On Writing Romance (14 page)

It's important to remember that the problem your characters face must be solvable in the end so you can create a satisfying conclusion. That sounds painfully obvious, but occasionally an inexperienced writer comes up with a problem so real and so complex that a truly happy ending — a believable compromise or agreement between the characters — is inconceivable.

What kind of problem will create real disagreement between your main characters for the entire length of the book, yet allow them to find a solution or compromise that will satisfy both of them — and the readers, too? What type of solution will achieve your happy ending without being so obvious that your heroic pair look like dorks for not seeing it immediately?

1. Consider the romance novels you've been studying. In each book, what was the heroine's short-term problem? Her long-term problem?
   

2. What was the hero's short term problem? Long-term problem?
   

3. What was the story element forcing them to stay together? How did their problems relate to each other?
   

1. What is your heroine's short-term problem?
   

2. What is your hero's short-term problem?
   

3. How are the two problems related?
   

4. How do these problems come to the readers' attention?
   

5. How does your heroine's short-term problem grow worse?
   

6. How does your hero's short-term problem grow worse?
   

7. What is your heroine's long-term problem?
   

8. What is your hero's long-term problem?
   

9. How are the two problems related to each other?
   

10. How are the long-term problems of each character related to their short-term problems?
    

The core of the romance novel is the developing love story — the key word being
developing
. The readers pick up a romance because they want to watch the hero and heroine fall in love. They don't want the old treat-each-other-like-crap-then-declare-mutual-love-on-the-last-page gimmick. They want to follow along as these people get acquainted, as they discover and nourish warm feelings for each other, as they realize they are in love.

The love story isn't the same as the plot (which is unfolding at the same time, in parallel), but it's connected to the plot. Each event shows the lovers to each other in a new light and lets them make fresh observations and discoveries about each other.

As you develop the framework of your story, keep in mind the importance of the characters' reactions to each other. Two hallmarks of unsuccessful romance novels are hatred at first sight and lust at first sight.

In many romance manuscripts, the hero and heroine meet for the first time and instantly fall in
hate —
often with very little reason for such a strong reaction. I'm not talking about them taking a dislike to each other or getting a bad first impression. I'm also not talking about people who knew each other before and were hurt by their past encounters, because it makes sense that they'd be wary of another round.

But many heroes and heroines leap to judgment in their first encounter — drawing conclusions violently and quickly on very little evidence — and then stay stuck in that mindset. The longer it takes them to sort out the misunderstanding, the worse they look to the readers. But if you've set up their misunderstanding as the main conflict, you can't solve it quickly or easily, because then you've got no story left.

The biggest difficulty with the hatred-at-first-sight scenario isn't actually the misunderstanding between the characters, because sooner or later that will be cleared up. The problem is the type of people they've shown themselves to be. If they're so judgmental about someone they know nothing about, and so unwilling to take a second look before writing off another human being, what hope is there that they can ever be open-minded enough to make a marriage survive?

Many characters in unsuccessful romance manuscripts lay eyes on each other and instantly fall in lust. One glance and they're gone — totally smitten. He's been looking all his life for the right woman, and here she is; he just has to convince her to get married. Or the heroine's nourished a crush on this guy for a while, and suddenly he notices her and now she's over the moon.

Stunning, sudden, overwhelming attraction doesn't often lead to convincing love stories. If these two people are so aware of their feelings, what's standing in the way of them getting together? Unless it's a very strong conflict, it's hard to believe they can't work out their difficulties so they can ride off into the sunset and indulge in their attraction.

If the heroine's long-term problem is that she doesn't believe in marriage, but the short-term problem is simply that the hero wants to marry her, it's obvious that she's going to change her mind; it's a romance. But if she's open to changing her mind at all, why couldn't that happen in chapter two instead of at the end? You need something else going on — a strong conflict — to convincingly explain why these two people need time to solve their differences.

Physical attraction is not love. While it's an important part of the romance and the fantasy, it's not enough to sustain a true relationship. The heroine who can only think of the hero's great physique, or the hero who can't get beyond how his groin tingles when he catches sight of the heroine's sexy curves, isn't a very good candidate for lasting love. Heroes and heroines who have their tongues hanging out for each other before they know much more than their idol's name aren't in love, they're only suffering from hormones. Attraction can certainly lead to love, but they're two different things.

Awareness, on the other hand, is a necessary part of the romance. From the beginning, your hero and heroine should be alert to the presence of the other. The senses of each should be heightened where the other main character is concerned. They should be more attentive to each other than to others surrounding them. Each should notice what the other says and does. They may write off this awareness as purely sexual attraction, or they may not recognize that it has any basis at all in physical desire. They may believe that their awareness of each other comes from dislike or distaste for the other person.

