I’m both of those things, and I’m beyond the point of being able to separate those two parts of my self. I also want to qualify here that I am not coming at this “from the perspective of a writer” or “from the perspective of a reader” but as both.

I have answers to both of those questions now and a lot more, and I’m going to detail them at length here, simply because I can. that makes their work different from non-writers? How do they do it?Īm I really “not a romance reader” or have I just not found the right sub-genre of romance that fits my taste? What are these writers actually doing with language, structure, characterization, etc. I had two types of questions I was asking as I went into this project: So, I decided that I should learn from the best: romance writers.Īnd now, one year and roughly 150 romance novels later, I suddenly find I have a lot of opinions lol. I also wanted to figure out how to string romantic tension through a whole series, and while there were lots of books on writing romance specifically, I couldn’t find anything focused on a series-level. And I felt like I wanted to learn to do it better. Writing romance that is believable, balances the right amount of tension with the right amount of steam, and progresses at the right pace while blending in a separate storyline at the same time is no joke.

The majority of the Disney princesses, for example, are main characters in romance stories, though they have been branching out somewhat in recent years.Īfter writing the fifth and sixth stories in my series, I started to feel a bit like I had no idea what I was doing. Most fairytales, especially modern retellings, are typically considered romances. I should probably start from the beginning, though.Īs you know, I have a series of fairy tale retellings set in space ( Rove City). I always used to be the type of person who said, “Oh, I don’t mind romance, but I’m not a romance reader.” I still kind of feel that way, however, my overall perspective has greatly changed.

The Daragh Deception by Kenley Davidson