Romance Writing – Writing Advice

While I am not a romance writer, exactly, I do enjoy a good romance and love writing one. I’ve been told that I write a good one, so I thought I’d share what I know. 

Establish The Dynamic:

Writing a good romance starts with establishing the dynamic between the two couple members. Whether you’re writing a basic romance, friends to lovers, enemies to lovers, or any other sort of romance, establish their dynamic early on. Use flirting, teasing, and banter to show their chemistry, and give readers a reason to ship them. You also want to establish their interest in each other (whether that interest is romantic or otherwise). Show them investing time, effort, and thought into each other. 

Ways you can write this:

Lingering looks, thinking about the other, creating excuses to touch the person of their affection (arm brushes, ‘hey you have something in your hair let me get it out’, hand holding, ‘here let me help you up’), jealousy when they interact with someone else (jealousy really is a normal emotion, I promise, though it can easily get out of hand), interest in the other, emotions and time spent on the other. If they’re friends, show how they care about each other. If they’re enemies, show them appreciating one another and investing time into fighting them/besting them. If they’re strangers/new acquaintances, show them wanting to learn about each other. 

Give Them Depth:

A lot of romances fail to intrigue because they are shallow. A romantic relationship is more than banter and flirting, more than even affection. A good romance is built up of little, emotional moments, where the characters are vulnerable and learn about each other. The middle of a romance plotline should be the characters going from crushes to people who truly care about each other and know each other on a deep level. You can’t fall in love with someone without knowing them, without knowing their heart. If you want your readers to believe your characters love each other, show your characters loving each other on a deep, personal level. 

Ways you can write this:

Little moments. Little Moments can make or break a romance. Little moments building up on each other create a relationship. These little moments can be a number of things: moments of fluff such as flirting, banter, dates, casual affection, moments of angst like characters interacting during events such as injury, death, anger, grief, or stress, and mundane moments where characters interact in casual ways. The majority of a relationship is not made up of typically ‘romantic’ things like kissing or s*x, but rather little moments between them. Jokes, teasing, 2am sleep deprived interactions, dancing to old country songs—these moments combined with little emotional moments such as deep late night conversations and staying by each others’ sides throughout wrecking emotions form a strong relationship readers want to invest in. Think of all your favorite romances or the strong relationships you’ve witnessed throughout your life—the moments that define their relationship and make it so strong and compelling are probably just the little moments, right? 

Affection:

While affection isn’t the only way to show romance, it is a normal part of romantic relationships (in most cases). However, in a lot of stories, affection is used cheaply, as the only way to show that the characters are ‘in love’. Don’t do this (really, please don’t). Use your little moments to build up to affection, so the affection is ‘well earned’, in a sense. A kiss means so much more when you’ve properly built up to it (my favorite and probably best written relationship didn’t even have a kiss until the final moments of the book). And remember that there are many forms of affection. Affection can be hand holding, finger brushes, tucking hair behind ears, touching shoulders, sitting together, hugging, forehead touches (!!!!!), cuddling, and even making food for each other or talking!

Ways you can write this:

I would suggest figuring out your characters’ love languages. Not everyone’s love language is affection/physical touch. (The five love languages are: Acts of Service, Gift Giving, Physical Touch, Quality Time, and Words of Affirmation.) And most people show love in different ways than they like to receive love. (Talking about love language or something similar can be a great way to show how much characters care for each other.) 

Honestly, the best way you can write a relationship is to imagine them as real people and write the moments between them that would happen in real relationships.