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How to Write a Great Love Story
Making Your Romance Novel Memorable
Plain and simple, the formula for a romance novel is man meets woman and they fall in love. Of course, they run into various obstacles along the way, but there is always a happy ending.
Yet, what sets a romance novel apart and makes it irrefutably memorable?
Think about one of the most dramatic love stories through the ages — Romeo & Juliet, young love of the forever kind. True, their love story ended tragically. However, it featured the ingredients of a great love affair. Even death could not keep them apart.
Let’s look at a more contemporary example, The Notebook, by Nicholas Sparks.
Two young people experience a passionate summer romance and life threatens to pull them apart. The heroine goes away to college while the hero enlists in the army. The hero wrote to her, but she never received his letters and she thinks he doesn’t want to be with her.
She gets engaged to a man from an affluent family and finally, circumstances bring the hero and his heroine together again. They marry and have a family, living a good life. Eventually the heroine has dementia and her loving husband stands by her, trying to help her remember the happy life they had. Even when she has lost her mental capacity, he stands by his…
