Writers are readers. Huge readers. I started reading romances by nicking my Grandmother's Nora Roberts and LaVyrle Spencer books. Probably younger then I should've, but there were worse ways I could have been spending my childhood, rather than curled up with a good book. Now I'm writing them, isn't that a plot twist?
Ironically enough, the book I'm working on now is the sort of book that
drove me batty as a prepubescent, never-been-kissed, reader.
Character A assumes a thing, Character B is hurt, then angst, angst, angst. I remember getting so irritated they wouldn't just act like adults and talk. Pouty sulking was immature.
But as Kipling says: There are nine and sixty ways of constructing tribal lays, and every single one of them
is right.
There's far more than sixty-nine (hehe) different sources of
personal conflict and drama in romance novels.
So I'm going to narrow my focus down to the the type of romance novel when the main conflict
between the characters is based on a simple misunderstanding.
Something that could be cleared up with a little honest discussion.
But that discussion cannot happen
easily.
For romance, there's a Main Character
and an obvious (or not so obvious) Love Interest (or more than one).
As a reader, you know after roughly two hundredish pages, they're
going to kiss, have some epic sex, and live happily ever after.
Because that's what romance is. That's the promise made to you
when you pick up the book. You will wade through the trials and
tribulations of these characters and eventually, they'll find True
Love and you'll get a happy wobbly feeling when they admit how they care
about each other and throw themselves into each others arms.
But wait, but wait, why don't they just
do that from the beginning? Since they're so obviously meant for each
other? Two halves of a single soul, and all the other sickeningly
sweet cliches.
There has to be a reason they don't
boink (or boink with tender loving feelings sprinkled on top) until
after most of the book has happened, otherwise it's
just a casual hook-up without an emotional angle, unless one character
is using the casual hook-up to avoid intimacy and-- and I'm going off
target. Ahem.
After Main Character and Love Interest
meet, but before Main Character and Love Interest do the beast with
two backs, stuff has to happen. Important stuff. Plot stuff.
Character stuff. Because there has to be a reason these two (or more)
people dance around each other and hold off the boinking until the
end of the book.
If their eyes meet and they run toward each other while
At Last plays over the loudspeaker, and then commence violating public
nudity laws, it's interesting, but it's not long enough to
make a book. Something has to keep the climax (harhar) from
happening.
For dramatic reasons. But there's a fine line between drama and melodrama.
So if the reason they aren't together is
because of a smallish misunderstanding that could be sorted out with
a brief conversation over some caramel lattes on a sleepy Saturday afternoon,
then that conversation has to be danced around like negotiations with
North Korea over taking some chill pills and developing a national
hobby that doesn't involve Geiger counters.
Get me? It has to be a huge thing, with
some element of danger or apprehension surrounding it. An 'I might
die if I say this right now' sort
of atmosphere. There has to be trepidation. There has to be a solid reason the conversation absolutely could not happen in the course of the casual 'getting to know you'
chatter amid the heated glances and magnetic pull they feel toward each other.
How tedious and unfulfilling would it
be if they met, had a misunderstanding, then retired to some trendy
cafe to work things out by the end of the first chapter?
'Oh, I made an incorrect assumption about
your life/job/values/personality/relationship status/family. Allow me
to kiss away your hurt feelings.' Then nothing else happens except
sex in every possible position for the next twelve chapters?
If
you've been reading romance novels any length of time, you've read
lots and lots of sex scenes, and you know they're not nearly
as rewarding when the characters haven't bled, sweated, and wept copious
amounts of tears to get to the emotional climax, not just the physical
climax.
You want them to work for it.
You want them to clench their hands, bite their lips, and take deep,
shuddering breaths while they force the words out with their eyes
squeezed shut because they can't bear to watch the reaction to whatever they're struggling to say.
The conversation to clear up the simple
misunderstanding has to be radioactive. It has to be enormous. It
has to be
a giant, world-view shifting moment that causes stress, anxiety, fear,
nerves and running through it all has to be the faint, thin
shred of hope that maybe it might work out after all.
This is when character motivation
becomes vital. You have to know exactly why your characters would flee
to the ends of the earth rather then have that particular conversation. Then you can
make a simple misunderstanding work to keep them apart for 70k+.
So go forth and obfuscate.
