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A Touch of Romance

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Flickr Creative Commons: Horfnungsschimmer

My wife Lisa does not like to get red roses.  I discovered this early in our relationship.  “They’re so obvious,” she informed me, “Anyone can buy those.”  Okay.  I began to learn about hyacinths, freesia and bird—birds?—of paradise.  And romance.  Happily, my education is coming along.  I’ve reached roughly third grade level, I’m told.  Progress.

I mention this not only because Valentine’s Day is coming, but because many a novel would benefit from a touch of romance.  It’s an element that contributes to the swept-away effect that we want our fiction to produce.

I’m not talking about writing category romance novels, a story form built on sustained romantic conflict, teasing and eroticism.  Such novels are tightly focused on heroine and hero.  Their push-pull attraction is the whole subject.  Many how-to books address writing romantic fiction, including one by WU’s own Barbara O’Neal.

What I’m talking about today is a touch of romance, an element in a larger scheme, a surprise and heart delight that can warm any story.  It’s a neglected factor that like food, unfolding secondary relationships and a sense of time that, when used, enlarges and enriches readers’ experience.  Romance is a welcome and redeeming part of our world yet it is absent from many manuscripts.

To evoke a romantic feeling in readers requires understanding what evokes a romantic feeling in we humans.  This is not a topic to which my gender, typically, gives a lot of thought.  Male authors are not necessarily better at this than your typical guy.  For instance, women readers’ number one, eye-rolling complaint about male-authored thrillers is their clumsy handling of female characters who are improbably ready to jump into bed.

Conversely, as a male reader my number one, eye-rolling complaint about romance protagonists is their improbable 720-minutes-a-day, 5040-minutes-a-week focus on the heroine.  Romance heroes don’t have to stay late at the office, sit on committees or travel for work, especially if they are billionaires.  They are hyper-focused in a way that in life would earn them a restraining order.  We see only one dimension of them.

Still, we’re not talking about the fantasy fulfillment of romance fiction.  A touch of romance is an add-on.  It’s a surprise, most effective when it is unexpected.  Like romantic gestures in life, romantic moments in manuscripts are personal, thoughtful, insightful, spontaneous, creative and send signals of interest.  They tease.  They hint.  They’re a beginning, or maybe a renewal.  They suggest not what is, but what might be.  They cause us to hope.

That, in turn, depends on establishing a need for love and possibly, better still, a resistance to it.  Bringing together two characters who are destined for each other is fine, no problem, but why not build a match that is unneeded, unlikely, forbidden or even impossible?  It’s basic reader psychology.  When love can’t happen, we anticipate that it will.  When love is undesired, refused or rejected, we hope for it all the more.  We hope for it not because one party isn’t interested but because the other has already given his or her heart.

Let’s make this practical:

  • Who in your story is single? Who wants love?  Who doesn’t need it?  Who can begin to love that character?  Who can love that character despite obstacles?  Who can find those obstacles a welcome challenge?
  •  Focus on the one who is already beginning to love another…what does this character notice about the object of affection than no one else does? What does he or she find interesting?  What insight does he or she have?  What will break down the resistance of the opaque object of love?
  •  How can the pursuer give help, time or appreciation to the pursued? What is the best gift?  What’s the most unexpected time to give it?  What can the pursuer do that is spontaneous, playful or childlike?  How can the pursuer make the pursued feel safe?
  •  What signal of interest would be the most personal, well timed, teasing or creative? What is the most original and symbolic way in which the pursued can accept the offer?  What would be the most crushing rejection?
  • What must the pursuer give up to win the heart of the pursued? How must the pursuer humble himself or herself? 
  • Reverse that: What must the pursued let go? What foundation of resistance must crumble?  How?  What it is the hidden source of resistance and what brings that to the surface?  What confession must be made, what sorrow revealed, what fear finally expressed?
  • Get sexy: What’s the most unique way in which one party can get the other in the mood? What is a safe and creative way to get the other alone?  What would be heart-melting?  What would be better than a massage or a puppy?  (I know, I know, but think hard.)

A touch of romance reassures us that your story world is, after all, a good world.  Despite the vicissitudes of your plot, human hearts can connect.  There is hope.  There is a future beyond the final page.  We feel that in life, so why not provide that feeling for your readers?  It’s your Valentine’s Day gift to them.  It’s like giving your readers red roses.  Or, you know, something better.

