12 Comments

  1. You make a romance sound…exciting to write. I’m not sure if that’s the right adjective for it. It’s just the way you word this blog post. It’s simple yet entertaining to read, and it gets the point across. It can easily be made into a checklist.

    By the way, how common is the “cute” meet these days? Some of the other sources I have read said that it has become a bit cliche, but I’m not familiar enough with the genre to make that judgement.

  2. The cute meet was/is used more with romantic comedies which aren’t as big a part of the genre as it used to be. As with all things, it is all in how well you do it. 🙂

  3. Ana

    Great post Lori. I think you are right when you say it may be a bit formulaic but that’s the way life is. In the end, all our romantic relationships need to have some key points, we need to meet, we share things, we feel physical attraction and finally the love wins. The conflicts in between depend on the relationship, but all of them have one or another.

    This post has also helped me realize that maybe I am a romance writer after all. It’s not the genre I love most, but when I think about a story to write, it always ends having those key scenes you describe, and they are the scenes I have more fun thinking about and writing. I imagine a lot of things around the romance that helps it develop, I have mystery, and fantasy and adventure, but love keeps being the main theme even if I don’t intend to. I would like my stories to be mystery, fantasy or adventure with a pinch of love and not just the opposite as they finally become. I didn’t want to write romances but maybe I have to recognize that this is what I enjoy most writing, even if it is not what I enjoy most reading.

  4. Very well written article. I’m working on a romance right now. I think the reason that people feel it’s formulaic is because it’s always they meet, they hate each other, they realize they don’t hate each other and so they get married. I think sometimes these novels make love look to easy. Maybe they can like each other at the beginning and then find things out about them that makes them annoyed. Or maybe someone comes in between them or they don’t like them back. I don’t think it always has to be meet, hate eachother, marriage. But good article either way 🙁

  5. Lori, thank you so much for sharing the piece above. I have bookmarked it! Came across it while searching “what do romance readers really want.” Would love to see you do a piece on writing romance series. Again, thank you. Cassandra, Multicultural Romance Author

  6. […] adult romance author for a decade–I have full respect for the genre and its authors!).  But the romance genre comes with certain expectations–most are written in third-person-past, usually alternating between the hero’s and […]

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