Topic of the Day: Did your OCs' relationship start with friendship or butterflies? : The romance/relationship writing thread (all romance, all the time) (but sfw tho.)

[ThunderChicken]

In Wild Nights, Hot and Crazy Days, the main couple (myself and my husband) have little in common on the surface. I mean, neither of us drink, smoke, or do drugs, but other than that we’re polar opposites. I am a rugged redneck type who is into hunting, fishing, camping, building things, and classic cars. I listen to 1980’s heavy metal and don’t give a rat’s ass about fashion or brand names. He is more the city boy type, likes bars and partying, listens to modern pop music, and will gladly spend way too much money to have a brand name on his shoes or shirt. In “gay speak” I am butch and he is fem.

And we fit so perfectly together. This coming July will mark 25 years together for us, and will also mark our 7th wedding anniversary. We just plain get along. We never fight (and I mean that literally, in 25 years the most serious arguments we’ve had were over what to eat for supper). We love each other and we are also each other’s best friends.

[Leyelle]

For me, i think the hardest part of writing romance is avoiding redundancy. when similar emotions appear again and again, it can be tricky to find a unique way to express them every single time. It's easier from story to story, as different characters have different personalities and ways of reacting, but within one story, I have to keep in mind little subtle ways each scene is different to keep the originality.

[Leyelle]

Should your readers know clearly from early on how your OCs feel about each other?

I imagine in action series you want to keep it more subtle than you would in full on romances. But perhaps if you want to write from a first person-ish perspective, your lead's feelings are clear while their love interests feelings might not be, so you can 'feel' a bit of the leads hesitation or wariness about confessing.

That said, my female lead in "Damsel in the Red Dress" is 99% sure her crush likes her since before the story even starts. She's furious about it.

In "Hushabye Prince" it's probably pretty clear to the reader from day 1, but for the characters, not so much.

[yumeryuu]

I like the relationship between characters where you know they love each other dearly, but 20 chapters go by before they make out and then the scene just blows you away

[Leyelle]

A bit like mine, except i'm keeping it sfw, their feelings for each other are clear for a very long time, they've loved each other to death since they were teens, but the start of the relationship, first kiss, etc. don't take place until the second book. I hope when they do they'll be very touching/emotional moments for the readers.

[Leyelle]

Between whirlwind romances and friends to lovers stories I've done one of each now that I have "Hushabye Prince: and "Damsel in the Red Dress."

That being said, my friends to lovers story was technically love at first sight, at least for one half of the couple, that took 15 years of friendship to come to a head, and Jinwoo, the lead of my whirl-wind romance is a very cautious person. It's not in his nature to have a fling or hook up with a stranger, so though the process of falling in love is pretty quick, the progression still takes time. This tends to be how I write stories. Characters have to have time to get to know each other first.

[Leyelle]

alright so on writing flirting. my leads Kattar and Alicia tend to flirt with each other quite a bit once they've confessed their feelings, and they even spent time teasing and joking with each other a little bit before that.

Now characters who flirt with somebody they just met have a tendency to come off as playboys or 'bad girls' but I personally think the line has to do with how appropriate the flirting is tbh. There is a level that I think is acceptable even for characters that are strangers, and once you pass that threshold is when you break into not-so-good character/definitely crossing a line territory.

That said, with my new series "Hushabye Prince" the female lead dares to be rather flirtatious, because a portion of her personality I wanted to base off of the idea of a coquette (a kind of hummingbird and a flirtatious woman) but I think I hope i'm writing her with a proper balance lol

[Leyelle]

Childhood Friend Romances anyone?

the leads in my second series JUST met, but in Damsel in the Red Dress they've been friends for literal ages, and I really enjoy writing and adding in little bits and pieces of their lives before now, and getting to see what their relationship has been like up to this point. (it's so cute and sweet lol)

[Leyelle]

Who made the first move in your romances?

This one is hard to nail down for "Damsel in the Red Dress" you could consider lots of small decisions made throughout the course of their lives little hints toward their interest in each other, but never overt confessions. Those were mostly on Kattar's part (chauffering Alicia to school formals and her award show) but when he admitted, more or less intentionally, that he thought she was pretty, it was Alicia who initiated the conversation where they actually took the time to talk about that.

In "Hushabye Prince," nearly, all of the agency is on Kimberly's part.

[yumeryuu]

It isn’t covered in my series at all, but mentioned briefly that my characters met in New York and lived together several years before the events in THE SOUL COLLECTORS. Sky was a student in Uni and although not mentioned at all in my novel Silas was in fact a surgeon.

The true beginning, never mentioned, is that Sky worked at a coffee shop in NYC. Silas met her there and was literally smitten the moment he met her. Super Love. Heart eyes all the way.

In the backstory touched on in the novel, Sky got sick. Silas loved her so much he made a deal with Lucifer to stay with her in Death.

Read THE SOUL COLLECTORS | Tapas Web Novels

[Leyelle]

well "Hushabye Prince" and "Damsel in the Red Dress" are both romance dramas, so it's part of the story how they got together. But a little like your story, with my series "Lion Proof" the male and female lead start the story as a married couple, so you have no idea how they got together.

[Leyelle]

In "Damsel in the Red Dress" the leads have known each other for 15 years.

In "Hushabye Prince" they literally just met each other.

In "Lion Proof" they've been married for more than ten years.

[Leyelle]

I'm a fan of the friends to lovers trope, really emotional confession scenes, and really chivalrous prince-like male leads rather than the bad boy types.

As for other romance tropes? I admit I use the method of constantly avoiding confessions, though in "Damsel in the Red Dress" it's not because of a misunderstanding. There will be a few misunderstandings in "Hushabye Prince" but...well given the male lead it only makes sense.

