Writing Clean (Romance Edition)
As someone who is a severely cynical about romantic irl, writing romance is a bit of a challenge and a catharsis.
EW
<3
EW <3
I usually find myself with two options when it comes to romance: 1) get cringed out, 2) close my eyes because it’s not clean.
“Romance is best on the pages in books and the screens of movies, because it can live nowhere else.”
—some person somewhere, and also me
I am a bit of a cynic about romance. I find so much of real life to counter everything I’ve ever seen on the screen or in books. I won’t go into detail, but it is a release and a righting of a wrong to write romance that actually makes sense to me—romance as I think it could be and not as people often do it.
It’s also great because I, personally, rarely find a romance I enjoy nowadays (show or otherwise)—mostly because every time I watch/read something it feels like being smacked with either cringe or smut or some unholy in between—and writing lets me right the wrong. At least to myself.
Now, of course, people may feel something I write is cringey or maybe “too far” for them physically but I can’t control everything nor can I control people’s perceptions of my writing or their own moral compass. What I can tell you though, is that I try very hard to do the best I can to write romance that is emotionally close, slow-burn, with some physical affection without crossing the line.
My take is multi-faceted. I am thirty years old. So I definitely see things differently than I did at age 13. At 13, I panicked about everything! And if that’s you, I totally get it. However, as you grow older, you learn how to balance between too much and nothing at all.
While I still do not like being run over by open door/closed door scenes or hyper-physical ones either, I do think in romance some things are part of the story—like a kiss (*gasps*), being close, growing closer, emotional openness—but I don’t think they need to be overdone. Often, the best romances are the ones that do the least in this area (Emma, Pride and Prejudice, The Blue Castle). Not to say no kissing, no nothing, always works, but there has to be a balance! I do my best to strike the balance between TOO MUCH, SHUT THE TV OFF and Well, that was boring, nothing happened!
What does that balance mean to me in a romance context?
No closed door scenes/no open door scenes. Case closed.
Careful about how much physical affection is implied or written. However, there will be physical affection. If that’s something that makes you uncomfortable, I suggest waiting a bit until you feel comfortable reading a passage where two characters kiss or are together in any meaningful sense. Again, that’s not to say you should be able to handle it or it’s silly if you can’t, but I encourage my audience to be their own barometer and not expose themselves to things that push them out of their comfort zone.
Careful about descriptions of a love interest. While there is character descriptions, and it’s important to know why a female/male lead might like the other, I want to avoid morbid detail. We don’t need it!
I do write emotional scenes and slow-burn romances, sometimes characters explode, sometimes they avoid, sometimes they may morally gray decisions, that’s part of writing. It’s not always a stamp of approval, but character reactions and decisions vary and we don’t always have to love what they do.
I can’t please everyone. I know this from Camp and from life in general. Recently, I’ve even received some horrible emails and reviews assuming things about me from my characters! Trust me when I say that my characters and their ideas are not always endorsements.
My grandmother once said to me, “Ronan, you can be the most beautiful, ripest peach in the entire bunch, and there will still be someone who hates peaches.” So there’s the lesson. I can do my absolute best to write a romance and write books and it still may be too much for people, not enough, or… who knows!
But I’m still going to try to fill a space that isn’t being filled as often as I wish it was.
HTCFW (and future Mirror Garden installments) will all have elements of romance, but have stories running alongside them. HTCFW is my first and, right now, my only romance as the main story, so I hope everyone enjoys it and sticks around for the future Mirror Garden books.
As always, thanks for being here!!
You guys are why I can do this and are making it soooo fun!
xx RJ
