Tag: romance

Blog Post #38: Three Reasons Why I Quit Ghostwriting and What I’m Doing Going Forward

C. L. GrossLeave a comment

It became impossible to work on my own literary projects when swamped with commission work for clients. Here’s the three big reasons I quit ghostwriting and a peek and what I’ll be doing going forward.

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If you’ve been here a while, you know a few things about me…

1) I’m pessimistic. (Or, at least more realistic than optimistic).
2) I’m inconsistent with blog posts.
3) I’m pulling myself in a lot of directions at once.

In my daily life I struggle with three main things when it comes to managing time…

  1. I HATE losing spontaneity in my creative ventures.
  2. I tend to follow my heart and not my head when it comes to what I manage to get completed.
  3. My husband relies on me for all domestic duties because he’s constantly on-call for his job and he “brings home the bacon”, per se.

To no one’s surprise, taking on ghostwriting only dwindled my capability to be creative even further.

And at times, I felt like I was wringing my internal muse out like a rag — squeezing the last little bit of creativity clean out of her to hand to someone else.

So, in the interest of transparency, here’s the main three reasons why I’ve said goodbye to ghostwriting, (despite my clients begging me to stay).


#1 My Writing Outgrew My Clients

I began ghostwriting as a way to get my feet wet in the writing industry. I was warned by a few writers that I was selling myself short by giving away my work for someone else to publish, but I didn’t see it that way.

I saw ghostwriting as a paid internship, and I still encourage other people considering getting into ghostwriting to do so! I learned so many things about how stories are written, how tropes are expected to be handled in stories and how to create tight, psychologically sound love stories that are exciting and fun for readers!

Still, I learned a lot of hard lessons too, including how to tell when I’m working with someone who wants me to “dumb down” my work, or someone who wants me to write pure smut under the guise of “romance”. I started to feel like I was required to be a robot, to completely strip my voice from my work, and on top of that, there were times where I would come up with something really beautiful and have to sell it away…

All in all, it became unfulfilling…


#2 The Market Doesn’t Pay As Well Thanks to AI

When I started ghostwriting back in September 2022 the idea that AI was about to sweep the international workforce was unheard of, but now, we all see the reality. With the introduction of AI, people who are not the best at crafting stories (or even, the best at having a rudimentary understanding of the English language) are now able to crank out manuscripts at lightning speed in perfect English, while the story maybe lacking entirely.

I can’t tell you all how many manuscripts I edited that had “4o” at the end of each chapter…

At the same time as this AI influx occurred, there was a mass influx of new “ghostwriters” taking contracts for the lowest of rates, which drove down the overall rates of the contracts entirely. No longer could you write a book for 2, even 3 cents per word — nearly all contracts at this time are 1 cent per word or less!

For the quality I put out, it started to feel like I was giving away my work for free…


#3 I Realized It Was Time To Move On To Publishing My Own Work

I really loved my last client.

He’s a great guy, someone who really loved the work I put out and was consistent with payments.

He was also the first client I had to show me the reviews the romances I had written for him were getting…

All the consistent 5/5 star reviews…
Reviews from readers beaming over the storytelling, the characters…

It was after a handful of these reviews that I looked through my dusty stack of ideas and notebooks — the internal bibles of my extensive storylines that I had put on hold back in 2022 when I began ghostwriting in the first place…

And I realized in that moment that I had achieved what I had set out to do.
I proved myself capable of writing 5/5 star books.
I had proven that I could write multiple books at a time.
That I could write over 15 manuscripts in a year’s time…

And it was in this moment that I decided to put myself first again.

I promptly closed out my last contract, sent out the files that I had been dragging my feet on to send to him, and told him that I was stepping away from ghostwriting for good. He’s still messaging me to come back, but I don’t have it in my heart anymore…

I want to write for me again.

I am still so grateful to myself for taking this on. Ghostwriting the last three years has given me perspective and understanding beyond any “how-to-write” book could’ve. Every manuscript I wrote for a client went to at least one editor, and the vast majority of replies were lessons in what not to do with certain genres, so much so that when I began writing manuscripts so clean the editors had no remarks, it was another sign I was ready for more.

Now I’m excited to take the knowledge I’ve gained and move forward with my own projects!

And I plan to document the entire plan and launch here, for you all to see.

To the people who have been here since the beginning, I can’t tell you what your patronage means to me. The fact you even come and visit my blog at all… it makes me so happy I want to cry.

Fall seems to be my season of change.
Let’s see what comes this year!


Blog Post #37: Writing Different Romance Subgenres and How I Keep Reader Expectations Straight

C. L. GrossLeave a comment

Different Romance Subgenres have different expectations, and not abiding by reader expectations can spell DISASTER for a manuscript.

