I wanted to update this chapter after I got 1000 subs, but I can't seem to get over that mountain because I'm not updating. It was a little goal I wanted to reach first...  So thanks for almost 1000 subs guys, really awesome. This chapter could have gone many ways, me ranting about bad romances I've read, trying to give advice about how to write good romance, or something else. Instead, I made my normal weird analogies. I've been rather busy with school, but that isn't really an excuse because I do have a lot of free time. So if I can get some feedback on this chapter, I might make a better "romance" chapter in the future. 

I've wanted to write a rant about this for some time, but it always felt sub-par and I never finished one. I ranted in a blog, so you might want to read that as well. [Rant] Romance in Novels and the Shipping Mentality

If we’re going to talk about what 95% of fics have in them, it’s romance of some sort. Actually, most fiction stories have some element of romance to them. And while I am not a romantic type of person in the least, I can appreciate a well-developed and purposeful romance.

I am very picky about how romance is presented in a story, but my reactions vary depending on genre and whether the story is a fic or not. For instance, I usually read sci-fi/fantasy and if there is romance in the story, it better be subtle or well integrated because I did not sign up for romantic adventures. There have been multiple books that I have stopped reading because a romance is forced in a ruined character development, plot development, and overall the enjoyment of the book because the love interest is not likeable. In a fic, I am expecting romance to be forced upon me because you writers can’t help it, that’s why you are writing (at least, for some of you), so I have a certain level of tolerance. It’s not a high level, but it’s there.

Personally, I believe if your entire story revolves around romance, it is most likely boring and pointless.

Let’s walk through another food related analogy. You have a meal, say a salad, and this salad is made up of various parts. The lettuce is the main ingredient, it is the crux of the salad and every salad needs lettuce. Some salads have a fancier main ingredient like kale. Some have rotten greens, maybe rotting spinach. That’s the quality of your plot, the crux of your story. The better your greens, the better your salad; the better your plot, the better your story. And of course, the quality of those greens/plot.

Now you need to add some flavor to your salad. Let’s add in some toppings. Choose what you want, carrots, meat, cherry tomatoes, cheese, nuts, fruit, croutons, etc. These are the elements of your salad that give it its unique flavor. It represents various things in your story like characterization, setting, clichés, POV, explicit content, romance, and so on. Then we’ll top off this salad with a dressing (if you want) to represent a conclusion. Some salads need a dressing to make them better or complete, some don’t need them, some make the salad worse.

But let’s talk about your greens and your added toppings. For the sake of this analogy, romance = cherry tomatoes. I hate cherry tomatoes and would rather eat a salad without them. I would especially hate it if my salad was just a little bit of greens topped with a heap of tomatoes. I’m not hungry for tomatoes, I want lettuce, so I’ll eat around those tomatoes. When I am done eating this salad, my plate will still be filled with tomatoes that I have left untouched.

“How were the tomatoes?” The chef asks.

“I didn’t eat them!” The customer exclaims. “I will never eat here again!”

So many fics here on AFF are tomato filled salads with rotting greens and a terrible dressing. Trying to finish these salads is near impossible.

Yes, some people enjoy tomatoes a lot, and a lot of people will eat tomatoes all on their own, but you can’t eat that all the time. You have to mix up your salads.

TL;DR There is more to a salad than tomatoes, so there should be more to your fic than romance. Life is more than romance. There are more issues that “does this guy/girl like me”. Financial problems, work/school problems, health issues, family spats, political controversies.

Twilight has vampires, A Fault in Our Stars has cancer, Fifty Shades of Grey has abusive , and various other books/movies that I’ve never read/watched have their own gimmicks. A story containing only romance shows immaturity and a narrow view point of life.

So basically, spice up the story with more than romance.

What I find the most annoying about romance in novels and fics isn’t the romance itself, but the predictability of the romance. Obviously no two love stories are exactly the same and many of them are actually quite exaggerated and crazy. But there are still key signs that are easy to spot when reading these stories, and that bores me so much. I read such a wide variety of genres with almost exclusively the exception of actual romance/comedy books, but still the signs are there, almost even more so because they aren’t supposed to be there.

The two characters meet, and while they might not immediately have an attraction to one another, eventual the tension and conflict escalate to the point that their feelings can develop to something greater. While that sounds normal, it’s really predictable for just that reason. Because usually there will only be these two characters with such chemistry, stories will often play down the relationships of the other characters or completely cut them off.

The Japanese would call this “raising a flag”, or the act of setting a plot for a story. A death flag might be a character saying something ominous like “Relax, Carol, there’s no way there is a killer out here in the quiet country.” A romance flag might be something that initiates emotions between two characters. I believe the reason it is called a flag is because flags are something easy to spot even from far away, so this subplot is also something easy to spot early on in the story before the real foundation of it happening is set. That makes it boring unless there is some other gimmick going on for the story.

This can, of course, be hard to avoid in a mostly romantic story that focuses more on the romance and relationship of the characters rather than any other thing on this planet. And that is why it is so important to focus on the other toppings for your story. You might have grown up with tomatoes, seen it on the television, in movies, in music. Tomatoes are in every story and come in every medium. But remember, there is more to eat than just tomatoes.

I really want to tell you all how to write good romance stories, but that really isn’t my strong point. In my fics I kind of just show the characters are comfortable with each other by the end, and yay, love! I guess my only advice on that front is to establish solid characters and remember that romance is about characters, not about plot. 

*Yeah, if you could make my poster true, that'd be great!