Making Your Character A Trope Does Not Make Your Story Better

Over the weekend, I was reading submissions and there was a wave of Rom Cons coming in. OK, I get it, these stories are fun to read, and if you look to what the editors are talking about, they love getting these stories (right now...I stress this because the winds will shift as quickly as they came in). But here is the problem too many authors are having. They are writing these stories, setting the stories in a sports venue, making their heroes a hockey player, and thinking that this alone makes the story marketable.

IT DOES NOT!!!

What makes the story good and marketable are great characters, a realistic plot, a conflict that is significant, and obviously quality writing. It is not the character.

Again, time and time again with the submissions I read, it was clear people were simply looking at the surface level of many of these stories. They were just writing using these devices and not realizing the story was far from good. This is what I saw:

• Stories written in first person because they seemed to believe that is what it took.
• Heroine was someone thrust into the sports venue with clearly no knowledge of the game but just doing it because she needed to pay the bills.
• Hero was a [insert sport but more often than not, a hockey player] coming off of an injury and trying to make a comeback.
• Both characters coming out of a disastrous relationship (heroine was likely engaged) but now, after 6 months are just wanting to "get in the sack for a quicky".

Is there a plot? No. The story was just episodic of characters arguing about something insignificant followed up by a sex scene. I should also note that the tone of the sex scenes shifted a lot. There may have been fun narrative, but once they get into the sex scenes, the authors felt that just writing as graphic as they could would make it better.

Nope.

So, when you hear editors or agents telling you what type of story they want, this is a VERY BROAD category. In the end, it still means that the story must be good.