The Secret Ingredient

June 5, 2007 4:00 PM
Posted by -- Laurie Sanders
Editor Black Velvet Seductions

We’ve been talking for a few days about erotic romance and about some of the elements that make some erotic romances work better than others. Today I am going to switch gears a little bit and talk about romance novels in general.

There is an ingredient that can take a romance book and elevate it to exceptional status. That ingredient is not eroticism, or romance, or plot, or even the characters. It is something else...

To determine what it is…and even to land upon a definition of what an exceptional book is, one needs to think about what a reader wants when he or she picks up a romance novel. What is that elusive thing that he or she is seeking? Why does he or she seek out a book rather than the television, or a swim, or some other free time activity?

The answer is simple. The reader wants a vicarious experience. The stronger the vicarious experience the more the reader receives what he or she seeks.

Think I am wrong? How often have you heard it cloaked in different words? You might have heard it as “this book kept me on the edge of my seat” or “I couldn’t put this one down,” or “I just loved the hero.”

All the comments above are really at their root about the reader being engaged in the story the author has told. The reader was swept along into the experiences of the characters in the book. The reader couldn’t put the book down because he or she cared what happened to the character, because he or she was enmeshed with the character.

At Black Velvet Seductions we know that readers want an experience that keeps them glued to the story, hanging on each word, feeling each and every feeling the character feels, going through each triumph and each tribulation that the character goes through.

We make no bones about it. We sell vicarious experiences….stories that make readers feel like they are in the story, inside the characters, experiencing what the characters experience.

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