Worthy Love Interest

Dwayne, here's where "show" rather than "tell" is crucial. Your story will be far more powerful if you show the depth of your characters' love by their actions rather than having them say "I love you." Anyone can mouth those three words, but it takes real love to say, give someone one of your kidneys.

Show the lengths your characters will go to for one another and no one will doubt their love, even if they never once say "I love you."

Devil Ledbetter said:

Dwayne, here's where "show" rather than "tell" is crucial. Your story will be far more powerful if you show the depth of your characters' love by their actions rather than having them say "I love you." Anyone can mouth those three words, but it takes real love to say, give someone one of your kidneys.

Show the lengths your characters will go to for one another and no one will doubt their love, even if they never once say "I love you."

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'nuff said...

DwayneA said:

that makes sense! Thanks!

Does the romantic interest also have to have any important qualities or traits similar to the character? In real life, many couples are formed from people who have things in common.

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Generally the love interest is cohesive in some way, or provides an enhancement to the character. In some cases, as you said, he/she shares important qualities with the character--and in that way enhances those qualities in both characters. In other cases, the love interest is the very antithesis of the character--an opposites attract sort of thing--and acts as a foil to those qualities. I've only seen this pulled off once or twice-- you have to consider plausibility.

Most effectively, the two characters share some qualities and differ in others. Kinda like real life. These work very well, providing both enhancement and contrast throughout the romance.


Now, keep in mind that I've never tackled writing a romantic plotline until my most recent project. This is just my opinion from a reader's point of view.

The characters should have chemistry, but I imagine that would be pretty hard to do, at least at first.

Suppose you have two characters A and B in a romantic and/or sexual relationship. You should be able to answer the following two questions:

1) What does A see in B?
2) What does B see in A?

Those answers, by the way, will probably be very different.

When I think of people in love, I assume they say it to each other a lot, kiss and hug a lot.

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It's a silly thing. In real life, problems often arise when 1) people say it but don't mean it, or 2) don't say it even though they feel it.

Hugging and kissing aren't necessarily indicative of emotional attachment, I'll tell ya that much. Neither is sex.