We want some characters to fall in love, but how, exactly? What steps are involved? It probably won’t work if they jump into bed immediately, as that’s not much of an arc. And it’ll seem contrived if they act like they don’t like each other despite obviously being perfect together. Maybe the key is a slow yet steadily growing attachment? Sounds like it could get boring. This week, we’re talking about how to give your romance structure!
Show Notes
Romantic Structure Does Romance Need a Happy Ending? The Luminous Dead MovementTension Worf & Dax Shield of Sparrows Godkiller Dark Winds Turning PointWillowTranscript
Generously transcribed by Phoebe. Volunteer to transcribe a podcast.
Chris: You’re listening to the Mythcreant Podcast with your hosts, Oren Ashkenazi and Chris Winkle.
[intro music]
Oren: And welcome everyone to another episode of the Mythcreants podcast. I’m Oren.
Oren: So, I’m working on a romance and I want it to have structure. So I figured I would just have the characters get into a fight over which of them should have this magic sword over and over again, ’cause those are basically child arcs, right?
Chris: Yeah, that sounds great. And then the next time you do another romance book, you can just do that again.
Oren: Yeah. That fits perfect. Nothing could go wrong. So this episode is about how to structure a romance. It is inspired by me reading The Luminous Dead by Kaitlyn Starling, in which it felt like the lovebirds were just kind of going in circles, but I didn’t really know what they should have done instead, ’cause my first thought was like, well, they should go from not liking each other to liking each other. But then my thought was, that would be like a smooth, linear increase, and that sounds boring. So surely there has to be something else to it other than them just doing the same conflict over and over again, right?
Oren: So I’m just gonna let Chris talk about this for half an hour. I’ll go get a snack or something.
Chris: Okay, so now we’re talking about structure, but we’re talking about structure with something other than tension. Not that tension isn’t also gonna be present. Usually—
Chris: There is—the way that you construct a romance just also happens to create tension, which is good, right? We want tension.
Chris: It also gives us more entertainment. But typically for, you know, a romance romance in the romance genre especially, or just romance arcs in general, usually what we’re trying to create is romantic tension, which I like to call longing, so I’m not talking about three different types of tension.
Oren: Yeah. There’s so many different types. So what’s the difference between a longing-based arc and a tension-based arc?
Chris: Okay. So let’s just look at, like, what is the story situation. So we could do a comparison for a relationship arc that is based on tension, for one that is based on longing. I’m also gonna add in desire, sexual tension.
Chris: Because it also matters a lot in romance arcs.
Chris: Typically. Not all of them obviously, but. Okay, so tension. “Oh no. My spouse is gonna be so mad when they find out what I did.”
Chris: Okay. So we have a meaningful relationship that is in danger and we’re worried about it, right? And we’re worried about how the rupture in their relationship might negatively impact the people involved. And that negative anticipation is tension.
Oren: Yeah, this is pretty familiar because, you know, we generally operate on the philosophy that readers are gonna care more about bad things that might happen than good things that might happen.
Chris: Mm-hmm. Okay. So now let’s look at longing. “My dream babe is making eyes at me, but if I touch them, we’ll both die.”
Oren: Whoa. That’s a little different.
Chris: Yeah. So basically instead we have a romantic relationship in the making, generally, that is wanted but appears unattainable. Okay. So that’s based on positive anticipation, but it also—there also has to be a barrier that it’s running into.
Chris: Right, and that barrier often creates tension, right, so we have a tension component in there, but at the end of the day, it’s about the wanting, right, it’s that positive anticipation.
Oren: Yeah. I certainly have worked with a number of clients who haven’t really put enough thought into what is it that’s keeping them from getting together right now?
Oren: And I even, you know, occasionally a published story has that problem where it’s like, all right, well, they seem to get on great and they seem to want each other. So what’s the hold up?
Chris: Which brings me to desire.
Chris: Or sexual tension.
Chris: So instead of “my dream babe is making eyes at me, but if I touch them, we’ll both die,” desire is “my dream babe is making eyes at me, and any moment we’re gonna touch.”
Oren: Mythcreants After Dark over here.
Chris: Like, if I was not intending to talk about sexual tension and desire in stories, but it’s really important to account for this component when we’re talking about romances, right?
