Love Stinks. Doesn't It?

Romance paperback novels are the highest selling genre in the publishing world, hands down. Now, some of you Rouge Wavers may be fans of romance novels, so I’m going to check my snobbery and keep moving. Others may scoff at such trifle. Whatever. My point is that everybody loves a good love story – whether you’ll admit it or not.

Look, everybody knows that having babies is grueling, worrisome, expensive and generally a bad idea for your health – but we keep doing it, don’t we? And we keep falling in love or wishing we were. It’s built in. That’s why writers of romantic dramas or romantic comedies are smart. It’s a genre that simply will never, ever go away.

The important thing to remember about your narrative when writing romance – even if it’s the secondary narrative – is that the fuel which keeps romance burning is yearning. In THE PAINTED VEIL, we watch, we wait, we pine for the moment when Edward Norton will finally forgive Naomi Watts and just make sweet love to her already! Even in silly, funny JUNO, we wonder – will Juno get together with Paulie Bleeker? Does she love him? And in the end, as she...

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...lies next to him, we know they’re 16 and it can’t last – but it is satisfying in a deeply primal way that there’s love in the room.

It’s like a song, you know? We have lyrics, melody, the bridge, the build up, the repeat, THE CHORUS – and man, when we get there, it’s just so beautiful. Humans are built to expect completion. We wait for the other shoe to drop. That’s why horror movies get us so damn wound up – she’s creeping, she’s creeping, she’s creeping – what is going to happen? Something has to! Pay off has to happen! That’s why some of us, myself included, felt a bit ripped off by the ending of NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN. I need closure, folks. I just do.

The fundamental formula of a good romance is that this couple really should be together – but they can’t. Circumstances, class, fate – something always stands in the way. And the question is – can this couple become a couple anyway? Even for a moment? The search for love, companionship and sex is hard-wired into each and every one of us and it drives us to procreate, to cheat, to murder, to travel great distances in our socks – anything for love.

So for you Rouge Wavers in the midst of writing a romantic script, whether that is central or just a subplot, don’t forget the magic ingredient – yearning. Play your reader and ultimately your audience like a violin. You know they want it.

Now go be nice to somebody today. Make St. Valentine proud.

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