#rant of sorts

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There are four basic types of romance stories:

Stories where the romance is both the focus and the driving force (ex: The Princess Bride)
Stories where the romance is the focus, but not the driving force (ex: Tangled)
Stories where the romance is neither the focus or the driving force (ex: Star Wars)
Stories where the romance is not the focus, but is the driving force (ex: Billboard Dad)

Why is any of this important? Well, I’m a firm believer of the idea that, if you want to be good at something, you need to work at it constantly and, when it comes to writing, the work isn’t just writing. A large part of the job is thinking about stories and figuring out how they work, what makes them good, and what makes them bad. So let’s talk about what makes a good romance story/subplot and what makes a bad one.

To do this, we’re going to talk about each of the four story-types listed above. Be warned, I will not be kind to type 2.

Type 1: The Focused Romance

Stories of this type are stories that would not exist if it weren’t for the romance. Think about The Princess Bride. If we remove Buttercup’s love for Westley or vise versa, then where’s the story? Nowhere. Other events contribute to this tale, but the force behind it is the characters love for each other. No love, no story.

These types of romance stories are incredibly powerful when told right because the most interesting thing going on in the story is the romance. This means that the audience isn’t wasting their time trying to figure out other complex elements of the plot because there’s really nothing to focus on other than the characters and their fight to be together. Things that effect the plot are things that effect the couple’s ability to be together and basically nothing else.

Other Stories of this type: Much Ado About Nothing, Pride and Prejudice, Beauty and the Beast

Type 2: The Unexpected Romance

Stories of this type are stories that would probably be very different without the romance, but would still exist, they’d just be way more focused on the big event that’s actually driving the plot. This type of story is really popular in young adult fiction but, to be frank, they are both very hard to pull off and one of the main reasons teen novels get such a bad reputation.

Imagine if someone asked you to rewrite Star Wars or Harry Potter, but instead of focusing on overthrowing the empire or Lord Voldemort, your job was to tell the story of Han and Leia/Harry and Ginny becoming a couple. Welcome to what’s wrong with type two.

More often than not, these stories are distracting and hard to read because there’s something really freaking important going on other than the romance. This means that the audience either has its attention split between the romance and the big events going on or that the audience fails to care about either the big event or the romance as much as the author might want.

This doesn’t mean that any time there’s a big event going on in the story you get a story of type 2. For example, a story set during world war two would not immediately be a type two story. It depends on who the characters are and how important they are to the war. If the war would still be won without them, then it’s probably a type one.

It’s also worth noting that these stories can work, but they have to be told in a way where the romance doesn’t distract from the main plot. The romance should to serve to bring together characters that need to be brought together and/or drive characters to do what needs to be done.

A good example of this is Tangled. The driving force of Tangled is not Rapunzel and Flynn falling in love. Falling in love is just something that happens to these characters while they’re working together to get Rapunzel to see the “floating lights.” If you told the exact same story, but just had Rapunzel and Flynn becomes friends, it would still work. It just wouldn’t be as good.

Other Stories of this type: The Divergent Series (mostly Insurgent), The Mortal Instruments, The Iron Fey Series

One I actually like: The Lunar Chronicles, Tangled

Type 3: The Subplot

Stories of this type are ones where the author acknowledges that, hey, people fall in love and then decides to throw some romance into the story. The story would probably work just fine without the romance, but the romance makes the story better.

An example of this type of story would be Han and Leia from Star Wars. Their romance is organically developed and certainly adds a fun element to the story, but it’s not the story’s focus and people would still enjoy the films without it.

Other Stories of this type: Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, Uglies Series

Type 4: The Background Lovers

Stories of this type are ones where everything happens because two characters fall in love, but yet no one really cares about those characters falling in love. You normally see these types of stories happening when it’s a story about matchmakers, like Billboard Dad and yes, I’m using an Olson Twin film from my childhood simply because, when it comes to these types of stories, you rarely remember that the romance happened at all.

For the many of you that haven’t seen Billboard Dad, the plot focuses on two young girls getting their father set up with a woman and then trying split the pair up and other hijinks. Like I said, everything happens because of the romance, the story wouldn’t exist without it, but it’s not a story about lovers, it’s a story about meddlesome kids.