Just in Time by Mary Jo Young

From the January 1, 2018 issue

Tagline: Glenda was always running late...until she met a kindred soul at just the right time!

Observations: This week's story needed a little more romance for me. In my opinion, the ideal Woman's World story needs to show attraction between the man and the woman, a connection, some camaraderie and some humorous banter. I know this sounds like a laundry list, but I think with the exception of the humor, these things need to be present in order for us to believe that these two people might be able to build a future together.

In this story, for me, the hero and heroine didn't quite spend enough "quality time" with each other. For most of the story he was businesslike. This made sense because this was a business meeting. He loosened up a little at the end, but...it just wasn't enough for me.

However, this is only my opinion. Obviously, the editors liked it. :)

I did think that the hero was clever in making the reservations for a half hour later because they were all chronically late. I actually do this sometimes with my husband. LOL

Photo credit: Tinou Bao (Flickr cc license)

Let it Snow! by Joan Dayton

from the January 9, 2017 issue

Tagline: Susan thought she'd never love again...until she met Dan!

Woman's World Tropes: Man to the rescue, independent woman, matchmaker family member, widow, moving on

Observations: There is a great deal of information packed into the first two paragraphs. I haven't talked about this in a while, but backstory dumps are a-okay in Woman's World stories. You don't have time to dribble it in a bit at a time, like you do in a novel. Quick and dirty, ladies! Everything is compressed in an 800 word story.

Here's what Dayton stuffed in there:

• Susan needs a snowblower.
• Susan is new in town and new to Minnesota weather.
• She has a daughter and granddaughter.
• Susan has become a do-it-yourselfer.
• Susan had help with this transformation.
• The helper is single.

After that, still in Act One, she's just as efficient.

• Dan is proactive about helping Susan when she comes to the store.
• Dan and Susan are still dancing around their mutual attraction. ("I wouldn't want to trouble you...")
• Dan makes a subtle move to show he's attracted. ("I really admire how you dove in and tackled all those home projects.")
• They start using first names.

Act Two, we see the plot moving forward when the daughter gives Susan the push she needs.

Act Three, the scene is all set. The reader is just sitting there waiting and hoping it will turn out all right. And it does. Dayton throws in some romance for good measure--Dan snow-blowing a heart in Susan's driveway. Totally adorable. 

In my opinion, the story would have ended nicely after he says "All the time in the world" but Dayton went even further and brought back the fact that Dan's face lit up when he smiled, which was mentioned earlier in the story.

This was a well-crafted and enjoyable story.

Photo credit: Janine via Flickr Creative Commons License

Shall We Dance? by Elizabeth Palmer

from the December 12, 2016 issue

Tagline: Allison and David wanted adventure for the holidays..and then they realized true love was more important!

Observations: OMG. I. Loved. This. Story. I have tears in my eyes and that hasn't happened in a long time. Let me try to put into words what made this story so outstanding to me.

First, we have an established couple. If you've ever tried to write a story that is not a first meet story, you know how difficult it is. What I have found to work is to find a tiny problem that a couple might have. In the second story I published with Woman's World, it was that a new mother was feeling fat and frumpy. In another, it was the mother of the bride feeling her
empty nest something awful, like Allison in this story. Then the husband steps in and saves the day, like he did in this story, by suggesting they dance.

Allie has a small character arc in which at first, she doesn't want to wear the Santa hat, nor does she want to dance, but she overcomes that reluctance. How does she do it? With that magical flashback memory that I saw just like it was a movie.

The "out-danced" line was funny.

There is sentimentality in droves. It's Christmas. It's their 25th anniversary. And let's not forget the newlywed couple. I was already misty after reading that Madonna flashback paragraph, but when it became clear the honeymoon couple were going to get their honeymoon after all...I was a goner. And then Palmer really nailed it when she had David and Allie go home. Did anyone else get the shivers when they read that final word, "home?" That word has power, especially because they spoke it together. It was the perfect ending.

