3 Key Takeaways: Between Commitment and Betrayal by Shain Rose

This is part of my ongoing video series of Three Key Takeaways from books I’ve read – the lessons we should take as authors from what worked and what didn’t work. You can view the original video here with the transcript below:

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Thanks to @Page & Vine, @LuvBooks Club, and Meredith Wilde books for the opportunity to analyse this one! #booktok #bookish #ghostwriter #books #romancebooks

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I’m a professional ghostwriter and these are my three key takeaways from Between Commitment and Betrayal by Shain Rose. I was sent this by Page and Vine so first of all very much thank you to them for sending this over. I always love getting the chance to read a new author who I haven’t come across before.

This is a romance novel and it is about a fake marriage which is one of my favourite tropes so let’s get into the three things that I learned that other authors can use to improve their work.

So my first key takeaway is this, know the steaminess expectations of your subgenre. Romance in recent years particularly has become a lot more steamy, or at least, it’s always been steamy, but the steamy books have become more mainstream, which means that there are a lot more levels of heat out there than the average consumer might have had access to without going into a shop and buying a book that was encased in a black bag in the past.

You will find that it varies a lot. Now, in this book the heat is very high immediately when you begin. The protagonists actually have an encounter together, a steamy encounter, right before the plot of them actually having to get married even starts.

So before they even get into the fake marriage they’re already testing things out between them. Different types of romance have different expectations. For example if you’re reading a Regency romance you might expect it to be more on the clean and sweet side – although that is not to say that steamy Regency romance doesn’t exist, because it really, really does.

I’m just saying that audiences might be more receptive and more expectant of a clean sweet romance and these days you will find that a lot of publishers are putting the heat levels into the actual blurb that goes on Amazon or whatever site it’s being sold on. This is really something to bear in mind because if you are trying to attract and target the kind of readers that really love high levels of heat and steam but you’re actually giving them a clean sweet romance, they’re going to be very disappointed and vice versa. If you give clean sweet readers a steamy romance they are not going to know what to do with themselves, so you have to watch out for that.

My second key takeaway from this book is that one of the greatest drivers of conflict, drama, and therefore interest that you can use in a novel is to force your characters into uncomfortable situations. If you’re stuck with your characters and you don’t know what to do with your plot and you don’t know what to do next, a really great idea is just to go okay, what is the thing that they would least want to have happen right now? What situation would be the most uncomfortable for them right now? Maybe one of them is claustrophobic and you’re going to force them to get trapped in a broken-down elevator. Maybe they hate animals and you’re going to have them tasked with looking after a bunch of puppies that are being adopted at a charity event.

Maybe your two protagonists cannot stand the sight of each other and so you force them into a marriage that they cannot get out of because there is an external reason why they need to see that marriage through. As in this book where the protagonists have to get married in order to fulfill the requirements of this dead guy’s will. He’s his business partner and she is his daughter.

The will states that they have to get married if they want their inheritance so they have to suck it up and get married even though they don’t want to. Putting your characters into uncomfortable situations creates drama, creates a sense of oh my gosh how are they going to get out of this for the reader. It allows their personality to come through, it allows conflict to happen and it allows them to spend time with each other in ways that might start to bring out the seeds of that attraction and love which is what you’re going for in a romance.

But you can use this in non-romance books as well if you’re doing a fantasy story. You know maybe they get attacked by robbers and all of their provisions are stolen and so they have to fight to survive because they haven’t even got any food anymore. If you’re doing a crime or mystery thriller book, maybe the villain targets your detective, sends them a threatening letter, or maybe they have to investigate in a place that has triggering memories for them personally.

You know, things like this you can use to really push the drama, push the excitement, bring out the tension and find ways to push your characters to new levels.

My third key takeaway from Between Commitment and Betrayal by Shain Rose is that in romance stories the bonus chapter is everything. Now this is referred to in different ways, some authors will call it the second or third epilogue, some writers will call it the bonus chapter or the bonus scene, a bonus ebook, a bonus novella or whatever you want to call it.

The point of this chapter is to give a bit more elaboration on the happy ever after ending. So typically in these kind of chapters you will have the protagonists going and having a baby, getting married, having these kind of idyllic scenes of their future life with their children and their pets and you’ll see some of their supporting characters as well in those final scenes. Just a moment for everyone to be happy and if you’re writing a spicy book then that is also where you will have that last touch of spice in that bonus chapter.

They don’t even have to go full on, it could be a hint that the curtain is closing just as they’re about to go on and have another spicy moment. These chapters are not extra and they’re not bonus, no matter how much they may be called that. These chapters are for many romance readers the whole point.

I was taught this when I was working for a publisher who publishes a lot, a lot of romance books every year and when I was given the first outline to write a book for them it had several epilogues, had three epilogues and in the notes for what I had to write for those three epilogues they had written specifically, the bonus epilogue chapters are not just an extra or a throwaway for our readers, they are their favourite part of the book, that is what they are waiting for, what they’re hanging on for, it’s what makes the experience so special for them. You must put as much effort into those bonus chapters as you do the rest of the book, if not more, because those are the key scenes that are going to leave them with that satisfied feeling, feeling of love, of happiness and they’re going to go, oh that was so good, I want to read another one by this author. So take your bonus chapters and your epilogues very seriously if you are writing romance and you will find that your readers come back for more and more and more because you are giving them exactly what they want.

Those are my three key takeaways from Between Commitment and Betrayal by Shain Rose, if you’ve read this one and you enjoyed it let me know in the comments or if you have any other romance books that you would like me to analyse for you please feel free to suggest those as well.