588 – Structuring a Romance

We want some characters to fall in love, but how, exactly? What steps are involved? It probably won’t work if they jump into bed immediately, as that’s not much of an arc. And it’ll seem contrived if they act like they don’t like each other despite obviously being perfect together. Maybe the key is a slow yet steadily growing attachment? Sounds like it could get boring. This week, we’re talking about how to give your romance structure!

Show Notes

• Romantic Structure 
• Does Romance Need a Happy Ending? 
• The Luminous Dead 
• Movement
• Tension 
• Worf & Dax 
• Shield of Sparrows 
• Godkiller 
• Dark Winds 
• Turning Point
• Willow

Transcript

Generously transcribed by Phoebe. Volunteer to transcribe a podcast.

Chris: You’re listening to the Mythcreant Podcast with your hosts, Oren Ashkenazi and Chris Winkle.

[intro music]

Oren: And welcome everyone to another episode of the Mythcreants podcast. I’m Oren.

Chris: I’m Chris.

Oren: So, I’m working on a romance and I want it to have structure. So I figured I would just have the characters get into a fight over which of them should have this magic sword over and over again, ’cause those are basically child arcs, right?

Chris: Yeah, that sounds great. And then the next time you do another romance book, you can just do that again.

Oren: Yeah. That fits perfect. Nothing could go wrong. So this episode is about how to structure a romance. It is inspired by me reading The Luminous Dead by Kaitlyn Starling, in which it felt like the lovebirds were just kind of going in circles, but I didn’t really know what they should have done instead, ’cause my first thought was like, well, they should go from not liking each other to liking each other. But then my thought was, that would be like a smooth, linear increase, and that sounds boring. So surely there has to be something else to it other than them just doing the same conflict over and over again, right?

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Oren: So I’m just gonna let Chris talk about this for half an hour. I’ll go get a snack or something.

Chris: Okay, so now we’re talking about structure, but we’re talking about structure with something other than tension. Not that tension isn’t also gonna be present. Usually—

Oren: Yeah.

Chris: There is—the way that you construct a romance just also happens to create tension, which is good, right? We want tension.

Oren: Mm-hmm.

Chris: It also gives us more entertainment. But typically for, you know, a romance romance in the romance genre especially, or just romance arcs in general, usually what we’re trying to create is romantic tension, which I like to call longing, so I’m not talking about three different types of tension.

Oren: Yeah. There’s so many different types. So what’s the difference between a longing-based arc and a tension-based arc?

Chris: Okay. So let’s just look at, like, what is the story situation. So we could do a comparison for a relationship arc that is based on tension, for one that is based on longing. I’m also gonna add in desire, sexual tension.

Oren: Oh boy.

Chris: Because it also matters a lot in romance arcs.

Oren: Sure.

Chris: Typically. Not all of them obviously, but. Okay, so tension. “Oh no. My spouse is gonna be so mad when they find out what I did.”

Oren: Okay.

Chris: Okay. So we have a meaningful relationship that is in danger and we’re worried about it, right? And we’re worried about how the rupture in their relationship might negatively impact the people involved. And that negative anticipation is tension.

Oren: Yeah, this is pretty familiar because, you know, we generally operate on the philosophy that readers are gonna care more about bad things that might happen than good things that might happen.

Chris: Mm-hmm. Okay. So now let’s look at longing. “My dream babe is making eyes at me, but if I touch them, we’ll both die.”

Oren: Whoa. That’s a little different.

Chris: Yeah. So basically instead we have a romantic relationship in the making, generally, that is wanted but appears unattainable. Okay. So that’s based on positive anticipation, but it also—there also has to be a barrier that it’s running into.

Oren: Yeah.

Chris: Right, and that barrier often creates tension, right, so we have a tension component in there, but at the end of the day, it’s about the wanting, right, it’s that positive anticipation.

Oren: Yeah. I certainly have worked with a number of clients who haven’t really put enough thought into what is it that’s keeping them from getting together right now?

Chris: Mm-hmm.

Oren: And I even, you know, occasionally a published story has that problem where it’s like, all right, well, they seem to get on great and they seem to want each other. So what’s the hold up?

Chris: Which brings me to desire.

Oren: Ooh. Yeah.

Chris: Or sexual tension.

Oren: Mm-hmm.

Chris: So instead of “my dream babe is making eyes at me, but if I touch them, we’ll both die,” desire is “my dream babe is making eyes at me, and any moment we’re gonna touch.”

Oren: Oh boy.

Chris: Okay?

