In Praise of Bad Romance Novels

I just read a bad romance novel, and it has made me a better writer.

I won't name it here. Let's just leave it at this - Avon, C-list writer, circa 2003. There's no need to name the book - pick any Avon C-list writer and you're practically reading the same book anyway.

Reading bad books is usually excruciating, but occasionally it's insctructive. You can learn a lot about what not to do by getting bored, annoyed, and snickering at all the wrong spots. This one had 'em all:

Stock characters - The untameable rake! The innocent beauty! The scheming villain!

Telling, not showing - "I'm afraid you're repressing all of your passions, and someday they will explode, though you have never shown any signs of unhappiness or discontent." How's that for dialogue?

Unbelievable setups - If you face a woman and aim a gun, it's almost impossible to shoot her on the inner thigh. Sorry, but that's just an excuse to have the hero go up her dress and "clean the wound."

Bad sentences - Here are some of my faves:

"Her eyes fell shut."

"She felt his genitals touching hers." Heeeurgh!

"Her forehead crinkled with frustration over her fatigue."

"She felt as if she were being carried away on a huge wave."

"Before he knew what he was doing, he had taken a well-defined step backward."

I could go on and on.

Prequel and sequel characters - There was a double whammy here - not only reappareances of happily-married characters from the author's previous books (which I haven't read), complete with babies, but a whole bunch of sequel-bait characters as well. Writers - when we readers see a line of dialogue like, "Why, she'll never get married! She's too odd! Who would marry her?" we know exactly what you're doing. And it's boring.

I have a suspicion that Avon makes their writers put a lot of this stuff in. But Avon is not responsible for "his genitals touching hers." That crime was committed by the writer, and the writer alone, and has been inflicted us all...