Filtering Feedback
There’s lots of different advice out there on how authors should handle negative reviews. Some people recommend ignoring or not even looking at reviews, while others suggest reading and applying every critique. The right answer is somewhere in between.
While there are trolls and jerks out there, when a significant number of readers give the same negative feedback on your work, it is a sign that there’s something wrong. So should you apply their criticism and change your book? Maybe, but probably not. Readers are excellent at knowing whether they like something, but they’re not always great at knowing why they loved or hated a book.
That’s where this series of blog posts comes in. I’m going to help you decode and demystify the most common criticism received by romance authors. As a romance novel book coach and developmental editor, I have the skills and training to take what people say and translate it into what they actually mean.
The Plot Was Too Predictable
One of the most common criticisms Romance novels receive is that the story’s structure is overly formulaic and predictable. This might seem strange or confusing to authors who have noticed that all romance novels—good and bad—follow the same pattern of beats, or scenes, in about the same order. Are the critics suggesting that you abandon the time-tested structure of the romance story arc? The answer is yes, they are. But you would be foolish to listen, because that’s not actually what they want.
The real criticism underlying their complaints of a formulaic and predictable plot is the lack of tension in the story. This critique is most often applied to romance novels that hit all the required beats (also known as obligatory scenes) in the expected order, but fail to include the required conventions.
For example, if you follow Jessica Brody’s Save the Cat model, you know that the lovers have to meet, that they have to break up, and—in a romance novel—they have to get back together and live happily ever after (or at least happily for now). What Jessica Brody and other purveyors of story beats don’t teach you is that, in addition to the right beats at the right time, you also need to follow Romance conventions.
The essential conventions romance authors need to be sure to include in their stories are: Triangle, Helpers and Harmers, Opposing Forces, Moral Weight, External Need, Rituals, Gender Divide, and Secrets. These conventions are the secret sauce that takes your predictable plot and fills it with enough tension to keep readers on the edge of their seats. Even though every romance reader can identify who the guy is that the girl will end up with within the first few pages—and in fact readers would be upset if that wasn’t how the book ended—they still want the author to create a reasonable fear in their minds that are heroine might not get her happily ever after. When the love interest learns her secret, will he still want her? Will he be able to overcome the fear of repeating past heartbreak and give love a chance? Will the fact that her parents, whom she loves deeply, are so opposed to the relationship stop her from being with him?
Being sure to meet these conventions while also following the prescribed beats of obligatory scenes for a romance novel is the way to overcome the readers’ complaint that your writing is too formulaic. When they said your writing was formulaic, what they actually meant was you weren’t following the formula closely enough! That’s why you should neither accept nor reject the criticism of readers; instead you need to send it through a filter to understand what they meant when they wrote their review.
What Have You Heard?
Would you like help decoding negative feedback on your novel? Leave a comment and let me know what your readers said!
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