As a ghostwriter I feel it is my duty to understand reader expectations in and out, and my career relies on that knowledge. Often times my clients are new to the self-publishing realm and don’t really have a firm grasp on how it works as a whole (and they often are paying for courses to walk them through publishing books written by ghostwriters).

To learn all of these tropes has a steep learning curve, as there are integral story beats that follow each trope. For example, you wouldn’t want to read a romance book with a single-father if the child isn’t going to be a key part of bringing the couple together. Likewise, you wouldn’t want to read a romance with a forced-marriage trope if the audience hardly gets to see the awkward moments of flirtation and frustration that comes with being in an arranged marriage.

Working with multiple editors (each client comes with their own freelance editor in tow) has sharpened my knowledge of common romance tropes that are key to the modern romance writing game. However, each subgenre of romance comes with its own rules, bending and molding the old tired trope into something new and daring (or at least fun and exciting). As you can imagine, an arranged marriage trope is going to look a lot different in say 1800’s Regency England v. 2020’s NYC USA. However, there’s still going to be a good amount of overlap when it comes to the emotional expectations the readers have for the trope itself (e.g., family and friend drama surrounding new partner’s arrival as a marriage prospect, the difficulty getting used to being intimate for show ((especially if there’s an enemies to lovers trope included, which often goes hand in hand with arranged marriage)), etc., etc.

Here are five key ways I keep the expectations straight between subgenres that utilize the same tropes.

  1. Know your tropes.
    Here’s the keys to the castle y’all, because everything in stories comes down to tropes. Story Tropes, by definition, are common or frequently used devices, themes, images, or plot points in a work of art or literature. Think amnesia, secret child, surprise pregnancy, orphan, “the chosen one” … these are all story tropes utilized in almost every genre ranging from westerns to horrors, from romances to mysteries.

    Understanding how these tropes play out requires an understanding of how people function and react to situations. A surprise child reveal isn’t going to hit the reader emotionally if there wasn’t a good reason (i.e. danger) to keep the child a secret in the first place, they’re going to start pondering the ethics of keeping children away from their perfectly decent (yet still flawed as we all are) parent.

  2. Know your subgenre (read ALL the books you can).
    If the story tropes are the keys to the castle, consider the subgenre the castle itself. Subgenres are sub-categories of a main genre, examples being: Regency Romance, Psychological Thriller, Police Procedural Mystery, Zombie Horror.

    Understanding the nuances of the sub-genre is integral to writing a story that readers will love. Readers who love Werewolf Shifter Romances, for example, are going to be very annoyed if you don’t understand Alpha/Beta dynamics of packs, as well as heat cycles, transformation, and a whole slew of other details no where to be found in really any other sub-genre of Romance (besides twists and variations in other shifter works such as Dragons, Vampires, etc).

  3. Know your audience.
    Here’s the third ingredient for success (but clearly, the most important by far) and that’s Audience Expectation. See, most readers of fiction lean towards a handful of specific genres and then a few specific subgenres in those genres; sure, they may go out and read something completely different every once in a while, but everyone has favorites, and voracious readers are no exception.

    This means that the new readers to your story have most likely read 20+ other stories very similar to your own, some even featuring the exact same tropes you’ve chosen.

    That’s kind of terrifying, isn’t it?

    So, in turn, you have to make sure you’re READING AS MANY BOOKS IN YOUR GENRE/SUBGENRE AS POSSIBLE. You need to be aware of what your readers are reading and how those popular books are shaping the market.

    The market always moves, and you better move with it, otherwise you’ll be left behind.

  4. Read Reader Reviews
    As well as reading the most popular books you need to be reading up on the reader reviews of the books you read — or haven’t read, as I also suggest going through the complaints of some of the worst books in your genre to see what readers DON’T like. Reading up on reviews available by readers gives you insight into what the readers, your target audience, are looking for. I often scrap the Romance subs in Reddit looking for what readers are demanding when brainstorming for new stories.

  5. Practice, Practice, PRACTICE!!!
    The final piece of advice is the same old thing you’ve always been told: if you want to be a great writer you have to WRITE. I advise writing literally as much as possible, some days that’s going to be zero, other days it might be 10,000 words, but getting words on the page, no matter how boring or useless, is always good practice, and practice, as they say, makes perfect.

Blog Post #28: The Prevalence of Romance in Any Kind of Story and the Romance Story Beats

C. L. GrossLeave a comment

A majority of stories, even those geared towards male audiences, have “Romance B Plots” included in the stakes. Gwen Hayes’s Romancing the Beat is a great, fast read on applying a romance arc to story structure.

Blake Snyder’s Save the Cat has a story beat specifically called “the B plot” — and it is explicitly stated as the beginning of the love line (if there’s going to be one). These B characters, whether love interests, villains, or friends, are used (mostly) to either show the MC their own flaws or to reflect to the audience a theme, character flaw/virtue, or idea. If executed well, the audience will receive the message the author is conveying without feeling as if they were being “beaten like a dead horse” with the idea.

