How to Start a Romance Novel
Benji Russell
NovelPad Author
Romance is one of the few genres where a reader knows how it ends before they’ve ever even heard of the book. By definition, romances end with a happily-ever-after, which means the love interests must fall blissfully in love.
If you already know the end, what makes romances fun?
Well, as any fan can tell you, the fun is seeing how these specific characters find their $ happily-ever-after$ . The format doesn’t spoil the story—it makes a promise: This will be a story about people falling in love. The rest is anyone’s guess.
When readers pick up your book, not only do they expect a happily-ever-after, but they also expect to see unique characters, unique takes on $ tropes$ , and unique takes on the $ subgenre$ . It’s your job as a writer to promise, in the book’s opening scenes, that this love story is worth their time.
How To Outline A Romance Novel
When you start writing, it can be difficult to know where you’re going. What needs to be set up? Who are these characters, and what do they want? How will the plot find them?
If you make an outline, you’ll have this laid out in front of you. You can confidently start your romance novel with a clear understanding of what your opening scene needs to accomplish.
Here’s a guide to build an outline that will hold your hand through the writing process. (Get it, because it’s a romance outline? Holding hands? Ay?)
Identify Subgenre and Tropes
Because romance readers have certain expectations, being aware of the subgenre and tropes you use will help you craft a story for your desired audience.
After you’ve decided to write a romance novel, determine your subgenre. Popular subgenres include historical romance, contemporary romance, paranormal romance, and erotic romance. Read other books within that subgenre and make note of the themes and tropes commonly explored, especially in recent releases. This will give you an idea of what readers will expect when they open your book.
You also want to identify the tropes you’ll be using. Make tropes your own, but make sure to pay them off—again, it’s about giving the readers what they want in a new, interesting way. Popular romance tropes include enemies-to-lovers, small-town romance, friends-to-lovers, and soulmates.
Flesh Out Main Characters
You’ll also want to flesh out your main characters. Besides some basic information (what they look like, their full name, etc.), identify what your characters want and need.
A ‘want’ is something the character thinks they need. A high-strung workaholic might want a promotion and a new penthouse in the big city.
A ‘need’ is what the character needs, embodied by the love interest. Our workaholic might want a promotion and a new penthouse in the big city, but throughout the book, it becomes obvious that she needs the peace her new lumberjack girlfriend brings her in small-town Nebraska.
Wants and needs should conflict with one another, and they should prevent our love interests from getting together. If the workaholic follows her wants, she’ll move away from her lumberjack girlfriend, and the romance will die. If she realizes what she needs, we get our happily-ever-after.
Plot the Story
Once you know what type of story you’re writing, which tropes you’re using, and who your characters are, it’s time to plot the story.
An easy way to do this is to use a classic three-act structure, like this:
Act I: The Beginning
Main characters are introduced. An inciting incident occurs in Act I, which is the meeting of our love interests. At the end of Act I, something forces the love interests together—this takes us into Act II.
Act II: The Middle
The second act contains the bulk of the plot. Here, the main characters learn to overcome their differences and fall in love. As the climax nears, it becomes more and more difficult for the couple to stay together and declare love for one another.
Act III: The End
This act begins with the crisis, which triggers the climax. Maybe our workaholic gets a call and learns she got her promotion, and she could choose to leave her lumberjack girlfriend and have the life she thought she wanted. A fight ensues. She might lose both!
But this is a romance, so she’s going to tell her terrible company to kick rocks and pick a peaceful life with her loving lumberjack girlfriend (duh). After the climax resolves and our characters declare their love for one another (for good), we get our happily-ever-after and a glimpse of their wonderful life together.
If you prefer a more detailed outline, try a romance beat sheet! These give a much more detailed framework to slot your plot points into, and they can especially help if you find yourself stuck figuring out what should happen next. Try $ this one$ by Jami Gold or $ this one$ by Kaye Dacus!
Are romance novel openers important?
The opening of your romance novel is your book’s real first impression. Yes, your reader gets an impression of the book from its cover and description, but the opening pages can make or break a reader’s decision to buy the book and keep reading.
Let’s take a closer look at what romance novel openers need to accomplish to engage their readers.
