As part of an experiment in writing Romantic Fiction, I watched the excellent BBC4 documentary: How to Write a Mills and Boon. In it, Stella Duffy met authors, publishers and readers to get advice on what she needed to do to adapt her style to fit the requirements of a Mills and Boon story.
The writers were pretty much exactly how you imagine them - aging women with overly coiffured hair, small fluffy dogs and aggressive make-up being interviewed on chintzy sofas in large country houses. The readers she met also fit the stereotype quite neatly. One woman - middle-aged, bobbly green jumper, greasy hair, Dierdre Rasheed glasses - said she found the books addictive and read 30-40 a month. That works out at over one a day.
Another said that when she attended public school, the books were passed around among the girls like contraband. Having read one myself as research, I can understand why.
The one I tackled was part of the Blaze series, the most sexual orientated of Mills and Boon's various genres. It was very explicit - much more so than I'd expected. It can be bought from a respectable shop without feeling grubby or squalid but it's undoubtedly ladyporn. The sex scenes don't add to the story or represent any sense of realism; there's no squelching or flab or clumsy fumbling to alter the mood. They're written as though the author has never actually had sex themselves as they're exactly what you'd imagine it to be like before you did the real thing. This is obviously why they're so appealing to teenage girls cooped up in boarding schools.
As for the rest of the writing, I knew it'd be bad, but that was much worse than I'd expected too. It started off being quite funny but after a couple of chapters the clichéd plot, the one dimensional characters, the shit puns, cheesiness and fumbling repetition really started to grate. 'Really smokin' sex' was the phrase that irritated me most in the one I read. If the publishers had removed all instances of it, the book would have been about 50 pages shorter.
Everything I desperately try to avoid in my own writing was there. It was vague, sloppy, lazy, obvious - the perfect example of how not to write a novel. I got the impression that the author had just churned it out as quickly as possible without re-reading or redrafting; it was just vomited up onto the pages and sent away to be published.
After reading it for a couple of days, the irritation faded and I was left with a strong sense of melancholy. 'Who writes this mindless pap?' I thought, 'how can they live with themselves? Have they no dignity?'
Granted, that's a very high minded and snooty point of view. It's easy for me to be a bit sniffy because I don't earn my living from writing so I haven't got deadlines to meet or a mortgage to pay. Apparently, these sort of writers make an incredible amount of money and a Mills and Boon book is sold, somewhere in the world, every eight seconds.
I suppose it's the art vs economics dilemma. I know there's a huge difference between writing and getting published and there has to be room for compromise. But how much compromise? Mills and Boon is too much for me. I write primarily because I feel I've got something to say; it's the way I understand and give perspective to the world. If I simply wanted to make money there are lots of other more financially beneficial industries I could work in without knocking out bodice-ripping bonkbusters.
The process is like a production line. Each month a set of books is published and at the end of that month, any unsold copies are pulped. It's impossible to maintain any shred of integrity under those circumstances - especially when the books must be written to a rigid set formula. The two main protagonists, for example, must always meet in the first chapter. The sex scenes must be of a type and be shoehorned in at specific points to punctuate the story. And, most importantly, there should always be a happy ending.
It's inevitable therefore, that every book is broadly the same. It doesn't require a great deal of creativity to change the names and occupations of characters, put them in a different setting and hang them off an established plot structure - you're just adding a thin layer of flesh to a generic skeleton. The process could almost be done automatically like the novel-writing machines in 1984 that churn out cheap, disposable pornography for the masses.
They're obviously popular though, what about the readers? There's the perfectly reasonable explanation that people can read them without thinking about things too much. They can dip in and out without losing the plot, enjoy the familiarity of the characters and treat them as simple entertainment - a harmless distraction like an action film or a computer game or an American sit-com.
That's fine - but 30-40 a month? One sold every eight seconds?
That simple entertainment might start to give you unrealistic expectations of the world; give you dreams that'll never happen. How can a frumpy, middle-aged woman ever hope to be truly happy if she's set her heart on a lantern-jawed and mysterious millionaire who's capable of delivering non-squelchy, non-clumsy, really smokin' sex?
Too much distraction also causes problems. It's not a good idea to stop yourself from thinking too much, there are lots of big important things happening that we all need to consider. The tat that 1984's novel-writing machines produced served to keep the masses in their place, kept their thoughts and aspirations so low that they couldn't see or question the bigger issues in their lives. I suspect consuming too much Mills and Boon works in the same way.
I heard Stephen Fry make a comment once about human nature. He said that every person will always find something to be passionate about - whether it's a political ideology, a job, an artist, a football team or a type of book. It's perfectly natural for people to be obsessed with something. I just think, with the world as it is, that it's a terrible shame if that thing happens to be Mills and Boon novels. It seems like such a waste.
