NightOwl Romance Review:

Have you always wanted to write a romance novel but you don't know how to go about it? Are you unsure of how to properly plot a story, create conflict between your characters, write a sizzling sex scene, or how to put together a manuscript properly?

In The Everything Guide to Writing a Romance Novel, romance authors Christie Craig and Faye Hughes, have created an incredibly useful book to use as your guide while writing your own romance novel. The book starts off with a brief history about romance novels and the different subgenres within romance.

I particularly found Chapter 10: The Nuts and Bolts of Characterization to be extremely helpful information on how to develop a character from head to toe, inside and out. Also Chapter 12: Mastering and Choosing The Right Point of View is full of great tips on how to pick the right POV for your novel.

Writers can also learn how to deal with writer's block, rejection, how to use the five senses to make a book come alive, and whether or not you want to find yourself an agent and how to go about it. In the back of the book is a glossary of frequently used terms in the romance genre and a large list of romance publishers that include major publishers, small presses and e-book publishers.

The Everything Guide to Writing a Romance Novel is perfect for readers who don't know a lot about the writing industry and would like to write their own romance novel. This How to Book is the ultimate guide for aspiring writers to give them that extra push to writing a book. Overall, the information was easy to understand and I enjoyed learning more about how to write a romance novel. - Rachael Dimond, Night Owl Romance

Armchair Interviews says: A must-read, must-have reference book.

How does an author get from the bottom to the top of the agent/publisher slush pile? There are many answers and most of them are included in The Everything Guide to Writing a Romance Novel.

Some multi-published authors may find that this guide includes information that they already know. But I'd bet that there are nuggets that they will find new and interesting. The novice author (and that is who this book is directed toward) will find it a comprehensive book filled with useful information.

Authors Craig and Hughes start with the history of the romance novel and then head straight into an in-depth discussion of the genre and the various subgenres. I found this section fascinating and clarified many of my thoughts on the subject. The meat of the writing of a Romance novel is in the Basic Structure chapter and includes story arcs, plot points, hooks, setting, etc. The important question answered in this chapter is calculating word count. There isn't an author living (I suspect) who didn't start their career wondering how to do the word count.

The information is vast and the authors discuss most things in a concise but in-depth manner. They will help the reader through the subjects of critique groups, brainstorming ideas, targeting markets, grammar, sentence structure, openings, dialogue and narrative, character sketches, pacing, writing drafts and so much more.

This 305-page book, including appendix and index, is a reference book the Romance writer MUST have in their library. It will save you time. And time saved is time spent writing that Romance novel.