I Love You

CEDAR SANDERSON, MARKETING, WRITING: ART

I Love You

February 14, 2026

2–3 minutes

As it turns out there are many ways to say those three words. When it comes to some of the more famous (infamous?) here are two:

I know.
As you wish.

I was torn about doing a Valentine’s post. I’m likely not the person to be writing about romance. Not because I don’t write romance. I do, and will do so again (no one stop me!) but because Romance with the uppercase as a genre is a complex beastie I am still learning. It’s a fascinating blend of biology, psychology, and entertainment. It is also, for some people, how they pick up their understanding of what the romantic ought to be. Which is why those two lines, from different sources, hit like they do.

Mostly, what those who came up with romance novels think they want to hear is I love you. However, there are as many ways to say that as there are people. In real life? The most romantic gesture may not look like one beyond the person who is making it to the person who receives it. And if the recipient does not receive it, well, that’s a sign the relationship has a profound mismatch and may not last. No, I’m not really talking about the 5 Love Languages, although believe it or not I had to study that in an actual college class and no, it was not as a bad example. There’s some usefulness in it, if for no other reason than it teaches young’uns (we were all in our teens at the time, or not far off it) that there are more ways to say I love you.

In romance, then, which is a genre which seems to subsist on tropes, the three words are the goal of much of the plots. They must be said, and reciprocated. Personally, I think it’s more fun to have the characters act it out (not like that! Geesh… not all romance has to have steam fogging up the windows) before they say it, if they say it at all. A really solid partnership will form, and then, you get the words. Mainly, if you play it right, for the readers. The characters will know. I know.

Speaking of tropes, I was asked to write about them for Caroline Furlong’s blog, and I analyzed my last romance novella for what it contained. I can’t consciously steer a plot through all the desired tropes, but knowing what it has after the fact allows me to set up my keywords and marketing for more success of the story reaching readers. Romance readers have become canny about tropes, have favorites, and will use them as shorthand in searching to find new books they will enjoy. So it’s very useful to know (after the book is written) what tropes your work contains.

It is also useful to know when to invert the tropes. Signaling commitment with the three words might be something your characters don’t do. That will hit differently than a close-locked embrace and murmured words meant for only one other pair of ears.

6 responses to “I Love You”

Frank

February 14, 2026 at 9:50 am

Thanks for reminding me of one of our anniversaries. We were married in October by a retired Baptist minister, despite both of us being Catholic (long story). Eventually we got our marriage blessed in the Episcopal Church on February 14, so we considered ourselves to have two anniversary dates.

I’ve always appreciated Charlton Heston’s words of advice to Rush Limbaugh on his second (third?) marriage, “Just remember those three little words. I was wrong.”

I don’t read romance novels, but I’m a big fan of Princess of Mars, perhaps the closest I come because I married a woman who was smart, beautiful, and fierce. I have also been a devotee of TV series and their long-term romance plots. Yes, I would occasionally laugh at the lengths taken by series like Castle and Bones to keep their protagonists apart for years and years.

As for Sharon and me, we mostly expressed our love in poems we wrote each other over the years. Of course, with both of us being who we are, it took divine intervention to get us together, so The Princess Bride was always a favorite.

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Pam Uphoff

February 14, 2026 at 10:16 am

My problem, in writing a Romance (trying?) is to have both a good story with stuff happening *and* keeping the characters focused on each other.

Urf! Much easier to write an adventure and happen to have characters fall in love while doing stuff.

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1. Cedar Sanderson
  
  February 14, 2026 at 10:17 am
  
  This is pretty much what I do 😀
  
  Reply
2. Dorothy Grant
  
  February 14, 2026 at 10:40 am
  
  Whereas my characters set out to Do Stuff and keep falling in love with each other whether I want them to or not!
  
  …Okay, I did try to write some where they fall in love with each other… but then without my intending, Stuff Happens, and they have staying alive and trying to fix it to do…
  
  Reply
Teresa Peschel

February 14, 2026 at 12:24 pm

I thought of Robert Hayden and Those Winter Sundays.

Sundays too my father got up early
and put his clothes on in the blueblack cold,
then with cracked hands that ached
from labor in the weekday weather made
banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him.

I’d wake and hear the cold splintering, breaking.
When the rooms were warm, he’d call,
and slowly I would rise and dress,
fearing the chronic angers of that house,

Speaking indifferently to him,
who had driven out the cold
and polished my good shoes as well.
What did I know, what did I know
of love’s austere and lonely offices?

Sometimes love is very hard to recognize.

I, too, have my romance hinge on a larger plot. That’s how the world works.

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TXRed

February 14, 2026 at 12:45 pm

Once, thus far, I’ve tried writing a romance with the current beats and tropes. It didn’t work, so I scrapped it, but used some of the bits and pieces in other stories. I tend to have characters who meet, get along, have to work together, and decide over time (or at least one of the two does) that this could be something more than a friendship.

Or they end up like a true family story, where she had been a friend of the family since the not-yet-married couple met eachother. His first wife died of cancer, and after a year, the kids cornered him and said, “Dad, why don’t you marry Aunt So-and-So?” And after much talking, and hemming and hawing, he did, and everyone lived mostly happily for many years.

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