Photo by Blair Vermette.
3 EASY WAYS TO AMP UP THE ROMANCE IN YOUR WRITING
Romance touches our hearts. It makes us vulnerable. We experience feelings that warm us and connect us to our world. The stories we tell become more memorable and relevant when we incorporate romance. Romance doesn’t have to be a one-on-one love or sex relationship. Romance, in a larger sense, taps into our emotional expression of the bonds that connect us to real life, whether that is at work, in our homes, in school, at our vacation and relaxation destinations, at church, in sports, in transit, or anywhere. It’s the connection, the bond, that romance emphasizes. Here are some ideas for adding romance to your stories:
1. Add Sympathetic Weather.
Atmosphere! It’s all around us. When we breathe, we take in air that is humid and warm, or dry and cold, or moist and cold, or arid and hot or whatever! When we move through our world, weather is happening all the time.
Nothing amps up romance more than sympathetic weather. The character is confused and uncertain; the weather is uncertain with rain and then clouds and then sun and more rain. Or we have a character meeting someone for the first time, and there’s a sudden, unexpected ray of sunshine that falls across their faces, or a nearby lightning strike! The weather can accentuate what is happening.
Being lost in the desert for 40 days and nights without a speck of rain adds to the trauma of being lost. Getting stuck on an ark with rising oceans and an ongoing deluge that seems like it will never end increases tension. These are the bonds of humanity through experience. When the weather changes, there’s a corresponding feeling that can be explicated or suggested. Weather can be an omen. A rainbow after a tough day may signal better times coming.
While sympathetic weather can accentuate a character’s connection to life, uncooperative climates can signal by contrast the character’s distress or disconnection. A character feels sad and just wants to have a good cry, but it’s a beautiful day and everyone around her is cheerful. A typhoon is coming and everyone is packing and rushing about to prepare, but you have a character who blithely goes about his work without noticing.
Whether your story occurs in a day, a week, a month, a year or over a season or decades or centuries, or whatever time period, consider the weather of the moment. Keep it real, but use it to enhance, romantically, your characters’ bonds to the lives they live.
2. Try a Splash of Color.
An individual color dropped into your story can add a refreshing note. But for romance,color as in a theme is what I recommend. It can work as metaphor. Colors can be used for symbolism. They can predominate throughout the work, creating mood. Color is a powerful tool.
Publishers spend countless hours testing colors on cover art, making sure they’ve got balance and appeal and signify the correct genre based on contemporary use. But authors can use color, too. We can brighten or enrich images we’ve created. When we use color to act as metaphor, we connect to some deeper, visceral, meaning: blood-red, sickly yellow; royal blue.
We may create a character who wears only maroon, like a young man I once knew. Readers will want to know why?! A color theme can also paint the world in vivid dreamlike essence, as the yellow brick road in THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF OZ, or the raven black of Poe’s THE RAVEN.
While there are some generally prescribed meanings for color, there is no requirement that you use color as it’s been used by others. Red can mean war and hate, but it can also signify love and ardor. Yellow can be cowardice or illness, but it can also be wholesome sunshine, freedom and joy. Green can be verdant earth or aliens from outer space. Each of these colors and any other color you can possibly imagine can be used in any way with any meaning. You want to make sure to use it aptly, so that the color and meaning fit your story.
3. Treat Environment As a Character.
WUTHERING HEIGHTS would not be the same without the heath. TESS OF THE D’URBERVILLES needs the moor. DUNE depends on the barren wasteland of the planet Arrakis.
A powerful landscape, whether it is all-encompassing or just an isolated feature, connects the world of the story to the reality of life. We live at places, surrounded by our environment. We interact with it every day. To bring this to the page as a character, as an essential element involved in what is happening, is one of the most romantic possibilities the author can undertake.
Landscape, as a character, isn’t revealed all at once. Long paragraphs of description do little to breathe life into the environment. But icy streets and overhead traffic lights pushed about in the wind can chill the bone. The smell of worms after a heavy downpour, the humidity clinging to the skin and weighing down your sweater sleeves can evoke a time and place. Familiar, iconic memorials, like the Eiffel Tower or the Statue of Liberty, can ground us in a surfeit of history and recollection.
The environment as a character can be powerful, but you may not need powerful. You may just need a light touch to dance through your narrative and keep things lively and romantic.
CONCLUSION
Amp up the romance in your novel or other stories, remembering that romance in the larger sense is our bond to life. Hear the music of your words. Find the rhythm of your writing style. Use weather, colors, and the environment to facilitate the romance of your writing.