[Leyelle]

how do you feel about the bad boy trope and the trope of male leads who practically worship the female lead?

this could be the suave guy who's always calling her 'a princess' or the awkward guy who thinks she's a goddess.

While i generally don't do good girl bad boy romances, to a slightly milder extent then the trope usually uses i have done some things along these lines, but the closest I get to a guy who worships the female lead is Shannon Carmichael in "Damsel in the Red Dress" and it's more that he is just unabashed to tell Alicia how ridiculously beautiful she is. Jinwoo is rather dumbstruck by Kimberly, but he doesn't worship her.

[cherrystark]

I honestly hate it. I've seen it play out two different ways. The female lead "settles" for the safe guy and the bad boy shakes things up. This storyline is usually heavy into emotional cheating and the "nice" guy deserves better. There has only been a few stories I've seen where the nice guy gets treated as a member of the "team" and not an obstacle for the leads happiness.

The other way I've seen it is the standard female lead as a quiet nerdy male best friend who feels entitled to the female lead, thus perpetuating the myth about the "friend zone". The male best friend is also willing to "betray" the female lead and the bad boy at the story's climax because he's "protecting" her.

I tend to hate it because it takes away the female leads ability to choose. She's either stalked, harassed, and manipulated into a relationship that she may or may not want thus leading to her cheating, or she's foisted into a situation out of her control and the men "fight" over who gets the right to take care of her/make decisions for her.

Note - I do this think dynamic CAN work if you set it up in a way where it becomes less "I need to choose between these two hot guys" and more "I chose him because he's my home". To me, it feels more realistic to have your female lead be able to step back and look at her options objectively and pick accordingly. IF she does end up picking one of the men, have her choice acknowledge her feelings and comfort her. It can be an emotionally touch time for the female lead and definitely cements her relationship with her endgame.

[NickRowler]

how do you feel about the bad boy trope and the trope of male leads who practically worship the female lead?

I guess I like when “bad” is defined more as being unconventional. Things like motorcycles, half-shaved heads, facial piercings, don’t make someone “bad” but maybe frowned upon by conservative parents. I don’t like when bad is defined by him abusing her.

Same with a guy who “worships” her. I have seen some guys who use that to be emotional manipulative. There are women who don’t want to be treated like a queen/princess, they just want to be treated like an equal.

[Leyelle]

I agree with this. I have a friends-to-lovers romance, and it's never been based on her best friend feeling like he had a right to her.

He stepped back when she started dating someone else and he didn't even make a move when her boyfriend broke her heart, because of his respect for her. He wasn't willing to prey on her emotional vulnerability or get in the way of her relationship even for the sake of protecting her to any extent other than telling her boyfriend he needed to treat her with respect.

Admittedly, this was hard for him, but I feel like the idea that a guy is owed anything simply for treating her kindly is what takes the 'nice guy' trope into the dangerous toxic stereotype, where they aren't really nice guys at all.

And definitely, when the choice is made it revolves around her best friend being the person she knows loves and cares for her. He's safe, and that isn't settling in her book. I wanted it to be a relationship based in mutual care for the other, not in selfishness on either party or the female lead feeling like she HAS to do anything. That was her past relationship, and this is part of her recovery.

[Leyelle]

Yeah, I don't like the 'bad boy' trope if the guy is toxic or anyway, but sometimes the guy is just different and the sort of person society tokens bad because of visuals, that don't really make you bad. It's the same for 'bad girls' one of my OCs in "Hushabye Prince" is a girl with tons of tattoos and piercings, but she's also a sweet and affectionate daddy's girl who likes being treated like a princess.

And in the same vein, I totally get how being treated as a princess could be seen as manipulation. In my house hold having doors opened for the girls and heavy things carried for us has been used as a way to take away our freedom to act on our own and train us into 'well behaved girls' who let men do things for us because our femininity allegedly makes us incapable of those things, and in that vein I'd rather be treated as an equal. But if someone showed my proper respect and acknowledged my ability to care for myself when i WANT to care for myself, I wouldn't mind being pampered or treated like a princess, it's all about balance.

The male lead of my series "Damsel in the Red Dress" treated the female lead like a princess as an act of kindness which meant a lot to her because she'd been treated as baggage and charity in her teen years. But it was also unintentionally based in insecurity on his part. He never manipulated her, but he WANTED her to need him, even while going out of his way to teach her to be more independent. In a way he was fighting against his own interest with those choices.

[cherrystark]

The toxic "new guy" trope is a huge reason why I tend not to like the friends to lovers trope. At its core, the nice guy feels entitled to the girl. The core of jealousy is entitlement. Yes, a guy can be hurt/heartbroken over seeing his love with someone else, but if he's jealous - its usually because he feels entitled to her.

The only way I really enjoy the friends to lovers trope is when A and B are essentially a packaged deal couple without the romantic strings attached. They take care of each other. They support each other. They love each other so much that they don't want their dynamic to change. The guy could get realy "protective" when the girl starts to date a new guy but backs off when he gets to know the other guy and learns how good the other guy is for the girl. Because at the core, yes, he would LOVE to be her husband and the father of her babies, but if he gets to be her best friend and her kids' weird uncle - he's okay with that too. Just as long as she's still in his life and happy.

[Leyelle]

The toxic "new guy" trope is a huge reason why I tend not to like the friends-to-lovers trope. At its core, the nice guy feels entitled to the girl. The core of jealousy is entitlement. Yes, a guy can be hurt/heartbroken over seeing his love with someone else, but if he's jealous - it's usually because he feels entitled to her.

Yeah, but that's not how I'm writing it. There's no sense of entitlement between the friends, they just love each other, hence why it's friends to lovers. They've always loved each other and that love just increases over time. They want whatever will make each other happy, they just hope that what will make their best friend happy is for them to be together.