You only have to say ‘romance novel’ for people to begin telling you their very strong opinions about the genre. These may be positive or negative, but everybody seems to have a fixed idea of what a ‘romance novel’ might be. On the negative side, words like ‘formulaic’ and ‘one dimensional’ get bandied about; on the positive side, romance is the number one selling genre in the Western world. So whatever you think, there’s no ignoring it.
I don’t read category romances* (not yet, anyway…) but I do love romance in my reading. And it struck me that much as there are popular words in fantasy titles, there are some words which crop up over and over in romance titles. Billionaire and Duke are two top trends at the moment. Also Highlander, which makes me laugh because I think automatically not of brave kilted heroes, but of decapitation. There can be only one.
Anyway after the popularity of my last two novel title generators for romantic fantasy and world-clash fantasy, not to mention my Olden Times random OCCUPATIONS generator which you can download with this link )I thought it was time to create a Romance version. I looked up the most popular romance titles of today, and of all time. (If you think you can identify the words used in Harlequin’s all-time most popular titles, try this quiz.) And based on my extensive research, that is, googling, here is the Romance Novel Title Generator.
I updated it (June 2020) with an absolute ton of new words frequently found in romance titles so there are now over 5,000 possible combinations.
Yes, I made it pink.
It creates a two-word title which you can fancy up with some The’s or A’s as you see fit; it uses 27 *27 options which gives, I think, over 1400 combinations. (My maths may be wrong. Please tell me if it is…) Anyway, 1400 or nine million, there are enough possible romance novel titles to get you started.
Have fun! Maybe this will inspire you to write the next hot romance series.
*And I just realised that maybe I do read category romance. What else would you call MC Beaton/Marian Chesney‘s Regency series? These slim little books – around 60,000 words at most – come in neat sets ( such as The Six Sisters, The School for Manners, The Poor Relation, The Daughters of Mannerling) and have a light, comedic tone, making them a perfect pick-me-up read.
In each series, a set of women make mistakes, grow up and find true love, invariably with a man they find overpoweringly sexy. I must have read 20 of them over winter last year. Beaton knows her Regency historic detail too, so while you can’t call them educational, you do learn a thing or two. They’re mostly written thirty years ago so can seem a little dated (The Taming of Annabelle was a bit much for me – I thought she didn’t need taming, personally) but are still great fun.
These books are kind of my guilty pleasure, except I don’t feel guilty about them because I like them. Nobody can make you feel small about a thing you sincerely enjoy.
I hope you enjoy my romance novel title generator. Let me know what you create!
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