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I never thought I would be asking this question, since I can’t stand romance novels, but I am. How do you write clean, realistic romance that’s not annoying? When I began my novel I was determined to keep romance out of it, but I guess my two MCs had different ideas. So I tried to avoid it by killing them both in the climax, but that’s even worse. So…I need help.
Haha! Killing them both is definitely not the solution. 😛
As far as writing clean romance goes, it’s really pretty simple. Keep it clean.
Okay, it’s a little more complicated than that. 🙂
Something I’ve found very helpful is observing my mom and dad, who are two of the most in-love people you’ll ever find. So that’s a quick tip.
As far as theory goes, I’m definitely not an expert, but to make a romance realistic… well, I’ll give you a short checklist of a few important points to get you started.
1. Did the two characters really have time to get to know each other well enough? Now this one can be tricky, because sometimes it doesn’t take a lot of time for two people to get to know each other intimately. I would say if two people are thrown together in life or death circumstances, they’ll both become very familiar with each other very quickly.
2. Something that gives romance novels their bad ‘mushy’ reputation is their portrayal of the perfect guy and the perfect girl coming together and never disagreeing with each other or even having a minor bump in the road as far as their relationship is concerned. Any couple, no matter how in love they are, is going to have quarrels and tough moments with their relationship.
3. No character should be defined solely by his or her status as a lover or a love interest. They’re still humans— they’re still going to have their same personality, not just going to melt down into someone else the moment they fall in love.
4. As far as keeping it clean goes, keep it simple. You don’t have to have the guy pay the girl wave after wave of sickeningly poetic compliments to show that he’s in love with her. You don’t even have to show them holding hands, though that’s certainly okay. It could be as simple as him picking a flower from the roadside and giving it to her without a word.
In fact I would say the simpler a love story is (as far as the romance side of it goes) the better, the cleaner, and the more attractive it will be.5. Also, you need to show that real love is built on both romantic love and sacrificial love. That’s very important.
Hope that was helpful! 🙂
So let me get this straight Kate.
It’s like, “Here, I thought you’d like this flower, and I tossed in a dead ram too.”
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Um… what?
point 5
(I have officially reached the epitome of overly thoughtful and overly dumb jokes. I’m going to go eat a pickle.)
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@Daeus! that is a logical fallacy!!!! It’s called Equivocation. Equivocation on the word sacrifice. Yes. Quite serious, actually. 😛
I did laugh once I got it though. 😉
Got what right?
You’d better come back on here quick, @sarah-h, before this topic devolves into complete silliness. 😀
Or maybe I’ll just stop assuming people understand my very subtle references to things I already said. Yes, I’ll try to do that. (…though I had a lot of fun)
@sarah-h What Kate said.Pluuuuuuuuuuus….
Show don’t tell. Show don’t tell. Show don’t tell. Show don’t tell. Show don’t tell.
Yep
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@Kate- Okay, thank you. Their friendship was built mostly on working together to survive drastic situations. (It was supposed to stay a friendship. I don’t know what happened…) Thanks for the checklist. Maybe this won’t be as difficult as I thought it would be. Now I have to figure out whether they slowly fall in love over the course of the book and get married at the end, or get married in the middle of the book and work together as a team for the rest of it (they are both members of the anti-Nazi underground). Do you have any suggestions?
@Daeus- How do you show romance without showing the mushy stuff? What do you show?
Oh, heh heh, you’re thinking like hollywood showing. No no hollywood. Bad bad hollywood.
I mean don’t go like, “He thought he had never seen anyone so beautiful da da da. She thought, he thought, she thought.”
That is explaining things to the reader as if they can’t understand it. They can. That’s not to say you can never use, “he thought, she thought, but use it sparingly.”
What you want to do is show what they think. That way the reader makes the discovery and they feel all effervescent and want to go eat a pickle.
Example: guy starts treating girl with more respect. Tries not to talk to her much. When he does can’t stop. She starts making sarcastic remarks and feels bad about them and apologizes and has a hard time explaining why she was that way.
You know, that stuff. But then of course, you run the risk of being very awkward. Solution! spread the stuff out. Jut a tad here and a tad there. It’s not like you have to mention everything. You just have to let the reader know that the emotion is there and then move on to other plot points. They won’t just forget.
And this leads to another point. Conflicting emotions.
Example: “I could never marry her. I’m much poorer than her. I don’t like her purple tooth. my uncle wouldn’t like it. That’s just a dumb idea. Oh, look! Chocolate! I really like chocolate.”
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@Sarah-h— well, there are pros and cons both ways. If you have them get married at the end of the book, you end on a really sweet, fulfilling note.
If you have them get married in the middle, you can show the development of their relationship as they are married, and have them grow a lot closer than they were when they were just ‘courting’.
I personally like doing the marriage in the middle of the book a lot of the time for my own work, because courtship is only half the relationship. And while courtship certainly has its difficult times, it’s nothing like marriage for tight places that could either ruin the relationship forever or make it that much stronger.
Besides, if they got married in the middle of the book, the book can end with the birth of their first child! 🙂Another point about romantic love and sacrificial love— love like this isn’t about gratifying one’s own pleasure. If a girl really loves a guy as love should be, she’s going to care more about the purity of his heart than her own selfish desires, and vice versa.
And this could also tie in to Daeus’s ‘show, don’t tell’. (All excellent points, by the way, Daeus). Maybe they avoid each other because they care more about the other person than about themselves, and are either afraid that the other person doesn’t see them that way or afraid to get too close and compromise something they were trying to protect.And… I tried but I couldn’t think of any joke with which to end this. At least not one that wouldn’t pale in comparison to Daeus’s. 😛 😉
The best simple thing to avoid mushy-ness is to make it just a really good friendship. They share jokes and tease each other and just generally act like best friends. If they’re in love, great. Just a step above friendship works great for romance in my opinion. 🙂
@Daeus- Ohhhh. Sorry. I did think that. So, basically, I should let the reader infer that they are in love from their actions, instead of saying “they were madly in love”, right?
@Kate, thanks for the advice! I like the idea of ending the story with their marriage, since the climax is intense and kind of sad, and I don’t want to leave my reader feeling depressed. Then again, since my novel spans several years, that might not be realistic. I guess I will have to develop my plot more before I can decide.
@Rosey- Oh, good. I had hoped that was the case. 🙂
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