If you’re a regular writer of romance or are looking to dive into this popular genre, you might be on the lookout for some stellar plot ideas. Spend any time reading and exploring the genre and you’ll know that romance is just one word for dozens of different subgenres all with their own tone and style. 

Romance tropes are the heartbeat of what makes romance novels feel like cozy sweaters you want to snuggle into.

To write a romance you need to manage three separate arcs: your main character, your love interest, and the romance itself.

Today we’re going to look at story beats to help craft your romance novel. Beats are specific points of significance that occur in stories that a) help keep the tension up and b) help drive the story forward. They can also be extremely useful in helping you map out your story before you dive into your first draft. 

If you’ve never heard the term “meet cute,” let me explain. It’s a common expression you’ll hear when talking about romance novels, movies, and shows. It’s the moment that your love interests meet for the first time, often in a cute and humorous way (though it doesn’t have to be). 

Steamy Romance author Sierra Simone talks with us about how she goes about writing characters that readers can't get enough of.

Welcome to the story craft cafe podcast. We're continuing our monthlong celebration of romance that we're calling #KissTember. Today we have husband and wife duo Jasinda and Jack Wilder and we talk about the ups and downs of the writing life, understanding your audience and delivering what that audience has come to love from your writing, the changing market and how publishing has changed over the last decade and so much more.

So you want to be a romance author. Not just a romance author, but a romance author who makes money. Well, I have good news and bad news. Which do you want first? Let’s start with the good news. The good news is that the romance genre is far and away the best-selling genre out there and the potential to earn money writing romance is pretty high. 

Love. That universal feeling that brings us all together. It’s an emotion that can destroy us or uplift us. Make us feel safe or make us feel lonely. It can give us the highest highs and the lowest lows. Love can bring down empires and love can overcome evil to save the world. Wow. That’s a lot for one little four-letter word to handle. 

What’s the difference between a great love story and a so-so love story? Romantic chemistry, that’s what. If you’ve ever read a romance novel or a book with a romantic subplot and found yourself not really caring about the relationship between the love interests, there’s a good chance the author missed out on building up that oh-so important chemistry. 

Pacing is one of those things I think only writers talk about. Before I delved into becoming a writer, I was a reader and didn’t really toss around words like “pacing.” To me, if something was wrong with a book’s “pacing,” it felt either too slow and boring or too fast and shallow for it to hold my interest. Chances are most of your readers are the same.