Good Romance is Love Made Dangerous

A few weeks ago, fellow FTLOW author Helena Cross posted a blog on Character Sacrifice. In it she mentioned an essential part of good novel writing, “Raising the Stakes.” In reply to that post, a reader asked, “Is it necessary to raise the stakes in a romance?” 

As you guys know, I love doing requests or taking on topics people bring up. And it so happened that I was in the process of reading a ton of stuff on writing romance, some of it on this very topic. Since the answers were fresh in my mind, I jumped on the chance to offer my newly discovered insight.

So, the question. Is it necessary to raise the stakes in romance?

The simple answer is yes. But lets be clear here. When it comes to romance, the stakes are not necessarily the same kind that you would find in other genres, although they can be at times. And how high they are, as well as what kind you employ, also depends largely on the type of romance you’re writing.  

Lets start with what a romance is. A romance must have, and is, by its nature, two people falling in love. If done right, the stakes are already high. Stakes are merely what the character has to lose by obtaining or not obtaining the novel goal. What is already at stake here? A person’s heart. Really, anything they might give up in falling in love. Or lose by not obtaining the other’s love. Love, for most of us, poses a huge risk. We have plenty to put on the line. A good romance also has something else, what is known as “The Force.” 

Huh? What the hell does Star Wars have to do with this? No, not that kind of force. In romance, the Force is just another word for Conflict. It’s what stands in the way of the couple getting together, what keeps them apart.

Conflict is anything that prevents the protagonist from obtaining what they want. It’s a challenge, something standing in the way of the character reaching their goals. In any good novel, there is conflict. If you have no conflict, there is no story. In a romance, no Force, no story.

In a romance, put simply, keeping the reader interested is a matter of creating two characters we want to see fall in love, then drawing the couple closer together, then employing different techniques to keep them apart. This creates a longing in the reader to see them come together, and a worry that they will remain apart forever. And in any novel, you need something at stake. Meaning there must be something the characters stand to lose, and that loss must be something all important to them, something they can't live without.  

Another way to put that is, Romance in stories is love made dangerous. There is a great risk in the couple falling in love. Sometimes the danger is life and death. Sometimes the danger is losing one’s heart or being hurt. Whatever it is, it must be something the character can’t afford to lose without causing themselves heartache, or worse. 


It isn't enough to bring the couple closer and then pull them apart by the same sort of interference again and again. The risk must increase throughout the story in order to keep the reader interested. In short, you must raise the stakes. 

Lets use a beloved fairytale, Beauty and the Beast, for an example. I’ll use the movie, since it delves much deeper and has much higher stakes than the original concept.

The Beast must fall in love with Belle, and must earn her love in return. The issues that prevent her from loving him (his monstrous temper), or him from gaining her love (his mistaken belief that no one could love a beast, thus causing him to sabotage his chances, often with said temper) is the conflict. In Beauty and the Beast, romantically speaking, the Beast’s temper and his lack of faith in himself, his belief that as a beast, he is unworthy of love, is the Force.

With me so far? Good. Back to the stakes. Lets borrow from Beauty and the Beast again, shall we?  The Beast’s goal is to earn Belle’s love. In this story, the stakes are huge from the outset. If the Beast fails to earn her love, he will remain a beast forever. He will lose his humanity. So his humanity is what’s at stake. In the movie, Disney did an excellent job of raising the tension by using a classic manoeuvre, employing the ticking time bomb, or what’s called a time limit. The Beast not only has to fall in love with Belle and earn her love. He has to do it by his 21’rst year. And Belle arrives at the castle close enough to the deadline that it lowers his chances and makes it more difficult for him. It’s like tightening the noose. But the threat of his remaining a beast for all time would not have been enough to sustain a movie on its own, not while keeping us on the edge of our seats. So how were the stakes raised?

Well, from the outset, Disney found a way to make the situation matter more by having the curse effect, not just the Beast, but also everyone in the castle. If the Beast fails, not only will he remain a beast, but every other person in the castle will remain in an inhuman form (as inanimate objects) forever. Disney turned it from a personal conflict to a “world conflict.” The world, in this case being, not the literal world, but the world of the castle. Everyone else in the castle needs them to fall in love too.

No pressure, Beast.

So if you have a romance with plenty at stake, like this, how can you raise the stakes even more? How about how Disney did it?

About 3 quarters way through the movie, he added another apposing force to keep Belle and Beast apart. It helped that he did it when it would carry the greatest impact, right after Beast confessed his love for Belle, and was just about to win her heart. You remember the movie. After the romantic dance and Mrs’ Pots’ rendition of the now classic movie theme song (I think it was named after the movie), the two went out onto the terrace, hand in hand. Beast asks Belle if she’s happy with him. She says yes, but she misses her father. When Belle asks to see her father in the mirror, she discovers he’s lost in the woods and terribly sick. Beast has mastered his temper and brought Belle closer, but now there is a new apposing force. Something to keep them apart right at the moment before his victory. Belle was finally happy with the Beast, a step closer to love, but now she must leave him or her father could die. So her father is at stake, something she could lose if she stays. 