Chris: So, you know, in this case, you know, we’re just hot and bothered over somebody and not yet sexually satisfied, and it doesn’t require the same kind of unattainableness that longing does. And so that’s why in many romance books that are, you know, particularly these spicy ones, but any ones that rely on desire in general will have a place where it’ll feel like the writer often is kind of neglecting all of these longing child arcs because they’re just relying on desire.
Chris: Because it doesn’t require those barriers. Now, I honestly think it’s better if we can also, you know, maintain longing too, because they’re all engagement factors, as best we can, right, and some readers are gonna, you know, be more drawn in by longing and more drawn in by desire. You know, different romances do cater to different people too, right? Obviously.
Oren: Yeah. With desire, do you need the same kind of barrier that you need with longing, ’cause otherwise, why don’t they just, like, bang it out.
Chris: No, that’s why they keep—no, that’s why—
Chris: —romance writers keep doing this thing where people are humping each other and yet never have sex for very flimsy reasons. Because all it requires is to not have sexual satisfaction and get hot and bothered.
Oren: Okay. So this is like scenes where they’re like, you know, eye banging each other and you’re kind of wondering, why don’t they move on to the next step? Is that what we’re talking about here?
Chris: Yeah. Okay, so the thing that I always think of, I know a lot of people love this book, is Paladin’s Grace.
Chris: Okay. So Paladin’s Grace did not particularly work very well for me personally because it was kind of hard to see why the two, you know, Grace and the Paladin—
Chris: —our two lovebirds, you know, why they weren’t getting together. Instead, we have a lot of scenes where they kind of get really close to each other and maybe almost kiss or touch each other a little bit and say over and over again, “oh, what’s wrong with me?”
Oren: Oh, yeah, that’s an interesting line. I hear that a lot in stories where the author doesn’t really have a good reason for them to not be together.
Chris: Right. It’s like they just find it very unreasonable that they are attracted to each other. It’s like, well, what do you mean, what’s wrong with you? Obviously, you’re into this person. I don’t— right. But for somebody who’s like, hot and bothered, right? It’s not gonna seem as repetitive as it did to me, who is not hot and bothered.
Chris: Right. It’s just a matter of, you know, which of these engagement factors are working? And different romances will definitely cater to different groups because taste is really important here, but, you know, typically a romance in the genre is written for people who will feel that longing. And, you know, depending on how spicy it is, desire might matter more or less.
Chris: But not everybody’s gonna feel it. And again, sometimes when I talk about this, people get a little confused because they are not used to thinking about this in terms of what the reader experience is. They think, oh, well, the characters are experiencing longing.
Chris: The characters are experiencing desire. It’s like, no. The goal is to get the reader in the same place as, you know, viewpoint character or protagonist typically. So we need the reader to get hot and bothered and we need the reader to feel longing. This isn’t just for the characters. We can make the characters feel whatever we want. It’s not gonna do it for the reader.
Oren: Right. When they get that confused between character feeling and reader feeling, is the issue that they are telling too much? They’re like, “oh, well, this character thought the other character was hot. There, I said they were into each other.” Or is it more that they just aren’t thinking about what might get the reader turned on as it were?
Chris: You know, I’m not sure, ’cause this is, you know, something that happens in my, you know, followers and students and—
Chris: —that they—I think they’re just used to thinking about it a certain way and not, you know, used to thinking of romances.
Chris: These are two people falling in love and not thinking about in terms of, well, the reader is also falling in love.
Chris: Right. That’s our goal. And obviously it’s not the same as happening in real life, but that’s how it is for all story.
Oren: Right. I mean, and you get that sometimes in other types of storytelling scenes too, right? Where sometimes the author will think, “oh, well my character is scared, therefore the reader is also scared.” And it’s like, all right. But.
Oren: You know, the character being scared does matter, but if you don’t convince me that the situation is dangerous, I’m not gonna be worried, right.
Chris: Right. By default, we want the reader to feel what our protagonist is feeling.
Chris: Right? So that they can have that kind of vicarious experience. So we need to—and just saying the protagonist feels a certain way or even showing them feel a certain way is not gonna do it. And, a lot of, you know, storytellers have to learn, “no, no. I have to show the source of their feelings so that the readers can feel it with them, ’cause the readers are then responding emotionally to what’s happening in the same way the protagonist is.”
