6 Essential Elements Your Romance Novel Needs

What's your favourite romance novel? Now think of your favourite scene from that novel. Is it the ending when, despite the obstacles, both leads get their happily ever after? Or is it the first kiss...or the first fight?

Regardless, there are more players on stage and circumstances that helped create the tension/opportunity/obstacle that led to your favourite scene.

Here are a few handy tips for making sure your own romance story has the right support system for those unforgettable scenes!

  

Six Essential Elements Your Romance Novel Needs

1. The Rival

There needs to be a rival for the protagonist’s romantic intentions, but this doesn't necessarily mean a love triangle. This could be someone who takes time away from the romantic interest as well.

In my contemporary romance, The Right Fit, Antony is desperate to reconnect with Maxine, but his brother Marc is a controller and feels it's his responsibility to shape Antony into a successful pro-hockey player, regardless of what Antony truly desires.

2. Helpers vs Harmers

As you can guess, helpers are characters who assist in enabling the relationship grow while harmers are motivated to keep the couple apart. It should be noted that a helper can sometimes unwittingly become a harmer. It's common in romantic comedies to have a character who is truly invested in the couple's happiness, but ends up becoming bad luck by always doing or saying the wrong thing at the worst time, thereby taking the role of harmer.

In my novel, Maxine has enthusiastic support from her younger sister. However, in the end it's her own self doubt that is the most destructive harmer to her relationship with Antony.

3. External Need

This mechanism acts as a motivation that brings the two characters together.

As an example, Antony is certain his new found luck on the ice is entirely due to his one night with Maxine. Desperate to stay in the professional hockey league to pay his brother's medical bills and support them both, Antony pursues Maxine at all costs, including keeping his true identity a secret. As a result Maxine is overwhelmed by his attention and begins to believe she can love again after having her heart broken by her ex-fiancé.

4. Secrets

One or both leads are keeping something from the other. The motivation for not telling the truth must be greater than the risk to the relationship.

In The Right Fit, Antony is not only keeping his true identity a secret, but also the fact that he considers Maxine his good luck charm and is using her to keep his hockey career on course. Meanwhile, Maxine considers Antony a rebound, as a way of getting her confidence back and helping her forget about her ex.

However, it's important to acknowledge that characters often lie to themselves to justify their actions/decisions.

5. Rituals

These are the cute little idiosyncrasies a couple naturally develops with each other, those shared intimacies that only they know about.

It's most effective to use when the couple is apart and something triggers the memory for one of the leads. This can motivate a change of heart at the realization that they truly need that person in their life. *cue the rush to the airport to stop their true love from leaving forever*

As a result of mistaken identity, Maxine assumes Antony's name is Ace. This leads to a nickname which creates a moment like the one described above as the name 'Ace' pops up when Maxine least expects it.   

Maxine rolled her eyes and instead told her to pick out a nail color for them both. It was a bright ruby shade and when Maxine looked at the name on the bottom of the bottle, her heart filled and then slowly deflated—Ace of Hearts.

6. Moral Weight

In essence, the moral weight is how the lovers changed for the better over the course of the novel. It's always satisfying for the reader if the ending scene is a mirror opposite to the beginning where their flaws were highlighted.

At the beginning of The Right Fit, Maxine was still trying to find a way back into her ex-fiancé's arms convinced he was the only man she could have a life with. And Antony was carrying a secret guilt fueled by the belief he didn't deserve to be loved. By the end of the story, Maxine realizes she's beautiful and desirable enough for any man and Antony's past sins didn't preclude him from happiness.

Thanks for reading. I hope you found this useful! Happy writing! Please enjoy the book trailer for THE RIGHT FIT.

Amazon // iBooks // Google Play

Barnes & Noble // Wild Rose Publishing

The Most Common Characterization Mistake Writers Make and How To Fix It

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self-a·ware·ness

ˈˌself əˈwernəs/

noun

noun: self-awareness

1. conscious knowledge of one's own character, feelings, motives, and desires.

   "the process can be painful but it leads to greater self-awareness"

One of the most common characterization mistakes writers are guilty of is making their characters too self-aware. Inner monologue is a great tool, it lets the reader in on secrets, gives the character dimension, but it can also be the biggest stumbling block to the story.

There's nothing less satisfying than a character who analyses every decision, weighs the pros and cons, and keeps coming back to the same inner struggle over and over again. The reader gets it, there's a theme, but repetition kills the tension.

The good news is that this can be easily fixed!

Beware of using inner dialogue to provide an ongoing narration rather than what it really is, a response to immediate events. Keep it authentic!

