Hello, readers and writers!

This week I’ll be discussing an awesome romance website I found while researching some plotting advice. I believe it’s good practice while writing romance to not only read novels but to also research romance blogs and websites as much as possible. My goal for this blog is to include more of my knowledge as I go, and I’d love to put a spotlight on this awesome site!

What’s the website?

Romance University is an online organization that focuses on anything and everything having to do with the romance industry in publishing. They have workshops, conferences, and a weekly lecture schedule for writers who are interested. I’m so excited to have found them and I look forward to looking further into their website and learning so much more about writing!

What post did I find?

After googling some helpful tips about plotting for a romance novel, I came across this blog article titled Romance 201: Plot and Characters. Of course, I read a lot of different articles while doing my research and googling, but not all of them have helpful information.

At least for me since I’ve already read a lot of what’s out there, but this article truly struck me as different for a few reasons.

• They go into detail about the three-act structure and how it can apply to the romance novel. The detail of this list was more in-depth than other blogs I’ve read with similar material. I love the description of each act, and I believe it’s beneficial for any writers struggling with their story’s plot and characters.
• They also created a chart for characters and conflict. They compare and contrast prompts for non-romance novels and how that same ideal could be converted into a romance plot.
• In the end, they discuss the secondary characters and their importance in a novel. Sometimes romance novels can ignore that element of the story because they’re focused so much on the hero and heroine (guilty), so I felt being reminded of that was important.

How did this help me?

This article, in particular, helped me with some current plotting. I have a series I’m writing that will follow Escape on my publishing schedule, but I’m struggling so much with keeping the storylines of 8 characters straight. I also need to focus on other secondary characters for each of these novels as well, so I’m going a little crazy, but I think it’ll be worth it.

I also think finding this website will help me with writer’s blog not only for my novels and stories but also for this blog. What are important elements of romance writing that readers need to know? What new inspiration can I find within my own writing, especially involving my journey as an indie self-publisher?

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Thank you for reading!

Check out some of my other stuff on this website, including detailed about my next release! I also have some other blog posts talking about my experiences with reading and writing romance!

Until next time 🙂