#I AM saying that most heterosexual ships in modern media get LESS buildup than whatever THAT was

[moltengoldveins]

molten, having never seen the Hobbit films: ehh. I read the Hobbit a thousand times when I was a child (really not an exaggeration, thrice a week for at least three years and once a week or so for another like… four?) think I’d know if there was actually anything to the whole Bilbo and Thorin ship. I think this is the internet Internetting again. Molten, three films and an Absurd Quantity of Blatant Staring later: …. Alright. So. I still don’t think this is canon. However.… there is very little someone can do to explain That without… Like. That’s… a lot of Unnecessary Looking. At Each Other. Like. Please. There are children present (gestures vaguely at the Li brothers) could you not do that in public like that.

[concerningwolves]

Writing Romance | The Ins, Outs and All-Arounds

Here’s a fun fact before we get started: you don’t have to like the typical romance novel to enjoy writing romance yourself. You don’t even have to be a romantic person. I see so many writers saying things like “I don’t like romance, I’m not romantic, I’ve never had a romantic relationship!! I can’t write romance!!” These things are not mutually exclusive to one another.

Can’t do it? Then stop. Walk away and find a TV show or a book series and run over to Archive of Our Own to hunt down some fanfiction, then write some of your own. This works best for the non-canon but super hinted-at ships, like Destiel or Johnlock, the kind of ships where the characters are friends, but their chemistry is so strong that everyone winds up agreeing that these canon-stated heterosexual characters are actually closeted non-straights in love with one another. In the long run this doesn’t matter too much, since you need to ship the ship yourself, but that’s the gist of it.

The only thing to do from there on in is practise, practise, practise. The groundwork has been done for you, which means all you have to do is write something that keeps true to the characters’ relationship, carries over the qualities that make people ship them in the first place, show some intimacy, and. Oh. Look! Romance! (please bear in mind this is simplified and I’m about to get into the gritty details now)

That’s all good, but how do you go about then making your own groundwork?

Consider the things that go before attraction is the answer. Whether your characters go from friends to lovers or enemies to lovers, or anything else along that spectrum, there is a list of things that must, must must be present before any kind of romance can begin. Most media misses these out and thus warps our perception of how we as writers should be showing love, adding to this idea that we just can’t write it. If you look past the bullcrap of consumer-orientated romance, you’ll notice these fundementals missing:

Respect

This is more than Him holding the door for Her and thinking about how great her hair smells. Respect is knowing who the person is, understanding them, and not trying to shape them into your opinion of how they should be. It is asking for consent, not kissing to cut off an argument, accepting set boundaries, being willing to communicate, to try, to give space and know when space would be damaging. Respect is such a broad term, encompassing everything from basic human decency to the begginning of admiration, understanding and adoration. Romance is nothing without respect.

Understanding

Your two young women in love are never going to be able to take that love further until they understand one another and what makes them tick. And when I say “what makes them tick” I am not talking about turn-ons or sex, not in this context anyway. Loving someone without ever understanding them is tantamount to being in love with the idea of someone you hero-worship, or adoring a Victorian house for its antiquity based on the facade when the inside has been completely modernized.

Understanding isn’t always knowing your significant other’s turbulent past and understanding that it has warped their moral compass and trying to fix them (Don’t use the moral saviour trope in romance building, ever). More often than not, understanding is knowing that your Significant Other(s) doesn’t like loud places and respecting them enough to just take them out of that place; it is understanding that your SO will tell you why they have this problem in their own time, if at all, and that they don’t like having questions asked.

See now that these two things are both exclusive to their own, and intrinsically linked? You can’t have one without the other, and you can’t even begin to think about inching your plot or sublot into romance territory unless they’re present. Respect and understanding are how you have two characters forming a connection of some description. Ergo, groundwork.

So what is the groundwork anyway?

Groundwork is all of the aspects listed below. It’s the things that happen after, or in tandem with, some very basic respect and understanding being established between your characters. They’re not a recipe for loving or crushing- that happens on its own, and I’ll come back to how to write that later on- but they are a recipe for writing your blooming romance into an actual relationship that people will love.

Pre-established relationship

This can be a friendship or a fued- (if you’ve ever looked at the Romeo and Juliet fandom, you’ll see a huge amount of people shipping the sworn enemies, Mercutio and Tybalt with gleeful abandon)- a previous meeting years ago, High School friends, whatever. There just has to be something there, and that something needs to be some sort of chemistry. Love is chemicals, after all, and nothing comes from nothing.

Chemistry

Thinking of Romeo and Juliet, let’s study this classic example of “love at first sight”. Whether or not it was actually love is something I can debate for hours, but it could definitely have become love of the strongest kind. And what was the clincher for this? Chemistry. They had that in bucket-loads, and given a healthy environment, they could’ve built a solid relationship. Romeo was head-over-heels with Juliet’s beauty, she stopped him short with her wit; he suggested, she responded; she was level-headed while he was headstrong. They balanced one another so perfectly. Shakespeare knew what he was writing about. People are still shipping and writing fanfiction of this play 400 years later.