And just like over analysing the decision, your character should be a little clueless about their faults, strengths, dreams/goals. These are qualities the character is supposed to discover through their struggle as the story progresses. By the end these traits will come to the surface and that's when the wonderful self-awareness happens in the hero's journey.

Okay, so how can you fix this?

Here are things your character should NOT do:

1. While in the middle of a crisis, they shouldn't be providing a narration as if they're an outside source watching with an emotional detachment.

2. They shouldn't label their emotions. Instead of your character thinking, "I'm so angry!" The anger should manifest itself in your character's actions and choices (without them realizing it).

3. The shouldn't analyse all the possible reasons behind all their emotions. "I'm angry because my boyfriend doesn't love me anymore." No, look at reason number 2. The analysing shouldn't come until they've made choices that lead to disaster. No one in real life figures it out that quickly so why should your character?

4. When your character is in a highly emotional scene, their self-awareness should be negligible. This is why when you're angry you shouldn't send that email right away. You wait until you're less emotional and thinking more clearly. Your character shouldn't use calm logic when they're being dumped by their lover. The place for this growth can begin during the following scene to provide a few subtle sparks of self-awareness (this hints at the coming revelation and is more enticing to the reader). 

Remember it's not just their flaws, their strengths should be waiting to be discovered as well.


Now go make your character clueless!

Seven Characters That Will Strengthen Your Story

This is a great tool for outlining a new idea, but I mostly find its real worth when I'm revising. During this phase of writing I need to add meat to the bones of the story. I want to make sure the characters stay true, but this exercise also helps me tweak out something unexpected from them.


The Protagonist:

The character whose goal and transformation drives the story.

Needs to be likable. Show the reader the redeeming qualities as soon as you can.

Needs to be in trouble. What does she want and why can't she get it.

Needs to have a weakness. Primarily it should be her weakness that is her downfall. Whatever she fears the most should be the thing she needs to overcome at the end.

Needs to sacrifice something to get what she wants. She'll risk pursuit of a goal that she feels has a greater significance than her own comfort zone. Show how she changes/learns/grows through this transformation. In the end, she'll have to battle obstacles that would have stopped her at the beginning of the story.


The Antagonist:

The character whose goal drives the conflict and push the protagonist toward transformation.

Needs to have motives that make their ambitions opposite to those of the protagonist. Why are they in competition with the protagonist?

Needs to make sense. They can't be evil for evil's sake. Give them their own story arc. After all, the villain thinks they are the hero of the story.

Needs to be interesting, mysterious, and a little stronger than your protagonist.

Needs to go after goals in a way that sets up obstacles for protagonist to overcome, the more entertaining and extreme, the better.

Needs to have own transformation. Do they become a better person or do they get more desperate?

A Foil:

A character used to reflect and illuminate specific aspects of the progtagonist's strengths and weaknesses.

Needs to serve as an example or voice of reason through the story. Helps protagonist learn essential lesson.

Needs to be contrast to protagonist's logic.

Should have own character arc throughout story, but more behind the scenes than on the page.


A Threshold Guardian:

Someone who likes things the way they are and opposes the protagonist when she wants to change the situation.

Can be an ally of either the protagonist or the antagonist, or a completely neutral party.

Should be introduced to the reader before the turning point of the story.

Should add conflict to the B story by testing the protagonist or antagonist by pushing them to solve their problem by making discoveries or creating conflict by their actions.

Helps propel the story forward by either helping or hindering the protagonist.

May be come a mentor by the end.


A Mentor:

Someone in the story who give the protagonist answers, tools, or advice she needs to achieve her transformation or reach her goal.

Similar to the foil, but has a direct influence on helping the protagonist win past the threshold guardian.

Provides help to the protagonist based on respect or love or kindness. Through their actions, protagonist makes choices that lead to their change/growth.

May have a story arc of her own. Could be a foil who has fallen on hard times and resurrects for one last stand against the antagonist. Or she may be the foil who can't be brave enough when it comes to the showdown.

A Minion:

An agent of the antagonist or someone who wants the same thing as the antagonist does.

May oppose the protagonist for different reason, but assists the antagonist to help reach their goal as they share same desire to see protagonist fail.

Unlike a mentor, the minion is motivated to help antagonist by greed or hate.


A Ficelle:

A character who helps you avoid infodump but may create worse problems.

Has same motives as protagonist, but doesn't have the same obstacles.

Is useful for discovering information through dialogue or action that will help add detail or clues about the story without baring all the responsibility on the protagonists story line.

Is the most effective when they are introduced in a way that will be brought back and tied in to the story resolution.

How do you outline your list of characters? Who else would you include?