How To Write A Romance Novel
I Build a Romance Novel Premise and Show You Where to Start
Love, romance, and human relationships have fueled stories for as long as humans have recorded their experiences traditions, and myths. In the United States, the romance genre has been a publishing powerhouse since the early 1970s. Kathleen Woodiwiss is generally credited with writing the first mainstream romance novel: a novel that didn’t just include a story focused on a love story, but a book that included an explicit love scene.
Since the ‘70s, publishing houses and self-publishers—thanks to an insatiable reader base—have built a billion-dollar industry out of stories that sell not just love stories, not just spice/steam, but something else to readers: romance novels are the books that tackle issues on the forefront of human experience. From complex issues related to physical intimacy, such as consent, protection, and communication, to issues surrounding work and career, home life, family dynamics, trauma, and healing, romance is the genre that allows readers to laugh, cry, learn, grow, and be challenged—all while delivering a guaranteed Happy Ever After.
If you’ve wanted to write a romance novel but don’t know where to start, here’s a guide to getting started:
Start with this formula: Goal-Motivation-Conflict.
In a romance novel, the story is always about something bigger than just the love story. Yes, the love story is a key quality of the genre, and of course, the happy ending is a critical covenant that romance authors make with their readers. But new authors often think a romance novel is simply the story of how two characters fall in love.
This is not correct!
Both characters in a romance novel need to have the first component of the GMC formula: a goal.
What kind of goal? Ideally each of your main characters, whether you write single point of view or dual, will have a clear, time-bound goal. That means your character is working toward something. That goal could be saving a family business, opening a business, getting a new job. That goal could be avoiding something, as well: such as running away from an engagement, avoiding legal trouble, or staying under the radar while engaging in questionable life choices.
No matter what your character wants, they need a goal unrelated to the romance itself. I promise you, the romance will be critical to the story. That’s where the rest of the formula comes in.
The characters in your romance novel have goals. But why do they want what they want? Just like humans in real life, your characters need motivation. Motivation is the thing that drives characters toward their goal, and its the story fuel that will sustain the story’s pace while hitting all of the expected beats and arcs.
In your romance novel, look at the goal you’ve developed. Why does your character want to save that family business? If the answer is “just because,” you’ll run into problems trying to develop the middle of your book. (Also known as writer’s block.) Motivation comes from something, often in romance a core wound or a critical lack the character feels. Motivation can come from inside your character; things like trauma, desire, need create that drive toward a goal. Without motivation, the slightest resistance will collapse your character’s intention. And that means a story that falls apart.
Think about your own life. Why do you want what you want? Let’s take a realllllly simple example. I love crocheting, so let’s say I want to crochet holiday gifts for family. But what is the consequence of not achieving that goal? Well, the stakes are pretty low. I have other options, such as showing up to the holidays with store-bought gifts.
Let’s add motivation. What if I have been unemployed all year and I have zero money. I have a closet full of yarn and some crochet hooks and nothing but time, and I just found out that my younger sister, who has been my lifeline since our parents passed away, is going to be deployed overseas in the new year. If I want to send my sister off with something special, now I have motivation to make that afghan or shawl. I don’t have money. I do have yarn. I have a relationship that deeply impacts my life. I have a timeline under which I need to do something concrete or else I will suffer some unwanted consequence.
Now, I have authentic motivation for my goal, and as a result the journey changes! I can’t just do the easy thing, and I can’t just fail. Well, I can fail, but the cost to me is a lot higher in the scenario where I have motivation for the goal. A goal + motivation = a far more dynamic story. Notice that I haven’t even mentioned the love story yet… But once you have motivation for the goal, you’re ready for the last piece of the puzzle.
If my goal is to crochet my sister something by the holidays so she can take it overseas with her, you might think the only thing I’m battling is time and my own skills—and maybe my tendency to procrastinate. Far from it! A dynamic romance novel also needs conflict.
Once you know the goal and why the character wants to pursue that goal, you can litter their path with obstacles. Some of those obstacles will come from inside the character—such as my ability to procrastinate and not get the afghan done because I’m searching for a job, filing my nails, walking my dog—whatever I’ve done over the last year that I’ve been unemployed and very, very broke. Those internal issues are the things that I’ll need to change if I want to be healed and whole by the end of the novel. So if I am a procrastinator, you (as the author writing my story) will want to create opportunities for me to change, to get over myself, and to stop doing the thing that has held me back in the past. That journey to grow and change (sometimes successfully and at other times not so successfully) creates a dynamic character arc.
Some of those obstacles, or conflicts, will come from outside the character.
Think now about how to create a complete story for the “me” character.
Jeanne, unemployed and broke, has three months to crochet a going-away gift for her sister who’s being deployed overseas.
We have a goal and we have the motivation for that goal. We have a time frame within which that goal must be achieved or else the character will suffer some unwanted consequences. But where will we find our conflict?
I’ve already got plenty of internal flaws that will challenge me on the path to finishing this project in time. Let’s look outside of me for some external obstacles or external conflict.
What are some things that in my external world that could stop me from achieving my goal? The obvious circumstance I can think of is noise.
So let’s consider the hardest noises to block out/ignore: construction or a dog barking are two that would be high on my list. Now I have an idea.
One day I notice scratching, barking, and crying coming from across the hall. I’m trying to crochet but in my cheap apartment, even noise-cancelling headphones can’t silence the sounds filtering into my apartment.
Now I have an external problem to solve, an obstacle that will keep me from my goal. What if one day I get so mad, I walk across the hall in the evening when the dog is quiet and pound on the door. My neighbor across the hall is someone I’ve never met and I plan to give them a piece of my mind until I open the door to very attractive man. I learn he’s a hot single dad who has custody of his daughter. His daughter is struggling to get through her parents’ divorce and so Dad rescued a puppy. And that puppy is the bane of your crocheting plan.
See what I did there? I had a goal. I had motivation for my goal. I had some internal conflict, but now, I’ve got external conflict. That external conflict just so happens to create an opportunity for not only growth, but love. Now that I have all three pieces, I have the critical components for an epic rom-com. And look how easy it was to find the “right” match for my main character. I didn’t start with her perfect partner. I build out a fully developed character and worked through the essential components of the story to find that perfect match.
If you’ve always wanted to write a romance novel, start with a character. Give that character a goal. Add authentic motivation, and if you can, a time-bound consequence tied to the success or failure of that goal. Now dig deep for conflict—obstacles that come from both inside the character and who they are as well from their external environment. The love story will come together once you know who you’re writing about, what they want, and what challenges will get in their way. And of course, don’t forget to give them a Happy Ever After!