Photo credit: David Fulmer

The Wedding Wager by Shelley Cooper

June 20, 2016 issue

Tagline: Erin thought the spark she'd carried for Erik was dead...until she saw him again!

Observations: I'm going to do a stream-of-consciousness critique this week. I haven't done one of those in a while. This is where I just tell you my thoughts as I read the story. I hope the thoughts I have end up being good ones. LOL

Aww, they're childhood friends who went to summer camp together. I hated summer camp and only went once. I think it might have been a weekend and it was the most miserable weekend of my life. However, I'm well able to imagine that other people had a fantastic time, like in The Parent Trap (new version. <--one evah.="" favorite="" movies="" my="" nbsp="" of="" p="" very="">
Having your wedding at your old summer camp is a very quaint setting. I hope there's more meaning to this location.

OMG I love that she got the root beer float to share with her new friend. That's so sweet. Love that.

Planning futures with boy crushes...man, can I identify with that. I used to write love letters in my diary to Rudy Baldoni who lived across the street from my dad's house. He was so out of my league it wasn't even funny.

Okay, LMAO. "It's been ten years, Mel. That spark is deader than the campfires we used to sing around."  Hilarious.

Oh! This is great. "Bet you a dollar, if you stir those ashes, you'll find an ember still burning." This is beautiful. It not only brings back their original bet to climb the rope, it connects with her spark metaphor. Awesome. This is the stuff that makes a story nice and tight.

Erik still hasn't shown. This is a Woman's World black moment. The point in the story where you are worried there's not going to be a happy ending. Usually in Woman's World, the worry is not very urgent or dire. Sometimes it's barely even noticable.

Erik arrives, finally! I love this moment, but I wish she'd elaborated more on what he looked like now and what that sight does to her insides.

Hm. The invitation to go for a walk seemed abrupt. I would have smoothed this out a little had it been my story.

They've just gone on their walk and he takes her hand and says he wants to get reacquainted and I'm feeling a little lukewarm. The story was going great and then it sort of lost steam for me. I am not feeling the attraction. Erik seems monochromatic to me. There's no life to him, no personality.

I'm finished with the story. I LOVED the friendship between Melody and Erin. I wish I had felt the same connection with Erik. He just felt flat for me. However, the whole bet motif was fabulous.

Photo credit: David Morse via Flickr Creative Commons License

The Scent of Lilacs

by Karen M. Leet from the May 18, 2015 issue

Tagline: Rona had noticed the handsome new tenant in her apartment building. One spring day, something made him notice Rona too!

Observations: If you'll pardon the horrible pun, this story was blooming with romance!

When I talk about romance in Woman's World stories, I am usually referring to how you show the romance developing between the hero and heroine. We all want to believe that the couple will ride into the sunset at the end of the story (or sometime farther in the future) and it's hard to believe that if the author hasn't done a good job of building that foundation. In my first Beyond the Basics class this is one of the first essential story elements I show you how to create.

But in this case, I'm talking about the romantic gesture at the end of the story that made me inhale with surprise and delight. Giving a woman flowers is not particularly inspired, even if it is inherently romantic. However, Leet injected thoughtfulness into the gesture. The hero didn't give her any old bunch of random flowers. He gave her lilacs, her favorite scent, the flower mentioned in the poem they share-quoted.

There's a lesson to be learned here. You can have a romantic gesture in your story, like a candlelit dinner. That's perfectly fine. But if you want to catapult it into "OMG, that's so romantic!" territory, see if you can bring in an element that you mentioned earlier in the story, like Leet did. Or think about some other way that gesture can be personalized to fit your characters and their situation.

Photo credit: Sharon & Nikki McCutcheon via Flickr Creative Commons

Sleepless in Cincinnati

by Shelley Cooper from the January 26, 2015 issue

Tagline
Thoughts of Dan were keeping Isabelle up at night. Turns out, Dan was struggling with insomnia too!

In a Nutshell
Isabelle and Don are best friends. They kissed once, but chalked it up to having both been recently dumped. Now that he gets a job offer that will take him far away, it looks bad, but Dan kisses her just to make sure and it's wonderful.

