A question I get a lot is "how do I write a realistic/convincing romance". I never know how to answer, because it's not something I actively, specifically think about, for better or for worse. So, I figure it might be useful to open a discussion on romance—what works, and what doesn't?

When you've read a story involving a romantic relationship, was it successful? Can you think of what made it that way? And if it wasn't, why not?

What advice do you have for those venturing into writing romance?

No specific negative examples, please. I think it's a great idea to link to ones you felt succeeded in having or focusing on a relationship. I don't want anyone shamed or having their feelings hurt, however, so please do not link or make specific references to ones that fell short of your expectations. Keep those examples general to avoid that, please!

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I think romance stories should always go deep into feelings of the main character of the story. I think it helps understand what that certain character is feeling about the other.

Romance stories should also not be at the perfect pace, which is something I struggled with when first writing a romance story. It should take a good amount of time for feelings to build, and for the two to get together.

I think Q&B executes all of this very well. The romance aspect was one of the main reasons I fell in love (no pun intended) with Crystal's Wishes.

Some other great romance stories are:

When the Stars Align
Basically all of Calm Wind's stories
DisneyFanatic23's Bride of Discord series

Alright, I'm no expert in romance or anything and I think I don't like stories that are solely about romance in general, so feel free to take anything I say with a truckload of salt.

That said, what is a romance? What is the basis for a romance story?

The characters, right?

I think, if you want to write a convincing romance, you need to have convincing characters.

Now, in my view, realistic is somewhat different from convincing. Realistic, I think, implies it's a possible real-world scenario, while convincing may only be limited by a reader's suspension of disbelief. By that, I mean that being convincing means that the things that are happening have to make sense in your world, rather than the real world.

It's alright to have unrealistic things happening in your story, as long as it's in accordance with the rules of your story. It doesn't have to be outrageously different or anything, but if you've built a world where strong feelings can affect the world around it, you may be able to have the power of love make flowers in a field bloom spontaneously or something.

So it comes down to having well-crafted characters for me. They need feel like living, breathing people or... ponies in this case, I guess. They need to be more than each other's "romantic interest". They have their own lives, their own goals, personalities, quirks, flaws, struggles, hobbies and more, before they meet due to a conflict of interest, or pure happenstance, or maybe they actually went looking for love. Who knows?!

Make sure you have well fleshed out characters, before you're setting out to write a romance about them.

Characterization for both sides of the relationship.

Okay, I know that sounds obvious, but think about how many stories we've read where there's a romantic partner that's completely forgotten about, like they're just there to be a romantic partner and have no life of their own. One of the things that draws me to the Quill and Blade stuff is that both of the romantic leads have different writers so they're forced to deal with the complexities. This leads to stuff like Crystal stealing Silent's armor to mock him for being so dark and brooding all the time and it just works.

This is why when I'm writing a romantic relationship I do it in first person with both halves (or all players if the relationship is poly) because it forces me to guess and check the characters' thought processes.

I think it needs some balancing between characters that work by themselves, as characters that you would still be interested in as individuals, but also between characters that work well together. Need chemistry between them, otherwise it'll take a lot of salt to figure out why they're even together.

Chemistry.

That is really what everything else builds off of. If the two characters go together well then they can get together. Building the chemistry is the difficult part. You can't have both characters spout off multi-chapter speeches to each other. Sure that might not hurt the chemistry, but it doesn't build it. Chemistry is built through the thousand small things that often the audience won't even consciously pick up. All they will know is that these two characters work great together.

*edit*

This applies more to long form stories. It's not really possible to fit a thousand things into a thousand word story without looking like a dictionary entry.

All great insights!

If anyone has any questions about writing romance they would like to pose to the group, please feel free to speak up! Or send me a PM and I'll ask it for you.

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Alright, I'll toss something in.

So, when you're setting out to write a romance, you'll build two character that end up in that romance. How do go about doing that? How do you know when these two characters have chemistry with eachother? How do you prevent setting yourself up for failure? And what are some pitfalls to avoid?