Every romance writer has heard it: “Romances are so easy to write,” some uncouth soul will claim.  “Boy meets girl, girl hates boy, boys seduces girl, end of story.  How hard can it be to come up with that?”  By the time you’ve regained control of your blood pressure, the ignorant fool is usually spouting nonsense on another topic and you decide to let it go.  It just isn’t worth the assault charge…

Your fellow romance authors know better than to suggest that writing a romance is easy, of course.  We know there is no easy formula, and if the professionals make it look easy, well… so did Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers when they were on the dance floor.  If anything, a romance plot is more difficult to write because there have already been so many variations on the theme, and so many constraints and conventions within the genre that you have to keep in mind.  The market is hungry for romance, but the competition is also fierce and the reading public unforgiving.  We have to plot it right.

Plotting is the basic foundation of storytelling, and plot comes from conflict.  The focus on the internal, emotional conflict is what sets a romance plot apart from other genres.  Like any story the romance is a series of events that lead logically from one another, but is also much more.  That emotional content is what the reader craves when they pick up a romance novel.  The major conflict in these books isn’t whether the main characters will save the world, but whether they’ll find fulfillment in their relationship while they’re saving it.  This requires not one, but two major plots, which must be intertwined for maximum effect.  Writing a romance requires a balancing act which is very difficult to maintain scene-by-scene, chapter-to-chapter, and still make it believable.

A romance plot, however, does not merely detail the changing of the hero and heroine’s feelings, or simply chronicle their reactions.  The romance plot is the formulation of emotional goals, the hitting and being hit by emotional obstacles, and reaching the emotional conclusion of the Happily-Ever-After ending demanded by the genre.  That is what makes the story sing.

The romantic plot usually makes up about 75% of a romance novel.  At most, the external action of the story gets perhaps 25% of the scenes dedicated to it, most of these intertwined with the romance.  The hero or heroine is present in very nearly every scene, with usually very few scenes from a secondary point of view.  This means the author has to create an emotional conflict between the two main characters that can be sustained throughout the entire book.

As in any novel, the standard plot elements are present: conflict, stakes, crisis and climax.

The romantic conflict is emotional, not merely situational.  Modern romances do not depend on couples being kept apart by tyrannical fathers or arranged marriages to others.  Today’s romance reader expects the conflict to stem from within the characters themselves.

Creating an emotional-based conflict for the romance plot can be done by answering one question: “Why is loving this person the worst thing this character can do at this moment?”  If the answer is something that can be solved simply, then it is not strong enough to be the main conflict of the novel. 

Like any main conflict in any genre, the stakes must rise and the conflict worsen throughout the entire length of the manuscript.  If the whole thing can be solved just by having the hero and heroine sit down for a heart-to-heart talk, then the stakes are not high enough.  You need to dig deeper for an inner struggle that is more heart-rending.

Crisis points are places in the plot where the action changes irrevocably and the hero and heroine have no choice but to try Plan B.  Just as in external plots, the emotional plots need to have these crises along the way.  A conflict that does not move through events and change with them is stagnant and boring.  The central emotional problem is solved bit by bit, not all at once.

The end of a romance plot has two climax scenes, one for each plot.  Properly placed, the emotional plot’s climax should be the last one in the book.  In the external climax, the hero and heroine join forces and save their world.  In the emotional climax, they resolve the last, and most personal, problems preventing them from making a lasting commitment to one another.  The reader should be able to close the book, knowing in her heart that these people will live Happily Ever After.  That is what the genre promises.

If you look at the basics, the structure of the romance plot is not all that different from that of any other genre.  All of the elements are there, but doubled and more character-based.  By focusing on the emotional aspects within the characters rather than the situations those characters find themselves in, romance becomes a very complicated dance, made to look easy by the skills and talents of the people writing it.

As the saying goes, “Ginger did everything that Fred did, but backwards and in heels.”  Plotting a romance is very much the same.

Happy Dancing.

-Leslie Bousquet

Sources:

‘Plotting the Romance Novel’ by Andi Ward and June Drexler

‘Creating Plot’ by J. Madison Davis

‘Beginnings, Middles and Ends’ by Nancy Kress

’20 Master Plots’ by Ronald B. Tobias