To write a love story, start with two people who each want something besides each other, put a real obstacle between them, and let their attraction show in what they notice and what they risk. Unlike a romance, a love story doesn't have to end with the couple together. It can end with them apart, dead or undecided, as long as the ending grows out of who the lovers are and what they choose.
Love story or romance?
Every romance is a love story, but not every love story is a romance. Romance, the genre, promises a happy ending: happily ever after, or happy for now. A love story makes a different promise, that the relationship will matter more than almost anything else in the book.
| Romance | Love story | |
|---|---|---|
| The ending | RomanceTogether, always | Love storyTogether, apart, death or open |
| The reader's question | RomanceHow will they get together? | Love storyWill they, and what will it cost? |
| Where it's shelved | RomanceRomance | Love storyLiterary, historical, women's fiction or any genre, often as a subplot |
| Classic example | RomancePride and Prejudice | Love storyRomeo and Juliet |
The difference is easiest to see in one couple. Ben has flown in from Phoenix to sit with his dying father, who does the crossword every night. Ruth is the hospice night nurse, and she knows the answers too. Their story could end three ways:
Together. In April Ben drove back from Phoenix with the dog and a lease on a duplex six blocks from the hospice. Ruth told him it was a terrible idea and helped him carry the couch up the stairs.
Apart, both changed. Ben flew home the day after the funeral. In October a package came to the hospice for the night nurse: his father's crossword dictionary, every margin full of notes. Ruth kept it in her locker, and on slow nights she did the Sunday puzzle in pen.
Open. Ben's flight boarded at 6:10. At 6:05 his phone lit up with a photo of the Sunday crossword, finished in her block capitals, with one square left empty. He was still looking at it when they called his row.
The same couple and the same motif carry three meanings. The first says love was worth rearranging a life for, and it is the only one of the three that keeps a romance's promise: a reader who chose the book from the romance shelf would feel shortchanged by the others. The second says love changed both of them and couldn't hold them. The third hands the choice to the reader, which works only because the reader knows exactly what the empty square is asking. A love story outside romance is free to end either of those ways.
If your couple ends together and the relationship is the main plot, you are writing a romance, and the guide to writing a romance novel covers its beats, tropes and heat levels. This guide is for everything else: the love story that ends badly or bittersweetly, the one inside a thriller or a family saga, the short story about one winter.
Seven steps to a love story
- Decide what the love story is for
Is it the whole book or a thread inside another plot? Is the book about love winning, love lost, or what love costs? One sentence is enough, and it usually points to the ending that fits.
- Choose the ending before you draft
Together, apart, death or open. You can change your mind later, but drafting toward a known ending lets you plant it.
- Give each lover a life of their own
Each needs a want that predates the other person, a belief or wound, and a reason this person, of everyone, threatens or answers it. In Chapter XXIII of Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre (1847), Jane claims equality before she accepts love: “Do you think, because I am poor, obscure, plain, and little, I am soulless and heartless?” That want, to be valued on her own terms, is why she can leave him later. A character profile for each lover keeps both sides of the story alive.
- Build an obstacle with two layers
One outside them, such as a family, a marriage, a war or a secret, and one inside, such as pride, fear or loyalty. The outer layer keeps them apart. The inner one is why they would stay apart even if the door opened.
- Plan the turns
Meeting, closeness, declaration, the obstacle biting, the choice and the ending. The choice is where your ending is decided, so give it the most room.
- Draft the three scenes you can already see
You can probably already picture the first meeting, the first touch and the parting or the reunion. Write those early. They tell you what the rest of the book must set up.
- Revise for choice and cost
Check that both lovers make decisions, that the obstacle can't be fixed by one honest conversation, and that the ending follows from what they chose. Then ask beta readers where they first wanted the two together, and whether they believed the end. If you have drafted two endings, give half of them each, without saying there is another.
