Once again, I’d like to explore a little more of the idea that encountering an example of bad writing by someone else can actually provide an excellent opportunity to improve your own writing.  (My previous discussion about this is here.)

As a writer, it’s always important to read plenty, both for enjoyment (of course!) and to have a lot of examples to draw from of what sort of writing is to your taste.  But when you come across something that is not to your taste, it can actually be quite helpful to study it for a little bit to try to figure Why Not.  At first you might think the thing that is Bad is really obvious (e.g., This book is so boring!), but when you turn that around (How do I not write a boring book?) it can become a lot more complicated.  So then, if you stop and poke at the bad example for a while, you might find that the issue you’re looking at is actually quite specific and something you can try to do something about in your own writing (e.g., Interesting things are happening, but I don’t care about the characters (work on developing interesting and/or sympathetic characters); or, I thought this was supposed to be a romance but the heroine keeps philosophizing about death rather than fantasizing about the hero (work on setting reader expectations); or Every paragraph has so many tangents, I don’t know what to pay attention to and I Don’t Care (make sure your writing has focus or intent). Etc.)

Last time, I provided some examples of books I’d read where either the plot didn’t make sense in a satisfying way and/or the book failed to stick the landing, ultimately because the stories that were being presented seemed to be tangled up in the backstories to the stories the authors actually wanted to be writing about.

This time I’d like to talk about some examples of books with a romantic plot-line that I thought didn’t quite work.  I think all of us who either read romance or otherwise enjoy some romance worked into our stories can probably think of plenty examples that we didn’t really like, and that can be for a lot of different reasons, the first, big one being that there are a lot of different flavors of romance and no one flavor is a good fit for every reader.  After that, there’s a further long list of things that can go wrong (like comedy, romance isn’t always respected for the work that it is, but it is a lot harder than it looks), even when everything else is lined up in a way that seems like it ought to be great.  Why things went wrong in the examples I list below varies widely, but the thing that ends up sabotaged (and which is essential for a good romance) is the tension.

Case in point, example 1, the book I should have adored.  This one took me a long while to figure out and was one of those books I actually ended up reading twice because I just couldn’t put my finger on what was wrong.  All of the elements of the story were exactly what I like.  It was a fantasy-romance novel written by an author that I really like (who writes characters that are prone to being sensible over being dramatic; my personal taste is not dramatic).  It was the next book in a fantasy-romance series by this author and so far I’d really enjoyed the series—it usually puts the MCs (main characters) into some sort of dastardly mystery that needs solving, usually with some gruesome elements that need to be dealt with along the way, and this book played perfectly well to that expectation.  The two MCs were both charming in different ways and I liked them both.  They happened to both be guys, which the author hadn’t done in this series before, but for my personal taste I was counting that as a bonus.  I should have absolutely adored this book.

And perhaps I might have if it wasn’t supposed to be a romance, but the romance part of it was really meh.  And this wasn’t an issue where the romance was too ‘sweet’ for me (i.e. no sex scenes) because there were sex scenes and sexy hijinks happening on the page.  But it just wasn’t reading as sexy.  Which was really weird because I know this is a good writer who can write romance novels I think are sexy.  What is going on?

Finally, I got down to the heart of the issue, which was at the darned paragraph level.  Any time something sexy was going on, the author would tell us what was about to happen before actually describing it.  Now, sometimes that technique works great; as a writing device, there are definitely times to use it.  But it absolutely does not work when you’re trying to draw out the tension.  And for a romance to be sexy, you absolutely need the tension.  As to why this happened, I can only speculate and compare to the writer’s other romance books.  I speculate that what happened was that she, as a female author, was having a difficult time embodying her romantic characters.  There weren’t any female bodies involved in these scenes, and so she didn’t have that in that would let her write the scenes with fluidity.  Again, she’s a great writer, and I think this problem actually could have been fixed merely by going back over the text and removing those ‘this is what’s about to happen’ sentences that she was using to make her ins.  But it was super subtle and not a thing she usually has trouble with, so it got missed.

But it made for a great teaching example, and now I have actually a pretty clear lesson I can take away.  Resist telegraphing when you’re writing the in-the-moment scenes in a romance.  Preserve the tension!  (Or go back and rescue the tension if that’s what’s needed for the writing process—that is totally valid, too.)

Next example, the book of why-is-this-heroine-so-saccharine?!  So, once again, I was reading a book by another author I really like.  This time it’s a book in a new series I haven’t read before, and as a series this has a stronger emphasis on the romantic plot-line than other series I’ve read by this author (an author of fantasy and science fiction novels, this series being fantasy).  One thing this author usually does really well is create really interesting and intense MCs, so I’m kinda befuddled by the fact that it’s the MC heroine I feel is the weakest link in this book.  She’s giving off the vibe of being too perfect (FYI, characters who are too perfect can totally obliterate all the tension around them everywhere, and the female ones can be the worst because they are prone to both being too perfect and not actually doing anything).  Except that this heroine really doesn’t fit the too-perfect-heroine mold.  She’s proactive (sure she got kidnapped, but then when the hero threw her a knife to stab the bad-guy with, she stabbed that bad guy lickety-split).  She has a laundry list of personal flaws that really do make her a pretty well-rounded character (stubbornness—a great character flaw because you can use it both ways; a short fuse with her family—great for exploring interpersonal dynamics; etc.).  And yet…

And yet, this author unwittingly uncovered a new version of the too-perfect-character cliché.  This version requires two MCs, and it requires that the second MC acts like the first MC is perfect.  The author wasn’t trying to convince the readers that her heroine was perfect.  But she was trying to convince the readers that the hero fell in love with the heroine really fast.  And then stayed very firmly in love with her.  That premise can be made to work.  The problem was, this author wanted that falling-in-love-and-staying-in-love stuff to happen really fast page-count-wise.  The romance was rushed in the writing.  And then it stayed rushed, because a) this unlikely romantic pair is at the heart of the larger story the author wants to tell with this series, and b) she also has lots and lots of cool, fantasy-world, big-stakes plot that she wants to tell, too.