Chris: Which is a little different. So anyway, the goal here is of course, to create, we’re talking about longing.
Chris: So there’s three different things here, which makes, you know, again, romance seems simple, right? You know, people refer to it [as] formulaic, but what’s actually going along is there’s a lot of different engagement factors that puts romance under a lot of different constraints, which—
Chris: —tends to result in, you know, certain patterns of how we maximize these things. So it’s actually a result of more complexity, not less.
Oren: I used to work with people who would sometimes kind of derisively joke that if their chosen career path didn’t work out, they would just go write romance novels. And I’m just like, go do it, man. Go do it. If you think it’s that easy, go do it. Seems like free money. You know, none of them ever did as far as I know.
Chris: So longing, again, it’s about positive anticipation and for it to work, first of all, you have to have a taste fit, okay? So you need at least one character that fits the reader’s romantic tastes, or else it’s probably not gonna work.
Oren: Yeah, that would explain one reason I was having trouble with The Luminous Dead, because I did not want that romance to come to fruition. It’s like no, main character, you get away from that lady. That lady is dangerous. That is a bad person. You don’t want to be in a relationship with them.
Chris: So, yeah, that’s a starting requirement. And then what you want is, you know, what I call the clash of the positive charge and negative charge, right? The positive charge is the things that make this relationship compelling and desirable, doing chemistry and showing bonding and mutual appreciation and just, you know, describing a person as attractive.
Oren: Mm-hmm. Yeah, sure.
Chris: Those kinds of things. Whatever, you know, tropes or personality traits this particular audience likes. And then we have our negative charge, which is that sense of unattainableness. That barrier, you know, being rejected or feeling like the love interest is inaccessible or whatever. “Oh no, they’re already betrothed to somebody.” We got some logistical barrier in there, and I think the higher both of those things are, both the positive charge and the negative charge, the more longing you get. So you build your positive charge, you build your negative charge and lightning strikes.
Oren: Okay, this makes sense so far. When I’m thinking of a normal tension arc, the way that I imagine it in relation—the child arc in relation to the through line is that I imagine that a child arc is bringing us closer to the resolution of the through line while also seeming like it’s gonna be harder for the protagonist to get, you know, the thing they’re trying to get to win the day in some way or another. Like, you know, if you have a child arc where the protagonist gets a magic sword, you need to usually temper that by like, “oh no, getting the magic sword also awakened the evil army that’s gonna conquer your city or something,” ’cause otherwise it’s like, “oh, they have a magic sword, it seems like they’re doing great,” and you don’t usually want that. Is there an equivalent for that in this longing setup we’re talking about?
Chris: Yeah, so there does have to—it is very similar to tension in that there also has to be movement.
Chris: Right. Just so for tension, child arcs, again, as you described, we want to make it feel like we’ve taken a step forward towards the finish line, but now we’re making it harder in response to maintain the tension. Longing is very similar. So, you know, we might start with a situation priming the pump where, hey, let’s say love interest seems cool, but oh, it’s never gonna happen for whatever reason.
Chris: Right. And then we go back and forth, just like tension, you have like a problem or obstacle for each child arc, right? And then you go through the same, you know, turning point and resolution. For longing, we have kind of moments of bonding and moments of separation. And the separation would be like the equivalent to the obstacle or problem. So, you know, I think typically it’s almost like we start with bonding and then go to separation. So—
Chris: We have our bonding moment where they have a positive interaction and if there’s a previous barrier, it’s overcome, and we’ll talk more about the barriers ’cause it sounds like that’s the problem with the book you read.
Chris: Okay. So movement is created as we see characters A) getting to know each other, getting to care about each other more. Their interest is piqued more.
Chris: Right. And we kind of see that their relationship is developing, right. That they are moving towards having a relationship.
Chris: Like movement. Yeah. Pretty simple. And then we have, usually this comes shortly following this where, as we kind of—as they start to cozy up to each other, we have, you know, an abrupt separation, right, where their positive interaction abruptly ends, leaving readers wanting more as a new barrier asserts itself that separates them.
Chris: Right. So, and I have seen, I mean you talked about this like slow progress, I have seen some romances that seem to focus less on this kind of like strong child arc structure and have more of, kind of slow progress with, you know, and I think those are just gonna be, you know, capitalizing on longing a little less.