Happy Valentine’s Day!  Can you add a touch of romance to your current manuscript?  If it’s a romance story already, how will you surprise us with more?

About Donald Maass

Donald Maass is president of the Donald Maass Literary Agency. He has written several highly acclaimed craft books for novelists including The Breakout Novelist, The Fire in Fiction, Writing the Breakout Novel and The Career Novelist.

Comments

  1. Don, I agree about the red roses bit with your wife. It’s cliché. And just so you know, third graders can be very creative :) Thank you for your lovely post. I wasn’t originally going to include romance in my YA book but my MC surprised me and it has made the book richer. Truer. And also unexpected. Even in literature for younger children, a touch of romance is appropriate, esp. between the parents. It sweetens the story, gives the child a sense of security, of home, even when they are fighting to save the world from terrible things.

    I love what Madeleine L’Engle said when asked what’s the best thing for children. She replied (and I’m paraphrasing): to love each other (referring to her husband Hugh). By the way, her book, TWO PART INVENTION makes a beautiful St. Valentine’s Day gift.

  2. Don – A favorite topic of mine. This is a hit-or-miss element in my genre (epic fantasy). Things have improved over the past decade or so, but still… For example, I’m reading a thousand page doorstop of an epic right now. It’s full of some of great characterization and some of the most intricate and amazing world-building I’ve ever encountered. I’m on page 700, and so far the only slight hint of any sort of romance was a superficial side-plot, and the pursuer just died after admitting to our featured character that his interest in her was feigned for ulterior gains. Seven. Hundred. Pages. Without a drop of sexual tension, let alone any sexual interplay.

    I really appreciate your exercises, as they advise working on this throughout the story. For fantasists, romance is not the sort of thing that can be wedged in as an after-thought. The Lord of the Rings movies demonstrated that (maybe sometimes all you really need is a little bro-mance). I suppose this is why I intersperse my epic fantasy reading with his-fic and women’s fic. And looking over at my fantasy favorites shelf as I type this makes me wonder. Almost all of the epics that I love that have integral and well-woven romance elements have something in common. You’ve probably guessed it. Yep, guys—women fantasy authors are kicking our asses on this.

    Great stuff. Thanks for pointing us to the paths that lead to books that make us *feel*, Don. The world could use a little romance, now more than ever. (Wishing us both luck in finding just the right gift or gesture in two weeks. Fourth grade, here we come!)

  5. Thanks, Don. I have found in the novels I’ve been working on the past several years that the romantic element is my favorite part. It’s a relief in a troubled world, it makes you smile to see people being in happy little pockets, it gives you something to hope for. When my husband read the manuscript for I Hold the Wind, he said, “This is really romantic.” I hadn’t really even realized that until he said it, so I must have had a weird look on my face because he immediately clarified, “In a good way.”

    In my current WIP, there’s a play between a dark, sexualized pressure coming from one direction and a kind, deeply caring love developing from another direction. How desire can go bad and how it can redeem.

    Every time I write scenes that involve the two characters I want to see together, I am so happy. I smile as I write. And every time there is a scene involving the two characters where there is something sinister and manipulative going on, I feel stressed and upset. I’m sure it is deepening the scowl-lines that have taken up residence between my eyebrows. I hope those feelings translate to the reader.

    • “I smile as I write”, vs. “I feel stressed and upset”. As I wrote (promo alert) in The Emotional Craft of Fiction, how you feel as you write is how we will feel in reading. In a good way, I expect.

  6. A whiff of romance always gets me more invested in a story. Love brings humanity along with it. The need for it, the denial of it, are two sides of a coin that for me, can’t be explored enough because I believe the need for connection colors everything our characters do. I’m not a romance reader by nature, but right now I’m binge-reading Jane Austen and I’m fascinated by how she gets me to care about who ends up with whom, and why. I also love what you said about establishing “a need for love and possibly, better still, a resistance.” Here’s to finding the perfect way to celebrate love on the 14th. And to infusing it into our stories so we can spread it around some!! Thanks, Don.

