By Ellen Butler
The framework for
romance writing includes conflict between your hero and heroine. Conflict can
entertain and carry your couple through a 70K word novel, but done incorrectly
will have your reader tossing the book aside for something better. Without the conflict
between your hero and heroine either a) your story isn’t a romance or b) Your
novel becomes a nice short story about how a couple met and got married—The
End. When writing conflict there must be a fundamental reason for your
characters to be at odds. Below are three easily made mistakes in romance
conflict creation.
The Misunderstanding - The biggest mistake in romance writing is the
creation of conflict because your characters don’t talk to each other. Maybe
they heard part of conversation and made inaccurate conjecture. This is called
The Misunderstanding which you can use for a chapter or two, but The
Misunderstanding can’t be your main source of conflict throughout an entire
story. It gets old quickly and a reader will want to reach through the pages
and slap your main characters for being so stupid.
The Love Triangle – Be very careful using a Love Triangle.
An open Love Triangle where a woman has to choose between two good men rarely
happens to adults. It’s more likely to happen to struggling teens or new
adults, but even then it’s rare. What usually causes a Love Triangle is a
significant other sleeps with a person outside of the relationship—we call that
Cheating and can certainly make for great conflict, like vase throwing
conflict, but isn’t a true Love Triangle. It’s also difficult to pull a Love
Triangle through an entire book, if you start with a Love Triangle, it needs to
end sooner rather than later. Using the Love Triangle as your conflict
throughout the entire book will also wear on your reader’s patience because it
makes your hero/heroine look like a wishy-washy flake who doesn’t know their
own mind and can’t make a decision.
The Third Party – What do I mean by this? A woman falls in
love with a man, but her annoying sister is intrusive, doesn’t have her act
together, or uses her as a doormat and the couple fight about this. Now this is
true conflict and certainly happens in real life. Families stick together and
can become enablers of bad behavior and written well it can last an entire manuscript.
However, if your character throws off the chains of the family screw up, you
need to build up to it. Don’t give me 250 pages of a very sweet character who
plays the doormat then have her stand up for herself in the last 5 pages of the
book. We need to see the character grow through the book and perceive smaller
steps being made before the big break.
___________________________________________________________________
Ellen Butler twitter
style: author, mother, wife, shoe lover, chocoholic, fashion fan, sarcastic
wit, autumn enthusiast, dancer, book worm, and good-time devotee. Ellen is an award
winning novelist living in Northern Virginia with her husband and two children.
She writes sexy, sassy romances with laugh out loud humor and edge of your seat
suspenseful women’s fiction. Her recent release includes the Love, California Style series. When she’s not writing Ellen can be found
running around after her children, giving interior decorating advice to
neighbors, or holed up in her favorite chair with a glass of wine. Ellen admits
to having a penchant for shoe shopping and is an admitted chocoholic. Stalk
Ellen At: Website: www.ellenbutler.net Twitter: @EButlerBooks
No comments:
Post a Comment