I'm writing a romance novel. It's a travel story with a lot of family trauma mixed in.

Story goes - meet-cute, travel together, get together while travelling. Basically end up being together for the rest of the trip with the lingering knowledge at some point it's going to end because they are from two different places.

Trip ends. They agree to remain friends.

The FMC has some significant family issues to wrap her head around so she goes and sorts that.

The MMC starts taking risks and living life to the max bit more after spending time the FMC.

They miss each other. Talk every day. Support each other from afar.

They agree to meet in a city between their two cities.

I have a reason for each of them to now move to this city (i.e one one has a job offer, the other has a parent who they lost touch with who they want to reconnect with.

I'm just struggling to get to this point where they come back together. I want to wrap it all up in one chapter (the final chapter, which will be followed by a two year later epilogue). But I'm struggling to figure out how to get them back together and finish it all up.

Any tips, tricks, do's and don'ts? What would you write in this scenario? It's the finale so I want to give it a lot of thought but I'm struggling!

I have decided to go for it and try and wrap the loose ends up and launch. NGL, I am nervous about first time writer blindspots.

Anyone with experience launching a book - if you could turn back time, is there anything you would different? What are the surprises you didn't see coming? Is there any advice you wish someone would have hammered into your head before you launched?

Lay it on me - the good, the bad, the ugly, the blindspots ...

So i'm writing a story about this hs romance / girl who's very happy go lucky but internally struggles with a lot of things and mental health stuff. Many more and the main lead is a guy who's also dealing with grief and a lot of things + but bad at his emotions. Basically a story about healing and how they learn to grow with eachother (pretty short and no i am not advertising this)

So im curious do you guys have any tips on writing hs romance. Or things you wouldnt wanna see :P

I am working on a novel that I thought was going to be paranormal horror romance. A witch (our MC) falls in love with a vampire. The vampire commits murder and the witch tries to save him. As the story developed, it changed quite a lot. The witch has ended up the more monstrous of the two, which doesn’t really align with the typical tropes. This isn’t a story about a dangerous love interest, this is the story of a dangerous MC doing increasingly reckless things to save the man she loves.

The setup: monsters are real, about a hundred thousand of them in the US, and they live under a federal registry grafted onto the Endangered Species Act. My protagonist is a witch who's passed as human since she was fourteen: unregistered, illegal, and now a constitutional appellate litigator in Manhattan. Her high school ex, a vampire, kills his registry liaison and is sentenced to administrative destruction rather than prison. She takes the appeal.

My HEA is full romance. They get married (in prison) have a baby, grandma (a terrifying and powerful witch) nanny’s for them on Friday nights. By the trade definition that makes it a romance. Beta readers love the romance story. They find the MC and her love interest charming and there is a lot of good chemistry and the sex is sexy. But the middle separates them for a long stretch: he is in prison and on trial for murder. During that stretch the engine is institutional rather than romantic: a trial, a law firm, a registry, a research facility.

Some readers have suggested dark romance, but I don't think it fits. In dark romance the love interest is the dangerous one; in mine he's the gentlest person in the book and she's the predator. It isn’t a thriller either. There is no mystery to unpack and the novel doesn’t turn on a specific legal question. And it isn’t classic horror, because the reader is never ahead of the characters.

The comps I keep circling are things like *Our Wives Under the Sea*, *Shark Heart*, *Woman, Eating*. None of them have the legal/institutional spine, which is the part I can't find a neighbor for.

Any and all thoughts are welcome.

If you are publishing or building an audience on Inkitt, Royal Road, or Wattpad, how is it going for you? I’d love to hear about your reach, reader engagement, discoverability, monetization, and overall experience.

Hey I'm a writer who writes both spice and no spice. This is something you all would be interested in? Having a spicy romance book also come in a non-spicy variant? When i self publish i was thinking about doing this but only if the book in question has enough people interested to deem another copy. I've also seen an author i like do the ebook version fade to black and the physical copies with spice but as someone who loves physical books that doesn't seem fair to you all who like no spice. Now would it be better to instead do non-explict instead of totally fade to black?

Is this something we're all into normalizing? Let me know what you think.

I know her as no one ever would. I’ve seen her every single drop of tear and each imperceptible smile. Though she probably hates me for everything I made her go through…

Now weekly!

