In my last three posts I discussed the 7 Romantic Comedy Beats, as defined by the screenwriter Billy Mernit, and how I’ve used them in my books. Here, I’m going to explain why I add an extra one at the end.

A rom com – a good one, anyway – isn’t just about the heroine getting a man. It’s about the heroine’s personal journey, or her development into her better self. The key is to show her taking that final step towards becoming the person she needs to be. So in this 8th beat, I try to show that regardless of what happens with the romance, regardless of whether or not she is going to get together with that particular man, the heroine is on path to a better life. I call it the ‘I’m Gonna Make it Anyway’ step.

Gone With the Wind: not quite a rom com but the sentiment is the same.

I should point out that this step is missing from most earlier romantic comedies – including When Harry Met Sally and the early Jilly Cooper books. But for me, and for most contemporary romance writers I read, it’s vital.

One of the ones I most enjoyed writing was in The Out of Office Girl. [Warning: spoilers].

Alice, unemployed and heartbroken, has returned from Italy (the Magical World of the novel) with her self-confidence and career in tatters. However, she forces herself to go to an art opening to support her friend. There she sees someone who she would like to network with, to salvage her career, but she’s too scared to cross the room to speak to her.  At that moment she comes to a similar Blinding Realisation as in the romantic strand of her story:

‘Standing there, I think, not for the first time, that all my problems – Sam, work, everything – stem from my crazy lack of self-confidence.’

Note that she says ‘not for the first time’. Alice has long been aware that this is a problem, she’s just found it hard to do something about it. To change yourself is a long and painful process – we take one step forward and two steps back, in fiction as in life.  This moment is different because all of Alice’s experiences throughout the story have combined to show her that she can do this. That moment – when she crosses the room to speak to this professional connection – looks small but it’s the most significant of the whole book.

Work is often a key symbol of the heroine’s inner journey. Sometimes, though, this final step of self-development can be shown another way. Maybe she finally stands up to her family, or maybe she rejects a toxic ex. There is a great example of the latter in the Nancy Meyers film The Holiday. Iris has a surprise visit from the terrible  Jasper, who’s been toying with her for years. When he delivers a classic mixed message – offering to take her to Venice despite the fact that he’s getting married to someone else – she finally snaps:

IRIS: ‘You broke my heart. And you acted like somehow it was my fault, my misunderstanding, and I was too in love with you to ever be mad at you, so I just punished myself! For years! But you waltzing in here on my lovely Christmas holiday, and telling me that you don’t want to lose me whilst you’re about to get MARRIED, somehow newly entitles me to say, it’s over. This – This twisted, toxic THING between us, is finally finished! I’m miraculously done being in love with you! Ha! I’ve got a life to start living.

[Picks up Jasper’s jacket, walking to the door]

And you’re not going to be in it.’

Brilliant. I don’t think anyone, witnessing Kate Winslet deliver those lines, would doubt for a minute that whether or not she gets together with Jack Black, or A.N. Other, Iris is going to make it anyway. Which is how we should feel, ideally, at the end of every romantic comedy.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this mini-series on rom com structure. And I’d love to hear from you. Would you use these beats in a novel? Or do you prefer to freestyle it?

When I was thirteen or fourteen, I started reading the newspapers. Big mistake. Murders, bombs, genocide in Rwanda; I was terrified, but I couldn’t stop myself from inhaling it all. Until one day, I came home from school, got into bed and basically refused to get out again until the world was a better place.

That plan was nixed. (Just as well, clearly, as otherwise I’d still be there waiting.) Instead, my mum told me to remember all the places where war doesn’t take place, all the people who don’t murder each other, all the planes that take off and land safely. (I still think of this, every time I get off a plane).

It was good advice. I got over it. I grew up, and became sensible – or complacent. And it’s been many years since I’ve threatened to go on strike until the world improves.

Juno, in Love and Other Man-Made Disasters, is like me aged fourteen, but on steroids. She’s scared of climate change, war and terrorism.  (She’s also worried about the zombie apocalypse, urban foxes, and her mum being killed while riding on her new stepfather’s scooter.)  She’s the sort of girl who seriously worries about what skills she could use in a post-apocalyptic scenario. The story is about how she learns to live in the world with those fears, without letting them overwhelm her.