The funny thing is, the sexy, interpersonal scenes in this book are written with perfectly yummy amounts of tension.  It’s the larger romance arc that the tension has been sucked out of (and has sucked away a chunk of the heroine’s likeability/relatability along with it), because the author is too invested in getting these two MCs on the same side and keeping them there…so they can go off and do other, non-romance stuff.  I.e., get the romance bits out of the way so that we can proceed with the rest of this plot that’s super predicated on this romance.

Except, for a romance to really be romantic, the romance needs room to breathe, and getting the readers to really like both of the MCs is really important, arguably more important than getting the MCs to like each other.  Were I the writer of this series and trying to fix my heroine-too-saccharine problem, I could see three possible solutions:

1. Let the romance actually be in charge of the first book.  That would mean letting the two MCs actually be in conflict for a while.  I think the author tried to take this approach, throwing lots of external conflict at them, but she was so invested, long-term-plot-wise, in having the hero cleave to the heroine 100%, that the MCs themselves just weren’t touched by any of that uncertainty.  That can work fine when the romance is a side plot to the main story, but this first book in the series ended with the wedding after a pretty long several chapters of getting-ready-for-the-wedding, so it’s a romance, and to be successful the uncertainty needed to be real (for both of the MCs) or else the romantic tension isn’t there.
2. or Let the romance develop over a much longer time period.  If this author really wants both romance and an involved fantasy-quest story-line at the same time, the best way to do that is to not resolve the romance story line right away in the first book.  Let it build over many books.  This author wanted them married really fast for plot reasons, but actually lots of romance authors have come up with lots of ways to put the wedding before the love story.  I will not try to list them all here, but there are enough that even with the author really being picky with her plot needs and themes, she could have still found one that would have worked great.  Instant love was not necessary for this plot, only instant faithfulness, which isn’t nearly the same thing at all.
3. Remove the romance label from this series and let it be just a fantasy with a few romantic elements on the side (like lots of fantasy series often do).  The author could have left all of the meeting-and-falling-in-love for backstory and started things out with the marriage already done.  A bunch of things would have had to be re-worked, but it could have been done.  Or she could have structured the first book to focus even more heavily on the fantasy conflict, sprinkling the romance bits into the down time, and still ending with a wedding, but a wedding that only took up one chapter at the end, not the later third of the book.

No matter what, no matter how amazing your characters, they cannot save you if you do not commit to the needs of the genre you’ve chosen.  Neglecting those needs, unfortunately, can undermine even the very best elements of your writing.  And, almost always, those needs are going to include tension and uncertainty.  Plot requirements you might have, but don’t let them come for your uncertainty.

Final example, the professional-romance-author-who-missed.  This was a book I read quite recently (although it came out many years ago) by a very prolific author of historical romances.  I’ve read a lot of her books and they are almost always worth the read, and usually very excellent.  But, being as this author is very prolific, she is bound to have a couple that aren’t as good as the others, and this was one.

The problem was, for most of this book, the hero had amnesia.  The result, interestingly enough, was that I could detect no chemistry between the two MCs.  Which is particularly funny, because the whole novel was predicated on there being an instant, intense attraction between the two of them.  Except, because the hero had amnesia, he just couldn’t really bring himself (or any of his baggage) to any of their interactions.  The two just sort of longed at each other, until they hooked up.  (Both, of course, were crazy good looking.)  That’s really hard to pull off in a book.  Maybe you could pull it off in a film…if that film was a porno?

Later on, the author included some scenes of the two of them being really goofy with each other which came a lot closer to convincing me there was a real spark between them.  But although she did give the hero a good sense of humor from the get go, those early scenes that were supposed to be all chemistry didn’t include anything goofy.  So, again, there just wasn’t much there for the reader to hang on except being told how very pretty the two of them were.

Basic take-away from this one: amnesia is tricky.  Even though it seems like it adds a lot of mystery, it can really easily flatten the afflicted character, and cardboard cutouts are only so sexy.

So, in summation, tension is a really important aspect, not just of romances, but of lots of genres (action, mystery, horror, …).  And there are lots of ways that that tension can be sabotaged.  It can be sabotaged at the sentence or paragraph level if the author is writing from a place of uncertainty.  (But that can absolutely be cleaned up after!)  It can be sabotaged by plot-specific goals derailing the inherent, necessary uncertainty in the story arc.  (Addressing that is going to be structural, though, so strap in.)  And, at least when character interactions are really important, it can be derailed by a MC having amnesia, or otherwise not being able or allowed to bring themselves into those interactions.  (Choose your afflictions wisely, handle them with care.)

I can’t promise that I am above any or all of these fatal mistakes in my own writing (I think maybe I’ve been committing some degree of all of these examples here in one project that I’ve got in progress), but knowing there’s a problem is the first step to doing something about it.  So, onward.

And happy writing!