 When writing romance, the important thing to remember is to not suck at it. Unfortunately, most people seem to have forgotten this simple fact because I very rarely see any relationships in anything ever that don't suck. How many action movies have two leads just start sucking face as the end credits roll despite the lack of any chemistry? How many romance novels have the leads simply meet and fall in love instantly? How many love triangles involve a generically pretty girl choosing between a plank of wood and a bad boy plank of wood? How many a fourth example of this trend have you seen? For some reason my patrons wanted to hear my opinions on this topic So I'm writing them down and putting them out there for the internet to hear and presumably attack me for. The obvious elephant in the room is that I'm a straight man, so most romance focused media isn't aimed at me and my opinion shouldn't matter as much. My response is that whatever my gender or sexual orientation are, I still enjoy seeing a well-developed relationship that can be investing or just cute to watch. And if the story in question has a lot of focus on romance, I'd rather it be good slash well-developed than bad. Advice is good when it's used to improve the story that the creator is trying to tell. It's bad when used to change it into something different. None of my advice is going to involve not using or ignoring romance or well most of my advice. So while I'm hardly the target audience, my insights are no less valid than anyone else's. This is where the intro ends and the numbered list of advice begins. Number one, Love at First Sight is stupid. So I'll start off with possibly the most obnoxious cliche that's associated with this. Love at First Sight is when two characters meet and one or both of them immediately decides that they're not only infatuated with the other, but they're in love and want to spend the rest of their lives with them. When I say Love at First Sight, that includes couples that fall in love in an extremely short time span. If they met a week ago and they're already willing to die for each other or planning out baby names, that still counts. Even if it takes an entire book, slash movie, slash video game campaign for them to reach that point, it doesn't make a difference if it takes place over the course of two days. The timeline is the important bit here. This sort of thing grinds my gears for a variety of reasons, the main one being that humans don't work that way. Even in cultures where arranged marriages and such are common, no one becomes that attacked just someone that quickly, and if they do it's because of underlying mental problems. Another issue is that it deprives the audience of the opportunity to watch their relationship unfold. I'm not here to watch two planks of wood press their wooden faces together, have fun with that mental image. I'm here to watch one fleshed-out person form a genuine bond with another fleshed-out person. That's impossible to do if we don't get to see them grow to appreciate certain aspects of each other. People tend to forget that there's a whole lot of room between starting a relationship and falling in love. It's not only possible to like someone and slowly grow to like them more, it's extremely common. Throw in some time skips. Make them a couple who just enjoys being around each other for a while. Just do something. Anything different. Number two, love at first sight is stupid most of the time. Okay, I know this sounds contradictory, but give me a minute. Love at first sight is dumb and I hate it, but it can be used to do more interesting stuff. I almost never see it used that way, but you know, it's technically possible, so I have to put this in here somewhere. Anyways, if you insist on being a lazy piece of shit who doesn't want to show a relationship grow, you can still play around with it. For example, what if the relationship goes on for a while before both characters realize that they were just infatuated with each other and that they have little in common? From there, you have several places you could go. They could break up and become fine with being single, break up and shack up with other people, or maybe they would still fall in love for real, but over time. Or what if... Nope, that's pretty much the only way I can think of to make this interesting. For real, guys, imagine if one of your friends was trying to marry someone they met a month ago, you'd be concerned. Number three, controlling is not loving, so don't do that. This seems to be a mostly YA problem, but I've seen it pop up in other places too. Basically, the female love interest will be in some sort of danger, real or imagined, and the male love interest will try to protect her from that by cutting her off from friends and family, preventing her from doing anything he deems dangerous, or just straight up abducting her and imprisoning her somewhere for her own good. I don't think I need to explain why this is kind of creepy. It's not always obvious when it happens, but it's always unsettling. Remember in Twilight when Edward just straight up took parts out of Bella's car engine so she couldn't go off to see Jacob? He claimed it was for