Today Christina shares her thoughts on what makes and breaks the relationship aspect of romance reads.
Writing About Relationships…Zzzzz
If you’ve read any of my other posts, you know by now that I’ve plenty of literary pet peeves. I know, who am I to tell writers what to do? Ah, I’m a reader, that’s who I am. And that’s why I get to bash a story this girl with whom I went to college wrote. (In fairness, my own stories were quite bad as well.)
It was in a creative writing class. One particular student always showed up with stickers on her face and hot pants on her bottom half. One day she turned in such a detailed, tedious romance story that it was obvious the whole thing was absolutely. . . true. And this chick didn’t want to embellish a bit. Want to make us like your characters? Nope. Make us care if they end up together? Nuh uh. How about a conflict other than they guy just stopped calling? Nah. It included all the nuances of any university fling – one night stands and “I can’t believe he didn’t call” and gossiping to roommates about whether or not they should be together and monotonous conversations with her lover about “But you said last night that you wanted to be together and now you’re doing this?” When the time came to discuss her story, a thoughtful classmate asked, “Is this true?”
“Oh yeah,” she proudly told us. Yeah, that’s why it was so boring. Listen, I know real life romance can be way better than fiction much of the time (think I Will Plant You a Lilac Tree, by Laura Hillman), but in the event that it’s not, l think we should keep those romances between us and our diaries. That, or write a fiction piece and embellish the heck out of that boring old romance.
So let’s start writing some crafty prose about deep relationships with quirky twists and turns, and allow Kbuuk to take care of the boring parts, of publishing that is.
