So as a side hustle, I come up with plots for ghost writers for a romance publisher. We started out with Victorian plots, but lately Mail Order Bride stories have started selling well, so we’re trying some of those on for size.
There’s a definite formula for these plots. You have to start in a large Eastern city like Boston or Chicago or New York. You must have some sort of horrible reason the young lady wants to become a mail order bride, like a relative is trying to subject her to a fate worse than death or she is penniless and cannot pay the next month’s rent. Then you must have some reason for the two not to get married immediately so there is plenty of romantic conflict (or you can have them marry but hate one another at first). Finally, you need one final horrible event that nearly convinces the two star-crossed lovers that everything is going to fail miserably. Only then can they be together.
I enjoy coming up with romance plots, though I can’t imagine sitting down and actually writing out the whole 50,000 word novel. Maybe that’s my problem though – maybe I ought to start trying to sell romance …