You all remember how it went. The Beast released her, and she was no longer his prisoner. She returned to her father. In doing this, he sacrificed his chance at happiness with Belle, as well as, seemingly, giving up the possibility of restoring his human form. This moment still works for raising the stakes, because it’s always good to raise them, not just for the protagonist, but for the antagonist, in this case, not a person, not a villain, but the force that keeps them apart. This also goes to making things worse for the characters, an essential element of good storytelling, which I mentioned in other posts.

But were the stakes raised even more once Belle left? Yes indeed. While up until now, the danger to Beast and his friends has been the psychological cost of never being human again, this is where it turns to life and death. As you know, Gaston, who, from the start, wanted Belle as his wife, paid the local psychiatrist to use Belle’s father’s claims of a Beast living in a castle as grounds for insanity, and threatened to lock him up if she didn’t marry him. This raised Belle’s personal stakes. It gave her more to lose. But then when a well meaning Belle tries to prove the existence of the Beast through his mirror, it backfires on her, and Gaston rallies the town to go after “the Monster.” Which suddenly upped the stakes for the Beast and Bell. If Belle can’t get to the Beast in time, Gaston and the villagers will kill him, and everyone in his castle. And as we saw in the movie, the rose had already begun to wilt, meaning that the end of Beast’s 21’st year is close at hand, and his chance of returning to human form will disappear forever if Belle doesn’t finally confess her love to him before the last pedal falls. This seems impossible with Belle and her father locked up, and Gaston and the villagers converging on the castle.

In the ensuing battle between the Beast and Gaston, we see just how deadly things are, just how at risk the Beast’s life is, because Gaston tries to kill him in a jealous rage. Gaston wants Belle and the Beast is in love with her. Up until the very end, the Beast’s life literally hung in the balance.

Which meant not only would he lose his life, but Belle would lose him, just when she’s learned to love him. And there is an added implication in the subtext here. If the Beast dies, that leaves Belle in Gaston’s fist. Her freedom is at risk, since it would invariably mean marrying Gaston, which, since he only wants a trophy for a wife, would cost her everything any woman holds dear.  

Now, I’ve seen plenty of romances where the stakes never get anywhere near that high, and even the emotional ones don’t go that deep. Category romances, the shorter ones turned out monthly by companies like Harlequin, don’t require as high stakes, partially because the word count restricts the time in which you can build things to that height. They also often require softer reads. Longer romances, or romances that combine genres like thriller or suspense, often have higher stakes in order to provide the high intensity the genres need. Longer, single title romances that have deeper thematic significance and stronger characterization, like Gone With the Wind, The Cowboy, Sound of Music, or Romeo and Juliet, need higher stakes, giving the characters more to lose because they seek to send a message or provide a lasting impact. A movie like Beauty and the Beast needed huge stakes because the story was intended to send a powerful and important message, to carry strong “thematic significance” for viewers.

So if you are writing a shorter category romance, or one that is intended to provide a quick read without any lasting effect, then the stakes may stay relatively low. But if you want your story to stay with the reader long after it’s over, if you want the type of book that will be talked about and remembered for years to come, then yes, high stakes are a must. And if, like Disney did, you can turn what’s at risk into a “world stakes,” so make it something the community at large cares about, then so much the better.

Raven

Saturday Shorts: Redbox Love (pt 2)

by: Ree Vera

**Click here to read Redbox Love (pt 1)**




Movie nights were always something I used to look forward to. Every Friday night my girl and I would hang out on the couch, basking in the glow of some film flickering from my crappy television set. Of course after she went and slept with my best friend, that all changed. She was now probably snuggling with him on his fancy leather sofa, watching some piece of trash action movie with bad acting and stupid lines—which I know she hates—and I was stuck renting a movie for a night in alone. With my mother.

I scowled at the concrete. The fact that it was her birthday didn’t matter. The thought was still depressing. I felt my phone vibrate and flipped it open. “Hello.”

“Honey, can you see if they have any romantic comedies? I love those.”

“Sure mom.” I rolled my eyes as two teenage girls giggled their way in front of me. Apparently the two thought they were cute enough that I wouldn’t say anything about cutting. They were not. But I wasn’t in the mood to cause a scene for a stupid spot in line for the redbox.

As my mother rambled on about what type of movie she had her heart set on, the doors to the Walgreens slid open. I’ve seen my fair share of movies. Seen the cheesy, overdone scenes where the guy first spots the woman of his dreams. Until then, I’d always snorted at them.

Never again.

