How to Decide what Paranormal Romance to Write

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By PABechko
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print by Linda Hunsaker

You’re a writer, you’ve written a lot and you’re fascinating by the burgeoning paranormal romance field. The books are great and romance sells! So, how do you decide if you want to write a story about demons, werewolves, vampires, shape-shifters or other fantastical creatures? Mostly you go with your gut!

Difficulty: Moderately Challenging

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

method of research
lots of imagination
writing tools
passion

Step 1

Right now Demons are big, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be big next month or next year. So don’t write for a fad, write from your passion. Vampires are a steady seller, spiking and retreating, but holding their own. The key there is a new angle, a new twist.
Step 2

When writing a paranormal romance you have to create a whole world. Don’t think you can cheat and steal bits and pieces from various other ‘worlds’ you’ve read about. It will most assuredly fall flat. Create your own world and be consistent. Do research on any angle of your idea you can. You yourself must know the mythology of the world you create inside and out. Is the backdrop for your ‘creatures’ our world? If you’re writing about shape-shifters do they retain any animal traits while in human form or human traits while in animal form? Are your vampires immortal or just really long-lived? Are demons the good guys or the bad? If they’re good, what is their origin? For that matter, if they’re bad, what is their origin!? Think about it, make notes, be thorough.
Step 3

The appeal of paranormal romances is becoming even broader. The fantasy is a great appeal. It gives the reader a chance to completely abandon everyday life and wander into new worlds. It a chance to ‘suspend disbelief’, something readers love to do, at least for a little while.
Step 4

Follow your bliss, follow your passion and keep your center. Don’t focus on market shifts, fads and what’s ‘hot’. Read continuously and study the market. Consider what you like and don’t like about books you read, the elements you might change or leave out and what you would take a step further. Bringing a new eye to the genre, a new twist is key to breaking in and staying in.
Step 5

Remember, when it comes to this genre pretty much anything goes. Let your imagination fly free, be thorough when creating your world, maintain some of the basic ‘expectations’ of whatever creature or creatures you’re developing and then find new and unique ways to thrill the reader. If you try to aim your writing at a particular fad or ‘what’s hot’ you’ll probably end up wasting your time. Move ahead, be different! Write from your passion.
Step 6

Need a little encouragement? Remember in 2007 paranormal romances took 11.8 percent of the Romance market and the romance market was by far the overall winner with more than $1.375 billion in sales, the largest share of the consumer book market. It is projected now that it will grow to 13.3 percent share of the market in 2008. As the biggest fiction category, publishers released 8,090 romance books and some of those books hit the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, and USA Today best-seller lists.

Comments

PABechko said

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on 12/15/2008 I prefer working without an agent, but then there are some real up sides of working with them such as negotiations for a bigger dollar deal. It's all a trade-off. The down side of agents is they get part of your payday, the percentages going up these days, and they can drive you nuts if you hook into a bad one.