them, and part of what their relationship blocks are right now with this particular hero or heroine.

It all comes back to writing characters who feel real to the reader,  who are challenged to learn and grow by each other, who struggle as much if not more with their internal issues as anything going on externally, who encounter setback after setback, until finally they earn their happy-ever-after.

Seems like not much is definitely a no-go area in terms of personal issues, as long as the story isn’t bogged down in their past unhappiness. Their attitude now is what keeps them heroic, sympathetic and interesting and worthy of that HEA. Proactive and looking for solutions, not whiny and “poor me”. Resilient, life can knock them down but they get back up again. They aren’t defeated, no matter what’s thrown at them. Understandable- even if they’ve acted in ways or made choices we don’t agree with, we can see why at the time they thought that was the  best choice they could make.

And ultimately, triumphant – a better person by the end of the story, more fully all they can be, deserving of the real love they can accept at last.

Phew! Gotta try to remember all this as I keep writing my New Voices story. Meg and Nick are both scarred by their past. Meg’s scars from the car accident are all on the surface, but the emotional hurt runs deeper. Whats he doesn’t know is that Nick has his own emotional scars hidden behind his charming, golden facade.

If you haven’t read it yet and would like to, my chapter is here.

Once I write a bit more of this story, I want to read all the stories on Nikki’s recommended list!