Adams Media - Plot Development for Romance Novels: Tips and Techniques to Get Your Story Back on Track

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One of the biggest challenges facing a new author is in keeping the focus firmly placed on the romantic relationship between the main characters. An easy way to maintain that focus is to restrict your use of subplots to those that support the romantic conflict.

Tone refers to the choice of language that you use to describe the events of your novel. All romance novels, regardless of their type and format, have a unique tone that sets them apart from other types of fiction. More specifically, romance novels inspire an emotional response in their readers, although the specific emotional response can vary. For example, some books may inspire laughter, while others may inspire sadness or fear. All, however, will inspire a sense of awe at the redemptive power of love.

Remember the English Lit professor who discovers he has a wife and a possible fraudulent manuscript on his hands? Just as the focus on the romantic relationship between the two main characters defines the book as a romance, the novels tone should also establish its genre. This tone is usually set within the books opening lines. Here is the opening for the novel in question:

He still wanted her.

Justin Stone stood in the doorway of his office and stared at the raven-haired woman sitting on top of his desk. With the telephone receiver pressed to one ear, head tilted back, short leather skirt hugging her tanned thighs, she had all the self-consciousness of a cat sunning itself in a warm spot. And he wanted her with an ache of longing that cut straight through to his core, even though he knew such a desire was wrong. She belonged in his past, not in his present. And certainly not in his future.

They had both decided that a long time ago.

(Faye Hughes, Cant Fight the Feeling)

Notice how word choices can convey poignancy, desire, longing, and regret. The specific language used here serves dual purposes. Not only does it establish mood and begin to tell the story of Justin and Morgan, it tells the reader that she is reading a romance novel, as opposed to a mystery or a science fiction novel, by establishing the tone.