Writing Romance When You've Never Had Any

...That title sounds dirty for some reason. ANYWAY.

Hello, all. So I'm working on my story Dawn of Night (which I'm going to have to make a trope page for at some point), and I'm running into a bit of difficulty. This is going to be a long post, so please bear with me.

I have three main romances going on in this story, although they are not the predominant focus (that focus is on saving the world and stopping a horrible war and stuff). There are three (four?) main races in this world: humans, elves, and vampires. Humans are pretty normal but most can use magic; elves live to about 500 years, are deeply magical, and incredibly snotty; vampires live to be about 250, cannot transmit their vampirism as they are essentially a whole separate species and thus breed like normal beings, must drink blood (any blood, be it animal, elven, or human) to survive, are stronger and faster than normal humans but have no magical abilities, and burn horribly in the sunlight. The sorta-fourth race are dragons, who teamed up with humans and elves to form dragon riders and act as a worldwide peacekeeping system ala The Federation, although they are running into some PR problems as the story begins.

The first romance is between a vampire (Vin) and an elf (Ayanora). There's a war going on between dragon riders and vampires, and the vampires are winning. Actually, they're kicking the riders' asses because they have their own mutated offshoot of dragons who are stronger than the originals. However, in the middle of this giant shitstorm, this elf and vampire fall in love. Somehow. I don't know how. They knew each other before the war started, but I have no idea how to get across the attraction between the two of them without being a) heavyhanded or b) implausible.

The second romance is between Vin and Ria, the main character of the story. During the course of the war, Ayanora is killed in battle and her relationship with Vin is uncovered. He is promptly sent into exile and left to die in the wilderness. However, he manages to survive, and some time later, he meets up with Ria (who is a dragon rider and one of the last survivors) and her elf friend Evi (who happens to be Ayanora's snarky, victim-of-parental-neglect younger sister). Vin agrees to help Ria in her quest to find the last remaining dragon riders and put an end to the war. In the course of this, they end up falling for each other (Ria first, as Vin takes a while to get over the death of Ayanora and is initially very reluctant to move on).

The third romance, which is something of a Beta Couple, is between Evi and the fourth non-dragon member of their group, Dacar. Dacar is a human who was raised by prophecying elves and has an empathic link with dragons (he gets flash visions of random dragons, and during the war, this ability nearly drove him insane because he could actually feel the pain of all those dragons being brutally slaughtered). Since Evi has severe abandoment issues and all the delicacy of an axe with a bit of Tsundere, while Dacar is a CloudCuckooLander and The Ditz, they're a case of Opposites Attract.

If you've read through all that, then my sincere thanks. Here's the problem.

I've never had a romantic relationship of any kind. Never. Nothing. Not even a flirt. Because of this, I don't really know what constitutes a believable romance. With Ayanora and Vin, how do I portray their attraction and subsequent fling-escapist-love thing as believable and sympathetic? With Vin and Ria, how do I show their relationship as natural and sympathetic without the massive amounts of Unfortunate Implications, squickiness, and general masochism that normally comes with a vampire-human romance (see Twilight for EVERYTHING I'm trying to avoid), particularly since as a dragon rider, Ria is fully capable of kicking Vin's ass if he ever tried to hurt her? With Dacar and Evi, how do I make their attraction believable and keep Evi's biting snark while avoiding Evi coming across as a Jerkass?

I can't just cut the romance. It's a vital part of the story and a main drive of the character development. So yeah. Help, please?

edited 19th Jan '11 8:18:39 AM by Accela

Do you have friends in romances? Observe them. Don't necessarily ask, just observe.

It isn't that hard to do, actually, most romance is so overblown and exaggerated that it's very easy to write one without actually doing much research (sorta like writing lemons, in a way).

Basically, you have hormones (you've experienced that before?) + best friend + sibling-esque relationship = romance.

By sibling-esque, I mean a certain wavelength sharing and a certain amount of bickering.

It boggles my mind that someone can imagine a world full of dragons, elves, vampires, wars, magic, and whatnot, but can't imagine what it's like to be in love.