There she was. Shoulder length hair the color of taffy set off a round, moon-like face with two dark eyes and full expressive eyebrows—one which arched when she spotted the lengthy line. Her lips pursed at this and she took another bite of the candy bar she held in her hand. I grinned.

The mystery woman click clacked her way towards the end of the line, which was right behind me. My mother’s voice kept rambling in my ear. “Mm hmm. Yeah.” I kept it up enough so she would think I was paying attention.

A snicker sounded in front of me and I noticed the two teenagers whispering. It was very obvious that whatever they were saying was about the woman that had just exited the store. I noticed her step falter, having obviously heard, and that’s when I realized why.

I’m not much for fashion. I’m pretty much a jeans and t-shirt kind of guy; even though my mother insists I should start ‘dressing’ up more now that I’m nearing the age of thirty. Not sure why that’s such a big deal but apparently it is. Even so, I was pretty sure high heels—sparkly ones no less—weren’t supposed to be worn with sweatpants. Very green sweatpants.

“Check if they have any of Meryl’s movies. I love her.”

I lowered the volume on my phone. “Ok.”

As the woman neared the end, her eyes caught mine. I smiled in greeting. She blinked twice, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear and then went to stand behind me without a word.

I wasn’t sure why it felt so much like rejection when she didn’t smile.

I fought the urge to turn around the entire time, sighing into the phone while the line took forever to move forward. Just before the two nuisances in front of me were up, I risked another look at her. Once again, her eyes meet mine. She had been looking at me.

I turned away, but not before noticing the bright red her face changed to. Or the way she kept tugging at her shirt. A shirt with a picture of that lame excuse for an actor who played some kind of dog that girls went nuts for. I wondered if she was embarrassed.

At last it was my turn. I touched finger to screen and scrolled through the, let’s face it, slim and sorry selection of movies. It was dark out, but I still caught the woman’s reflection in the glow of the screen. She seemed to be trying to peer over my shoulder. I swallowed a laugh and went for It’s Complicated. I thought I remembered my mother mentioning she was a fan of Meryl Streep. Before I touched the button labeled ‘Rent’ I saw the face in the screen frown. Apparently mystery woman didn’t approve of my selection.

I don’t know why I did it. It wasn’t like I was going to watch the movie with her. But I slid over to the rest of my choices until she smiled. I stifled a groan. 3:10 to Yuma. My mother was not going to be happy.

I grabbed the dvd and snapped my cell shut. In my distraction, I hadn’t realized there was no longer anyone on the other end. Then I spotted the dvd in her hand and sighed. "I'm sorry for taking so long. I didn't realize you only had a return to make."

Her eyes went wide and once again, her face blushed a fetching shade of red. “Uh, no, I mean that’s fine. No problem.”

I gazed at her a moment longer. I wanted to ask her name in the worst way. I should have, but I didn’t. Instead, I smiled at her one more time, and then walked away.

What's Love Got to do With It?

Well, if you're a romance writer--then it has a lot to do with it.

In honor of Valentine's Day and overspending on flowers, cards, and candy that will go straight to my hips--I'm dedicating this blog to Love. Well....Love scenes, anyway. Ah yes, that four letter word. It doesn't matter if you hate overuse it...It can have so many different meanings. Lead to many different things.

Point is: Love scenes will/can make or break a book.

Is it the kiss your readers have been dying to see happen? The way your hero's gaze lingers in the direction of the woman he's interested in? The revelation of secret love? r is it the full out romp-in-the-sheets frenzy that sends your hormones buzzing with excitement? Whatever your tastes, make sure you write what you feel comfortable writing. If you don't enjoy sex, or feel uncomfortable describing it on paper, then maybe you will be more prone to writing those sweet, melt your heart romances. Trust me, if you write what you don't enjoy--it's going to show. Love scenes don't always have to be detailed to the very last dirty thought--you can always end it before the clothes come off. Then again...you can always end it way, way later.

So what makes a good love scene? The trick is getting them right. I can't begin to tell you how important this is. A good love scene will add to your story. It's not something you put in just because you want it in there. That's just sex and there is a place for that...but not in romance. No, a love scene must move the plot forward, must change the people involved in it, and must serve some purpose other than getting your readers all hot and bothered.

The scene should be perfect only for the two involved in it. It can't be something that could happen with any other couple in any other story--uniqueness or tailor made scenes is key. This is where knowing your characters really comes in handy. You should know how he/she will act and what they like.

Dialogue is important to. It doesn't matter how much or how little, but use it. This can set the mood just as much as description. Real sex doesn't happen without at least a few words in between. Why should your story differ? You can really have fun with this. Teasing, dirty talk, tension building, humor. Yes, even humor! Sex doesn't always happen without some insecurity. Getting naked is sometimes embarrassing. Adding humor in it can give the mood a lighthearted lift--make things a bit more comfortable for your characters. As well as your readers.