    • Lord knows we need a little love in our nation right now. In books, I don’t think adding romance is adding escapism. It’s adding what makes us joyful and glad to be alive.

    • You know it’s funny, an awful lot of romance fiction I read nowadays has a high level of heat and yet a low level of actual romance. Do you feel that too?

      • Yes! I love writing lots of sexual tension but I also add large doses of humor…I happen to think sharing a laugh with someone can be very romantic. Although sex can be romantic, romance and sex aren’t necessarily the same thing.

  8. The old movie moguls recognized this. The “love interest” is in virtually all classic films. Preston Sturges satirized that very notion in Sullivan’s Travels. Joel McCrea is making is plea to the studio heads to let him direct a really “important” picture, not the light comedies he’s known for. His film is called O Brother, Where Art Thou? He wants it to be “a commentary on modern conditions … stark realism … the problems that confront the average man.”

    To which the studio head responds, “But with a little sex in it.”

    The studio boss knew what would sell.

  9. Loved your post this morning. Not only do I agree with what you said, but I feel so darned vindicated! I write historical suspense with romantic elements and have often wondered if I am putting off male readers. At least one male fan has said that he loves my stories except for that “relationship stuff.” He could do without it, but the suspense makes up for it. SHEESH! And as to an alternative to the usual red hybrid tea roses offered by most florists, have you tried gardenias? Their glossy dark green leaves contrast with their white blooms to create a lovely presentation and their scent is wonderful. Your beloved has a multi-sensory experience! Always a good thing, no?

    • Gardenias, eh? Will explore. As to male readers…”that relationship stuff”? One wonders why they are reading romance. For the suspense, then? I guess we shouldn’t quibble!

      • Your response made me do a double take and started me thinking. Perhaps I am mislabeling my fiction because my characters’ romantic issues are presented as part of their fully imagined lives, not as the driving points of the plots. My fiction is historical first, suspense second,and not at all romance by the usual definitions, so maybe “with romantic elements” is incorrect. I do not consider myself a romance writer; although, my characters do struggle with relationship issues and do have love interests as parts of their stories. Thank you for drawing my attention to this issue. Any suggestions for better terminology in describing my work?

  10. Thanks for this, Don.

    My WIP has an antagonist who, in earlier drafts, was rather one-dimensional — from the Irredeemable Villain school, y’know. Your workbook got me thinking about that character in terms that would not only make him easier for readers to understand and accept (if not like/admire), but also make him simply more realistic: instead of simply threatening another character, he can be drawn to her. This article helps confirm the rightness of that direction.

    So thanks again for this piece — and also for the workbook!

    • Dark and twisted attraction, yum. That can be tough to pull off, though. A suggestion–? Make your baddie attracted to her for good reasons? Longing not to do harm but to offer a genuine love–of which your baddie is incapable, or which is rejected? Just a thought.

      • That’s kinda what I have in mind. He’s already enough of a baddie; I think (hope) I can communicate his loneliness, too — and through his discovery of something like innocence in someone else, soften (although not utterly nullify) his original nefarious goal.

        Thank you again!

  11. As a woman, married to the least romantic man on the planet, I get all my romance from the written word and film. (He’s basically a good guy, just clueless and uninterested in being educated on the ways of romance.) Your wonderful post brings to mind a scene I read a few years ago, written by a male writer. It wasn’t a romance novel, by a long shot. But there was a buildup to a man and a woman getting together and I was ready for some real romance. So they finally get together and what did he write? “And then she came and came and came.” Yeah right. Wanted to throw the book across the room. That was his answer to “romance.” He could have benefited from a few lesson of your “education.” .:-)

    • My wife is married to the second least romantic man, I suspect.

      One thing to consider, there are many ways in which a man may show love and care. Erma Bombeck once wrote of a romantic note left by her husband, “I filled up your tank today.”

      In a novel, if the heroine is forever running out of gas, this could be quite a romantic moment indeed.

  12. I want some of those gardenias.

    My historical mystery series has a romance between two of the main characters. I would characterize it as slow burning with powerful real-world obstacles separating the lovers (she, alas, already has a ne’er-do-well husband). I too wonder about putting off some readers who eschew any romance in their detective fiction, but in any case the mystery is always the main event. Still, I agree that romance can enlarge and humanize a story. Thanks for the post!

