Whether you call it Valentine’s Day or Singles Awareness Day, February 14 is a good day to write about romance. The genre, not the life event. Real-life romance is way too complicated to fit into one little blog post.

But it’s very important to most people. So we write books about it, to make sense of a complicated but important subject. Seems reasonable to me, but then again, I’m a compulsive reader; anything that leads to more reading material within my reach seems reasonable to me.

So, what is a romance? If the main plot revolves around two characters who aren’t in a romantic relationship in the first chapter, and they are in a romantic relationship (usually shown as dating, engaged, or married, according to what their world thinks makes a couple) by the end of the book, that’s a romance. Everything else is window-dressing (are they wearing dresses and tailcoats, or spacesuits) scene setting (historical, contemporary, or futuristic), or catering to specific readers’ tastes (how much and how descriptive are the sexual overtones). The thing that makes it a romance is that the characters start out not romantically committed to each other, and become romantically committed by the end of the book.

Romance can also be a secondary or B plot, in which the characters’ main goal has nothing to do with their relationship, but they end up together after they’ve saved the world. I, personally, struggle with relegating romance to second place, even when I’m writing non-romance; it keeps wanting to hog the spotlight.

Now that we’ve established what a romance is, on to story structure.

Let’s be honest- most stories have a very similar structure if you boil it down enough. Introduce protagonists who have goals, introduce conflict/antagonists that get in the way of those goals, protagonists fight to overcome whatever’s preventing them from reaching those goals, protagonists win and celebrate their happy ending.

In a romance context, that looks like this:

(Please note- you may recognize some of the following terminology from Romancing the Beat by Gwen Hayes, which I’ve found helpful for analyzing plot structure.)

First, the male main character and the female main character have to meet, and there has to be some kind of initial attraction/interest. This attraction can be very strong, very slight, practically non-existent, mutual, one-sided, even reluctant (see Darcy’s initial liking for Elizabeth Bennet). Lots of possibilities; pick one that suits the characters and the direction of the story.

Second, there’s usually at least one cycle of emotional back and forth, and often more than one. The characters move from attraction to ‘no way; I can’t stand that person,’ then back to attraction. Usually this is a result of things they say and do around each other, other events in the story, and possibly some meddling from family or friends (who might be trying to encourage or discourage the relationship according to their own motives). The is the getting to know you/falling in love part of the plot.

But there’s no plot without conflict, and that’s the third major part. The characters’ doubts overcome their attraction, and all seems lost. In less genre-specific terms, this is sometimes called the dark night of the soul. It’s the emotional low point of the story, usually about three quarters of the way through the book.

Then comes the climax. Not always that kind. This is the point when the characters have to fight for their love. It can be a real fight, if the antagonist keeping the couple apart is another person, or it can be a rescue, race against time, or any number of types of conflict. Whatever it is, the FMC and the MMC have to decide that the relationship is worth fighting for, get out of their comfort zone, strive for the right to be together, and overcome whatever’s keeping them apart.

Last is the denouement, the wrap up. This might include a mutual confession of love, if it hasn’t happened at an earlier point; it might be the moment the characters go public with their relationship (and might be surprised at the other characters’ reactions or lack thereof); it might be the moment they ride off into the sunset together and live happy ever after. Take your pick according to what works best for your specific story and characters.

Keep in mind, this is the basic plot for romance; it can be varied. Drastically, in some cases, but if you’re missing entire pieces of it, or it’s completely out of order, the readers will be confused, not emotionally satisfied. Confused readers leave bad reviews and buy fewer books from you.

There are also a zillion subcategories of romance, but they’re rather outside the scope of this post; they are many and varied, and hardly anyone actually agrees on where to draw the lines. The basic definition and plot structure should be enough to get you started.

Happy writing!