Jody Savage, author of Brilliant Charming Bastard: The Best Revenge is Getting Rich, introduced us to Romance, the highly structured yet creative, best-selling genre. She emphasized that Romance is about relationships far more than exoticism. The genre is character-driven—in contrast to say thrillers—and always begins with conflicts, both within the main characters and between them.
Jody provided several handouts, including ones on character building, settings, external conflicts, and plot planning that participants said would be useful in almost every type of story creation. The handouts and a recording of Jody’s presentation can be found here.