In Raeanne Thayne's long contemporary
Dalton's Undoing
, the heroine's teenage son has stolen and wrecked the hero's classic car. Yet when Seth Dalton, the hero, offers to let the teenager work off his debt rather than face criminal charges, Jenny, the heroine, has a very mixed reaction:

Jenny has excellent reasons for being attracted — not only by Seth's good looks but by his sex appeal and his willingness to rescue her son from criminal proceedings — but she also has excellent reasons for trying to fight off her attraction, because giving in to it may put her son at risk.

For a romance novel to be successful, the hero and heroine must be drawn together by something more than mere physical desire. They must have logical and believable reasons for liking each other, as well as for being angry or frustrated with each other, in order for the love story to be convincing.

People who feel nothing for each other between the extremes of anger and lust, or who see nothing attractive about the other person except in a sexual way, are not believable lovers. What else do your characters see in each other besides physical attractiveness? What reasons do they have to like each other? What reasons do they have to trust each other?

Tenderness, caring, respect, a sense of humor — these are important building blocks of lasting love, and they're every bit as important as the physical reactions.

Of course, if you overdo the trust and the nurturing and the tenderness and the jokes, you've got a cozy little duo who are merely going through the motions for 60,000 words or so before they can finally get to the happy ending.

This is why it's so important to have a real, believable, honest conflict between these people — not just a misunderstanding, not just the interference of another person, not just an unwillingness to admit that they're attracted to each other, and not just superficial nastiness, but a real problem that causes tension between these two characters. Then, against the background of that problem, you must show these two people struggling to deny fate and ultimately realizing that, despite their disagreement, the other is the one person who means the world to them.

The love between your hero and heroine needs to be the kind that appears only once in a lifetime. That means the readers must be convinced that this couple is the best possible romantic combination — that they're the perfect fit for each other. So it's not enough for the hero and heroine simply to fall in love, especially if it seems that any one of a dozen other men (or women) would do just as well. What makes this couple absolutely right for each other, better than anyone else could ever be?

In many a beginner's story, the conflict is that the hero is still deeply in love with his late wife — in fact, he's so wounded that it's hard to believe the heroine could ever be anything more than a feeble substitute. But such a story line is unsatisfying for the readers, who want
this
couple to be the perfect fit.

That doesn't mean you have to make the late wife utterly nasty, but in some way the new romance should offer more potential for deep and lasting happiness than his previous marriage did, or ever could have.

How are your main characters the best combination that could be imagined?

In this example, from Lisa Cach's chick-lit novella
Return to Sender
, the hero enunciates what he's looking for in a relationship:

Ian's definition of a once-in-a-lifetime love and his unwillingness to settle for less helps to make him a fascinating hero.

The developing love story, when well written, is like a river. Sometimes it moves slowly, sometimes it runs fast. Sometimes it's lazy and carefree, sometimes it's threatening and scary. Sometimes its course is level and smooth, sometimes it boils into rapids. Water, once set in motion, will wear away anything that stands in its path. In the same way, the love developing between the two main characters, once it is set in motion, should wear away the objections, problems, and differences that stand in its path.

This concept is easy to understand in the abstract, but applying it to the story is a little harder. So let's approach it by studying the ways you can diminish the romance, push it out of its place in the spotlight, and destroy the developing love story:

• Develop a too-complex plot and background.
  If you can't describe your characters' disagreement in a brief sentence, the conflict may be too complex, and you may find yourself spending time explaining the details instead of developing the story. The same goes for jobs — if you have to explain in depth what the heroine does for a living, maybe your story would be better off if she had a different, more straightforward career.
  

• Overload the story with too many technical details.
  If the hero, a pro golfer, is giving lessons to the heroine, a sales manager who has to learn the game, and you detail every golf term, shot, stance, club, and piece of gear, your readers will be ready to scream. Golfers know all this and will be bored. Nongolfers don't care.
  

• Separate the hero and heroine.
  If his job is to catch poachers in the national forest and hers is to babysit his kid back home, when are they going to spend time together? How are they going to have a chance to get to know each other, much less fall in love?
  

• Have the hero and heroine talk about each other instead of to each other.
  If the hero and heroine meet in the first chapter and exchange three sentences, and then you use the rest of the chapter to show the hero having dinner with his extended family and telling them all
  about
  how great the heroine was, what she'd said to him, what he'd said to her, and what her accent was like, the readers will go to the mall instead of reading chapter two.
  

• Bring in lots of characters.
  Tell us all about them. Let them take over the story. If you spend an entire chapter introducing every member of the hero's family and providing extensive histories for each, the readers are likely to drop the book.
  

• Let everybody think a lot.
  It's a great deal easier to let the characters get introspective — to show them rambling on in their heads about what the other one said, did, or might have been thinking — than it is to present a real conversation, with real issues and disagreements.