Sword Rain Alpha
Acolyte
I've been writing and brainstorming around one of my epic fantasy stories for a while now. And I'd say I have the main plot outlined pretty well, but I'm still feeling iffy about the romantic subplot I want to include.
To give come context, I have a young adult (basically early/mid-twenties) male MC who serves as my primary "perspective" character (i.e. I use third-person limited and explore the various perspectives across the different chapters, but primarily focus on my MC's) along with a consistent "party" of about five other characters, all of whom are working towards a shared goal. The party's journey is admittedly bit stereotypical, with them travelling the world with the end goal to save it. But as I said, that's not really the part that I'm worried about.
My MC and his love interest (a girl also in her early twenties) kind of already know each other at the beginning of the story, as they were both colleagues before being thrust into the whole "world-saving adventure" thing. As far as backstory goes, I'll say that they've already known each other for about a year beforehand, having built up a nice slow-burning friendship & rappor in that time. It isn't until after the adventure begins, at which point they get temporarily separated from each other before reuniting after some time, that their friendship starts to boil into romance. Now of course, the way I imagine it, their friendship was eventually going to turn into a romance either way, it just happened to get somewhat interrupted by them being thrust into an unexpected situation.
I've been Googling around here and there for tips on how to write romance, seeing as how I've never done it before. And I've been beaten over the head with the same generic tips. Mostly stuff like:
#1: Avoid overly-done tropes like love-triangles, insta-love, romanticized abusive relationships. All stuff that is apparently egregiously done in many YA novels (I haven't read many myself, so I have no idea how badly/how often it's done).
#2: Don't drag it out too long. They have to get together eventually.
#3: Make sure both characters get development. Don't just let the female character turn into a stereotype, like a damsel in distress.
#4: Don't force everything to be romance. Male and female characters can be "just friends".
#5: Don't overly sexualize your characters. i.e. If using a male character for perspective, don't just have him always talk about how "hot" or "sexy" she is all the time.
Okay. No problem. Avoiding these issues and tropes doesn't seem all that difficult. My two characters in question already avoid plenty of them simply due to their natures. There's no love-triangle, they don't instantly fall in love but they also don't take forever to get to the point, they both develop well as characters in my plot, they both become good platonic friends with the rest of the party (which consists of an equal amount of both genders. 3 guys, 3 girls essentially). And while my male MC would probably have a decently healthy/normal amount of sexual thoughts for a guy in his mid-twenties, he would also not be one to incoporate such thoughts when describing another character to the audience (or perhaps it's simply that I as the writer wouldn't do that). Either way, no issue with overly-sexualized female characters there.
So what's the issue?
For starters, I'm still not exactly sure how to incorporate it. It's only a subplot and not the main plot, so obviously I don't want it to be too much in my readers' faces. But at the same time, I want to make it clear that they have chemistry so that when they do end up together, it doesn't feel forced or sudden. One would think that building chemistry between two characters wouldn't be all that hard. Unfortunately, like my characters, I also happen to be a mid-twenties guy with only a small amount of relationship experience (it's better than none, but I wouldn't say its enough experience for me to actually draw upon when writing). And admittedly, I'm a little afraid that the relationship I've imagined up between these two characters isn't realistic enough or believable. Primarily because, in my mind at least, they would probably get along a bit TOO well. They both have considerably selfless, heroic, good-hearted personalities, and share a lot of the same morals. As such, its a bit difficult for me to imagine what kind of conflicts or arguments they would have, if any. And a relationship with near-zero conflict might be...boring to readers. Or at the very least, unrealistic and hard to believe.
Another issue I've run into is that most romance writing advice I've seen online makes alot of assumptions. Like, assuming that the characters won't OFFICIALLY get together until later in the story. Or that their relationship is going to be intense and passionate, with lots of lust and blatant sexual tension. I don't particularly care for any of this. I would much prefer for the characters to officially become a couple somewhat early on in the story, with their relationship being more subtle and down-to-earth as opposed to being exaggeratedly passionate and intense. If you've ever heard the phrase "your significant other should double as your best friend", that's essentially the kind of relationship I'd like to go for with these two. Essentially, they'd just be a normal, relatively happy couple that gets together early on, slowly gets to know each other better as they travel, and emotionally supports one another as they face hardships in their journey to save the world and all that jazz. A wholesome relationship between two morally-good, heroic characters. Not to say that there wouldn't be any slightly-less-wholesome moments here and there. I personally wouldn't write any sex scenes, but I'd probably imply that it happens every now and then (I mean, they're both in their twenties and have healthy sex drives. It's bound to happen at some point. I just wouldn't want to dwell on it too much because it's not that important to me, personally).
My point is: Is all of this too...boring? Don't most audiences want a bit more "spice" in their romances? More conflict? More tension, sexual or otherwise? I'm still not entirely sure what kind of audience I'm writing for, but regardless, I'm afraid of boring my readers with a relationship that's too wholesome or normal/down-to-earth. Or what if they feel cheated because some of the friendship/relationship development already happened before the story begins?
I think at this point I'm just rambling, so I'll stop the post here. Idk, I guess I'm just wondering if any other fantasy and/or romance writers have advice to give. I've tried to provide plenty of context, but I can always provide more if needed.
