Love hurts.Think back over romance novels youve loved or the genre-defining books that drive our industry. The most unforgettable stories and characters spring from crushing opposition. What we remember about romance novels is the darkness that drives them. Three hundred pages of folks being happy together makes for a hefty sleeping pill, but three hundred pages of a couple finding a way to be happy in the face of impossible odds makes our hearts soar. In darkness, we are all alone.So dont just make love, make anguish for your characters. As you structure a story, dont satisfy your heros desires, thwart them. Make sure your solutions create new problems. Nurture your characters doubts and despair. Make them earn the happy ending they want, even bettermake them deserve it. Delay and disappointment charge situations and validate character growth. Misery accompanies love. Its no accident that many of the stories we think of as timeless romances in Western Literature are fiercely tragic: Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, Cupid and Psyche the pain in them drags us back again and again, hoping that this time well find a way out of the dark.Only if you let your characters get lost will we get lost in them. And that, more than anything else, is what romance can and should do for its protagonists and its readers: lead us through the labyrinth, skirt the monstrous despair roaming its halls, and find our way into daylight.
About This Quote
About Damon Suede
Damon Suede.
Themes
- Love — Quotes exploring romantic love, compassion, and human connection