Oren: Mythcreants After Dark over here.

Chris: Like, if I was not intending to talk about sexual tension and desire in stories, but it’s really important to account for this component when we’re talking about romances, right?

Oren: Mm-hmm.

Chris: So, you know, in this case, you know, we’re just hot and bothered over somebody and not yet sexually satisfied, and it doesn’t require the same kind of unattainableness that longing does. And so that’s why in many romance books that are, you know, particularly these spicy ones, but any ones that rely on desire in general will have a place where it’ll feel like the writer often is kind of neglecting all of these longing child arcs because they’re just relying on desire.

Oren: Sure.

Chris: Because it doesn’t require those barriers. Now, I honestly think it’s better if we can also, you know, maintain longing too, because they’re all engagement factors, as best we can, right, and some readers are gonna, you know, be more drawn in by longing and more drawn in by desire. You know, different romances do cater to different people too, right? Obviously.

Oren: Yeah. With desire, do you need the same kind of barrier that you need with longing, ’cause otherwise, why don’t they just, like, bang it out.

Chris: No, that’s why they keep—no, that’s why—

Oren: Like right now.

Chris: —romance writers keep doing this thing where people are humping each other and yet never have sex for very flimsy reasons. Because all it requires is to not have sexual satisfaction and get hot and bothered.

Oren: Okay. So this is like scenes where they’re like, you know, eye banging each other and you’re kind of wondering, why don’t they move on to the next step? Is that what we’re talking about here?

Chris: Yeah. Okay, so the thing that I always think of, I know a lot of people love this book, is Paladin’s Grace.

Oren: Yeah.

Chris: Okay. So Paladin’s Grace did not particularly work very well for me personally because it was kind of hard to see why the two, you know, Grace and the Paladin—

Oren: Mm-hmm.

Chris: —our two lovebirds, you know, why they weren’t getting together. Instead, we have a lot of scenes where they kind of get really close to each other and maybe almost kiss or touch each other a little bit and say over and over again, “oh, what’s wrong with me?”

Oren: Oh, yeah, that’s an interesting line. I hear that a lot in stories where the author doesn’t really have a good reason for them to not be together.

Chris: Right. It’s like they just find it very unreasonable that they are attracted to each other. It’s like, well, what do you mean, what’s wrong with you? Obviously, you’re into this person. I don’t— right. But for somebody who’s like, hot and bothered, right? It’s not gonna seem as repetitive as it did to me, who is not hot and bothered.

Oren: Right.

Chris: Right. It’s just a matter of, you know, which of these engagement factors are working? And different romances will definitely cater to different groups because taste is really important here, but, you know, typically a romance in the genre is written for people who will feel that longing. And, you know, depending on how spicy it is, desire might matter more or less.

Oren: Sure.

Chris: But not everybody’s gonna feel it. And again, sometimes when I talk about this, people get a little confused because they are not used to thinking about this in terms of what the reader experience is. They think, oh, well, the characters are experiencing longing.

Oren: Mm-hmm.

Chris: The characters are experiencing desire. It’s like, no. The goal is to get the reader in the same place as, you know, viewpoint character or protagonist typically. So we need the reader to get hot and bothered and we need the reader to feel longing. This isn’t just for the characters. We can make the characters feel whatever we want. It’s not gonna do it for the reader.

Oren: Right. When they get that confused between character feeling and reader feeling, is the issue that they are telling too much? They’re like, “oh, well, this character thought the other character was hot. There, I said they were into each other.” Or is it more that they just aren’t thinking about what might get the reader turned on as it were?

Chris: You know, I’m not sure, ’cause this is, you know, something that happens in my, you know, followers and students and—

Oren: Mm-hmm.

Chris: —that they—I think they’re just used to thinking about it a certain way and not, you know, used to thinking of romances.

Oren: Sure.

Chris: These are two people falling in love and not thinking about in terms of, well, the reader is also falling in love.

Oren: Right.

Chris: Right. That’s our goal. And obviously it’s not the same as happening in real life, but that’s how it is for all story.

Oren: Right. I mean, and you get that sometimes in other types of storytelling scenes too, right? Where sometimes the author will think, “oh, well my character is scared, therefore the reader is also scared.” And it’s like, all right. But.

Chris: Mm-hmm. Exactly.

Oren: You know, the character being scared does matter, but if you don’t convince me that the situation is dangerous, I’m not gonna be worried, right.

Chris: Right. By default, we want the reader to feel what our protagonist is feeling.

Oren: Mm-hmm.