  13. LOVE this post, Don.

    Oh, and it might be a Canadian-girl thing, the no-go roses. I believe I said the same thing to my husband twenty years ago. He took some training, but he’s graduated in romance. One year, he bought me the moon. Really, an actual plot on the moon. Our favorite movie is It’s A Wonderful Life, our most cherished scene, where the male lead lassos the moon for his love. I think this makes my hubby a keeper. LOL.

    As for stories, you’ve hit the target. Many, many books miss the mark on romance. I wonder why? Are authors worried romantic elements will alter their story in a way their readers won’t like? Are authors hung up on genre ‘rules’ that create boxes within their work? Are the masses simply uncomfortable writing romantic or sexual scenes? Is this something too deep, too personal?
    I can think of dozens of books, including best sellers, which could have benefited from some relationship building, some sexual tension or intrigue. This is life. This is how we are made, how we communicate, how we continue. Pretending romance doesn’t exist is like covering the moon.
    Which, by the way, would make it impossible for ANY flower to grow.

    Thanks for the great post, Don!

    Dee Willson
    Author of A Keeper’s Truth and GOT (Gift of Travel)

  14. I can’t remember which movie, but I have a distinct memory of Bette Midler throwing a bundle of long stems at a suitor and screeching, “Roses? Who died?” :)

  15. “I’m not talking about writing category romance novels, a story form built on sustained romantic conflict, teasing and eroticism.”

    While your post was spot on, I couldn’t get past this line which was a slap in the face. OUCH!

    So, I’m guessing you don’t read Harlequin Love Inspired where you have to actually show romantic tension, and romance, without teasing and eroticism.

    The romantic arc can be nicely summed up in category romance in this manner.

    1. Awareness.
    2. Heightened Awareness.
    3. Emotional Discovery.
    4. The Almost Kiss.
    5. The First Kiss.
    6. Emotional Commitment.
    7. Emotional Setback.
    8. Acceptance.

  16. Throughout our dating, which was long and wonderful, my husband thought I loved orchids. I don’t. But I hadn’t the heart to tell him. A knot of roses, and hopefully not red, would be lovely. But again it’s the gesture, the action of going to the flower shop and making the purchase. In my novel, it’s the action of pulling away from the angst of the story and spending a few moments to remember–the intimacy of two people when love is present can heal and help make the next hours of living so much better. As always, thanks.

    • The gesture, um, yes. We guys can only hope that the women in our lives look past our clumsy offerings and see the sentiment underneath.

      Which, come to think of it, might make for a cool moment in a story. Hmm.

  17. Thank You for another timely post Don.

    Your response to Mr. Bell’s comment above is similar to what I was thinking about as I read this post, albeit for a different movie, The African Queen.

    I loved how in that movie how Bogart and Hepburn’s characters started off being so very different. Bogart the salty steamboat captain, and Hepburn the pious and prudish missionary. There’s a great scene at the beginning where Bogart has joined Hepburn’s character for afternoon tea and his stomach is growling louder than a jungle cat, and Hepburn ignores his discomfort out of a sense of decorum. That separation starts to give way when Bogart tries to crawl out of a monsoon and under the canopy where Hepburn is sleeping. She at first forces him to go back outside to preserve her privacy, but her good nature forces her to call him back in. Later, after many brushes with death, they embrace and fall in love. Before Hepburn calls Bogart out of the rain, I couldn’t see these two characters even liking each other. It gave a hint to the audience that there could be a connection between these two characters.

    • I’m a year late, but I just had to add my comment on The African Queen, my favorite movie of all time. For me, it contains the most beautiful romantic moment I’ve every read: when Bogart is standing behind Hepburn, touches her shoulder and she places her hand on his.

      I read this article when it was written, before the comments, but remembered it all this time and revisited because I am writing a story with “a touch of romance”. Thanks, Don, for writing on a subject seldom addressed (as many of your articles do).

  18. I don’t write romance “purr say” (per se) but incorporate relationships into the fabric of the story. With my current WIP I wrote an actual kissy scene! and I’m pretty proud of it. Might even try it again.

