For Almost Valentine’s Day, we’re going to get a little steamy, a little saucy, a little smoochy. Any and all parental units of mine, look away now. First, we’re going to talk about romance—and next week, the sex.
And as a quick caveat: I’m talking about writing romance in other genres, not writing romance novels. Completely different norms. (Though you could still take a few pointers here.)
I’ve made it no secret in my personal writing circles that I dislike writing smut. Frankly, I dislike writing romance, because I am ace as hell and find it to be forced even with the best of intentions. (That said, I love reading it?? I am made of layers.) Perhaps this could be one factor of why I like casual and platonic intimacy so much. The affection is sweet, but the romance is confusing.
That said, I do write it.
My current ongoing supernatural hunter series, Your Local Guides (the first book of which is How To Kill Gods & Make Friends), has romance in it. Multiple romances, in fact. I’ve written plenty of romantic fanfic, too. Shipping is my heart and soul.
But my Of Rooks & Rams trilogy does not have any real romance in it. (Is it weird to admit as the creator that I ship the Rook and the Ram, though? Still, shipping =/= canon. Maybe.)
Personally, I think I may have an edge as an asexual writer writing romance and sex: I have to consciously think about it. Ignoring all of the shitty forced love triangle subplots, or the This Woman Is Only Here To Be A Trophy The Male Main Character Wins At The End, you know when a pairing just clicks for you? Sometimes you can quantify it—many shippers strive to—but sometimes, you can’t.
It’s the same in real life. Clicking sometimes has concrete reasons; sometimes it does not. I’m not saying all writing has to be 100% realistic 100% of the time, but some grounded base is nice.
And that may be one of the biggest takeaways here: you need a base to build upon. Love at first sight is great, but it has a lot of skeptics for a reason. The characters have to like each other before they can love each other, and do the readers know they even got to that first base? Mutual respect and liking builds into a romance a lot more believability than any amount of sex scenes.
This is probably the biggest takeaway from this post: if your characters have to kiss or have sex for the readers to realize they’re in a relationship, you are doing it wrong.
The Legend of Korra got a lot of flak for having its two main female leads end up together—and without a kiss at the end to seal it. Many said it was pandering, claiming queer content without committing.
Ignoring Nickelodeon’s attempt at tanking the series, and ignoring the pacing issues the writers had creating different seasons, did we watch the same show? Seasons 3 and 4 were dedicated to building up Korra and Asami’s friendship beyond their love triangle prongs in seasons 1 and 2. We had four seasons of these characters together, interacting in different ways. Don’t entirely rely on it, but the proximity effect is real.
She-Ra And The Princesses of Power spent its entire run building up the relationship with Adora and Catra. Yes, they kissed in the end, but we knew before that that these two cared about each other. The writing team put in the work of making them know each other, respect each other, like each other, trust each other, and then confessed to loving each other.
This is part of why shippers find ways to ship: they don’t need the evidence of kissing, having sex, or full love confessions to identify the emotions, respect, relationship fodder, and chemistry characters have with one another.
I am not saying you need to follow a timeline to write a perfect romance (or any romance, really). Characters can bang before falling in love. Enemies and/or rivals to lovers is a thing that people go feral for. Will-they-won’t-they is popular for a reason, too, if frustrating.
But you are going to need more than the hot stuff for a really believable romance.