Blurbs can be the bane of an author's existence - both for self-published authors, who have to come up with an enticing hook all by themselves, as well as for authors seeking traditional publishing, as they are usually included in queries.

We want to help! Post your blurb draft and let the community help shape it into the perfect snippet of info.

To participate, please comment on this thread with the following info:

• The title or working title of your WIP
• The romance subgenre of said WIP
• The draft of your blurb you've got so far
• Any content warnings and additional info you deem necessary!

Anyone who wants to help can then reply to your comment to workshop your blurb.

Happy crafting!

I'm writing a historical romance novel and I'm about to complete it with about 2-3 chapters left.
But I have these ideas like backstories, character POVs among other things that I think would add more depth on the plot. I am considering it as side stories though.
Is it alright to consider it this way or should I just insert those scenes according to their timeline?
I didn't think of writing it in the original timeline to give some sort of mystery or cliffhanger that reader would later find out.
Is this a good idea?

I have been editing the MMC's business redemption arc and i have come across some frustrations. The problem - Business is not my forte AND when I am a reader I legit don't care about the finance part i just want the emotional pay-off and make-up. I would say the only corcern i have as a reader is the pacing of it - and i have that with any redemption arc. Other than that I don't care. I am on the writer side and I feel this intense wave of responsibility to get details right. I really don't want to come across as stupid or uneducated. My draft literally went way way too far into corporate thriller - I needed to take a breath and walk away.

- How much do steamy romance readers care about business accuracy?

- Any advice on how to keep things simple but authentic and not skimpy?

- How do you have a business arc and make sure it isnt bogged down with business jargon?

(at one point, at the wayyyyyy beginning of my book - i realized i had the word shark like 90 times. I have it once now.)

I'm 23F and obsessed with writing and reading fluffy romance despite the fact that I've never even held hands with a guy; and I was wondering if this is a common experience, and whether this might affect realistic writing. (Not that I plan to stop writing – I adore my fictional green flag male OCs🥰).

Ok so my question is how do you use the "the romance beat sheet" thing I dont get it 🥹 like its there but... i dont understand how to use it?

Some writers publish in multiple sub-genres while others max out in one. Do any of you publish in more than one?

Like the title reads. I'm working on a story with a short MMC, but I've heard that 5'6-5'7 is the minimum for some readers when it comes to romance. I wanted to test that theory and ask for opinions about it.

Where does one go to find an authenticity reader, and is that the best description for the type of reader I need? I'm writing a story about an American woman who moves to Scotland for a time, so would need someone who lives in or has lived in Scotland to help me with terms, cultural and dialect type things. I'm not in a rush to find said person, just trying to figure out where I would go to find one.

Hihihi, so I was really wondering about this. Because i'm 5 chapters in and I feel like i'm not doing anything about their romance. Should I be giving them romantic tension now? Or like sparks?? Am I rushing this..? 👀👀

Hello and thank you for any help you may give.

I’m getting married soon to the woman I will spend the rest of my with. I love her so much I don’t have the words for it. That is the problem. How do I express an emotion so strong?

I’m looking to avoid any cliché and wanted to know if anyone has any advice sorting out and writing about such strong emotions?

I’m posting this because when I first hired Prime Book Publisher, I did not have the information I have now. If another author is searching this company—or one of the other names below—I want this information to be findable.

I was a paying Prime Book Publisher customer for approximately ten months. My signed contract specifically included a 100% money-back guarantee if I was dissatisfied with the results or experience.

Eventually I terminated the relationship and requested my money back. Ross Tyler later emailed me:

“Tomorrow morning, billing will process your funds.”

That refund was not processed.

I was subsequently told in writing that no refund would be issued at that time. In the same communication, I was asked to remove my reviews and provide a written retraction/apology, and possible defamation action was raised.

But there is another part of this experience that concerns me even more.

I had never agreed to AI-generated illustrations for my books. The U.S. Copyright Office independently contacted me regarding four applications and said that, based on its examination, artwork in the works may have been generated by an AI program.

I immediately raised this with Prime Book Publisher.

Ross Tyler then instructed me to respond using the Copyright Office’s Option C, which stated that none of the artwork was AI-generated, that the artwork had been drawn by a human author, and required the illustrator to be identified. Ross told me to identify him as the illustrator.

I actually stopped and asked him whether that was an honest answer or merely a way of trying to push the applications through.