  19. One of the pleasures of “The African Queen” is how two total opposites, both as characters and actors, Bogart and Hepburn, come together after all. Thanks, James. (Hey, aren’t you supposed to be on a boat yourself right now?)

  20. Don–I too am in the remedial section of “Romance 101,” but with far less time to get it right than you have. Your wife Lisa’s perspective on red roses is shared by many. It’s half the bookend set of eye-rollers that goes with large boxes of bon bons purchased without thought for people conscientiously trying to watch their weight.

    As for “a touch of romance” and how it functions in non-romance genre narratives, I think you state it perfectly: “They suggest not what is, but what might be. They cause us to hope.”

    In my latest suspense novel–not romantic suspense–the lead character decides there’s no future possible with the man she loves. She’s a journalist, and she runs off to write a story in Naples, Florida. When she unpacks her suitcase, she discovers she’s accidentally-on-purpose packed one of her lover’s dress shirts. “She raised it to her face and breathed in. The smell was fresh and held something of the steam odor of the pressing machine. Under this she could smell Charlie.”

    I see this as a touch of romance, the function of which is to cause the reader to hope. It’s a heartfelt gesture, for no one but the character who’s alone in a strange bedroom. If I’ve set up the moment well, it should make readers more hopeful that the two characters will find their way back to each other.

  21. Thanks Don, as always, good questions for our WIP. Actually, I gained as much by reading the comments! Love the romantic arc from Tina Radcliffe.

    My husband of 51 years isn’t the most romantic man in the world either but does show his love in surprising ways. Like a single red rose first thing in the morning. A surprise because I can’t figure when he got it. He has left it in the outside shed overnight or gone to Safeway at 5 AM. Sweet! This year he surprised me (already) with a new car after me declaring “No more gray, white, or silver! Everyone in Tucson has that practical color.” My car: Ruby Red!

  23. Don,

    This post grabbed me (it even tried to kiss me.)

    ” When love can’t happen, we anticipate that it will. When love is undesired, refused or rejected, we hope for it all the more.”

    Yes.

    The characters in my WIP–three POV’s–are loaded with the status of ‘can’t happen,’ though the longing smolders under much of what they do and want. Question: For this element of a touch of romance to work well, are you thinking romance between a protagonist and another principals? Or can the potential suitor (or suitors) be a lessor character whose role is still compelling? Does it need front billing?

    Thanks.

    • Which characters? Doesn’t matter, I suppose, the operating principle is surprise. The romantic quotient rises, ask me, when we either don’t see a romantic gesture coming or when we’ve hoped hard for it and have all but given up.

  24. Don, one of the oddest aspects of reading Gone Girl, even deep in the work when every treachery, shallowness and betrayal is clear, there’s still some odd whiff of romance between the couple. I didn’t buy that at first (though I enjoyed the book), but I gave in later. The mechanism along the lines of Nick might have his hand’s around Amy’s throat to finally throttle her, and then on the radio “their song” might play. “Oh, that’s our song!” Perverse, but interesting.

    The most romantic scene I have in my last (spectacularly unpublished) novel is where the protagonist paints the apartment walls of his sweetheart a bright, warm yellow, after they have had two serious fallings-out. They fall back in.

    I’ve found my girlfriend responds romantically to me thoroughly cleaning the interior of her car. Love through Simple Green.

      • Hehe. Digging to make space for a garden, fixing things around the house, washing up the dishes, yeah baby!

        A while back I read the Five Love Languages and it was a good book to affirm what my husband and I already know about each other (physical and services), but the greatest benefit for us was helping to understand our children better, what they need to feel loved (words of affirmation, gifts). Our children are really quite different than us.

  25. I have a friend who writes non-fiction relationship books and last year she asked several of us to give her examples of things we do for our loved ones that we don’t ever mention (like the “filled up your tank today” above BUT with a difference – you don’t tell your loved one you did it or try to “take credit for it”, you just do it. For example, I often get out of the shower in the morning to find a fresh cup of coffee waiting for me in the bathroom. Or you might come home and find Sinatra on the radio playing (if that’s your thing) –the key is these are things you don’t draw attention to, you don’t even mention that you did them. They just make your loved one’s day easier or more pleasant. It’s kind of a classic “show, don’t tell”

    • Maggie–I like your noting that drawing attention to something done for another is the surest way of devaluing the gesture. It makes me think of an old Jeff Foxworthy joke. A man’s wife is out under the hot summer sun, mowing the lawn. Her hubby sticks his head out the door. “Hey Honey! That ashtray in the family room? All taken care of!”

