The Writing Community Chat Show · Christopher Aggett

Mastering Romance & TikTok: Fiona Lucas on Character Arcs, Plot Twists, and Going Viral.

April 8, 2026·1 hr 3 min·4 clips

Fiona Lucas read every Mills & Boon book in her target line for a year, dissecting each plot point to learn how to write a sellable romance.

1. The Writing Community Chat Show hosts interview Fiona Lucas, award-winning author of over 30 romance novels under the names Fiona Lucas and Fiona Harper, whose new novel The Way I Love You uses a time-travel anniversary structure. 2. Fiona Lucas lives in southeast London, where she has built a network of author friends from years in the industry and can reach central London events in about an hour and a half. 3. The episode's central thread is professional craft development: how Lucas moved from a first-time writer with two small babies to a 30-book author who cracks TikTok and accumulates over 1 million likes. 4. Lucas describes beginning to write after a dream that she watched like a story unfolding — she was 'not in the dream' — and finding an online romance writing community before Facebook existed, populated mostly by ordinary people rather than MFA graduates. 5. Her first completed manuscript took nine months, was set aside as tonally inconsistent — funny but also tragic in a way that wasn't working — and eventually became her ninth published book and one of her best sellers. 6. She submitted her second manuscript to the Romantic Novelists Association's new writer's scheme specifically to get expert feedback on whether she had any potential; the RNA forwarded it directly to Mills & Boon, who offered a contract within a year. 7. Before writing her first Mills & Boon submission, Lucas spent a year reading every book in the target line — everyday romance with humor — and writing a synopsis for each to map conflict sources, midpoints, and breakup-and-reconciliation beats. 8. She describes the craft insight that this analysis gave her: a 50,000-word short romance has no room for extra characters or padding — 'you actually just have to go deeper with the same, which is a lot harder than it sounds.' 9. On craft resources, she recommends Save the Cat and credits Hollywood story consultant Michael Haig's six-point plot structure — available online, not in a book — for helping her understand how character arc and plot structure work together. 10. Lucas describes her character-first approach: she works out the character's flaw and what they need to change, then designs a plot that forces that change, rather than starting with plot and attaching characters. 11. She also recommends Dara Marks' Inside Story: The Power of the Transformational Arc, describing its central metaphor of a rubber band that is pulled until the tension snaps the character off in a new direction. 12. Her novel Never Forget You originated from a dream of a woman alone at a Scottish train station with no memory; research led her to dissociative fugue — a real condition where people flee extreme stress and lose memory of their identity. 13. She describes Never Forget You as 'a horror to write' because structuring around a character who must not reveal her backstory required constant plot reconstruction, yet readers responded positively and no one questioned the realism of the premise. 14. The Way I Love You was conceived partly from listening to audiobooks about the psychology of marriage — including books on trust, how it breaks, and how it is rebuilt — because Lucas found it hard to articulate what makes a long marriage work even having been in one for over 30 years. 15. The novel uses a time-travel structure described as 'groundhog day meets one day': after a near-identical book was announced in The Bookseller, Lucas had to tweak her already-fleshed-out concept, settling on a version where the wife time-travels through each wedding anniversary rather than reliving the same day. 16. The novel opens with the marriage ending on the 10th anniversary, so readers know from page one what the protagonist is working to prevent — a structural choice that loads each anniversary visit with dramatic irony. 17. Managing the decade-spanning structure required colour-coded post-it notes covering office walls: blue for the alcoholic mother subplot, yellow for the overbearing in-laws subplot, and separate notes tracking the marriage arc across ten chapters. 18. Lucas says her editor repeatedly told her to make the female protagonist more likeable — Lucas had loaded her with flaws — while also needing to give the male lead more problems so the marriage's deterioration felt credible to readers. 19. Writers interested in commercial romance craft, structural planning techniques, TikTok strategy for established authors, and long-term career development across 30-plus books will find the most value here. 20. Listeners looking for literary fiction, genre fiction outside romance, or debut author experiences are unlikely to find the episode directly relevant.

As heard by us

A warm, slightly scrappy conversation about craft, risk, and a story that found its footing.

The conversation has a pleasant, messy energy: a missing co-host, a community writing challenge, and then a turn toward Fiona Lucas's path through story ideas and the stubborn work of finishing books.

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Why you'd press play

You want a friendly writing chat about a book idea that felt far-fetched but readers still liked.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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