Hook the Reader
The ultimate goal of your opening scene is to hook the reader. If you hook your reader successfully, they’ll want to know what happens next, and they’ll buy and read the book.
Open your story with characters experiencing conflict. Meeting our main character as soon as possible helps the reader empathize with the character. Putting that character into conflict makes the reader curious about what’s going to happen to them.
This conflict in your opening scene doesn’t need to be the central conflict of your book (although it should, ideally, tie in somehow), but it should be something the main character cares about deeply so that the reader will care, too.
Establish Tone and Theme
The opening scene usually introduces the tone and themes of a story.
The tone is the general atmosphere of your story. If it’s dark and brooding, the prose and descriptions should convey that. If it’s punchy and funny, we should be able to tell from the opening scene.
The themes are the ideas with which characters grapple throughout the story—in the example with our workaholic, themes might include workaholism or materialism. Love, of course, will also be a theme in a romance novel.
The way the theme appears in the opening scene suggests how it will change by the end of the book. If we open with our workaholic getting turned down for her promotion and crying at her desk, we’ll see that her focus on corporate gain isn’t fulfilling her. So, what might? The opening promises that if you read more, you’ll find out.
Clue Readers Into Tropes and Subgenres
Opening scenes should introduce the setting as well as the characters. This means readers should know pretty quickly what $ subgenre $ this book falls into.
You can also use the opening scenes to establish what kinds of $ tropes$ you’ll be using. For example, $ The Duke Heist $ by Erica Ridley opens by telling us that a painting has been stolen from our main character’s charming family by a no-good duke. This clues the reader in on the enemies-to-lovers story to come.$ $
Good scenes to open a romance novel
With all this in mind, the primary goal of an opening scene should be to introduce the main character and give the reader promises you’ll pay off later. This means we need a sense of who our characters are, what they’re missing, and what they want.
Here are a few examples of scenes that do all of that and kick off well-loved tropes to boot!
Homecoming
Our main character is moving back home, and the book opens with their arrival.
There’s a lot an author can convey without explicitly telling the reader what’s going on. If their hometown is described with distasteful, angry description, we know our main character isn’t excited about the move.
While you might tell the reader immediately why the main character is making this unpleasant move, you can also hold back—this creates an immediate question the reader wants to solve. Why did they have to move back home? What did they give up to come here?
This scene is especially useful in small-town romances.
Stranger in a New World
This scene puts our main character in a new, unfamiliar territory. Maybe our Florida-grown protagonist moved to a new city to start a new job, so the story opens with her shivering in the unexpectedly cold Minnesota spring.
As with the previous example, let the setting provide the conflict. What challenges does our main character face in this new setting? Are they excited about this change, or are they dreading it? Show the reader what this character is like through their interactions with this new environment.
A Day in the Life
This opening scene gives us a snapshot of our main character’s everyday life. In other words, we see what the character’s life is like before they fall in love, which gives us expectations for how that romance will change things.
If you’re using this scene, avoid giving a blow-by-blow of our main character’s morning routine or office job. The way to make this scene work is by showcasing the unique aspects of our main character’s personality and life. If the setting is fantastical in some way, this works especially well, since things the character might find mundane will be interesting to the reader.
Everything’s On Fire/In Medias Res
For a scene that’s almost guaranteed to hook the reader, try opening your story in media res, or in the middle of the action.
$ The Duke Heist$ is a great example. The book opens with the painting already gone and our main characters already on a mission to retrieve it. It’s as if the reader crashes into the house alongside Chloe Wynchester, and this makes for a dynamic start. We want to know more about this awful Duke and this eccentric family.
Make sure to give your reader enough information so that they aren’t confused. The Duke Heist tells us the setting upfront, and it gives the reader enough information in the opening paragraph that, while they have lots of questions, they aren’t completely lost. You’re dropping your reader into an exciting room, but you do want them to land on their feet.
You’re ready to get started!
You’ve got an outline, a thorough understanding of what opening scenes should accomplish, and a few examples of opening scenes to hook your reader. You’re ready to start your own romance novel—don’t forget us when you’re famous!
Further reading
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