A recent study found that love releases the same endorphins in the brain as chocolate does. If you've ever had a pleasurable sensation, imagine that you can get it simply by spending time with a particular person. You will look for things that attract you to that person while overlooking things that would normally repel you. You will praise the things they do and the traits they possess. You may perceive traits in them that you would like them to possess, when they in fact do not possess them. You will find opportunities to speak with them, be with them, or touch them, and you may create those opportunities if they don't arise naturally. You will feel sad and/or anxious when you are away from them, and over time these feelings will intensify. You will think constantly about them. You may neglect friends, family, obligations, or old habits to indulge this new habit.

Yes, in that last phrase I deliberately used the word habit. In many ways love is like a narcotic. We won't even go into withdrawal.

Hah, believe me, I have been "in love." Or maybe it was just a three-year crush that wouldn't go away. But I've never had any kind of romantic relationship at all in my 18 years of existence. So I guess that's my problem. I have no first-hand experience of what it's like to have someone you love that way who loves you back, so I'm having a lot of trouble writing it.

I can think of plots and plan action sequences and have my characters kick ass, but I don't know how to realistically show them being in love.

And you probably can't make them realistically fight either, but no one (except for me) will notice.

Okay, so on the first couple, my thoughts went to Romeo and Juliet. Not in the 'love at first sight' interpretation, but in the 'horny kids cause a lot of problems that leads to several deaths' interpretation. Given that they already knew each other, but are now on different sides of a war is classic tragic lovers, like Romeo and Juliet.

This could also help you when Vin meets Ria. If the previous relationship was, and I'm sorry if this sounds insulting, a bit shallow you could realistically portray the grief and the start of a new relationship. Vin would be sad because of what has happened, but slowly come to realize that life goes on (but if they'd been married for 40 years, Vin could probably not function).

As for the human/vampire relationship cliché, I wouldn't worry that much. Some would deride you for it, but that's inevitable. But you're writing epic fantasy, while Twilight was urban fantasy, and that changes things a bit. Vampires are nothing new to the characters and they're not unique (you mentioned dragons and elves), so that is not what makes them stand out to the other characters. From there on you can pretty much play it as an interspecies romance. As long as you avoid the predatory behaviour of Edward Cullen you should be good.

As for the romance itself, remember that it often starts with physical attraction. From there on things can go so many different ways that you’re better off reading the love trope index.

Add zombies, that's always romantic! **is shot**

I dunno, rotting corpses asking for your brain don't seem to be pinnacles of romance to me.

@ Sidewinder, I like the "Romeo/Juliet" angle for Ayanora and Vin. I think I'd picture their relationship as something that probably wouldn't have stuck but was based more on temporarily escaping the fun and games of nearly dying every day. That works.

Still have no idea how exactly it'll start, but reading the love tropes sounds like a good idea.

I'll notice, I just won't comment.

The first thing to decide is whether you want to make your written romance romantic or realistic. To explain, the word "romantic" originally derives from the word "romanticism" which means "too good to be true." The opposite is "realism" which is used to describe when you show things as they actually are, which often means showing harsh truths that are in direct opposition to "romanticism" (but not always).

As for getting published, I think romantic romances are the way to go. On the other hand, I think realistic romances are harder to write.

As for romance, you don't have to consider people you lust after at all. Actually, I'd argue that lust gets in the way of love since lust is a type of self-gratification and love is caring about someone else's well-being (the opposite of self-gratification). In fact, when I write romance, I avoid anything sexual (even just kissing) because I think the absence of self-gratification makes their love more believable (in other words, I know they're not together solely because they're horny).

I also want to echo a pearl of wisdom from the best TV show ever, Scrubs: what makes two people right for each other isn't an absence of bickering/arguing but a willingness of both those people to keep making sacrifices for their relationship.

Oh yeah: the clearest way to show love is to make a character do something self-sacrificing for another character because an action like that is definitely for the other character's well-being. Basically, the "Social Exchange" page on wikipedia covers what to avert in order to write plausible sympathy, empathy, love, etc.

edited 20th Jan '11 8:37:59 PM by colbertimposter