Choose the ending first
The ending decides what the love story means. Each of the four shapes asks something different of the chapters before it.
| Ending | What it says | Public-domain example | What it needs |
|---|---|---|---|
| EndingTogether | What it saysLove was worth what it cost | Public-domain exampleJane Austen's Persuasion (1817) | What it needsReal costs paid on the way |
| EndingApart, both changed | What it saysLove mattered, and life won | Public-domain exampleEdith Wharton's The Age of Innocence (1920) | What it needsA reason to part that readers respect |
| EndingDeath | What it saysLove was stronger, or came too late | Public-domain exampleShakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (c. 1595) | What it needsCauses the reader saw gathering |
| EndingOpen | What it saysThe question goes on | Public-domain exampleAnton Chekhov's “The Lady with the Dog” (1899) | What it needsA last image that holds both futures |
Wharton's ending shows how a parting can be a choice rather than a defeat. Decades later, Newland Archer, now 57, sits on a bench in Paris below the apartment of the woman he loved, and sends his son up alone: “It's more real to me here than if I went up,” he suddenly hears himself say. Chekhov stops even earlier. His lovers, both married, know only “that they had still a long, long road before them, and that the most complicated and difficult part of it was only just beginning.”
If you can't choose between two endings, draft both. With the novel as a Strokes project, ask agent mode to copy the final chapter as “Ending B,” write the other version there, and read each one straight after the chapter of the choice.
Obstacles that keep them apart
In a love story the obstacle does much of the plot's work. The strongest can't be cleared by one honest conversation, and each tests something different in the lovers.
| Obstacle | Example | What it tests |
|---|---|---|
| ObstacleFamily | ExampleRomeo and Juliet: the feud between Montagues and Capulets | What it testsWhether love outranks belonging |
| ObstacleMoney and advice | ExamplePersuasion: at nineteen Anne “was persuaded to believe the engagement a wrong thing,” since “Captain Wentworth had no fortune” | What it testsWhether she trusts her own judgment |
| ObstacleA secret | ExampleJane Eyre: the wedding stops in Chapter XXVI on “the existence of an impediment,” a living wife | What it testsWhether love survives the truth |
| ObstacleSociety's rules | ExampleThe Age of Innocence: Archer is engaged, then married, and Ellen is separated from her husband | What it testsWhether desire outweighs duty |
| ObstacleMarriages already made | Example“The Lady with the Dog”: Gurov and Anna meet in Yalta, both married to other people | What it testsWhether a double life can last |
An outside obstacle works best with an inside partner. By the time Persuasion begins, “more than seven years” have passed since the broken engagement and Wentworth has made his fortune, so the outer obstacle is gone. What keeps them apart now is his wounded pride and her silence. If the outer obstacle falls before the end, the inner one has to carry the story, as it does here. The guide to internal and external conflict shows how the two drive each other.
Show chemistry on the page
On the page, chemistry mostly shows as attention. Two people notice each other more sharply than they notice anyone else, and the reader watches them do it. In the strongest examples it is something they do together, not something one of them feels. Three ways to put it on the page:
Beatrice: I wonder that you will still be talking, Signior Benedick, nobody marks you.
Benedick: What, my dear Lady Disdain! Are you yet living?
Beatrice: Is it possible disdain should die while she hath such meet food to feed it as Signior Benedick?
Leonato has already warned the visitors that there is “a kind of merry war betwixt Signior Benedick and her.” Watch what each does with the other's words. She says nobody is listening to him, and her line proves she is. He answers with a name for her, Lady Disdain. She takes his word straight back and makes him its food. The mutual action is catching the other's word and returning it, and banter reads as attraction when each line picks up the last.
Romeo: If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle sin is this,
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
Juliet: Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrims' hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers' kiss.
Their first fourteen lines together make a sonnet, with the rhymes passing between them. The mutual action is offer, accept, adjust. Romeo offers an image: his hand has profaned a shrine, and his lips stand ready to make amends with a kiss. Juliet accepts the image and changes its terms, since pilgrims and saints meet “palm to palm.” Romeo follows her into the new terms (“Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?”), and by the closing couplet they are finishing each other's form: two voices falling into one rhythm before they know each other's names.
Ben had been stuck on the same clue since midnight. “Seven letters. ‘Cured, in a way.’”
“Pickled,” Ruth said, without looking up from the IV pump.
He counted on his fingers. It fit. “You do this for all the families?”
“Only the ones who hold the pen like it owes them money.” She checked his father's pulse, then tapped the folded newspaper on the nightstand. “He finished it at eleven. He's been letting you work.”
Ben looked at his father, whose eyes stayed shut and whose mouth did not quite.
She has noticed how he holds a pen, and he notices that a stranger knows his father better than he does tonight. The secret she hands him is a gift, the teasing is friction, and the obstacle, a dying man and a return flight, is in the room. For more ways to make talk carry feeling, see the dialogue examples.