To give come context, I have a young adult (basically early/mid-twenties) male MC who serves as my primary "perspective" character (i.e. I use third-person limited and explore the various perspectives across the different chapters, but primarily focus on my MC's) along with a consistent "party" of about five other characters, all of whom are working towards a shared goal. The party's journey is admittedly bit stereotypical, with them travelling the world with the end goal to save it. But as I said, that's not really the part that I'm worried about.
My MC and his love interest (a girl also in her early twenties) kind of already know each other at the beginning of the story, as they were both colleagues before being thrust into the whole "world-saving adventure" thing. As far as backstory goes, I'll say that they've already known each other for about a year beforehand, having built up a nice slow-burning friendship & rappor in that time. It isn't until after the adventure begins, at which point they get temporarily separated from each other before reuniting after some time, that their friendship starts to boil into romance. Now of course, the way I imagine it, their friendship was eventually going to turn into a romance either way, it just happened to get somewhat interrupted by them being thrust into an unexpected situation.
I've been Googling around here and there for tips on how to write romance, seeing as how I've never done it before. And I've been beaten over the head with the same generic tips. Mostly stuff like:
#1: Avoid overly-done tropes like love-triangles, insta-love, romanticized abusive relationships. All stuff that is apparently egregiously done in many YA novels (I haven't read many myself, so I have no idea how badly/how often it's done).
#2: Don't drag it out too long. They have to get together eventually.
#3: Make sure both characters get development. Don't just let the female character turn into a stereotype, like a damsel in distress.
#4: Don't force everything to be romance. Male and female characters can be "just friends".
#5: Don't overly sexualize your characters. i.e. If using a male character for perspective, don't just have him always talk about how "hot" or "sexy" she is all the time.
Okay. No problem. Avoiding these issues and tropes doesn't seem all that difficult. My two characters in question already avoid plenty of them simply due to their natures. There's no love-triangle, they don't instantly fall in love but they also don't take forever to get to the point, they both develop well as characters in my plot, they both become good platonic friends with the rest of the party (which consists of an equal amount of both genders. 3 guys, 3 girls essentially). And while my male MC would probably have a decently healthy/normal amount of sexual thoughts for a guy in his mid-twenties, he would also not be one to incoporate such thoughts when describing another character to the audience (or perhaps it's simply that I as the writer wouldn't do that). Either way, no issue with overly-sexualized female characters there.
So what's the issue?
For starters, I'm still not exactly sure how to incorporate it. It's only a subplot and not the main plot, so obviously I don't want it to be too much in my readers' faces. But at the same time, I want to make it clear that they have chemistry so that when they do end up together, it doesn't feel forced or sudden. One would think that building chemistry between two characters wouldn't be all that hard. Unfortunately, like my characters, I also happen to be a mid-twenties guy with only a small amount of relationship experience (it's better than none, but I wouldn't say its enough experience for me to actually draw upon when writing). And admittedly, I'm a little afraid that the relationship I've imagined up between these two characters isn't realistic enough or believable. Primarily because, in my mind at least, they would probably get along a bit TOO well. They both have considerably selfless, heroic, good-hearted personalities, and share a lot of the same morals. As such, its a bit difficult for me to imagine what kind of conflicts or arguments they would have, if any. And a relationship with near-zero conflict might be...boring to readers. Or at the very least, unrealistic and hard to believe.
Another issue I've run into is that most romance writing advice I've seen online makes alot of assumptions. Like, assuming that the characters won't OFFICIALLY get together until later in the story. Or that their relationship is going to be intense and passionate, with lots of lust and blatant sexual tension. I don't particularly care for any of this. I would much prefer for the characters to officially become a couple somewhat early on in the story, with their relationship being more subtle and down-to-earth as opposed to being exaggeratedly passionate and intense. If you've ever heard the phrase "your significant other should double as your best friend", that's essentially the kind of relationship I'd like to go for with these two. Essentially, they'd just be a normal, relatively happy couple that gets together early on, slowly gets to know each other better as they travel, and emotionally supports one another as they face hardships in their journey to save the world and all that jazz. A wholesome relationship between two morally-good, heroic characters. Not to say that there wouldn't be any slightly-less-wholesome moments here and there. I personally wouldn't write any sex scenes, but I'd probably imply that it happens every now and then (I mean, they're both in their twenties and have healthy sex drives. It's bound to happen at some point. I just wouldn't want to dwell on it too much because it's not that important to me, personally).
My point is: Is all of this too...boring? Don't most audiences want a bit more "spice" in their romances? More conflict? More tension, sexual or otherwise? I'm still not entirely sure what kind of audience I'm writing for, but regardless, I'm afraid of boring my readers with a relationship that's too wholesome or normal/down-to-earth. Or what if they feel cheated because some of the friendship/relationship development already happened before the story begins?
I think at this point I'm just rambling, so I'll stop the post here. Idk, I guess I'm just wondering if any other fantasy and/or romance writers have advice to give. I've tried to provide plenty of context, but I can always provide more if needed.
Last edited:
Auror
Maester
Sage
