Do you need some guidance on how to write a contemporary romance novel? You’ve come to the right place. Check out the 10 top tips we’ve included for you below!
1. Choose the right plot formula.
How It Helps
Because the focus of a romance story is less on the plot and more on the characters, contemporary romance stories tend to follow the same patterns from author to author. This is why romance stories are so easy to read; they don’t require readers to spend too much time looking for clues or trying to unravel mysteries. Readers of romance stories simply want to follow two characters falling in love in spite of whatever comes their way, and following one of the tried-and-true romance formulas will help them do that.
How to Include It
Choose one of the most accepted plots: previously unattracted couple find themselves in love; the two lovers were fated to be together; or the protagonist finds love again. You can add your own style within these three plots, but if you deviate too much from these three basic plots, you run the risk of your writing becoming less romance and more something else.
2. Choose the right setting.
How It Helps
Contemporary romance stories tend to take place in small, unassuming modern places where there is little to fear apart from everyday annoyances. Some contemporary romances take place in big cities like New York or Los Angeles, but these stories often focus on small neighborhoods within those big cities and usually ignore any of the ‘big city’ crime drama that might realistically take place.
How to Include It
Where you choose to set your story depends on which plot formula you choose to follow. If you are doing the ‘unattracted people become lovers,’ then you may want to put your characters in a position where they have to work together or are competitors—a business office, a volunteer gig—somewhere they feel trapped interacting with each other, and others can notice their growing chemistry.
If you are writing about a fated meeting, then the setting is less important because you should be focusing on how the two characters keep meeting without trying. For this type of plot, a big city could work as a setting as it emphasizes how much fate comes into play since they keep meeting in such a big place.
If you are choosing to write about a second love, then you may want your setting to focus on a small town. Since this plot formula usually results from your protagonist being hurt in a previous relationship, moving them to a small town allows them the time and space to heal so they can be open and available for the new love of the story.
3. Create realistic characters.
How It Helps
This seems like an obvious tip, but it is especially true for romance stories because readers want the protagonist to reflect them. This is so that they can escape into the story and imagine themselves in those romantic scenes. This means the protagonist needs to be realistic in attributes and personality. This isn’t to say they can’t be exceptional or successful; they just need to be realistically so.
The same goes for the love interest. While romance novels used to be famed for having unrealistic love interests who personified ‘the perfect man,’ contemporary romance novels focus on ‘real-life love.’ This means the love interest needs to be just as realistic as the protagonist for the story to be possible.
How to Include It
Create a character profile for both your protagonist and your love interest. Include how they look, how old they are, what their job is. These are elements that you will add into your story when appropriate to help your reader picture the characters.
Above all, try to avoid stereotypes. Contemporary romance readers want real people so don’t fall into the trap of creating completely good or completely evil characters. Give them good and bad characteristics that help to create the drama and conflict of your story.
4. Create believable backstories.
How It Helps
Good backstories help develop good characters. A creative and in-depth backstory will help your readers understand the motivations behind each character. These motivations will help explain why the protagonist doesn’t immediately go after the love interest after their first meeting or vice versa. These backstories also contribute to the overall suspense of a romance story: what is it that’s holding them back from each other and how can they overcome it?
How to Include It
Write out a backstory for (at least) your protagonist and their love interest. Why is your protagonist in this place at this moment? Why is their love interest here at this moment? Are they actively looking for love? Why or why not? Is there someone or something in their past keeping them from finding love?
Then, you can use the details of these backstories throughout your story to develop the conflict and chemistry between the characters.
5. Decide on the initial meeting.
How It Helps
Romance stories live and die by the initial meeting of the protagonist and their love interest. There needs to be sparks from the start so that readers know this is the one. That initial meeting tells readers they should pay attention to this person more than any others so they can follow the characters’ journey. To do that, the initial meeting needs to be fraught with emotional chemistry and sexual tension.
How to Include It
Chemistry in romance stories tends to develop from either a sense of mystery, a sense of humor, or a sense of connection. Use a mixture of these elements in that initial encounter to show your readers there is an emotional chemistry. Combine that with comments about how physically attractive your protagonist finds the love interest, and your readers should know for sure that this character is the love interest of the story.
6. Develop the conflict.
How It Helps
Regardless of which plot formula you choose, the conflict in a romance story is always the same: the protagonist is falling for someone they don’t really want to fall for at this time. But if that were the only conflict, then it would be a very short story as all you’d have to do is have the character decide they want to be in love with this person and give into it.
