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Romance

Romance - A feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love. A quality or feeling of mystery, excitement, and remoteness from everyday life.

I could go all day on this subject. I have read so many Romance novels that I like to say I'm an expert on the subject. But no one is an expert on love.

Love is one of the trickiest subjects to figure out- in real life as well as in fiction. Love is also where the irritatingly omnipresent writing advice "show, don't tell" really hits home for any writer. If you want pure, heartfelt emotion to land, you should avoid those three words "I love you" at all cost. In writing, as in the real world, actions speak much louder than words.

Love is known to be electricity: It's a force that prompts people to make crazy, plot-friendly decisions, but it's difficult to control- and sometimes difficult to see. One of the biggest story challenges is to carry a deep emotional relationship between characters without resorting to the clumsy and the obvious. Go too subtle and your readers might not understand that two characters have fallen in love: too obvious, and it gets theatrical and begins to feel inauthentic.

The trouble is those three little words. They're melodramatic, they're overused and the only way to amplify them on the page is to do a lot of behind-the-scenes buildup. An "I love you" on page 2 is a whimper: an "I love you" on page 350 is a bang. In between, you have to hint at what's going on without coming out and saying so.

One of my biggest problems with writers when it comes to a romantic novel or scene to a book is that they don't quite understand how to introduce their character to one another let alone make a pair that's compatible to one another.

The biggest part of having a pair meet within a novel is mostly by a conflict that involves both characters. The conflict within the story is the key to making your pair meet.

For example, A princess was taken out of the kingdom for her safety after her kingdom was attacked, where later she comes across a warrior who happens to be seeking for revenge after her father, the king, killed his family.

The conflict that the two characters share the same path but different directions. Because of the attack, the princess meets the warrior. This is where the relationship between the characters begin to form and grow.

Depending on what your writing, this should work.

For example, the Pretty Woman cliché kind of story where the female needs money and the male lead needs a girl to be his fake girlfriend to fool his family and while doing so they form a relationship.

If you have read hundreds of Romance novels like I have then you may already know how this formula works when it comes to writing this kind of genre.

From an article by Jennifer Lawler, she says "that one of the biggest problems writers struggle with is creating a believable conflict, or series of conflicts, that will sustain the novel its entire length. Conflict is the core of any work of fiction-it's what makes your readers care what will happen next.

In romance, everyone already knows how the book is going to end (happily ever after), so there is no tension over the outcome; the tension (and the page turning) must come from some other source. At least some part of the conflict must be between the hero and the heroine. No romance reader wants to read about how the plucky heroine met the strong, sexy hero and they realized they were right for each other and everything was awesome once they got rid of those pesky cattle rustlers. That might make an interesting story, but it is not a romance.

A romance must have something (a conflict!) that keeps the hero and the heroine apart. And what keeps the reader turning pages is wondering how on earth you're going to get them to overcome that obstacle and reach the happily ever after. Use these three key questions to achieve just that."

And the last thing I'm going to talk about before ending this is about pairings that work together.

Matching characters to one another is like playing God, if you don't get it right it's like throwing a grenade to the reader, and hoping it doesn't blow them up after you just got them excited for these two characters to jump into the sake.

To make it plain and simple, opposites attract. In every story, every character has a weakness, something that holds them back, and are never perfect.

The pairing has to compatible to one another. If one character has lived his or her life without knowing what it feels like to love, its the other characters job to fill his or her mate with what the other character is lacking.

If both characters are lacking in an ability the same thing, side characters are the key to helping develop the characters to further development.

Relationships within your story regardless if its a romance or not, other characters usually helps further develops the main characters. No one in fiction or in real life can evolve without someone guiding them in the right direction.

And in a happier note, opposite couples usually make great opportunities for the author to make up funny jokes and moments.