How to Write Romantasy: Careful Balance of Magic & Love
Bella Rose Emmorey
book editor, rogue behaviorist, digital marketer, writer, brand builder, plant aunt, and cheese enthusiast.
Learning how to write romantasy is necessary. It’s not as intuitive as you would think.
If this genre followed the same conventional rules as plain ol’ romance fantasy, it wouldn’t be called romantasy. The coining of the term in itself represents the highly specific criteria readers are looking for.
It goes a step beyond meshing romance into your fantasy.
So let’s just get into how to write romantasy the way readers have come to love it.
Elements Romantasy Readers Love
The new craze in $ romantasy$ lends itself to a very specific set of traits readers are addicted to. If you pick up five highly rated novels in this $ fantasy subgenre$ , you’ll find this combo of romantasy elements:
- A good plot
- Flirty banter
- A proactive protagonist
- Well developed emotional connection
- Spice
- Quality dialogue
- High stakes
- Magic that causes problems
In fact, these are the very elements we’re going to expand on to teach you how to write romantasy. If it’s what people love, give them what they love!
How to Write Romantasy That Won’t Roll Eyes
There’s a fine line between quality romantasy and books that elicit cringes or worse, online hate spectacles. Learning how to write romantasy comes down to fulfilling reader expectations.
1. Plot
A plot within this genre is different from just throwing a romance into a fantasy story. Specifically, writing romantasy involves combining a romance plot with a fantasy plot. Even better is a romance story that simply takes place in a magical world. So long as the magic is a piece of the puzzle, it counts.
But you also need to make sure the romance isn’t full of pointless problems that could be solved through simple communication.
A good romantasy plot includes:
- Realistic stakes (more on this later)
- Conflict that impacts character growth
- Progression toward an important goal
- New and interesting characters along the way
- Excitement in both romance and other events
- Intertwined plot lines between romance and main characters’ goals
- Interesting worldbuilding and magical elements
- A resolution that ends with the couple together (or love confessed)
2. Compatible Characters
This will give us the flirty banter and the well developed emotional connection readers seek. But it’s easier said than done. You can’t create a romance based on characters who don’t really seem to go well together.
And sure, some people love the soft teddy bear sunshine trope paired with the angry grump, but you still have to give them common grounds to like each other. Enemies to lovers—one of the $ most beloved romance tropes$ —works because there are things drawing characters together despite their initial differences.
That means when you think of characters, don’t create them independently and hope they fit into the plot. Learning how to write romantasy is basically a crash course in learning how to make a great love match.
Here are a few traits necessary for romantically compatible characters:
- Matched morals and values
- Complementary strengths
- Some shared interests
- Similar enough world views
- Mutual respect
- Playfulness and sense of humor
- Emotional support
- Their own goals, motives, and desires
The characters and their dynamic will help you sell the most books here. They’ll be a core part of $ marketing your fantasy book$ , so spend time doing this right!
3. A proactive protagonist
If there’s one thing readers of this genre hate the most, it’s a main character who stop taking any action the second they get with the love interest. When a character becomes passive, the reader is uninterested.
Learning how to write romantasy involves making sure you maintain the proactive nature of your protagonist, even when they need to work with others (aka the love interest). Which means they have to make decisions and take action toward their goal.
Most often, these actions will drive a wedge between them and their love interest.
That’s where great conflict is created in romantasy, and also helps you $ avoid sagging middle syndrome$ . When the main character does things to further their other goal at the expense of a budding romance…ooooh! That’ll hook readers and pull them through to see how the couple will still get together in the end.
Romantasy Tip: Don’t be afraid to upset readers by keeping the couple apart! After they’ve displayed their desire for each other, you can separate them for a time being and it will actually make your book better.
4. Spice
Never required, but highly popular in the romantasy genre. It just can’t be that cringy crap.
Look. Let’s not beat around the bush (ha). Romantasy has grown in popularily largely because of the spice. The smut. The sex. Readers love it, particularly women. And not only are these spicy scenes more frequent in these books than in other romance novels, they also tend to be more graphic.
Because unless labeled (and written) otherwise, romatnasy is an adult subgenre. I will reiterate: ACOTAR—the book that people point to as having spearheaded romantasy growth—is not YA.
Detailed, in depth sex scenes that highlight each touch, movement, and its affect on the viewpoint character, are a staple when learning how to write romantasy. You’ll want to learn how to write sex scenes well, which mostly involves not referring to characters’ genitals as anything other than what they are. Please.
It’s not a log in his pants. It’s his boner. C’mon.
That said, you’ll want to have at least a few of these in the book, but you can get away with fewer if it’s the first book in a series so long as there are more in the following books.
5. Quality dialogue
Remember that flirty banter? It doesn’t just end there. Dialogue is one of the most potent pieces of learning how to write romantasy. The relationship develops in this space, and characterization is most easily done through what they say.
Plus, dialogue creates the most opportunity for entertainment in story. It can be unexpected, even more so than events of the plot. A lot of readers anticipate what will happen.
Hardly any think about what someone might say.
Here are some tips for writing quality dialogue in romantasy:
- Give each character a certain voice or habit when speaking
- Break up long paragraphs of speech with other commentary
- Cut greetings (no reader cares about a “hello, how are you” unless the formality is important to the world)
- Incorporate more body language
- Use dialogue to show versus tell (someone who is nervous will ramble, someone who is insecure will seek compliments, for example)
- Avoid exposition dumps in dialogue unless absolutely necessary and relevant to the plot
More than anything, consume good dialogue. I personally love sitcoms for this. Dialogue has to be punchy in these shows, and you’ll learn a lot about characterization through dialogue specifically.
6. Magic that causes problems
A lot of writers make the mistake of using magic to solve issues in fantasy novels. While magic is such a big piece of the story, it should do more harm than good. In fact, the use of and consequences of the magic will create additional conflict in the story.
This can get a little confusing, so here are a few instances to demonstrate what I mean.
1. As a character gets more skilled in magic use, the chances of them accomplishing their goal will go down. This could look like a character trying to fly under the radar of a deadly competition so they can make it home safely, only to get really good and suddenly become the biggest target.
2. A character must use their ability in desperate circumstances, but in doing so they violate a moral principle of the love interest, which drives a wedge between the couple.
3. The use of magic will give away their location to the antagonist, forcing them to find other means of solving their problems.
Romantasy Tip: If you’re having a hard time with this one, think about the ways in which using magic in a plan can still accomplish the scene’s goal, but will create additional problems afterward (perhaps related to the romantic element like in example 2 above). This is a bit of the "yes but, no and" method in story.
7. High stakes
Love often creates its own high stakes. If you’ve learned how to write romantasy well enough, this will be a natural consequence of good characters and an intriguing plot. But, it helps to make sure you spend time focusing on what each character has to lose outside of the relationship.
This has more to do with the main character’s core goal than anything else. What is it they wanted before they met their love interest?
Most romantasy’s stakes include the choice between love and what it is they wanted long before. Take this into account when crafting the plot.
Another hot tip: create moral and value-driven stakes as well. If the main character has to sacrifice something really important to who they are as a person in order to accomplish either goal, shit gets complicated!
Readers love complicated.
Learning how to write romantasy is an interesting combination of romance and fantasy, one that isn’t always easy to find a balance between. These tips will get you there! But remember to read the highly rated books to understand what readers love about this fantasy subgenre.
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