Observations
This is a friends to lovers story that pushes the norms a little in that the "meet cute" happens before the story even starts. We join their romance in progress instead of jumping in just prior to the meeting.

Also, there is a pretty hefty black moment in which Isabelle thinks Dan will be lost to her forever because he's going to take this amazing job. We see black moments, but they're not usually as intense as this. And this is tied to the fact that a majority of stories do show the first meet, so there isn't as much on the line.

I wanted to point out a couple of really romantic moments that gave me that warm happy feeling inside, and I think this is a real accomplishment for a Woman's World story, mostly because we only have 800 words to do this.

Moment One: When he hauls her into his arms and kisses her. OMG. I could SO picture this in my head. It was like something out of a movie. Sure, it was a little cliche, but it totally worked for me. Inside, I was like, "You go, Dan. Kiss the hell out of her!"

Moment Two: When he tells her she's his dream. Big Sigh. That sentence preceding it really sets it up, too. His gaze softens. Yowsa. That prepares the reader in such a subtle but important way.

I wish the author had milked that moment a tiny bit more instead of moving on so quickly to him suggesting he pick her up at seven and I thought the ending was a little lacking as well. With all the emotions she evoked in me, I was a little disappointed that all Isabelle seemed to get was a good night's sleep.

Still, fantastic story!

The Housewarming

by Kate Fellowes from the April 23, 2012 issue

Tagline: Holly should have realized that her mother would never let the house go to just anyone. Her mother had a plan. A big plan...

In a Nutshell: Holly's mom is moving into a seniors complex and selling the family home. She wants Molly to meet the man who bought it (her mailman), but Molly has her eye on a man she's been exchanging glances with at the gym. At a dinner that Mom springs on Molly, Molly discovers her gym guy is also the buyer/mailman. What a coincidence!

Observations: I recently told an online class that the one thing you absolutely must have in every Woman's World story is romance. I told them the you need to show it between the hero and heroine. But this story proves me wrong. (My apologies to all my students.) The hero and heroine in this story don't even meet until the end of the story. (The hero says all of five words. LOL)

Looking at what actually occurs here, I see it is partly a story in which Molly does some growing. She eventually accepts the fact that their family home is going to belong to someone else. She also takes responsibility for her own love life by resolving to ask the gym guy for his phone number.

It's also a matchmaker story. A good deal of time is spent with Mom and Molly setting us up for the big coincidence. I'm sure you saw the ending coming a mile away, but it's hard not to feel glad for the characters anyway, especially with an ending line like this:

Behind me. (sic) I thought I heard Mom give a happy little sigh.

A Little Help

by Emma Courtice from the March 4, 2012 issue

Tagline: Marsha didn't mind helping a neighbor in distress. Not even if the neighbor in question was that arrogant Daniel Wilson...

In a Nutshell: Daniel has locked himself out of his house and is unwilling to break a first floor window or wait the hour for his mom to arrive with the second set. Marsha agrees to let herself be boosted to the open second floor window. But the keys aren't where he thought they were. She pulls him in the ground floor window and he lands on top of her just as Mom arrives. Mom lets slip that Daniel has talked about Marsha before, and Marsha has since reformed her opinion of him. They make a date for lunch.

Observations: This story didn't have as much romance for me as I would have liked, nor did I particularly feel like the heroine and hero had a bright future together. I think perhaps it was because Marsha's dislike of Daniel was so strong and her change of attitude toward him wasn't...

She acknowledges the fact that he does have a mother. She smiles at his childlike pouting, and laughs when he agrees the situation is somewhat funny. We don't actually get a reaction from her when she finds out that Daniel had talked about her to his mother and Daniel is embarrassed about it. I think that one sentence to that effect would have convinced me more.

I also couldn't quite believe she could make it into his second story bedroom from his clasped hands. She's not even standing on his shoulders. But, hey, this story clearly made it past the editors. So I have to chalk it up to another story that proves I'll never be able to predict which of my stories will or will not pass muster.