Oren: Yeah, I mean, that’s what I sort of think of when I’m imagining romances that are a small subplot where it just kind of feels like, yeah, these characters sort of spend a little more time together and they start to like each other more, and then they tie the knot or what have you, right? Like, that was sort of what it was like on Deep Space Nine with Worf and Dax. I don’t remember there being any big obstacles to them getting together, it was just…
Chris: Yeah, so subplots don’t really have to carry the story in the same way ’cause they’re relying on the through line for that. And so they typically don’t have a lot of this interior, or, I mean, they can have this interior structure, but it’s just less important.
Oren: Back to The Luminous Dead. I think that I’m starting to be able to diagnose some of the problems here. Beyond the fact that this romance does not match my tastes, ’cause it’s a romance where the love interest is basically super evil and really obsessed with trying to get something at the bottom of this cave and is willing to kill the protagonist to do it. And is also like, real mean. That doesn’t match my taste. But I know there are people who love these really emotionally fraught, I would say toxic romances and find them thrilling, so, sure, right? Maybe that’s just a taste mismatch.
Chris; Sounds like the sapphic version of Shield of Sparrows.
Oren: Yeah, I mean, not wrong.
Chris: That was one where it’s just like, this guy is the worst. He’s making sexually degrading comments about the protagonist and she didn’t choose to be here. He chose her and now he’s being super mean to her.
Oren: Yeah. And so as I was reading Luminous Dead and I guess, spoilers for this book, it’s been out for a while, but, so Gyre is the protagonist, and Em is her handler, you know, the woman trying to get her killed in this cave. And I can tell, as the story goes on, I can tell that Gyre is getting more and more into Em, and I know that because the narrator tells me that’s what’s happening. So I guess in that way you could see that there’s movement and you can kind of see that Em is kind of into Gyre too, so there’s some movement there, but what I think was causing me problems is that it seemed like they kept having the same arc, which was, does Em care about Gyre or does she just want to sacrifice Gyre in this cave?
Oren: And it felt like we would do that arc and it would seem like Em cares about Gyre. And then a little bit later she’d be like, okay, but Gyre, I want you to go get yourself killed in the cave.
And then we would like, start over again. I think that was, in retrospect, what made it feel like there was no movement.
Chris: Yeah, so I mean, you do have to take these problems or these barriers and break them down into pieces. Although, granted, most romances will have more than one barrier, right? Like sometimes if it’s a very character-focused romance, each character will have their own emotional problem. Trying to rely on just one barrier for an entire romance novel, for instance, that would be hard. Usually you need more than one to sustain the story.
Chris: But yeah, you do have to sort of break it down into pieces. And with these kinds of emotional character problems, it’s very similar to character arcs where sometimes people have trouble figuring out how to break down and make baby steps that, you know, bring people forward, but don’t take care of the entire problem and in this case, leave enough [of] a problem left to cause issues. So, you know, we would usually wanna see that, okay, we don’t think this person cares about me, well—
Chris: —maybe there’s certain basic courtesies that this person starts to extend.
Chris: That is a notable change from before. So, you know, let’s say they’re talking to each other while one person is in a cave, right? So now starts, you know, the person in the cave is like, stop insulting me, boss. And the boss is like, okay, you know what? I’m sorry. You’re right. That is hurtful. And then the person in the cave feels better temporarily, but that hasn’t actually resolved [the] bigger issue with, for instance, the boss sending the person the cave out to die.
So then something happens that you know, okay, even though this one aspect is better, that was like a first little baby step. Something happens that reminds the person in the cave, oh, well, I guess my boss cares about my feelings, but she still doesn’t care about my life.
Oren: Yeah. So, okay. So it’s interesting that you say that because now that you say it, I can look back and I can see what I think are attempts to do that.
Oren: And maybe, again, maybe I am just being uncharitable here because I didn’t like Em, maybe that’s what’s happening. But like, there is a bit where at first Em won’t call Gyre by name and then she starts calling her by name and there’s like a bit where she keeps wanting to inject Gyre with drugs that Gyre doesn’t wanna be injected with.
Oren: And then she stops doing that. So, you know, I can see those. I think maybe in my mind those always seemed incidental.
