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Dramatica Tip of the Month
October 2006

Tips for Writing Romance Novels

Q: I am struggling with the Dramatica Pro to write popular romance
stories. I am all confused about the hero / heroine and Protagonist / Impact Character. I want two strong characters, and the impact character seems to weak for what I need. Is there a 'formula' I can follow in this?

A: Impact characters can be as strong or weak as you want them to be. Rhett Butler is Impact Character to Scarlett O'Hara's Main Character. They are both strong characters.

If you want to use the novel structure template that comes with Dramatica as a starting off point, you'll find the Impact Character referred to as the Romantic Lead. The Impact Character is sometimes referred to as the Romantic lead because that is one of the most common novel constructs -- particularly in romance novels. As a template, the novel template can only present one of a possible "gazillion" choices, so we chose one that is at least familiar, if not appropriate.

My recommendation on using the templates is to consider it as ONE way that a novel can be constructed and take from it what you want. It gives you a starting off place, a check list of story elements for those that don't know where to begin. Under no circumstances should you force a story to fit within the confines of the template. Keep what you like and delete what you don't (from your story document created using the template, not from the template itself).

There is a yahoo group called "dram_girls" that uses Dramatica to discuss romance novels. It's been going for about seven years. Here's a link to it, but I do not know the specifics of how to join:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/dram_girls

Here's another site that some of our Dramatica users writing romance novels have found useful:

http://groups.msn.com/RomanceWritingTips/articlesindex.msnw

The other thing to do is to join the Dramatica listserv and ask the group. I know there are several romance writers on the list and most everyone enjoys helping other writers.