Genre Guide — Romance

Back to romance guide Remember to read the articles in the Essentials section. These cover all the essential skills you’ll need as a self-published author. They are not just for beginners either. They go in depth on how to successfully write, publish, and market your own books. Online Resources This list from Evie Alexander has 150 tropes that are common in romance novels – https://eviealexanderauthor.com/150-romance-novel-tropes/ For a ton of great ideas and discussion on various tropes and clichés from the world of romance we love The Romance Tropes Thesaurus. Romancing The Beat is a great breakdown of how romance novels...

For this exercise, you should have a document open where you can write. Now copy the text in the box and paste it into that document. This will be the blueprint  for your story. You'll fill it in as you go through the exercise and end up with a basic outline for a romance novel.* You may also want to post your story outline in the forums to get some ideas from other forum members. 

This blueprint reads more like a beat sheet than some of our other genres. That is because it's much easier to write the same romance book (but different) over and over than it is with most other genres. You don't have to follow this exactly, but you can if you like. 

Do you love romance? Do you wish everything in life was a meet cute? If you love romance novels, and think you can crank them out over and over with new and compelling characters, then romance is right for you. If you just heard that romance was big money, but don't really enjoy the genre, then you should probably skip it.  

Romance novels are shorter than most other genre fiction. 100,000 words is