  26. I didn’t think there would be any romance in my novel in progress. It’s about terror attacks, loss, the death penalty — not typical romantic stock. But as I was writing, a friendship arose between my MC, who lost her daughter in a terror attack, and a man whose pregnant wife was killed in the same attack. It’s a subtle romance. He’s grieving, raising a daughter with Down syndrome, and deeply missing his wife, not looking for a relationship. But at some point, one’s hope for love, for a better day, for something to live for is irresistible, I think.

  27. I’ll tell you when red roses are romantic: when you grow them yourself, and you pick some and put them in a vase on the table where your wife is sitting in front of her computer suffering from writer’s block or some other soul-churning problem. Those are the sweetest roses in the world.

  28. Two of my favourite writers, Deon Meyer and Jo Nesbo, have their series detectives engaged in an on again/off again romance. They add parental/step-parental love into the mix, too. And alcoholism, which involves self-love, I guess.

  29. Don, as always, your questions are enormously helpful, moving me from “Oh, that sounds like a good idea” to “Yes, here’s how I can do it.”

    I’ve resisted adding romance to my fiction for the simple (if stubborn) reason that I hated being told that romance was the only kind of story for a female protagonist. In classes, workshops and critique groups back in the old days, I was told that it was all very well to want to write about big themes, but a female protagonist’s central story had to be about romance. Even one of my short stories (recently published, though written in the 1990s) about a mother and her friend’s grief over a lost child was originally criticized for not having a love interest. Some even recommended that the story be about the mother’s divorce instead.

    Things are better these days. Women characters are finally allowed to have stories other than love and marriage, though I’m still wary of the idea that love must be a female MC’s main concern.

    Of course, that’s not what you’re saying. I appreciate your point about romance adding joy to a story and also your suggestions for more subtle ways to incorporate it. In my WIP, my MC’s romance is one of two main storylines and the hardest part for me to write. Your questions are helping me get past that block. Thank you.

  30. If you’ve been my FB friend long enough, and see my feed updates, then you’ve probably seen my “I hate Valentine’s Day” posts. Red roses-bleah. Diamonds-blah. V’s Day: contrived. Romance: *eye rolling* (laughing)

    My characters are all discombobulated when it comes to love and romance – they don’t get love – they don’t connect well to others – they are “deer in headlight” social beings — write what you know, right? Ha!

    Thank you for the tips! I can use them!

  31. Getting the romance right isn’t as easy as some writers seem to think. Unfortunately, too many people feel it is, which is why certain cable networks (A certain cable network) can belch out dozens of romantic movies every year like a Pez dispenser. But since they can get one right every once in a while, hopeful romantics like me keep watching because you just never know which one will make your heart sing.

    And yes, so many stories have heat but not much else. I’m tired of romances where it seems the connection is based solely on physical attraction. This usually results in such a boring “romance” that, I suppose, the writers feel they have to get the couple in the sack right away so readers/viewers don’t start questioning why they’re investing in this story in the first place.

    Yet I often feel there can be more romance &, even, sexual tension when they don’t jump into bed. Take, for instance, the Pride & Prejudice (with Keira Knightley) scene when she tells him he’s the last man she’d ever marry &, amazingly, he glances at her lips. In that look we know he wants to kiss her & she realizes she wants that too &, of course, that’s what the audience wants … but it’s not the right time & everyone knows it so he backs away. The relationship between Aragorn & Arwen in Lord of the Rings has that same pull without anything more than a few mild kisses & heated gazes.

    On the other hand, the aforementioned romance movie channel often waits until it’s too late. In an effort to hold off the kiss as long as possible, they miss the moment & we end up with an obligatory kiss at the end. I sometimes feel even the actors are thinking, “Well, I guess we have to kiss now.” And one of the last things movie writers/directors should want is for the viewer to see actors acting instead of characters engaging.

    Sorry for the booklet. Apparently, I’ve given this a lot of thought. :-)

 

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