her safety, but Jacob and the other werewolves have never hurt her. In fact, they'd actively protected her from evil vampires so far, so his concern is not only unfounded, but he goes so far beyond what is acceptable to address that concern that... just... Jesus, dude. If he's really worried, he should just go with her. At least stay nearby so he can rush in if there's an emergency. That goes for other examples of this trope too. The majority of the time, the male love interest is the big, powerful badass, at least when it comes to hetero relationships, others might have a different dynamic, so if he can't convince her not to do something dangerous, why doesn't he just... go with her? You know, support her in reaching her goals rather than trying to replace those goals with his own. Say what you will about the damsel in distress role. At least there, the people taking away her agency are the villains and the hero is trying to protect her by fighting the bad guys rather than imprisoning her. And maybe to some people, this is part of the fantasy. They find the fake alpha male idea hot or whatever, but I think many authors just don't think too hard about it. Personally, I'd like to see an alpha male who's caring and helpful rather than obsessive and controlling, and I think many of you agree. If you don't, well, you've still got plenty of material out there to consume. Number four, the lovers need to do things together. Things besides sex and or hot make-out sessions. Have you ever met a couple that was never together other than having sex? Probably not, because they're not really a couple at that point. They're just fuck buddies. Even if the world needs saving, there's time for quieter moments where the love interests just enjoy each other's company. Maybe they're both huge gamers and play together, or they both have a passion for violin, or they think training to fight bad guys is rad, or they're Dungeons and Dragons nerds, or anything, just any sort of hobby they can do together. Maybe they're content to just chill out at home together, which is fine. It might not be that entertaining to observe, but it's fine. Hobbies and such are also a good way for them to meet each other or become closer or realize that they like each other. You know, have them run into each other through a coincidental occurrence rather than making them both some sort of cosmic keystone who are magically drawn together to kill the evil crows or something. This is called storytelling. I know that for beginners it's easy to accidentally write a story that's constant action, but the quiet moments are important for contrast and character development. Constant action becomes white noise after a while. Likewise, it's easy to accidentally write something where nothing happens and therefore the audience gets bored from lack of stakes. And I don't have enough to say to give it its own entry, just don't have them be destined to be together by some sort of prophecy. That's a lazy excuse to avoid showing them actually fall in love while still expecting the audience to be invested for some reason. Cough, cough, fallen, cough. For God's sake, just do something to give dimension to the relationship and the people in it. Number five, love triangles are only fun if there's a question about the outcome. Be honest, of all the love triangles you've seen, you've rarely ever truly wondered who the one caught in the middle would wind up with. No one thought Katniss would hop on Gale's dick. No one believed Bella would toss Jacob's salad. Not one fangirl genuinely predicted that Elizabeth Bennett would take a trip to Poundtown with George Wickham. The whole conceit of a love triangle is that whoever is in the middle is caught up in their feelings and has no idea what to do next. There has to be a real connection to both other parties, a real attraction and the feeling that maybe they'd be good together. If there's no real chemistry on one of those legs, it's clear which way things will go from the beginning. Even worse, if the second leg of the triangle doesn't come in until over halfway through the book slash movie slash series, then it's doubtful that they'll do much other than bring on pointless drama that takes everyone on a ride through a cul-de-sac of horseshit. Remember how they tried to introduce Dylan Sprouse into that Harry Styles fanfiction to make it seem like the main character girl wouldn't wind up with the only member of one direction to have a career after the band broke up? Or maybe that was Cole Sprouse, I can't tell them apart. And which member of the band is Trevor supposed to be anyways? Shawn Mendes? The point is that his inclusion does nothing. No one believed Tessa wouldn't end the series by shacking up with young Voldemort so it doesn't do anything for the plot, characters, setting or themes. Such as they are. Triangles are a form of conflict and while all stories are built around conflict there has to be a point to it. If you aren't going to do that then the triangle is a waste of time. Use that time to do something else. Develop the main relationship properly or do something else with the storyline. No one likes wheel spinning. And on the subject try to remember