Oren: Right, it sort of seemed like those things just kind of happened. They didn’t seem to be the focus of arcs. It was more like eventually Em started calling Gyre by name and said she wouldn’t do the drugs anymore. Whereas the conflicts always seemed to be over the cave thing and again, maybe I’m misattributing what was happening, but that was just my impression.
Chris: Yeah, I mean, I do think with a lot of changes in character behavior, a common problem is readers want to see what the cause is, right, what is the stimulus that caused a change in behavior? And I think a lot of storytellers end up neglecting that. It’s like, oh, it’s time. We’re at the time of the story where this person should act nicer, right.
Chris: And this is kind of one of the issues I’m having with—for our Patreon book club we’re reading the book Godkiller.
Chris: And there’s a romance in there between Elo and Kissen. And you know, Kissen is like a real grump.
Oren: Yeah, but her name sounds like “kissing,” so how could she not be?
Chris: It does sound like kissing. I could not help but notice that.
Oren: Some of the names in this book are kind of funny when you say them out loud.
Chris: And then we have an incident where it’s not really his fault, but he attacks her, right. And then after they fight, she’s much warmer to him. And it’s like, why, right? And it’s not because I can’t think of anything, right. I can imagine justifications, but they’re not in there, right? So—
Chris: If they had a conversation afterwards and she was like, you know, I thought you were a coward before, but now we had this fight, I realize you’re not, and that makes me respect you more, then we would understand why she acts warmer. So maybe that’s part of the problem that you’re running into is like, well, you know, asshole boss stopped, but I don’t know why. So I didn’t feel like there was a building [of] momentum behind this relationship and you know, that kind of thing. And so the movement is not coming across very well.
Oren: I did, as we were talking, think of a recent example I’ve seen that’s a fairly straightforward way to have, you know, this kind of, you know, we’re getting closer together and then there’s a setback, and now we’re far apart again—
Oren: —that was pretty straightforward, that was from the show Dark Winds, which we’ve just started watching. And you’ve got, this is a cop drama set on the Dine Reservation in the seventies. And so the two lovebirds in season one are Jim and Bernadette. And at first their obstacle is that Bernadette’s real mean, and Jim’s pretty dismissive, so they don’t like each other very much. And then they start to warm up and they start to get past that problem. And then boom, you reveal that Jim has secretly been an FBI agent this whole time, which we knew, but Bernadette didn’t.
Oren: And that causes a new, different rift between them that has nothing to do with the fact that Jim was previously dismissive and Bernadette was previously really mean. And I was like, yeah, there you go. Now it feels like there’s been progress, but we also have a push-pull. It’s not just a steady, smooth climb to romantic bliss.
Chris: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So those [separations] sort of, they act as a hook, right, and those are typically the most powerful places for longing.
I mean, the most powerful moment is, this is why in movies, people interrupt kisses so often because that denial, like, “oh, I thought I was gonna get a kiss.” That denial is just a very powerful hook there, right? And then the bonding gives the audience some satisfaction besides creating movement, right? So we’re not just stringing people along, so it feels like they’re getting something, which is very, again, very similar to a tension child arc, where we’ve got bits of, you know, tension and satisfaction. So it works in a very similar way. But like as an example, Oren, of when you have done this before, I still remember our big COVID campaign.
Chris: That we ran largely over text while COVID was happening, ’cause we couldn’t be in person. And we ended up having four romances.
Oren: Four romances, but only with three of the characters, ’cause one player wasn’t really interested.
Chris: Three out of four players decided to romance at least one NPC, one of us romanced two.
Chris: One of us got two romances.
Oren: Which was your fault, incidentally, you started the second ship of—actually, you started both ships for that player, so.
Chris: Uhhh, yeah, I think…
Oren: It’s your fault. You did this.
Chris: I do like romance. I think I was making little suggestions. Look, there was just lots of chemistry between that player character and the big villain, okay. It was just obvious.
Oren: Yeah, it did happen.
Chris: Anyone could have seen it. But like you would set up, there’s a couple times when you would set up like, okay, let’s do a romance scene, and you would set up a date.
Chris: Right, with the NPC in question, the love interest NPC and everything would go well and there would be bonding time, and then something terrible would happen, right.
Oren: Yeah, yeah, I did do that.
Chris: Right. Like for the date with the big villain, right. They had, you know, this cutesy time studying a dark magic book together.
