Following the Story, Not the Line
by Anne McAllister
In the 24 years I’ve written for Harlequin, I’ve always followed the story, not the line. That means, basically, that when characters intrigue me, I write about them and go where they take me rather than try to fit their story within the guidelines of a particular line.
I’m sure many other authors say the same thing and are fortunate when their characters toe the line, so to speak, and they get published in one place. The characters who wander through my brain are less cooperative. So over the years, my books have turned up as Harlequin Romances, Harlequin Americans, Silhouette Desires and Special Editions, as well as single titles, novellas and, happily, Harlequin Presents.
People often think that the scope of Presents books is narrowly defined. I get asked, “Aren’t they all about Greek tycoons?” or “Don’t the heroes have to be arrogant and overbearing?” or any number of other stereotypical notions.
On the contrary, Presents has traditionally had one of the broadest scopes for storylines. While there are certainly plenty of tycoons, Greek or otherwise, and no dearth of arrogant type-A heroes, what makes a Presents really “a Presents” is the emotional intensity of the relationship between the hero and heroine and the strong individual voice of the author.
And that sort of story can take place most anywhere between any two strong-willed emotional people. I always love it when my characters look like they are going to have a strong emotional conflict and a very tightly focused story because this means they will fit into the Presents line.
Sometimes it’s clear from the beginning that’s the sort of couple they are. Sometimes, however, they surprise me.
I never thought PJ Antonides, the hero of my next book, Antonides’ Forbidden Wife (November, HM&B Modern, January, Harlequin Presents) was going to be a Presents hero. He was too laid-back, too devil-may-care.
He’d been a beach bum since he was 18, for heaven’s sake! He’d moved from the east coast of the US to Hawaii and surfed his way through his 20s. Now in his thirties, even though he had, under duress, taken over the running of the family corporation two years before and was now at least cloaked in respectability, I still didn’t think he was emotional about much of anything.
Whoops! Turns out PJ had a past I didn’t know anything about. Turns out there was a woman in that past who could make him not laid-back at all.
Of course, as this was PJ, the relationship didn’t start out intense. In fact it started out as a lark. Why not do his friend Ally Maruyama a favor and marry her? It would solve all her problems. And it wasn’t as if he was planning on marrying anyone else.
But just as I didn’t realize PJ had hidden depths — or desires — neither did PJ. Once he and Ally were husband and wife, though, things turned out way more intense and emotional than any of us thought. PJ and Ally were Presents people right down to their toes!
When Peter “PJ” Antonides first appeared in The Antonides Marriage Deal, the story of his brother Elias’s encounter with new company CEO, Tallie Savas, I had no idea he would be a hero at all. He was the younger brother — the foil for the uber-responsible, dutybound eldest son, Elias. But just as Elias surprised me by leaving it all behind, so PJ has surprised me now.
That’s one of the joys of writing — when characters come along and do things I really don’t expect. It makes showing up for work every day exciting. It makes writing interesting. It makes me look forward to getting to know more characters along the way.
The way members of the Savas and Antonides families keep popping out of the woodwork — I’ve got Savas’ Defiant Mistress coming along in a few months and a Savas cousin, Christo, making my life difficult (and surprising) right now, it looks like they intend to keep me entertained for a while yet.
Who is one of the most surprising and memorable heroes you’ve read about? And why?
Gunnar, my flatcoat retriever, and his golden retriever brothers, Micah and Mitch, will be helping me choose a winner who will get a copy of Elias’s book (since I don’t have author’s copies of PJ and Ally’s book yet).
Stay tuned here or drop by my blog later this week to see who the winner is.
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
Ann, what an interesting post. I’ve never let myself be carried in different directions, I’ve always written for the Presents line only, so it’s intriguing to hear that you have written for several different lines depending on where the muse has taken you. Do you ever forget where you’re going?
Hi, Anne! I’m a huge fan of several of your books that cross the different lines. I always feel like I’m reading one of your books, but with a different feel to it. Being a reviewer now, I catch myself paying more attention to that “tone” than I did before.
I enjoy reading the different types so whatever your doing I hope you don’t stop!
I was wondering though, did you have a hard time selling the different types to Harlequin or do they just take the manuscript and tell you which line it will go in?
Sorry I have been incommunicado for several days. I’m in Texas babysitting my granddaughter who has been ill, and I don’t get online as often as I would like.
Margaret, you obviously have more will power than I do. I can’t stick with one sort of story, I learned that early on. And while sage editorial advice has been to do exactly that “and build a reader base,” I find that I am stopped dead if I try to push characters toward a particular “feel” — so I am quite sure I would have no reader base at all if I attempted it regularly because the books simply wouldn’t get written.
Larissa, thanks for saying you’ve enjoyed books of mine that cross the different lines. Yes, I would say that there is always a “McAllister flavor” to the story — and perhaps the quirky approach to life — and the fact is, I can’t entirely stop, though I’m trying to be selective about the books I write currently which means that my cowboys are going to have to wait a while.
It was Harlequin’s choice in the first place to put my books in different lines — the first was a romance, the second an American, the third a Presents. Then they decided I was more “Presents” than “Romance” so I only had one of those. For quite a few years I did just Presents and Americans. But when I wanted to do a shorter cowboy story, it ended up at Desire because Presents didn’t seem to fit (though later they said it could have). So it’s pretty much editorially decided now. I write what I write and I try to aim it toward something, and then they tell me if it works for that line or not. If it doesn’t we discuss where it might fit.