Bonus Features: Dinner with the Stars · 12:27am Jun 8th, 2020
Some enchanted evening, eh? Well I've got something even more enchanting for you! The ever fabulous Bookish Delight talking about how to write romance! Bookish is not only a writer I admire and have learned a great deal from, but more importantly a close friend both Bevin and I love very dearly.
General question: What goes into writing romance for you?
BOOKISH: Two things to note before I answer this:1) There are lots of things the word "romance" brings to mind when someone reads or says it, especially if they've grown up on a steady diet of movies and television, and esepcially genre-labeled books. There are so many that I won't go into listing them all here, we'd be here all day, but most of those things... if you're aiming to write such things out of the gate, you're probably setting yourself up for, as the old song goes, gonads and strife. And not much else.
2) I have always worked under the assumptions of interpersonal relationships being a spectrum rather than a binary (or trinary if we're taking conflict into account). Even the Greek designations for love (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greek_words_for_love) barely begin to scratch the surface. Friendship is one thing, conflict is another, but hey, frenemies also exist! Romantic love is another, non-romantic love is another, and you have stuff in between. Physical affection can be romantically intimate, platonically, intimate, queerplatonically intimate, there are so many damn ways you can craft and experience it, and the more you experiment with relationships and degrees of, both in fiction and real life, the more you find out that the big genre tropes—chief among them the popularly prevalent notion that romance is a "level up" from friendship as opposed to a different form of it—can get awfully reductive and restrictive.
All of this is to say that I write romance by... not trying to write romance. What I focus on instead is character dynamics. Which, for me, begins by breaking down characters into who they are, what drives them, their hopes, dreams, aspirations, the roles they play at present in the life they lead, and the possibilities that all of the aforementioned could play in their futures. I then do this for all parties involved, though for brevity's sake, we'll assume two parties for the time being. I concentrate on what connects two people, by taking both characters' broken down elements, and reassembling them in close proximity to each other. If more connection is required, one can craft outside circumstances using the world the characters inhabit.
(Character connections can include mutual things two people have in common, and also things that make people clash with each other. They can be physical, emotional, ideological, and you can throw whatever you want in the mix so long as you're willing to creatively explore cause and effect. You can create a relationship based entirely on mutual connection and affection, you can make one based entirely on conflict, or you can go halfsies, or have more of one than the other, and that's an easy way to explore the relationship spectrum I mentioned above.)
This means that I write Romance, not by having it as starting point when writing a story, or even as my endgame. It is, instead, a possibility that I look out for, that I remain open to. Sometimes I'll make it explicit, other times I'll mold character dynamics in such a way that possibilities for romantic love are pointed out, and readers can take that where they want to if I decided I'm done having my fun before it gets to that point. (And sometimes it's friendship. And other times it's friendship that could go a myriad of places. And sometimes it's conflict that turns to friendship that turns to love and then to drama and then even stronger love and are you confused yet?) And I look for things about the characters and their connections that can lead to emotions intense enough that they'll decide to pursue romance as that particular way to express their connection towards each other.
Meanwhile, how is that connection expressed? However they damn well want. It can be physical, it can be fireworks, it can be purely emotional, it can be subdued. It can be sexy, it can be decidedly devoid of sex, it can be indistinguishable from familial love. It's up to the characters—and be you a writer, you already know what I mean by that. ;)
MARVEL: Now, see, this is exactly the reason all Bookish characters and dynamics sing on the page. I only relatively recently realized the necessity of distinguishing characters' perspectives as much as possible. I know. I used to do the novice writer thing where all the characters either sounded like me or thought like me, which ended up with romances where they always are thinking the same stuff all the time because, when I was starting out, I thought that meant they were in sync. You don't realize you're just shipping different versions of yourself until a certain point (and hey, let's be real, we're always just writing parts of ourselves)
But then I finally got the joy of distinguishing character perspectives. Not they have to fight all the time to show how different they are, I just mean they have to have their own world-views that inform their dialogue and how they act. Basic bitch stuff, but it made all the difference because then I could actually begin learning from you directly, Bookish.
Once I had more than just one character (the author in different hats), I could start to really let them play off of each other. And from there, I could really get into this thoughtful character work that leaves the development of the relationship up to the ones in it
Being 10 years your junior in writing, it should be said that I'm only just now really getting into the good stuff when it comes to exploring relationships and, effectively, letting what I know about the individual characters guide how they might interact. Learning from the authors I've enjoyed is, just, a genuine thrill, and one of the best aspects of continual learning as a writer (it never, ever stops!)
Soundtrack additions for chapter 3 include:
- I Don't Wanna Miss a Thing by Scott Bradley's Post-Modern Jukebox - "'Cause I'd miss you, babe, and I don't want to miss a thing"
- La Vie En Rose by Daniela Andrade - "This magic spell you cast//this is la view en rose"
- Heart Attack by Wild Rivers - "I been waiting on the day all night//Would it kill you for some peace of mind? Would you take me and not look back? Good gracious, you're a heart attack"
- Creep by Scott Bradley's Post-Modern Jukebox - "I want a perfect body//I want a perfect soul"
- Sex on Fire by Scott Bradley's Post-Modern Jukebox - "Feels like you're dying//dying//Oh... your sex is on fire!"
- Pony by Scott Bradley's Post-Modern Jukebox - ... I don't have to say it, do I?
- Timber by Scott Bradley's Post-Modern Jukebox - "Swing your partner round and round//end of the night, it's going down//it's going down, I'm yelling Timber"
A lot of old-fashioned covers here because 1) Hey, fancy date night time, why not? and 2) Holy shit do I love the feeling that the soundtrack is all but antagonizing the characters. If you ever think the song choices are exceedingly obvious, they are, and it's because I'm taunting the characters I love. Swing your partner 'round and 'round, kids!
Next up, Mondays on FIMfiction...
- Marvel
P.S. Oh my gosh, indulging in my favourite ship is never not a thrill, seriously. Also Equestria Daily, my old stomping grounds!
Bookish is indeed amazing, especially when it comes to character dynamics. Likewise Postmodern Jukebox, though for different reasons. (Though the arc of Tambourine Guy is still something to be treasured.)
*reads*
Yep, that's Bookish wisdom. It's helped me tune my understanding of the world on many an occasion. :D
This is very sage advice. Something else that I look for as a reader when it comes to a romance is whether or not it enhances the story. If it does, great, I'm on board. If it doesn't, then I say don't bother. Just putting a romance into something to "check a box" isn't compelling, and doesn't lead to interesting character interactions.
I'll be honest, while we often talk about heroic romances, the same can be said of villainous romance as well. All too often, it feels like villains feel like they're aromantic, or like they're just using their "love interest". But, having a genuine romance between villains has so much story potential that rarely gets tapped into.