The relationship between two characters (or more, in the case of a polyamorous story such as a love triangle) can be full of intense drama, playful banter, heartwarming intimacy and other interesting elements of human relationships.
Examples of intriguing romance plots
Lyrica Sarmiento has a bright future ahead of her: a fiance she adores, her dream job, and the promise of a picture-perfect life just around the corner. Then, suddenly, on what should have been one of the happiest days of her life, everything she worked for is taken away in one tumultuous moment.
Harmonica Sarmiento is at a crossroads. At twenty-nine, she’s been dating her boyfriend, a neurosurgeon, for six years. With no wedding plans in sight, and her father recently diagnosed with ALS, she decides to use a week at her family’s cottage in Buenavista Marinduque, Philippines to ready the house for sale and mull over some difficult decisions about her future. Rhum El Salvador has never visited Marinduque but is summoned to that super luxurious and expensive, Santorini inspired exclusive resort in Buenavista, Marinduque called the Bellarocca Island Resort and Spa located at Elefante Island by a letter from a man claiming to be his father. A relaxing boat ride guide him. Rhum hopes to unravel some of the mysteries surrounding his mother’s early life and recapture memories lost with her death. When the two stranger’s cross paths, their connection is as electric as it is unfathomable.
2. Outline a romance where love doesn’t come easy
Sometimes love does come easy. For example, high school sweethearts stay close, marry, and live to old age.
Yet relationships that glide along effortlessly are rare. And can make boring reading. It’s the drama, the suspense and tension, that keeps us saying ‘I’m-only-going-to-read-the-next-page-before-bed’. The laughter, in the case of funny romance stories, which is its own kind of tension (as we wait on tenterhooks for the punchline).
Examples of plot points that delay romantic leads’ goals
Examples of plot points that can delay union and create romantic tension include:
· Reappearing (or even interfering) exes
· Disapproving/interfering friends or family
· Misunderstandings and negative assumptions between potential lovers
· Personal history or ‘baggage’ that potential lovers may bring to budding relationships
Many other possible obstacles can make romance plots exciting.
3. Plot goals and complications to build narrative momentum
Lovers often have goals and complications that work against their union. In Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, the doomed lovers’ feuding families are the complication standing in their way.
Goals and complications or worst case scenarios (the worst possible development that could come to pass, the fear lurking in the background) give a story narrative momentum (direction and drive towards the next plot point).
For example, in a rags to riches story where a character desires a well-off lover but is also career-driven, part of the story’s momentum may come from the juggle act of balancing romantic desires and professional ones. Maybe a character cancels a date to work late, and the love interest mistakenly reads this as disinterest.
This is an example of a plot point, a development of a situation, that plunges your reader into new uncertainties (we ask, ‘how will this misunderstanding evolve or be resolved?’)
4. Milk misunderstandings and surprises for tension
In a gripping romance story, the plot of an entire chapter could revolve around something as simple as one character’s parent coming to stay for a week unexpectedly.
A surprise scenario like this could complicate the story in many possible ways:
· A love interest who is commitment-shy might be spooked by the ‘serious’ step of meeting the lover’s parent
· The parent might disapprove of the relationship or be too controlling
· The daughter/son might be frustrated by the fact their new partner gets along with their parent better(!)
In romance stories, plot points revolve around human drama and the complex entanglements of our desires, wants, needs and fears.
Milk potential conflicts and misunderstandings to create intrigue and suspense. For example, in Jane Austen’s classic novel Pride and Prejudice, the protagonist Elizabeth Bennett misunderstands her eventual lover Mr. Darcy’s gruff manner for rudeness and disinterest at first.
This is a classic love story of two people overcoming the prejudice that results when we rely on assumptions and easy judgments.
5. Know sub-genre when
As with other popular genres such as crime, there are many sub-genres of romance.
6. Plot the purpose of each story section
For a by-the-book romance novel, here are the plot points a reader is going to expect in the opening:
· The characters meet
· Characters’ background goals, fears and flaws that are separate from their romance (and will impact it) need to begin to emerge
· A turning point occurs that incites greater romantic tension (the question of whether or not the lovers can find romantic fulfillment)
The final section, containing the final conflict and resolution, will occupy the final quarter of the novel:
· The climax often includes a section where everything appears hopeless and the protagonists’ future together is completely in question.
· The resolution and reward should be concise – short enough to be satisfying without being drawn out in such a way that romantic and sexual tension fizzle out.
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