Lecture — Romantic beats
Lecture notes
- Craft book - Romancing the Beat by Gwen Hayes
- Diagram to go through the beats
- Can be used for friendships/ace/aro, but example is not
- Theme comes ready made - love conquers all, just need the two+ examples
- In romance, there are at least 2 heros
- Character is king
- full arc, all the beats
- Thinking of each character as protagonist helps with other genres
- All beats are mirrored
- Industry standard terms (meet cute) plus some changes.
- Tool that plays well with other tools
- space with it by design, gives room for other elements, combine with 3-act structure, etc
- Some are scenes, some are just sentences
- Path:
- Each character’s intro:
- need a clear idea of them, no vagueness
- Hint at the hole in their heart, their wound (snake fangs biting)
- Goal/Agenda
- bonus if that goal/agenda is in conflict with each other’s
- Cross paths, they need friction for sparks.
- Should still have something to do with wounds
- Intro is when characters are as far apart as they will be in terms of distance (emotional/reality)
- Meet cute:
- Sparks will fly
- Memorable
- Slice of life with a hitch - not just like every other day, even if still slice of life
- Involve the senses - setting readers’ anticipations for the rest of the book
- Rooted in the bodies, even if not planning on having explicit sex
- The two heros are in a room together for the first time we know of, so the reader wants to be there with them
- No Way!! #1:
- Walking away thinking “hmm, hmm…but no”
- Usually (almost always) a line “I don’t believe in love/will never love again/don’t deserve love because…” and then backstory
- False relief
- That was interesting, but want to get back on track
- This will be the farthest away from each other they’ll ever get again; there’s been a change
- Trouble come, trouble go - they think they’ve dealt with it. Hitch is over with (false relief)
- If you make it explicit, enables you to use refrain, repetition with a bit of change - doesn’t work if you only hint
- Internal plot (revelations about emotions) more important than surprise
- Back on track with my life…
- Stuck together (adhesion):
- Neither can walk away from each other
- Literal (snowed in, locked in) or figurative (have to rebuild, volunteering in an event, presentation at work)
- Where you get to bring in all of your tropes (they can come in before in lesser way e.g: sunshine vs grumpy)
- Not just metaphors that become cliche, but a storytelling device/shortcut/convention, manage the reader’s comfort and surprise in order to build anticipation
- (That was first 25%)
- External goal:
- First trouble came and went, now complicate things
- Emphasis was internal prior to this
- Time for all the endearing shit, both for audience and characters
- Shows that them interacting could (maybe already is) make them better
- This is the two-step, gotta be fun to watch
- If beta readers say they don’t buy the I-love-yous, this is probably the part to revisit. Tweaking these will help. But fuck that, leave that for editing
- No Way!! #2:
- Revisit/stop and think about #1
- Maybe consider, but then!! “Eh, no way”
- Really satisfying when it comes up
- Should be mirrored, ideally for both people, or first No Way is for character A and this is character B (this loses the repetition, but this tool is made for a longer narrative, maybe not a short story where space is at a premium)
- Smol but important: Inkling:
- Both heroes witness something that happens which makes them wonder what being in love with this other person might be like
- “I’m against the concept, but now that I’ve pictured it, oh shit”
- They’ve said No Way!!, but it’s too late, they’ve pictured it
- Good place for callbacks
- For real:
- Slow slide towards bone town
- Desire becoming specific
- Offering glimpses of who the other is
- Dripping out backstory (not everything)
- Not necessarily wrong about you, but now I’m getting to know you
- Starts to soften up the No Way!!s
- Can’t deny the other person is more than their internal arguments - not just arguing against yourself, arguing against evidence
- Room for desire
- Here is where the external can distract/interrupt them - bit cheap to do it before here, may distract too soon from backstory
- But not too much because:
- (first 50%)
- Bone town:
- Sex at 60 pages
- Either first time they have sex or, if they’ve had sex before (sure, let them hook up!) this time is whoa different
- Bonfire of intimacy
- High high, such a high high that it is the false high of the story
- The intimacy is not false, but this feels like the solution yay I’m fixed
- The issue is that the gates of their hearts are open but the walls have to come down
- Still defensive of their tender wounds
- But because we are cruel gods…
- Seed of doubt:
- Just a small bit of real estate
- A sucker punch and reminder of their wound (still there and painful) even though they’re getting closer
- Don’t linger, it’s quick
- Hell, it can happen right there on the pillow
- Dark vines of doubt (bummer vine):
- Stretch out these No Way!!s, basically a big ol #3
- They’re trying to make it seem like they’re farther apart even though they’ve gotten close
- The internal is intruding now, interrupting the narrative they think they’re living:
- Wallow #1:
- Explicitly say it (to themselves or someone else)
- Name the hole/fear/wound that’s in their heart
- Name it fully, explicitly, they can’t ignore it anymore
- “I knew better than to believe in love/love again/deserve love, because when I let my guard down, this happens”
- Immediate retreat:
- Stings really bad
- Make the reader feel it
- There’s no more subtext because now we know the text of their backstory
- They’re not healed yet. They’re stucked together or haven’t expressed their doubts to each other
- Love conquers all, but it’s on the hero to heal themselves
- The other person isn’t going to fix the hole, love is
- Choose fear:
- I could choose love or fear, ding, gonna choose fear
- This is the breakup, or if they’ve already broken up, this is when we feel it
- Wallow #2:
- (colors go from sexy sunset to dark skies)
- Long dark night of the soul
- Rock bottom
- They made the choice, they each have to feel it
- Now they have to understand what they did
- Have to say out loud “I hecked up, that was a mistake”
- Good place to say it to others because this is when they’re willing to listen to advice
- Won’t solve everything, they have to heal themselves
- You’ve already created all of these footholds to get out of the wallow-pit: all of the endearing shit from earlier
- Callbacks are key, offer opportunities to drag themselves out
- Take an ax to the vines, and…
- I choose love:
- A second choice: this time choose love
- Realization and exhilaration: oh my god, I love Josh, 100% butt crazy in love
- Sets up all the nervous risk
- Internal, but explicit, no prevarications
- Gotta do something about it, has to be a sentence
- Helpful to connect an internal decision to something external/concreate (e.g: they were fighting over the last book in a store, “I’ll give you the book because it’s more important that you have it”, signifies their internal choice)
- Very last far point, planning and risking:
- They’re all in!
