The Recipe for Harlequin Presents

by Sabrina Philips

Take one alpha hero and one spirited heroine. Mix with a large chunk of conflict. Add a dollop of sex. Simmer in a glamorous, international destination for 50-55,000 words, and garnish with a happy ending.

Sounds about right, doesn’t it?

Ask readers of Presents what the books are about and they are likely to mention the above ‘ingredients’. Look at the Publisher guidelines, and you’ll find them mentioned there too. The two books I’ve sold certainly include them. But is the recipe really so simple? And if it is, how can the books be so perennially popular if they all include the same old ingredients, (and how can writing a novel for Presents be so challenging if it is really that easy?!)

The answer, I believe, lies within the ingredients themselves…..

Take one alpha hero…

So, a Presents hero is alpha. Certainly wealthy, good-looking, probably foreign and most likely cynical. But will a hero who displays those attributes over and over again for an entire book hold our interest? No, because he’s just a caricature – until we ask why. For example, why is our hero rich? Did he have a passion for architecture and work his way up from nothing to design some of the most famous buildings in the world? Suddenly he’s more interesting. Why is he cynical? If he just ‘is’ the heroine has no reason to like him and as readers we certainly won’t. But if he’s cynical because he found out his ex-wife only married him for his money, he’s automatically more human and likeable. And the minute we realise he is real the possibilities are endless. Instead of a caricature we start to get a full portrait; as individual as every person on the planet.

and one spirited heroine

The same goes for our heroine, but the point is she’s not just any feisty heroine. In Presents, the hero and heroine are the only people in the world who are right for each other, so she’s not archetypal, she has to ‘fit’ with the hero. For example, let’s say our heroine had a tough time growing up without money and consequently she’s unimpressed by our hero who is rich but still contemptuous. When she gets to know the hero she’ll begin to understand the reasons for his attitude and question her own. Likewise, our hero sees the situation through her eyes and is forced to consider that not all women are like his ex-wife.

Mix with a chunk of conflict

Again, this can’t just be any old argument. It comes from within the hero and heroine themselves, such as the deep-rooted attitudes to money we’ve already discovered. This conflict is internal, but will be highlighted by exterior events. For example, maybe our heroine has just started working for our hero and she’s forced to go to him to ask for an advance on her pay (because she needs the money to fund an urgent operation for her sick father). Maybe the hero says no because he assumes she’s just spent her already adequate first pay packet. Their conflict goes deeper than the mere scene where he says no. Furthermore, resolving it will bring them closer together.

Add a dollop of sex

Presents doesn’t just include sex for sex’s sake, it’s there because it shows just how strongly these characters feel for one another, and when it happens it reveals something about them individually. For example, maybe our hero has never slept a whole night beside another woman since the day he woke up and found his ex-wife gone with his fortune, but as he begins to trust the heroine, he doesn’t want her to go after they’ve made love.

A heroine’s virginity might appear to be another common ‘ingredient’ but what’s important is the reason why (that word again). Maybe our heroine has never got involved with a man because working long hours to support her ill father has always come first, so when she does sleep with the hero it demonstrates how much he means to her (this adds another personal conflict too).

Simmer in a glamorous, international location

This ingredient is all about ‘fantasy’ but we can’t just stick our hero and heroine in any exotic destination we fancy. Location informs the story. Perhaps this story takes place in Rome. Why? Maybe our hero grew up in Naples and came to Rome as a young man without a penny, vowing he’d build a fabulous hotel there. His ex-wife was only interested in the free stays and being photographed outside, but when our heroine sees the hotel she’s fascinated by his design; further showing that she’s different and ‘right’ for him.

and garnish with a happy ending

Our hero and heroine have been arguing about why he won’t give her the money since chapter two and now we’re on chapter twelve, so it’s time for them to say I love you and live happily ever after, right? Wrong. Parts of the conflict will have been resolved during the course of the book – perhaps he has given her the money and now believes she wanted it for a genuine reason, but other parts of the conflict have grown and grown, for example, he still can’t bring himself to trust anyone enough to contemplate marrying her and she can’t go on knowing she’ll never be anything more than a mistress to the man she’s in love with. This is the ‘black moment’ because it looks like their conflict can never be resolved and therefore they cannot be together. The happy ever after can only come once the conflict has been truly worked through, i.e. the hero realises that part of loving is daring to trust again.

Albeit through a rather crude example plot, the point is that listing the ingredients of a Presents story is rather like saying that to paint a portrait an artist is going to need to include two eyes, a nose and a mouth. Yes, you do, but every single portrait is different. Why? Because all people are different, and that’s just it, because at the heart of Presents is a central relationship between two people. And as a Presents writer, it’s my job to find the right ingredients to make those people and their relationship real. A recipe which isn’t quite as simple as it might initially appear.. .