Decide how much intimacy to show
How explicit to be is a choice about genre, readers and the scene's job, not a rule. Romance runs from closed-door to explicit, and the romance guide sets out its heat levels. Many love stories outside the genre cut away. Whatever you show, the scene should change something between the two people. If you choose to cut away, move the meaning out of the act and into what surrounds it:
- Write the first touch at full length. A hand, a sleeve, a shoulder. Slow down for it, because it changes the story.
- Cut at the threshold. The reader fills the gap with what you have shown them about these two.
- Put the feeling in the aftermath. What they say in the morning, what they don't, and what has changed in how they move around each other.
Later, he would remember the order of things more than the things: her keys on the radiator, the hall light she didn't turn on, the way she said his name once as a question and once as an answer. In the morning the snow had buried his rental car to the mirrors, and neither of them mentioned flights.
The last clause says what the night changed. A declaration can work the same way with no touch at all. In Chapter XXIII of Persuasion, Wentworth overhears Anne tell Captain Harville that women love longest, “when existence or when hope is gone,” and answers her in a letter written in the same room: “I can listen no longer in silence.… You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope.”
Where a love story turns
Whatever the ending, many love stories pass through similar turns. In Jane Eyre the love story starts late: Rochester doesn't appear until Chapter XII of 38, because the first part of the book is Jane's childhood, a bildungsroman before it is a love story.
| Turn | In Jane Eyre |
|---|---|
| TurnMeeting | In Jane EyreXII: his horse slips on the ice in Hay Lane, and Jane helps a gruff stranger |
| TurnCloseness | In Jane EyreXV: she wakes to smoke and puts out the fire in his bed |
| TurnDeclaration | In Jane EyreXXIII: the proposal in the orchard |
| TurnThe obstacle bites | In Jane EyreXXVI: the wedding is stopped by a living wife |
| TurnThe choice | In Jane EyreXXVII: Jane leaves Thornfield rather than stay as his mistress |
| TurnThe other offer | In Jane EyreXXXIV: St. John Rivers asks her to go to India as his wife |
| TurnThe call | In Jane EyreXXXV: she hears a voice cry “Jane! Jane! Jane!” |
| TurnThe ending | In Jane EyreXXXVII–XXXVIII: Ferndean, and marriage on equal terms |
In a tragedy the turns are the same and the choice breaks the other way. Romeo and Juliet declares itself on the balcony in Act 2, the obstacle bites when Romeo kills Tybalt in Act 3, and Juliet's choice, the friar's potion, leads to the tomb in Act 5. When the love story is a subplot, tie its turns to the main plot's. In Wilkie Collins's The Moonstone (1868), Rachel Verinder breaks with Franklin Blake because of what she saw the night the diamond vanished, so the love story can't resolve until the mystery does. For how the lovers themselves change across these turns, see the guide to the character arc.
Common love story mistakes
- Attraction as the reason. Love at first sight can start a story, but readers need to see why these two keep choosing each other.
- A prize, not a person. If one lover exists only to be won, readers are left watching one person want a prize.
- The one-conversation obstacle. A misunderstanding a single honest talk would clear makes readers impatient, not sad.
- Control written as devotion. Jealousy, surveillance and possessiveness read as warning signs, unless the book knows that is what it is showing.
- Tragedy by accident. A death the story never prepared feels like the author's hand, not fate.
Frequently asked questions
Can a love story have a sad ending?
Yes. Some of the best-known love stories end in parting or death, from Romeo and Juliet to The Age of Innocence. A sad ending works when it grows out of the lovers' own choices and the obstacle the story has built, and when readers can see the cost coming. Just don't market a sad love story as a romance.
How explicit should a love scene be?
As explicit as your genre, your readers and the scene's job call for. Romance ranges from closed-door to explicit, and many love stories outside it cut away. If you cut away, write the first touch at full length, cut at the threshold and put the feeling in the aftermath: what they say the next morning, and what they avoid saying.
How do you write a love story as a subplot?
Give it its own small arc, a meeting, a turn and a choice, and tie those turns to the main plot. Let the main plot create the obstacle, and land the love story's choice at or near the main climax, so resolving one helps resolve the other. If you could cut the love subplot without changing the main plot, it may be a detour.
