By Margaret
Curtis, PhD
Carla Neggers
can teach you the essentials of successful romance writing. The formula for Captivated, whirls like a waltz: 1-2-3:
One, begin
with a conflicted heroine,
Two, locate an
intense hero, and
Three, let
the plot throw them together.
Neggers does
not succeed as a genre writer, though, by concentrating just on what is
commonly called “chick lit.” Her bio inside the back cover of Captivated reveals:
“She now has
more than fifty books to her credit—ten of them New York Times bestsellers—and has earned raves from critics and
readers alike for her unique blend of fast-paced action, suspense and romance.”
Neggers
accomplishes this publishing miracle by letting her heroine act out her
psychological conflict. As her heroine chases after her hero, while
simultaneously trying to avoid his attention, she admits on page 82:
“Certain
she had her infatuation with Richard under control, Sheridan drove out across the Golden Gate Bridge to talk to him at his
yacht, where, she assumed, he’d spent the night. But he hadn’t….”
Even this
small passage reveals that the stars in her integrated
adventure-suspense-romance have begun a pas de deux, a dance for two, where
each circles the other, and the two act in concert because, in reality, they
already function as one whole, a distinctive pair.
Setting money
aside, and there’s a lot of it to set aside, of course, they perform that
psychological classic: “Go away, I love you. Come here, I hate you.” Such songs
resonate with every American music lover, male or female. Another favorite is “I
Won’t Dance. Don’t Ask Me.”
But dance they
do, for this is the pattern of opposites which attract, starting with the most
famous opposites, the male and female of the human species. All the elements of
Fifty Shades of Grey can be found in Captivated—except
pain and a secret room and a contract for slavery.
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