While many platonic B characters can come to mind (Samwise Gamgee/Golem, Ron Wesley/Hermione Granger/Draco Malfoy), for many people love interests will dominate the mind when thinking on these characters (Princess Buttercup, any Disney Prince, Ginny Wesley). We even may recall stories which revolve around letting go of your platonic B (often best childhood) friends for a love interest B character who’s demanding more out of the MC than anyone had prior (The Jungle Book, Superbad). Sometimes the story revolves around trying to make it work with a love interest B character, only to have them realize their platonic B friends were right all along (Saving Silverman). Either way, because of the relationship, the MC learns something about themselves. What the MC learns plays a major role in what kind of book you’ve written.

Crafting a story with a believable love plot line is one of the most difficult writing technics to achieve. If placed under a lens of scrutiny most modern day romances would be reduced to insta-love between two hot characters. To this day insta-love remains one of the biggest complaints about Twilight and its subsequent series, one of the highest grossing romance series of all time (and a potential dreaded future classic because of its impact on pop culture, which… please no). Love requires two characters do more than find each other mutually attractive, especially in an age when hooking up on social media doesn’t guarantee love in your reader’s own lives.

So, how do you craft two characters who have enough commonalities with one another to not only find each other attractive but also fall in love with them? How do you create two completely believable people and convince the audience not only that they exist, but that they they’re madly in love with one another?

Enter: Gwen Hayes’s Romancing the Beat

Now, no, this book cannot give you the inspiration with which to write the next great American romance novel (which will rightfully destroy any chance of Twilight becoming a classic novel because your novel will be so perfect, it will outshine).

What this book gives you is a plotting road map on how Romance books are structured, and what your readers are looking for as Romance genre readers. I argue it is ESSENTIAL to any writer who wants to write a romance B plot in any story, as it gives an excellent outline of the ebb and flow of a romance arc. The flow can be described as so:

1. Set Up (Meet Cute)
2. Falling in Love (realizing the B person is amazing)
3. Retreating from Love (MC lets their past trauma keep them from committing fully)
4. Fighting for Love (MC comes to terms with past trauma and strives to make the relationship work)

These beats align very easily to the plot points of a novel described in James Scott Bell’s Super Structure:

1. Set Up, Disturbance, Care Package, Trouble Brewing
2. First Doorway of No Return, Kick In the Shins, Pet the Dog ((SAVE THE CAT))
3. Mirror Moment, Second Doorway of No Return, Mounting Forces/Bad Guys Close In
4. Lights Out/Dark Night of the Soul, Q Factor, Final Battle, Transformation, Final Word/Denouement

The more writing books I read, the more I realize they are simply maps. We as writers must walk the path they can guide us through. My most current manuscript (a dark fantasy romance) was written with this book at the helm, and at the end of the draft I felt as if I had the strongest first draft I had ever written.

Still, it is not enough to sustain an entire book, I implore anyone pursuing writing to read into character arcs, story structure, dialogue, and theme utilization (as well as literary devices and techniques in general), but it is a perfect guide for anyone looking to sharpen their Romance skills.

You can find Gwen Hayes’s Romancing the Beat on Amazon today!



Blog Post #24: Finishing Rough Drafts and The Last Fifty Pages

C. L. GrossLeave a comment

Goals for the rest of the week and my thoughts on James Scott Bell’s The Last Fifty Pages.

The past week I celebrated completing the first draft of my dark fantasy romance book Silver Blood. Now it’s on to writing additional scenes for pacing.

Finishing my fourth manuscript felt a little surreal. It’s the first completed manuscript of 2022, and as happy as I am with the draft, sadly, nothing feels good enough when it comes to self-publishing. It’s definitely the most clean of my manuscripts, requiring only minor additional scenes and no major changes to the plot, but I still can’t help but feel like I’m behind the 8-ball. Always behind.

The newest addition to my writing book collection is James Scott Bell’s The Last Fifty Pages, a book very pertinent to my current project. James’s books are very straight forward, a major plus of his craft books because he doesn’t waste time (or pages) being overly verbose; he just tells you exactly what to do. That isn’t to say that you can’t be creative; the entire purpose of writing is to be creative, right? The succinctness of his style just means you’ll be on to writing your manuscript that much quicker. This book is marketed as a writer’s guide to perfect endings, and I hope to utilize the advice in my own revisions.

I’ve made a list of about 19 scenes to add to Silver Blood. If I can write 1,000 words for each scene, that will be 19K words added, bumping me up to (hopefully) 65K words. Then it’s just line edits and proofreading.

Keep an eye out in the coming weeks for a special announcement! Thank you, each and everyone of you, for reading my blog! I promise, I am not going to keep you guys hanging!