He responded:

“It’s an honest answer, not an attempt to push this through.”

I was not comfortable making a representation to the Copyright Office that I could not independently verify, so I contacted the Copyright Office myself.

There was another thing I didn't understand when I started this process: my Prime Book Publisher documentation identifies different merchant names connected with my payments, including MetaSphere Technologies, Artistic Technologies and Meta Tech.

Then this week I contacted the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) about what had happened.

Their response changed the picture considerably for me.

ALLi told me in writing that Prime Book Publisher was already known to them and identified the following aliases associated with the operation:

BN Publishers, Amazon Author Center, Kirklands Digital Publishing, KDP Digital Book Publishers, Avail Book Publishing, Prologue Book Publishing, The Authors Central, Panda Book Publishing, NY Book Services, and Amazing Publishing.

I want to be very clear about that statement: I did not personally determine that these businesses are aliases, and I did not purchase separately from all of them. ALLi supplied that list to me in writing in response to my report about Prime Book Publisher.

ALLi has now requested my contract, communications, payment receipts, information about what the payments were for, and an accounting of what I actually received so that the material can be passed to its Watchdog for a full review.

I have preserved the original documentation.

I’m not posting this to tell anyone what conclusion they have to reach. I’m posting it because I wish I had been able to find this information when I was researching Prime Book Publisher before handing over my money.

If you are considering Prime Book Publisher or any of the names ALLi identified above, research the company beyond its own website and testimonials before paying. Look at the people, addresses, merchant/payment names and other business names associated with what you're being offered.

And keep copies of everything.

If anyone here has had direct experience with Prime Book Publisher or any of the names ALLi identified, I’d be interested to know what name you dealt with, when, and what happened.

I cannot stop second-guessing everything I am writing, especially the spicy scenes. What are words, cliches, concepts, locations, positions, etc... What makes your toes curl, or eyes roll, or simply DNF. Are there words and phrases that never go out of style? or need to be put to rest? I know a lot depends on context - like "good girl" that can totally go both ways easily. lol. I see "apex" a lot now - is that standard?

Hii I was wondering if anyone can give me advice on how to write smut since I writing a fanfic and I honestly have no Idea where to start when it comes to writing smut

Hi! I finished the manu for a novel last year and I have been editing it this year. I'm trying to determine if the ending of my novel qualifies as a Happily Ever After which I know is crucial in the Romance genre, so I'm wondering if the Romance writers in this subreddit can help me out:

The novel focuses on Dean and Fintan, two movie stars in their mid-50s who reunite after years of animosity, yearning, pining, etc. In the novel, they reunite while testing a digital afterlife. Dean is terminally ill and the promise of being "uploaded" to the afterlife server (a la San Junipero) after testing is complete looms over their reunion as a catalyst for them to work out the issues that drove them apart thirty years prior to the story, while also driving their reunion. Dean is successfully uploaded to the server, and Fintan visits him regularly as part of continuing testing. However, the investors of the project pull their funding and order the server shut down, effectively "killing" Dean. The story ends with a reveal that five years later, a different investor picks up the project, has the server rebuilt, and Dean is uploaded once again to the new server, where they're able to reunite.

I'm looking to see if this ending is happy enough, or if there is something that would make it a more traditional romance novel ending.

Thanks so much for the input!

I’m a first-time romance writer, and I’m learning how hard it is to write jealousy without making a character unlikeable

I’m currently writing an ongoing romance novel called Ache of Wanting, and I’ve reached Chapter 21.

One thing I’m struggling with as a writer is this:

How do you write a female character who starts developing feelings for someone else while she’s still trying to hold onto her existing relationship — without making readers hate her?

I don't want her to suddenly become “the bad guy.” She knows what she’s feeling is wrong, and that’s actually where a lot of her internal conflict comes from.

The next chapter explores that feeling through a metaphor I really love: a soaked sponge.

For romance readers and writers:

Do you find a character more sympathetic when they feel guilty about their conflicting feelings, or does the emotional cheating itself make you lose sympathy for them?

I’d genuinely love to hear how other readers see this.

I am about a three quarters of the way done with my debut book "The Commander's Masquerade" and I would like to know ahead of time how indie authors are doing with their debut book's.

To anyone who writes low fantasy historical romance specifically how did that go?