From Romance Novels to Verticals
Interview with Donna Barker
During a recent trip to Vancouver, Behind the Verticals had a chance to meet up with Donna Barker, a romance novelist turned aspiring vertical drama writer. Below, you can read the free interview but first, this week’s curated global vertical drama news.
👀 Spotted:
Australia’s blind spot: the rise of vertical microdrama everywhere but here.
Onset Octopus claims UK vertical video first with ‘Cowboy Before Dark’ drama business model. Rewatch the recent Behind the Verticals webinar with the Onset Octopus team here. In other news: Cordula Schneider has also been appointed as Business Development Exec.
Netflix reality star Park Min-Kyu makes vertical drama debut with FlareFlow’s ‘One Year Love’.
Create London to unlock opportunities across vertical platforms and microdrama.
ViX Micro is premiering seven new original microdramas in April.
Financial Times: Chinese microdramas target US with familiar tropes for phone audience.
Double Tap Films launches microdrama studio focused on mobile-first storytelling.
Why Britain’s broadcasters are finally eyeing the micro drama boom.
Asian Academy Creative Awards announces microdrama award for 2026.
Forbes: How AI, microdramas, and interactivity are re-shaping entertainment.
The Chera TV app is now available in the Apple App Store. Google Play store coming soon. Catch up here on the recent Behind the Verticals interview with the team behind the app.
JioHotstar enters micro-drama space with 100 shows under Tadka banner.
BuzzFeed: 8 microdramas that are quietly outdoing mainstream media on representation.
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🎙️ Interview with Donna Barker
Donna Barker has spent 25 years as a ghostwriter before finding her own voice. She published her first novel in 2016, built a career in romance fiction, and then started noticing what was happening in the vertical space. What she saw reminded her of the early days of self-publishing: an emerging format, wide open, before the rules calcified.
“It’s the gold rush,” she says. “I have an opportunity to get in while the field is still forming.”
The Writer’s Case for Verticals
Donna came to verticals through Isabel Dréan’s incubator program, where she learned to write cliffhangers every 90 seconds and produce 40 episode outlines in under two weeks. It was fast, demanding, and clarifying. It also made her a better novelist.
“Learning to write a cliffhanger every 90 seconds has helped me write stronger scene and chapter breaks in my novels,” she says.
What drew her in wasn’t just the format. It was the business model. As a self-published author, she’d have to spend fifty percent of her time as a marketer to maintain a stable income. “I don’t enjoy posting on social media or managing ads, so it’s hard to continue making a living writing romance novels.” As a writer who wants to spend her time writing, Donna sees an opportunity in the verticals space. The writers getting traction in verticals right now are not necessarily the most experienced. They are the ones who showed up early and developed the craft.
She currently has two scripts in development: a secret identity hockey romance, in which a female player disguises herself to join the men’s team and ends up blackmailed into a fake relationship with the captain, and a completed script pairing a divorce lawyer with a matchmaker who go head to head on live television. Both are written to sell rather than self-produce, which is where Donna sees her lane.
“If I find a producer or director who likes working with me, all I have to do is the part of the business I love: the writing,” she says.
What the Industry Needs More Of
Like almost everyone in the vertical space right now, Donna believes the stories need to change. The format’s primary audience, women between 30 to 65, is the same demographic that drives romance publishing. And romance readers, she points out, have high standards and low tolerance for lazy storytelling.
“Romance readers are incredibly discerning about the kinds of stories they connect with,” she says. “They want conflict that feels real and layered—emotional, internal and rooted in real-world stakes—not just another jealous rival trying to tear the heroine down. SO when platforms keep serving up the same old formula, it feels lazy. If it’s working, fine. But how long are women going to want to see the same thing?”
She is not waiting for platforms to figure it out. She is writing the kind of stories she wants to exist, and betting that the market will catch up.