Jill Williamson is a chocolate loving, daydreaming, creator of kingdoms. She writes weird books for teens in lots of weird genres like, fantasy (Blood of Kings trilogy), science fiction (Replication), and dystopian (The Safe Lands trilogy). Find Jill on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, or on her author website.
In honor of this schmoopiest of holidays, I decided to give away a copy of my friend Melanie Dickerson’s The Captive Maiden. Enter on the Rafflecopter form below. USA entries only this time, please, since I have this book in my house and will be mailing it. Sorry!
I also wanted to discuss the romance formula. Not that there’s only one, but, well, this one in particular is a tried and true formula that has sold billions of romance novels and will likely sell billions more. Here it is:
Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back.
That’s all there is to it. Why do you think this works so well?
My theory?
1. It introduces two characters that the reader wants to see happily matched.
2. For whatever reason, it doesn’t work out—which adds conflict to the story.
3. The guy has to fight to win his girl. And most girls want our guys to be a hero—a fighter—to be the type of guy who wouldn’t give up, no matter how hard things get.
And that’s it. It’s simple. Maybe too simple. But it sells billions of copies of books.
Why do you think this formula is so very popular?