These kinds of fears can hit teenagers harder, because they have access to so much information about the world but have limited experience of it. When I started writing the book, around two years ago, I assumed I had outgrown Juno’s fears. Certainly I found the news worrying but it didn’t keep me awake at night. Now … well, let’s just say the zombie apocalypse seems a lot closer. But I still find that the things she learns, over the course of the story, are the same ones that I remind myself of these days, to keep me sane.

• Keep perspective. It’s essential to remember that there ARE good things happening in the world. For example; with the tragic exception of Syria, war is actually at a historic low. So is absolute poverty. Increasing areas in Africa are now malaria free. Global carbon emissions have flatlined. (And yes but Trump, but still). Our brains just aren’t built to deal with all the world’s horrors; we need balance. Juno starts to realise this when she meets Boy, who’s able to tell her a few nuggets of good news, including about a robot arm that will help people who’ve lost a limb. (You can read their conversation here). It’s not a total cure for her anxieties – far from it – but it’s food for thought.

• Self-care: it’s not just a marketing tool! Sleeping enough, eating properly, exercise, Netflix, time with friends: these aren’t selfish, they’re vital to being an effective advocate for your causes. You can’t help anyone if you’re falling apart yourself. It’s no coincidence that Juno starts to be able to relax more while she’s discovering a new physical activity (skiing). Which also involves facing her fears (though see 4, below).

• Take action, however small. We can’t solve all the world’s problems, but even the tiniest action – volunteering (I volunteer for this organisation), campaigning, donating, joining a political party – instantly makes me feel better and less helpless. Juno makes a big decision, towards the end of the book, about her future that will mean she can actually do something about her worries instead of being consumed by them. And yes, all these individual actions are drops in the ocean. But as David Mitchell puts it in Cloud Atlas, ‘Yet what is any ocean but a multitude of drops?’

• Be patient. I gave Juno quite a harsh lesson to learn, which is that overcoming her fears isn’t one magic moment that fixes her for good; it’s something she’ll have to work on forever. As a friend of mine said, these life lessons we get are pay as you go; you have to continually top them up. But it gets easier.

The other thing that helps balance out Juno’s fears is falling in love. It’s hard to recommend this as a cure-all for everybody, but it does help. It means that all her intense feelings find a new outlet, or get diluted at least. But I was also trying to show that it’s important to develop your own life instead of feeling you have to fight the good fight all of the time. It’s OK to build relationships that are meaningful to you instead of trying to devote yourself to the world at large. And, as Boy says, when the apocalypse comes they can be on the same team.

You can order Love and Other Man-Made Disasters from your local bookshop, or read the beginning and order it here.

The past six months have been crazy. On a global level but also on a macro personal level, and blogging is always the first thing to go. Now, things are looking both up and down … (but mainly up). I have a new teen romance coming out this summer. I’ve heard lots of nice things about the ‘old’ books. I still haven’t reached my ambition of seeing someone reading one on the tube (I blame Kindles). But! I have seen my books popping up in unexpected places, including on this lovely floor tile display. Fame at last!

Picture me just out of shot, unable to quite reach the Cotes de Whatever it is. Or on a more optimistic note, this could be you this evening reading, say, Maggie’s ski adventures in Girls on Tour. And you don’t even have to stay on the floor.

More blog posts soon, I promise.

Today on blog tour, it’s the turn of the amazing Sophie of Reviewed the Book. Sophie’s reviews are always really smart and perceptive, and generous without being uncritical. She never just says generic things; she always has really specific reasons why she likes things and if she doesn’t her reasons are always fair and well explained. I was really interested in her take on the two main characters – I hadn’t set out specifically to make Boy different from the usual teen love interests but I’m glad he is (to be fair he is quite an oddball, but he’s also partly based on some boys I’ve known).

You can read Sophie’s review here. And please check in tomorrow when I’ll be doing a Q&A with Agi where I discuss how Love and Man Made Disasters got published, what I’m writing next, and why I have a plan for if I’m ever burned at the stake.

Want to read an exclusive extract of my new book? Then you’ve come to the right place. Or rather the wrong place. You need to be over with This Chick Reads today, where you can read Chapter 14 of Love and Other Man-Made Disasters. It’s the first proper conversation between Juno and Boy where he learns about her fears and she learns about his interest in robot arms and chicken coops. Enjoy!

Here are the other blog tour dates, don’t miss them:

Genuinely one of my favourite London bus routes.

