Welcome to the Wattpad Block Party - Winter Edition III!
Round FIVE of this popular event is coming your way the entire month of February 2017 and it's going to be epic! The invites have started to roll out and everyone from your all time favo...
Sensitive souls abstain—from here on out there will be a shocking reveal of what not to do in a Romance, unless for some reason you want to send your readers running to the hills.
If you keep reading, it's at your risk and peril.
You've been warned.
...*hands out sunglasses* Wear these just in case.
So...let's begin, shall we?
Romance as a genre is about feeling, emotion and relationships, whether they are sweet, complicated, sensual or erotic. But with one poorly chosen word or metaphor, an entire scene can bomb. What should be romantic can get weird and unattractive faster than two Ronald McDonald clowns mud wrestling. Sometimes, writers get it wrong. Horribly wrong. Just like adding mentos to a bottle of coke during afternoon coffee with your mother-in-law.
Don't be one of those writers.
I won't be using examples from real books that I name, because bashing is bad karma, nor will anything be explicit (except in your imaginations, so leave now while you still can if necessary). Still here? First up: settings.
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Wesley might have tried to convince Buttercup that the Fire Swamp would make a nice place for a summer home, but neither she nor the reader were convinced.
Settings are all about mood and ambiance. So if you are going for a cozy, tender moment, don't put your characters in a sewer filled with rats. I think we need a handy dandy starter list of what doesn't work, depending on what you want your setting to be:
1. Cozy: Spanish Inquisition dungeon, the lair of the Chainsaw Massacre guy, hanging off a glacier cliff
2. Sweet: WWI trench (especially when filled with 2 feet of mud and rain water, and probably a whole lot of rats), any place in the book 1984 (if you haven't read it, you should), or a train carrying highly toxic waste
3. Exotic: the Mars potato fields in the future, Kansas (I'm from Missouri, I'm allowed to say this), or an accountant's office
4. Meet-cute*: back of a butcher's shop, stool/urine sample lab, or in a pest control truck
5. Erotic: behind a dumpster (just don't), gas-station store or bathroom, or a scum covered and alligator infested swamp where the air hums with ten million mosquitos
*The meet-cute is a typical devise used in romance to make get the two main love interests together for the first time in a funny, surprising or socially awkward way, leading them to get close and personal.
Admitteldy, some of the above settings could be used for lending ambiance to different kinds of romances. The Spanish Inquisition dungeon would be a dramatic backdrop in a historical novel, as would the trenches in WWI. The planet Mars works for sci-fi and adventure, and the accountant's office could be great if it came with nerdy hero in glasses who needed to learn how to break the rules. Remember, the right setting for the mood is vital!
