#bookinsta

1: Give the character a personality outside of the romance arc

I know this technically isn’t about writing the romance itself, but I wanted to talk about it. Too often I see characters who only exist to fall in love with the MC. If your character only exists to love the MC, try and rewrite them, or consider if they are necessary. Your love interest should feel just as real as any of the other characters! A good way to begin fleshing them out is to answer some simple questions about them. What is it that they love about the MC? What makes them swoon? How far would they go to protect someone they love? What’s their tell when they’re lying? Even such simple questions can really help bring the character to life, and not make it feel like your MC fell in love with a wooden plank.

2: Meet cute!!

This is more of a personal preference, but nothing makes me ship characters harder than a cute meeting. This doesn’t apply to all romance (especially not enemies-to-lovers), but sometimes a sweet meeting can start things off right. Maybe accidentally bumping into each other in a coffee shop, or maybe they meet while doing a mutual hobby. Whatever the case, a cute meeting can help your readers ship your two love interests from the start. At least it makes me ship characters from the start hehe.

3: Chemistry

The most important part of writing a romance is having chemistry between the love interests. However, speaking from experience, working chemistry into your story can be a challenge. A good place to start is common interests. It can give your characters something to bond over and grow close doing together. Another way to show chemistry is in dialogue. Banter and having chill one-on-one conversations can help show how your characters are growing closer or starting to fall for each other. Show some slight physical contact as well. Their fingers brushing but they won’t fully hold hands, one resting their head on the other’s shoulder. Cute little moments like that can help show chemistry.

4: Healthy. Relationships.

The one thing that always sticks out when reading romance stories is that the relationships are rarely written in a healthy way. The man is always controlling and yells at the woman, but it’s written off because he’s a “bad boy.” The woman is submissive and does whatever the men around her want. Big no! A relationship should be a marriage of equals, not one person in power controlling another. Instead of fighting and screaming over misunderstandings, let them have a mature and calm conversation. When they fight, like all couples do sometimes, instead of making it a screaming match and trying to say the most hurtful things they can, they should be able to step away and calm down before coming back to the conversation. Even a healthy couple will have an argument that gets out of hand, but when ALL your main couple does is fight and insult each other, it isn’t a very healthy relationship. Show them loving each other more than they fight each other. It’s alright to write an unhealthy/toxic relationship, as long as (in my opinion) it’s portrayed as such, and not romanticized the way books like After or 50 Shades romanticize abuse.

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