It's Raining Men!

by Jan Romes from the January 2, 2012 issue

Tagline: When Sarah met Jake, the forecast was suddenly sunny and bright--despite the clouds!

In A Nutshell: Sarah is on her way to an interview to be the local weather girl, but an inconsiderate driver splashes muddy water all over her. A stranger who happens to work at the TV station convinces her to go through with the interview anyway. She gets the job and finds that stranger who ends up asking her to lunch.

Observations: I really liked this story, which was a bit different than normal in that it focused mostly on the protagonist, Sarah, and how she finds the courage to interview for that job even though she looks horrible. The romance was kind of like a subplot here. But it worked, mainly, I think, because of this one moment. Sarah has just gotten splashed...


    "Hey," she heard a male voice call out.
    Sarah tucked her damp hair behind her ears and replied with a disheartened, "Hey."
    A blonde (sic) man with concerned blue eyes approached. "I saw what happened," he said. "It was like he did it..." His voice trailed off when they linked gazes. "...on purpose."
    Sarah felt a flutter in her stomach.

There. See what I mean? Couldn't you just picture that pivotal moment when they make that connection? That's romance! Little moment = big impact.

On a side note, that first sentence in the excerpt has a mistake in it. Anyone else notice it?

The True Spirit of Christmas

by Sandra Noble from the December 26, 2011 issue

Tagline: Megan thought she was facing a lonely Christmas until a handsome stranger with a generous heart proved her wrong...

In a Nutshell: Megan's daughter goes to spend Christmas with her dad and Megan is feeling lonely. She goes to get her favorite coffee to cheer herself up and the friendly store owner doesn't seem upset to be working Christmas Eve. That's when Megan gets the idea to spread some Christmas cheer to people she knows who are also working. She delivers meals to them, complete with fruitcake, and when revisiting that store owner, garners an invitation to go view the Christmas lights with him.

Observations: What I want you to notice with this story is the theme of good cheer throughout. Megan has good reason to feel down, being all alone on Christmas Eve, and yet...

No, Megan thought. I'm not going to feel sorry for myself. 

Megan takes action against the sadness, something Woman's World likes. As I've said before, the entire magazine is devoted to improving women's lives--their health, their outlooks, their pocketbooks, everything, so featuring a heroine who embodies that is a no brainer. (The hero is a positive and caring guy, too.)

I also noticed that this story was light on the romance, heavy on the Christmas spirit, but I suppose that makes sense, considering it's a holiday themed story.

Breaking the Spell

by Janice Sadler from the August 15, 2011 issue

Tagline: Luke was absolutely certain that he would never get past his heartbreak--until suddenly, he was ready to love again...

In a Nutshell: Luke declines an invitation to go to out with his co-worker Kay because he was dumped, but afterward starts to see what a great gal she is. A couple days later, the woman who dumped him stops by with tickets to an event. He realizes he's over her and that he'd much rather go out with Kay.

Observations: Wow. I loved this story. These characters were very real to me. I don't mind the big coincidences that often occur in Woman's World stories, but I found it refreshing not to see one (even if the setting was an animal hospital, cousin to the ubiquitous animal shelter setting.) Instead, the situation seemed extremely plausible. We also actually witnessed him falling for Kay. It felt like a long time had passed, but it really only took one paragraph:

Later, when we admit an injured puppy, I notice once again how very compassionate Kay is. While I'm examining little Bruno, I see Kay standing with her arm around the shoulders of his owner, reassuring the elderly lady that her little terrier will be fine.

Boom. There it is. The ex shows up, he rejects her and moves on. I liked how Sadler didn't demonize Emily the Ex and...

Holding my gaze, Kay says, "I thought you weren't free."

...she gave Kay a tiny bit of backbone at the end, which made me respect the character, because up until then I was thinking Kay was a little too nicey-nice. Lastly, everyone loves romantic gestures and Luke taking her hand in front of the people in the waiting room was a nice Hallmark moment.