- They’ve chosen love
- May not be together on the page
- There has to be risk - they don’t know if it will work, the cost will be big
- Both of them are doing this (maybe not at the same time)
- Grand gesture:
- Never been kissed, asks #1 to kiss #2, risk of rejection
- Trying to tell the person they’re in love with “I value you, I love you, most importantly I see you and am putting myself on the line for you”
- Could be one for each:
- One could be qualified yes could lead to a second gesture - “Yes but I’m not ready” “yes but there’s still a problem”
- happens at the same time
- One big moment that ends in…
- YES:
- Payoff:
- Shows what the relationship would be like
- A snapshot of life of them together
- A freeze-frame of them being together
- I’m proving that I’m going to work on my wound so that you can work on yours
- Epilogue/hope:
- always in romance as a genre
- Payoff was what happens after the YES
- Happily ever after or at least happily for now
- Hope for the future. The spark lives on
- Not perfect, but they can grow together - sparks still require friction
- Reward for all the angst you’ve put the reader through
- Big parts are the nodes where they come together, but don’t forget the space apart
- Need to have really good wounds for both protagonists because that’s how they land
- Courtesy of treating each character as a protagonist - character is king
- A model like this frees you up to focus on the character, adds richness
- Repetitions add emphasis/discovery/depth make it feel less clunky
- Indulge in the rigidity of the tool to play with it - two characters bound to each other through all stages of growth
- Works for friends, anyone bound together
- Use it to start from scratch, or maybe you already have a draft and need some help shoring it up
- Consider with multiple partners, all of the different shapes! Could have a braid shape or a spiral shape or argyle
- Start in any direction, hop on at any node and work backwards or forwards
Additional notes
- Gives you ideas for shorter narratives: show a chunk of the caduceus in a short story:
- some sections more satisfying (if you end on the wallow, that’s mean or not a romance)
- from meet cute to first trouble come/go
- stuck together to bone town
- stuck together to I choose love so long as you imply what it might be)
- For crush:
- The author knows, but maybe the character doesn’t
- Audience might pick up some of the mirroring, wonder if it’s as unrequited as it seems
- Rejection? Maybe, or could just end earlier like Choose Love
- Reader may not see other character, but author knows to generate angst
- Stretch out timing for the spaces (stuck together, but takes foreeeever to get to bone town)
- Character that feels their love is unrequited, but ends in intimacy and truth
- Oh…we know each other, uh…okaaaay let’s go from here
- Allowed to keep secrets from the reader for hero #2, but when they’re shown, they have to be there, #1 can miss them
- The grand gesture for poly romance:
- Fiction and real life not exactly the same thing
- Some sort of public action (maybe not hyperpublic, but witnessed) because there’s no going back
- You’re saying “I’m willing to risk myself for you because I’m seeing you fully and I love it”
- Maybe coming out and saying these are my boyfriends is maybe not the best because that’s kind of a coming out story
- Each character gets a snake
- Don’t have to dive super into every character’s path, but author has to know
- Has have to tailor to a basic structure (e.g: plan is everyone huge dinner at big restaurant with something everyone loves; all going to LARP and they all have feelings)
- Some members of the relationship team up for the final grand gesture to get the last person in
- Celebrate the complexity
- What if the snakes are couples (e.g: one person trying to come in and the couple trying to bring them in)
- Caduceus connecting to another snake part way through, or two caduceuses connecting, intersecting at the seed of doubt leading to stuck together
- Maybe there’s another wound there if you go into a second book? Past or new trauma - maybe we only got to bone town and are just realizing that
- romantic tragedy, caduceus joining with another going in the opposite direction, break-up and new relationship at the same time
- Specialized form of a very generalized character arc - this one is just fitted to romance, the beats in that order:
- “Limerent Object” - that’s a breakup story, so plotting a caduceus in reverse might help restructure the story
- Same could be done for a character and a job or character and city, and the job/city are essentially personified
- If you break the tool, it’s still super useful, you just may not be writing a romance. Just using it to make the characters the most important part of the story by giving them stages to grow through
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