Honeymoon with the Boss

Publisher: Harlequin Mills & Boon

Jessica Hart's course at the watermill is:

"Writing romance"

Saturday 24 September to Saturday 1 October 2011

Jessica’s earliest dreams were about sitting on a sand dune in the Sahara,
working in the Outback, hacking her way through a jungle or bouncing along a dusty track
in a battered old Land Rover rather than writing a book. Her itchy feet took her from
Afghanistan to Australia, from Algeria to Belize, and Cameroon to Indonesia, with various
stops en route, and she loved it all.

Because she was always thinking about where she wanted to go next, her career was a haphazard one, to say the least. Her last ‘proper’ job was on the foreign newsdesk of a national newspaper. Before that, she was on expedition in West Africa, cooked on an outback cattle station, taught English as a foreign language, was production assistant for a theatre company and research assistant for a publisher of restaurant guides and filled in the gaps between by working as a secretary, waitress, chambermaid and dishwasher. Regular readers will probably recognize how often she has drawn on her wide but lowly working experience for inspiration when it comes to setting and plot!

Jessica eventually stumbled into writing as a way of funding a Ph.D. in Medieval Studies (finally completed, after nine long years of research in 2004) and she is now a full-time author, based in York, an historic city in the north of England. The more she writes, the more interested she is in how and why romance works, and in spite of much grumbling about the writing process, suspects she is now hooked!

She has written more than 50 books for Harlequin Mills & Boon and is winner of the two most prestigious awards in romance writing, a RITA® for the best traditional romance of 2005, and the coveted Romance Prize, awarded by the UK’s Romantic Novelists’ Association in 2006. This year, 2009, has been a good year for Jessica on the awards front. Her 50th book, Last-Minute Proposal, was nominated for a RITA in the contemporary series category, and she was short-listed for the Romance Prize for a third time for Promoted: to Wife and Mother. Another book, Newlyweds of Convenience, was a finalist in the Booksellers’ Best Award, while Last-Minute Proposal won the National Readers’ Choice Award for the best traditional romance of 2009. You can find out more about Jessica at her website: www.jessicahart.co.uk

No matter how beautifully you write, if you can’t give your story the emotional punch it needs, it won’t grab an editor’s attention. But how do you invest a romance with the emotional tension that is so key to its success?

I’ll show you how by focusing on a practical approach to key elements in the structure of any romance. Yes, that structure is formulaic, but it’s a structure that works, and the good news is that it’s one whose techniques you can learn like anything else. In particular, we’ll be looking at how tension is created by weaving together character, conflict and plot.

We’ll spend the mornings discussing a particular aspect of writing romance, and because I’ve always found that the only way to understand anything is to do it, we’ll then break into groups to put what we’ve learnt into practice. Together, we’ll work out an outline structure for a story, elaborating every day with the technique that’s just been discussed. By the end of the week, we’ll have put together a complete plot as a model that can be adapted to any story.

In the afternoons, you’ll complete a similar exercise, this time applying the technique of the day to your own work. You might be writing something from scratch, or considering a manuscript you’re working on from a new angle. If you have a work in progress, I’ll ask you to send me a chapter and/or a synopsis so that I can read it in advance, and there will also be an opportunity to discuss your work on a one-to-one basis during the week.

I’ll be sending you a copy of my latest book in advance of the course so that we have all read at least one romance in common, but come prepared to think and talk about other romances that you’ve read, as well as your own work. If you’ve got a particular issue that you’d like to tackle during the week, let me know in advance, and I’ll adapt, but for now I propose the itinerary below:

Saturday
Arrive and settle in at mill.

Sunday am
Structuring a romance: the importance of emotional tension. What is it, and how do you create it? Hooks and setting.

Monday

Character: conflict and change

Tuesday
Plot: internal vs. external conflict

Wednesday - excursion day to Lucca
(transport there is included in the price of your course)

Thursday
Tension: emotional vs. sexual

Friday am

Dialogue

‘RITA® award-winning author Jessica Hart never disappoints her readers with her spellbinding and sophisticated stories, brimming with warmth, wit, drama and romance.’ - CataRomance

'Old-school romance at its finest, with a lovely modern edge and sizzle'
- Romantic Times

'With her 50th release Jessica Hart delivers exactly the sort of storyline that has endeared her to readers worldwide. LAST-MINUTE PROPOSAL captured my attention from the very first page and kept me riveted through to the very end. These characters quickly began to feel like beloved friends and I found myself laughing and crying along with them.'
- Romance Junkies

'LAST-MINUTE PROPOSAL is an absolute reading treat. Jessica Hart has a way of writing that captivates no matter what kind of story she tells. Jessica Hart romances delight with her insights into the human heart. In words, characters, dialog, scenes and conflicts, Jessica Hart tells a story that opens the hearts of her characters and the reader. What a wonderful way to celebrate 50 books with her readers! LAST-MINUTE PROPOSAL is a romance that readers will hold in their hearts long after the last page.'
- Merrimon Book Reviews