One of the hardest things I’ve ever tried to do when writing a story is to plan my characters a love story. It’s amazingly difficult put those kinds of feelings on a piece of paper. Whenever I write a story that’s taking place in real life I always try to communicate a character’s feelings by their actions and thoughts. However, that’s not so easy in a romance story. Whenever I’ve tried to give my characters feelings, I’ve always read back over the page and asked myself, “is this really what happens when I feel like this?” If the answer is yes, I happily continue, satisfied with my work. If my answer is no, I rub out the page and start again.

Usually I always say feeling are essential to a story, but in some stories I wouldn’t even think twice about adding a love life to a particular character. For example, in my new story The Nights of the Unknown, the only character I’ve ever thought about adding a love life to is Lilian. If this does happen, it would most likely be a huge part of the story. She would meet the guy/girl, she’d fall in love with them, and then she would have to make the huge decision of whether to stay with the love of her life, or the loyal friends who had given up everything else to come with her. Knowing Lilian, she would probably choose her friends because she values loyalty most. However, if she chose the love of her life, what would happen to the story? Would it follow the journey of Kiwi and Candie, deeply disheartened by their friend’s betrayal? Or would it stay with the protagonist, Lilian? Following my judgement of story structure, it wouldn’t switch back and forth; I always find it makes for a less gripping story in most of my cases, probably because I don’t have enough practice in that kind of stuff. I would probably have it follow Candie and Kiwi, and that’s where I come back to my point of how hard it is to write about love. I just can’t think how I would write about days, maybe weeks, of Lilian simply being happy with her new-found love.

Let’s pretend for a second this has actually happened. As the story follows Candie and Kiwi, there are 7 possible outcomes:

#1 The two friends are simply strengthened by their loss and survive the journey with victory.

#2 The two friends stay together, but are weakened by their loss. They do not survive the journey.

#3 One friend sacrifices themself for victory. The other, motivated, continues to victory.

#4 One friend sacrifices themself for victory. The other, weakened, does not survive the journey.

#5 Both friends decide they cannot go on and return home.

#6 Lilian returns to her friends.

#7 The two friends’ friendship is weakened and they seperate.

Only two of these results in victory with survival of all three friends, so I think it’s safe to say we can push love out of the equation for this story.

That doesn’t mean love is necessarily a bad thing to put into a story. It can add drama, plot and suspense. It’s just better with a different plot and character cast than most of my stories.