It's no secret that I'm not the most romantic person out there. I watch my fair share of sunsets while sighing and saying, "Isn't that beautiful?" but I'm about as romantic as this panda.
(Bad pickup line panda, everyone. *applause*)
Anywho--the point is, writing romance doesn't come easy for me. And when I say romance, I mean dreamy talk and gazing into each other's eyes and stuff like that. I'm fine with "raunchy." (As raunchy as YA gets, anyway.) Writing make-out scenes and piling on the sexual tension are a cinch for me. But actual romance?
Pssh...
In fact, a scene came up in DARK WATER recently that was full of romantic talk and I was stuck on it for three days. I was practically banging my head on the keyboard by the time I finally finished. (Every time Travis asked me what was wrong, I told him "mushy crap.") When I finally got through it, I didn't like what I had, but I was so happy to be done with it, I left it as is and moved on to bigger, more action-packed things.
When writing romantic scenes, I should feel like this:
(Lol. I wasted a lot of time doodling this crap for you guys.)
But this is actually how I feel:
And when you feel like rage-quitting all over the place, you're definitely not writing good romance. I blame the fact that I don't have a romantic bone in my body. Okay...that's a lie--I've got a couple romantic bones, but they're small and spongy.
But that's not going to cut it if I want to write love stories. (And I do.) So, I guess I'm going to have to up my calcium intake. (In a weird, metaphorical sense, anyway.)
What does that entail, exactly?
Well, for starters, I'm going to learn to pay close attention to the romantic parts. Not to say I skip romantic parts or throw them out immediately after reading them or anything like that. I'm just more interested in...well, we've been over my intense love of action scenes before. From now on, I'll be all but taking notes on the romance I read.
I'm planning to reread a couple old favorites and at least one I remember being not so great. This will help me get an idea of what kind of lovey-dovey stuff tugs my heartstrings and what makes me want to gag myself with a spoon.
I'm also going to buy a few new romance novels. I don't think an explanation is needed here. We all (should) know a little fresh reading is always a great thing. (Seriously. Read. All the time.)
To work myself out of the crippling corniness that plagues my romantic dialogue, I'm going to get Travis to read it with me in script form. Basically, I'll play one character, he'll play the other, and the every piece of dialogue that makes one of us bust out laughing gets some major surgery. This will probably help my little melodrama problem too.
Drabble, drabble, drabble. Drabble is defined by most (the greater interweb community, anyway) as a story, usually a piece of fanfiction, that's only 100 to 200 words long. I define drabble as "those practice stories I type up that are usually complete and utter crap, but it doesn't matter because no one will ever have to see them." I'm going to take every one of my characters that's ever been or will ever be romantically involved with one another and write random practice scenes. (Should be fun for my characters.)
All in all, I'm pretty sure this little regiment should really help me not suck so much at romance.
Now! Back to my action scene!
Have you got any tips on writing good romance?
HAPPY WRITING, LOVELIES!
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