Don't be scared to use naughty words. If that's what the scene calls for. I mean, you never have a virgin acting like a nympho. Right?  But don't fear being a little dirty. Four letter words during sex don't have to come off lewd...I've seen some great love scenes that used a good amount of this and still came out shining. (no pun intended) Also, don't use cheesy, clinical, or crude terms unless your scene calls for it. Or it's part of the character's personality. Nothing will make a reader grimace more than: "She grabbed ahold of his member, feeling her vagina react in such a way it made her heady."

Eww.

Here's an example of a love scene done well, by Madelaine Bauman, from her novel Hybrid Blood....

I felt Owen sit down next to me. His hand moved in soothing circles. “What happened back there doesn't matter right now. You're safe.” his hand moved up from my back to the nape of my neck. I shifted in the seat as I felt my legs weaken. My mouth went dry and the hot temperature of my skin became comfortable.

“What are you doing, Owen?”

He chuckled. “What's it look like to you?”

“Like you're trying to seduce me.”

“Good guess.”

I stood again, my senses dizzy. This isn't right. I met Owen's eyes and I felt the heat travel dangerously low. I clenched my hands, mentally screaming at my body to not respond like a lowborn nimal. I turned away from him. You're not a love slave anymore—you bow to no one's wishes! Still, I could feel Owen's gaze burn into my back and my thoughts spun. I heard him get up. His arms wrapped around me, pulled me to him and I bit my lip. Don't react! Be as stone.

“Do you hate me, Calias?”

I sucked in a ragged breath. “What would you say if I did?”

Owen chuckled. “We always want things that are bad for us, don't we?”

“Get away from me!” But as his mouth traced my neck, I found every cell in my body exploding. It was hard to breathe. “This isn't right, my Lord...”

“Call me that again, love.” His breath, hot against my ear, made me bite down harder on my lower lip. Do. Not. React. I was trembling. Owen slid a hand down one arm, his hand closed gently around one wrist. A crooked smile appeared. “Your heart's racing...”

“Fear.”

“Don't lie to me. That's not fear I smell.” His smile turned into a grin as he bent to kiss my neck again, inhaling deeply. The heat of his breath on my neck as his exhaled made me shift my weight from one foot to the other. His lips moved from my neck to my jaw, the touch featherlight. “You know, Calias,” I felt his teeth nip playfully at my earlobe. “have I ever told you of the greatest gift a narik can give his dasi?”

“I don't think so.” But I have a good idea of what it is. I felt my breath hitch as his hand moved up and down my stomach, teasing me. My hands twitched and I felt his hand lift my wrist to his mouth. My whole body burned with a strange, raw need. I fought his hold harder. “Owen...stop teasing me.” My voice came out a strangled moan.

“And why should I?” he laughed softly. “It's fun.”

“Fun for you perhaps...but for me it's...” I stopped, trying to think of a way to deflate this man's ego. Instead, all I could come up with was: delicious torture. Owen unlocked me from his grasp. Turning around to face him, I put my hands on his shoulders. Voice shaking, I smiled. Something felt off, even as another need—primal, instinctual—was unleashed full force. Pulling him to me, I felt his hands run down my back, sneaking up my shirt to touch bare skin. His skin was warm. So good. So wrong. I ran my hands through his hair and his lips came down on mine hard. His nails dug into my skin and I broke away to breathe, only to have him steal my breathe again. He let me go, nearly tearing my tunic and shirt off in his haste to unclothe me. I felt his mouth crush mine again and I felt his hands move to run under my thighs before he lifted me up into his arms. The heat was suffocating, but felt so wonderful as I pressed him closer to me. As I inhaled the scent of his skin, I shuddered as the heat within my stomach focused within my thighs. I felt Owen lower me onto the cot, his mouth hot on my skin. He seemed to have six pairs of hands, all running across my body, everywhere at once. But all I could smell as I tried to breathe was that smell on his skin—it made me think a strange mixture of cinnamon, soft glowing candlelight, and the warmth of his arms all at once. Dizzy, I pushed his shirt up and he muttered a curse as he fought to toss it aside.

He stopped and looked at me, his eyes alight with something wild. Untamable. He smiled. “You know, if I could stay in this tent with you forever, I would.”

“Would you be my property or would I be yours?” I felt my mouth tremble as I tried to hold in the tears.

“Calias...” he held my face in his hands and I felt his lips capture the tears. “I was angry, I wasn't thinking...I'm sorry.” I stared up at the ceiling, wanting fiercely to believe him, to forget this had ever happened. Pushing the incident to the back of my mind, I nodded and kissed him, hooking my legs around his waist...

Ha ha,  I know..I'm so rude to cut you off. :)

But you see how all these points can be worked into a love scene? Not only should it keep your readers on the edge of your seat--but even you should feel your pulse kick up by the time you're done writing it.