that being any of the legs in a love triangle would be kind of awful. If you're in the center then you're being torn apart by your feelings and if you're on the edges then you're being led along by this person who can't make up their damn mind. At the same time you're attached to them and want them to break in your favor. That kind of sucks and if you want to throw in that aspect to the love triangle it can make it more dramatic and less predictable. Number 6. A relationship should not be the only part of someone's character. Take the fact that a character loves another character away and what are you left with? If the answer is nothing then it's back to the drawing board for you. Humans are psychologically complicated creatures who have layers to our lives and personalities. Most of us have hobbies, dreams, beliefs, opinions on things ranging from the best type of bread to the least corrupt local politician. Without all of that what's left? We're an empty husk. Some types of stories can get away with having dull characters, most old school sci-fi was able to get by on the strength of having unique ideas and big themes and a lot of epic fantasy from before the 90s followed the same few archetypes but had big epic battles and stuff so no one really cared. Romance is different. It relies 100% on attachment to the characters involved. Without that you have nothing. Never assume that you can make something fun, exciting, intriguing, or otherwise emotional without the proper backing. For the audience to give a shit about the relationship we have to like at least one of the people involved. Even if they're supposed to be a self-insert for the audience they need to have something else to them. Audience surrogates should have understated personalities, not no personalities. Just make them someone who likes coffee rather than someone who mentions how much they love it in every paragraph. That's a weird metaphor but it works for relationships too. Number 7. Don't throw them in as filler. The thing about plots is that there have to be things, you know, happening in them. At least if you want them to be interesting. Sometimes you'll write something out, realize it's far shorter than you initially intended and decide to lengthen it by adding in a subplot or two. And that's a pretty solid tactic when it's done right. Subplots can be thrilling little adventures in their own right or something that gives extra dimension to the main story. What they should never be is pointless. Which is exactly what many romances are. Does the romance get any characters in trouble? Does it bring them into the plot to start with? Does it give them motivation to do something? Do other characters try to stop it for some reason? Is it at least cute and or funny? If the romance is unneeded, if it doesn't add anything, then either get rid of it or change it. At the very least don't spend half the story on it. Number 8. Fuck it. Try out polyamory. Polyamory is basically what happens when more than two people all decide to start boning each other. Take a group of three or four or five people of whatever gender and sexual preference, throw them into one house where they all take turns being intimate, raising children, and doing other things that life involves. Voila. Polyamory. If you're unsure how to deal with a love triangle, then throw them all into one big fuck pile. It'll still require some work to make it make sense, but at the very least it'll be something that isn't often seen. The only place I've seen this in is in the Expanse... well, the Expanse and Onision's books, but let's talk about the Expanse. Even there, it's not focused on very much. Holden was raised by eight parents who all have sex with each other in various homo- and heterosexual couplings. And Kamina Drummer is the pirate queen of the polyam belter fam. In both cases, it gives an interesting backdrop for the characters to exist against, and by doing so it helps to develop and define them. And both cases are common in their setting. This sort of thing can go beyond romantic slash sexual pairings too, and give a better feel for how large group of friends or families can interact. Back in my long Maximum Ride video, I mentioned how it's the only series I've ever read that captures the feeling of what it's like to have multiple siblings. They all love each other, but they all have their own distinct personalities, and some of them get along better with others, and they all have their own opinions of each other. It's a mess, and because of that it feels genuine. Polyamory is similar. You can use this piece of advice on all sorts of stuff that isn't romance. Actually, you can use all of this advice here for other things. That's just how cool I am. Share this video. Special thanks to all of my patrons, whose names you see here, and a huge huge thanks to the $10 up guys, who include Apo Savalainen, Olivia Rayan, Ava Tumor, Brother Santotis, Christopher Quinten, Deanna Dahim, Ambus Joel, Carcac Kitsune, Liza Rudikova, Madison Lewis Bennett, Microphone, Sad Martigan, Tobacco Crow, Tom Beanie, and Vaivictus. All of you guys are, seriously, you are the best. 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