How to plot a romance novel

I was recently asked for references on how to plot a romance. As someone who’s been writing in the genre for years and reading as many books on the craft of writing as I can, I had very few recommendations for romance-specific craft books.

It’s not that romance writers don’t share how they create their stories — they are some of the most generous people with their time and knowledge. It’s just that writing romance isn’t all that different from writing any other genre of fiction (aside; perhaps, for literary fiction which doesn’t have to follow any rules).

In all genres of popular fiction, some form of story structure is used and nearly all are built on the structure of Freytag’s Pyramid.

Of course, each genre has its basic rules that are specific to that genre — Sci fi has to contain tech that hasn’t been invented yet, fantasy has creatures that don’t exist in reality (as far as we know for certain), mystery must solve some sort of quandary, and romance must contain two (or more) protagonists and the book ends with either a Happily Ever After (HEA) or a Happily For Now (HFN) where the protagonists make a commitment to each other.

While adhering to these standards, an author can plot their book anyway that makes sense to them.