Oren: Hey, it was a regular magic book. The villain was just using it for dark purposes, okay. It was a legitimate piece of magical scholarship.
Chris: And then the villain started getting, you know, controlled by the big cosmic horror entity and started going kind of evil. But then we would alternate with like, Ron for like, tragic separation moment, right. So you’ve done these before, so you know how this arc goes, you know, if you think back to your just like GMing, you’ve already done it.
Oren: So what you’re telling me here is that I kind of absorbed these things without really understanding them. So I’m basically like a large GMing model. I’ve just Hoovered up all these ideas and now I’m just like, yeah, that looks about like what I’ve seen. Eh, it’ll probably work out.
Chris: I just think sometimes the knowledge is already in there somewhere and you have to connect to it, right?
Chris: It’s like the knowledge of how to do a romance child arc is already in there in your head, ’cause I’ve seen you do them.
Chris: You just had to consciously connect to that knowledge and maybe intellectualize it a little more.
Oren: Yeah. Well that’s a constant struggle for writers, right? A lot of writers understand things instinctively, but struggle to explain them. It was really interesting. I think the turning point was like the strongest example of that that I’ve ever seen, ’cause I think most authors on some level understand the concept of a turning point because when you were explaining them to me, I knew what they were. I could think of them, but I had never seen anyone explain it before.
So that’s like—there’s a lot of things like that. So it’s not surprising to me that I would, you know, have seen this enough that I kind of have a sort of instinctual understanding of it. But then when I’m trying to explain how it works, like, oh, I don’t know, maybe they’ll kiss, who knows?
Chris: Yeah. One movie I think does a surprisingly good job with its romance arcs, you do have to kind of ignore the creepy love potion.
Chris: Is the original Willow, um, between Sorsha and Madmartigan. It’s not that there’s not issues, there’s the love potion and then Sorsha’s character also turns around weirdly fast.
Chris: Right? But like, did you see how they set up the romance scenes between Madmartigan and Sorsha? You can see this pattern where Madmartigan, he’s under a love potion. He goes in her tent while she’s sleeping. She has a nightgown on.
Chris: He starts spouting all of this, like, lovespeak to her. She gets into it, right? Then people start crashing the party and he has to suddenly take off, right? So then we get the sudden separation.
Chris: Right? Later, you know, he takes her captive, the love potion is worn off, but she’s still into him and they have this—but he like, is oddly determined to take her hostage and take her with them, right? And then they have a bunch of like long stares and looks and they talk over, “what happened? You know, you said you would, you know, live in darkness without me, and then you’re just saying it went away.” Right? And then they have—and then a sudden separation when she manages to escape because she’s mad that he’s not under the love potion anymore. Right? So.
Oren: Look, I don’t like love potions really in any context, but as far as love potions go, that one is not really that bad by the standards of love potions, right?
Chris: It really isn’t. By the standards of love potion stuff, for sure.
Oren: Like nobody—like she doesn’t give it to him to try to get him into a relationship. He doesn’t do anything significant while he is under it, other than spout some poetry.
Chris: Spout some poetry. He does kiss her.
Oren: He does kiss her. All right. That’s not ideal.
Chris: So that is a non-consensual kiss, but like we’ve seen much worse. So, you know, that kind of, you know, they get up close, they do some stares, it looks like they’re about to kiss and then sudden separate.
Chris: It doesn’t have to be that dramatic, of course, to work, but that kind of, it looks like an oscillation, but again, you always wanna move forward and feel like they’re coming together and taking steps towards that eventual relationship at the end.
Oren: Well, with that, I think I more or less understand where I was having problems with the Luminous Dead, and perhaps I will be better able to elucidate these concepts in the future. So we will go ahead and call this episode to a close.
Chris: Well, if your positive charge from liking this episode is enough to overcome the barrier to supporting us on Patreon, consider going to patreon.com/mythcreants.
Oren: And before we go, I wanna thank a couple of our existing patrons. First we have Ayman Jaber. He’s an urban fantasy writer and a connoisseur of Marvel. Then we have Kathy Ferguson, who’s a professor of political theory and Star Trek. We’ll talk to you next week.
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This has been the Mythcreant podcast. Opening/closing theme, The Princess Who Saved Herself by Jonathan Coulton.
