Free On Writing Romance by Leigh Michaels

writing?
What sources might be helpful during the writing process?

part two
Establishing Your Framework

three
Essential Elements

    Even if you're a seat-of-the-pants, explore-as-you-go sort of writer, there are a few things you need to know about your story before you start seriously writing chapter one. Unsuccessful romances — especially the many that writers start but never complete — stall out because the writer didn't know enough about the basic framework that holds every romance novel together.
    Though it's nearly impossible to have every detail worked out ahead of time, if you don't have a pretty good idea of your framework, you'll be apt to wander in frustration with a story that goes nowhere. Or you'll write chapter one over and over, trying to make it work, until you're heartily sick of your characters.
    So what are the basics you need to know up front?
    Let's review the definition we established for the romance novel: A romance novel is the story of a man and a woman who, while they're solving a problem that threatens to keep them apart, discover that the love they feel for each other is the sort that comes along only once in a lifetime; this discovery leads to a permanent commitment and a happy ending.
    This definition summarizes the four crucial basics that make up a romance novel:
a hero and a heroine to fall in love
a problem that creates conflict and tension between them and threatens to keep them apart
a developing love that is so special it comes about only once in a lifetime
a resolution in which the problem is solved and the couple is united
    These things are the girders that hold up your entire story. Like the steel skeleton of a skyscraper, each piece depends on the others. If one is weak or flawed, the whole structure is apt to fall down.
    What your hero and heroine have experienced in their pasts will influence how they react to the problem they face in your story. The nature of the conflict between them will influence their relationship and how the sexual tension develops. The traits that make this couple fall in love will influence what the happy ending will be. If the conflict has no satisfactory resolution, it's not going to be a truly happy ending, even if the hero and heroine fling themselves into each other's arms on the last page.
    Knowing the basics up front will keep you from reaching the middle of the book with a limp conflict, no sexual tension, and two characters who have absolutely no reason to want to be together.

HERO AND HEROINE
    Without two people to fall in love, there is no story. Since you're asking readers to spend several hours with your characters, it's important to create a hero and a heroine they want to know more about. That means the characters have to be both real (so readers can relate to them on a human level) and sympathetic (so readers feel the time they spend reading the characters' story is worthwhile).
    If the readers spend several hours reading the story, most of that time will be in the company of the heroine. So your heroine must be someone the readers can understand, like, and respect — someone they want to hang around with. Someone who seems like a real person.
    The hero must be someone the readers can picture themselves falling in love with. But you want them not just to fall in love with him — experiencing that dizzying, glorious rush of emotion — you want them to stay in love with him and believe that the heroine will be truly happy with him forever.
    The next chapter, which goes into detail about heroes and heroines and how you can develop your main characters, may be the most important chapter in this book. If your hero and heroine don't come to life for your readers — if they aren't people they care about, root for, and want to be happy — they're not likely to spend their precious time reading a book about them.
    Knowing your characters is extraordinarily important. If you don't know these people almost as well as you