Good romance stories have external factors which both push the protagonist to the love interest and also try to pull them apart. These pull factors could come from the characters’ own lives, the setting, or their personal hangups.
How to Include It
Use the backstory you created for each character to identify potential conflicts. What is it about their pasts that might come back to haunt them? Is it internal conflicts in the form of low self-confidence or imposter syndrome that’s keeping them from coming together? What external conflicts could keep them apart (i.e. past lovers, disgruntled friend or family member, a new job in a different town)?
At the same time, you should also consider what continuously pushes them together and why they might fight against it. Do they keep meeting coincidentally due to their jobs or platonic relationships? What makes them fight those coincidental meetings?
7. Craft the moment they fall in love.
How It Helps
After the initial meeting, the first love scene is the most important in a romance story. This is the moment the readers have been looking forward to the whole time: the two characters have given into their feelings for each other and come together. This doesn’t necessarily have to be a sexual love scene (although it often is), but it does have to feel natural and true, so spending time on this scene above all the others will help your romance story really land.
How to Include It
The love scene needs to be somewhere near the middle of your story. It might not be the resolution to your major conflict, but it is the most intense and exciting scene. You need to put your lovers in a situation where there is no other way but to confess their love for each other, either through a passionate kiss or a sexual encounter. But don’t just throw them together; make sure that their love has built naturally to this point and the realization that they can’t avoid it any longer is the only way forward.
8. If you do write a sex scene, match the tone of your story.
How It Helps
Readers of romance stories vary when it comes to sex scenes. There are readers who love the more graphic and descriptive sex scenes, where adjectives like ‘throbbing’ and ‘pulsing’ are found. Then there are readers who prefer the more subtle descriptions, focusing more on how the sex scene confirms the lovers’ feelings for each other rather than just the physical enjoyment.
What matters most is that the scene matches the tone of the rest of the story. If a graphic sex scene seems random or out of the blue, then it will shock your reader from their sense of escapism and remind them that this is just a story. In the same vein, if a sex scene seems too subdued, then it may feel a bit anticlimactic and leave the reader feel unfulfilled.
How to Include It
Think about the conflict and the nature of your lovers’ story prior to this point. If the story is about two characters who originally can’t stand each other but have amazing sexual tension, then a graphic sex scene might work because it’s the explosion of all the pent-up frustrations of the story preceding it. If the story is a subdued tale of two characters trying to find each other, then a graphic sex scene might seem out of place.
And don’t be afraid to avoid sex altogether if you’re uncomfortable with it. A final scene with a passionate kiss and embrace can be just as romantic as a sex scene.
9. Include a happy ending for your lovers.
How It Helps
Readers of romance stories want the lovers to get together. That is one of the reasons they read romance stories over other genres: they want to finish with a happy feeling that true love has prevailed. For this reason, lovers in contemporary romance must always come together. It wouldn’t be a romance if there was no romantic ending.
How to Include It
After you’ve decided on the initial meeting and the first love scene, write the ending before you’ve written anything else. Make sure that your lovers are happy together at this point. This will force you to avoid deviating from the love story and into some other genre, regardless of what else is happening in the plot.
Once you have those three key moments—the initial meeting, the first love scene, and the happy ending—you can focus on how the rest of the plot moves to get the characters to those moments.
10. If you want to add a twist, choose only one thing to subvert.
How It Helps
Every writer wants to put their own spin on a traditional method or idea. It’s what defines them as different from the other writers in that genre. But deviating too much can take your story off track and turn away your target audience. You have to be careful what twists you include or tropes you subvert in order to keep your story a contemporary romance and not a historical one or a romantic thriller.
How to Include It
There are very few elements you can change without changing the genre. A ‘contemporary’ romance means that you can’t change the time period: it must be in the present, but you could make the setting something exotic or even scientific.
You also can’t really add elements like werewolves or aliens as that would make it a paranormal romance, but you could have them studying legends or artifacts related to these things.
Something you could do is have the love interest die at the very end (such as Nicholas Sparks’ books, The Notebook and A Walk to Remember). While not a happy ending in the strictest sense, as long as the lovers have gotten together throughout the book, you have written a romance. This just adds a level of realism and existentialism to your story that might make your reader stop and think about what love really is.