Chris: Right? So that they can have that kind of vicarious experience. So we need to—and just saying the protagonist feels a certain way or even showing them feel a certain way is not gonna do it. And, a lot of, you know, storytellers have to learn, “no, no. I have to show the source of their feelings so that the readers can feel it with them, ’cause the readers are then responding emotionally to what’s happening in the same way the protagonist is.”

Oren: Yeah.

Chris: Which is a little different. So anyway, the goal here is of course, to create, we’re talking about longing.

Oren: Yeah.

Chris: So there’s three different things here, which makes, you know, again, romance seems simple, right? You know, people refer to it [as] formulaic, but what’s actually going along is there’s a lot of different engagement factors that puts romance under a lot of different constraints, which—

Oren: Mm-hmm.

Chris: —tends to result in, you know, certain patterns of how we maximize these things. So it’s actually a result of more complexity, not less.

Oren: I used to work with people who would sometimes kind of derisively joke that if their chosen career path didn’t work out, they would just go write romance novels. And I’m just like, go do it, man. Go do it. If you think it’s that easy, go do it. Seems like free money. You know, none of them ever did as far as I know.

Chris: So longing, again, it’s about positive anticipation and for it to work, first of all, you have to have a taste fit, okay? So you need at least one character that fits the reader’s romantic tastes, or else it’s probably not gonna work.

Oren: Yeah, that would explain one reason I was having trouble with The Luminous Dead, because I did not want that romance to come to fruition. It’s like no, main character, you get away from that lady. That lady is dangerous. That is a bad person. You don’t want to be in a relationship with them.

Chris: So, yeah, that’s a starting requirement. And then what you want is, you know, what I call the clash of the positive charge and negative charge, right? The positive charge is the things that make this relationship compelling and desirable, doing chemistry and showing bonding and mutual appreciation and just, you know, describing a person as attractive.

Oren: Mm-hmm. Yeah, sure.

Chris: Those kinds of things. Whatever, you know, tropes or personality traits this particular audience likes. And then we have our negative charge, which is that sense of unattainableness. That barrier, you know, being rejected or feeling like the love interest is inaccessible or whatever. “Oh no, they’re already betrothed to somebody.” We got some logistical barrier in there, and I think the higher both of those things are, both the positive charge and the negative charge, the more longing you get. So you build your positive charge, you build your negative charge and lightning strikes.

Oren: Okay, this makes sense so far. When I’m thinking of a normal tension arc, the way that I imagine it in relation—the child arc in relation to the through line is that I imagine that a child arc is bringing us closer to the resolution of the through line while also seeming like it’s gonna be harder for the protagonist to get, you know, the thing they’re trying to get to win the day in some way or another. Like, you know, if you have a child arc where the protagonist gets a magic sword, you need to usually temper that by like, “oh no, getting the magic sword also awakened the evil army that’s gonna conquer your city or something,” ’cause otherwise it’s like, “oh, they have a magic sword, it seems like they’re doing great,” and you don’t usually want that. Is there an equivalent for that in this longing setup we’re talking about?

Chris: Yeah, so there does have to—it is very similar to tension in that there also has to be movement.

Oren: Right.

Chris: Right. Just so for tension, child arcs, again, as you described, we want to make it feel like we’ve taken a step forward towards the finish line, but now we’re making it harder in response to maintain the tension. Longing is very similar. So, you know, we might start with a situation priming the pump where, hey, let’s say love interest seems cool, but oh, it’s never gonna happen for whatever reason.

Oren: Mm-hmm.

Chris: Right. And then we go back and forth, just like tension, you have like a problem or obstacle for each child arc, right? And then you go through the same, you know, turning point and resolution. For longing, we have kind of moments of bonding and moments of separation. And the separation would be like the equivalent to the obstacle or problem. So, you know, I think typically it’s almost like we start with bonding and then go to separation. So—

Oren: Yeah.

Chris: We have our bonding moment where they have a positive interaction and if there’s a previous barrier, it’s overcome, and we’ll talk more about the barriers ’cause it sounds like that’s the problem with the book you read.

Oren: Well, a problem.

Chris: A problem?

Oren: Yeah.

Chris: Okay. So movement is created as we see characters A) getting to know each other, getting to care about each other more. Their interest is piqued more.

Oren: Mm-hmm.

Chris: Right. And we kind of see that their relationship is developing, right. That they are moving towards having a relationship.

Oren: Right.

Chris: Like movement. Yeah. Pretty simple. And then we have, usually this comes shortly following this where, as we kind of—as they start to cozy up to each other, we have, you know