One of the questions writers get asked most often is ‘Where do you think of your ideas?’ I can be very precise about this in the case of Love and Other Man-Made Disasters. I thought of the idea when I was on the 46 bus near King’s Cross, on my way from work in Holborn to yoga in Hampstead. (Side note: I love this bus route. It takes you from Maida Vale to Hampstead Village and then to Bloomsbury – it feels like the kind of bus Virginia Woolf would have taken. It’s also always stuck in traffic which is good for thinking.)

But I know people don’t mean where, they mean how. Here’s how: I had been reading about someone who was traumatised by watching too much 24-hour news, and thinking about how pervasive anxiety was these days. And I decided to write about a girl who’s scared of everything. Somehow I knew it would work best if she was a teen (who doesn’t still have nightmares about A-Levels, or in my case the Leaving Certificate?)  I’d been approached ages before – maybe two years – by a publisher who wanted to know if I would write teen fiction for them. I hadn’t had the right idea for them yet, but I knew this was it.

Urban fox: one of Juno’s many fears

Initially Juno, my main character, was going to have actual anxiety. But I nixed that, since there are so many other writers who’ve already written about it brilliantly. As it happened, no sooner had I pitched it to the publisher than I read a press release saying that Sophie Kinsella was writing her first YA book about a girl with anxiety – multiple discovery or what? I also wanted to write about worries that weren’t irrational but actually highly rational. I was very traumatised by the news when I was about fourteen, and I still find it all pretty upsetting. I think Juno is right to be scared of the future and climate change and the tanking economy and Donald Trump. (The book was written pre-Trump but she would definitely be scared of him and his hair-piece becoming President). I am scared of these things also, which is why I wanted to write about them.

So Juno is a worrier. She’s also highly organised and has a list of things she’s worried about, in descending order, from climate change to urban foxes and A-Levels. Other pressing worries include cancer, zombies and being burned at the stake.  She’s obviously not a fan of dangerous sports which makes it even worse when she’s dragged away on a skiing holiday with her new stepdad and his eight-year-old twins, who are of course better skiers than her.

Enter the love interest: Boy. I was stuck for ages on his name but then decided to just call him Boy – it’s the kind of nickname his posh uncaring family would give him. He’s a ski instructor, who lives in an unheated room above a garage that reminds people of the Blair Witch Project. He’s saving up to climb Everest and he’s liable to dive into a road full of traffic to retrieve 20 cents. He’s not scared of anything – or is he? Of course (spoiler alert) he is. I wanted to write about the kind of tough-yet-vulnerable boy I would have adored at Juno’s age … And to show that her fantasy of rescuing him isn’t going to turn out exactly as she’d dreamed it does.

As for Juno’s fears, there isn’t an easy answer to them. But she learns that she can handle them, and face them. She also makes a really great decision to do something about her worries instead of just fretting pointlessly. I’m still working on that, to be honest.

‘The Dirty Dancing of YA’: Best review comment ever.

So that’s how I came to write Love and Other Man-Made Disasters. Hopefully, it’s like a hot chocolate; warm and comforting and satisfying but not totally empty calories either. I originally pitched it to my agent as ‘Dirty Dancing in the snow’ which I thought might be pushing it, but luckily this brilliant review has called it exactly that – or rather ‘the Dirty Dancing of YA’ which might just be going on my tombstone.

You can order Love and Man-Made Disasters from your local bookshop (if they don’t have a copy, they should be able to get it for you the next day), or read an extract and buy it in paperback it here. I hope you like it.

Today is publication day! My first ever YA book is out now and you can order it from your local bookshop, or buy it in paperback or Kindle HERE.

I had planned a much longer post talking about the book, what it’s about and what inspired me to write it. However, I just got back from New York and have been plagued with the most gruesome jet lag I’ve ever had. I’ve never had it so badly even when coming back from California. Example: yesterday, I had a meeting at 2pm. I woke up at 13.56. It was absolutely mortifying. (I made an apologetic phone call, fell into some clothes and into a taxi, and luckily got there ‘only’ 30 minutes late). Then last night, I went to bed at midnight and got to sleep probably around 5.30 am – I set my alarm for 8.30 am and I do remember hearing it but I woke up at 10.30. All of which is a long-winded way of saying that I am not bringing my A-game this week. But! Next week I’m on blog tour talking about the book in various places. And I’ll update also on my NY holidays which were fabulous. Meanwhile I’m off to have another coffee.