Chemistry can go in another direction, too. Let’s look at Destiel, the most popular ship on Ao3. God, Dean is so frustrated with Castiel, and Cass, in turn, is so aloof until he learns some humanity. The two of them go back and forth, back and forth. Granted. I’ve just finished season seven, but the chemistry in there so far is enough to set something on fire through an exothermal reaction. It’s hatred, love and loyalty in turns. Anger, despair, betrayal. Maybe not the healthiest, but it’s still chemistry, and fans lap it up.

Feeling Things

Indifference is the death of love; things are where it starts. Slow burn and enemies to lovers are some of the top rising tropes in fiction today. That’s not to say you can have someone loving the abusive jock who used to bully them or a serial killer who took their family- there are lines, and you as a writer have got to lay them out- but when the protag brings out the best qualities in the antag without changing who they are, that’s good romance material. Any strong emotion provides a  great framework for romantic attraction to someone.

Basics down, let’s look at how to write love itself

The best part of any romance plot or romantic subplot is the buildup, but only if done well. If done wrong, it turns out like an infatuation, and that’s just unhealthy- or as indifference, indifference, oh wait they’re together? Love, done correctly, is a really fun emotion to write. You can take so much liberty with narrative, and even the way you use the English language! The possibilities are huge and with all the tools available, there is no such thing as “I can’t write romance”

It’s the little things...

If you’ve ever felt anything even slightly more than friendship for anyone, you’ll know that it’s the little things that catch your focus: the smile, the small quirks, hand actions, things nobody else notices but you do. There is something so delightfully intimate about these details, and it’s fairly simple to convey these feelings through writing by including- yes- details! I reiterate: your character is going to start noticing little things about their love interest(s) that other people generally would not. There is a misconception that writing these details is the buildup to a sexual relationship, but it isn’t; it’s a simple fact of any kind of romantic involvement. If your relationship is going to be sexual as well as romantic, then maybe your character will notice sunlight on skin, glimpses of exposed neck, etc etc, but generally speaking these details are actions that would be simple to anyone else, but become endearing.

An example:

Jack smiled. It was the kind of smile that Aryn had to respond to: gaptooth, lopsided. A youthful shift in a weary face that always made Aryn’s chest tighten, just a touch. Only a touch. It couldn’t be any more than that, but, he was unable to deny the safety in the way Jack’s eyes wrinkled at the corners.

That was pretty cliche, so here’s another one that’s less so and does the same thing:

He had a way of running his thumb under his bottom lip when nervous, a tic that reminded Cooper of a bird, in some ways. Or maybe not. It was familiar anyhow, and quaint, after the fashion of the colourful characters of childhood film.

 I’m assuming here that Cooper really likes birds. Not that I know who Cooper is, but the point of the exercise is that the descriptions link back to positive things, some of which are specific to the viewpoint character. With the second one, I didn’t even need to describe how Cooper was feeling- no butterflies, breathlessness or any other cliches of the romance genre that I find hard to write- just left the description open to positive interpretation.

If a character’s love interest makes them feel safe or dizzy, include words linked to these ideas in the descriptions and narrative, such as Cooper’s birds or the boyishness to Jack’s smile.

I mentioned sex. I guess I owe it to you now to explain how to put this in, too

It isn’t a part of a relationship for everyone, but for some people, the attraction within a romance is physical as well as romantic. When that happens, you’re free to unleash sensual and sensory language to get your readers excited and your characters’ chemistry really boiling. Make a list of words/phrases that relate to sensuality and sexuality and scatter them in the paragraphs leading up to a sex scene (whether you decide to write this as explicit, implied, or somewhere in between). such as:

Nessa watched Athenais’ fingers caress the curves of the chair absently, the skin of her hand a soft charcoal blue in the dim light. The night was sticky and wrapped itself around them.

This is the same technique used for demonstrating feelings of endearment and love, but taken to a new level. The words should be closer together, the description not too heavy but not backing up either. This helps with the tension and anticipation of the moment.

Some other ways to write attraction, physical or emotional, are:

viewpoint character paying unsual interest to how their love interest(s) walks/moves/talks

Intense conversation

Noticing freckles, beauty marks etc and wondering if they continue below the line of clothes

Glancing away, unable to meet eyes, trips of the tongue, blushing (but these in moderation.)

“She’s so good at singing, it’s amazing!” I don’t think she’s that good. “I do! Really-” (Heightened opinion, especially in comparison to that of other characters)

And last of all, swings and roundabouts

Your budding romance shouldn’t happen in a linear fashion. Characters need to recognise their feelings, push them away, deny them, attempt to reduce them to platonic ones; maybe one of the characters is afraid of having a relationship, while the other isn’t, but they both really want it. The rule of thumb in writing is create conflict, and that in no way ends when you write romance. Only this time, it’s a conflict of interest, of emotion, internal conflict.

The tug and pull is what makes romance fun. You can drag out the angst and build up to a lovely, healthy relationship that your readers ship and you feel fulfilled writing.

I’ve done my best to condense all I’ve learned in how to write romance, but if you’re still struggling with one aspect or another, send me an ask. I hope that this has helped: best wishes and happy writing!