“The more work you put in on your outline and getting the skeleton of your story right, the easier the process is later.”
Drew Goddard
Having set myself the goal of learning how to write a love story, and deciding that the best way to learn was by doing, the next thing I needed to do was start writing. But where to begin? How do you turn an idea into a novel? Some would say to just sit down and start writing, see where it leads, but I didn’t like that advice. I guess I’m a “plotter”, not a “pantser”, because I wanted a process, a step-by-step recipe I could follow that would allow me to flesh out my idea so that I wasn’t writing blind. I did a little bit of research, and the following is the process I settled upon.
How to Write a Love Story
Write Your Premise
A premise is a single statement that conveys the underlying idea of your story—the foundation that supports your entire plot. According to Joseph Nassise, a premise must do 3 things:
- Highlight the main character;
- Reveals the story’s core problem;
- Hint at the goal or resolution.
Following this structure, the premise for my novel became:
A recently separated mother-of-one pursues a snowboarding instructor ten years her junior, against the wishes of her friends, family, and ex-husband.
- Main character – a recently separated mother-of-one;
- Core problem – she wants to get it on with a young snowboarding instructor—but her friends, family, and ex-husband don’t want her to;
- Goal – will she or won’t she get her man?
This premise grew from the characters and events in a short story I had already written, and at the time the idea was conceived, I was (and continue to be) a regular listener of Shawn Coyne’s and Tim Grahl’s Story Grid podcast. I can’t recommend Coyne’s Story Grid methodology highly enough—it has been fundamental in shaping my understanding of story structure, and as a consequence, the structure of my novel. Essentially, what Coyne says is that for a story to “work”, it should break down into three parts:
- Beginning hook;
- Middle build;
- Ending payoff.
This should come as no surprise—it’s your classical three-act structure. But Coyne goes further than that, by giving what he calls the five commandments of story.
The Five Commandments
Each of your three acts should also contain a further five elements, or commandments, as follows:
- Inciting Incident (an event that kicks off the action)
- Complication
- Crisis (a character has to make an important decision)
- Climax (the consequences of that decision play out)
- Resolution.
Looking at it this way, we have fifteen major “beats” a story has to hit. In determining what those beats might look like, Coyne says that you must have a deep understanding of the genre you are writing in.
Genre is Everything
Coyne believes that genre is more than just a marketing tool, it’s an absolutely fundamental consideration in shaping your story. Every genre has its own obligatory scenes and conventions. See that word “obligatory”? It means that you’re obliged to use them, that they must feature in the story for it “to work”. So it’s essential to think long and hard about what genre you are writing in so that you know what obligatory scenes and conventions you need to include in your story.
It took me a while to figure out that what I was writing was a love story. Part of the reason it took me so long is that when I thought of love stories, I had a picture of Mills & Boon romances in my head, and I knew my story wasn’t that. I didn’t see how it could be a romance because it didn’t have a happy ending. But after thinking long and hard about it, I realised that at its essence, my story was about a girl falling for a guy—in other words, a love story. I prefer the term “love story” because it doesn’t have the same connotations for me as “romance” does. It seems, broader, more inclusive. Anyway, I digress—what’s important is that in the love story genre, there are obligatory scenes and conventions that Coyne says are essential to include when telling your story.
Obligatory Scenes of The Love Story Genre
- Lovers meet;
- Lovers first kiss;
- Confession of love;
- Lovers break up;
- Proof of love;
- Lovers reunite.
So, in terms of structure, my first task was to figure out how these scenes would fit into the fifteen beats of my global story. They don’t have to be in this particular order, but I chose to plug these into my story as follows:
- Lovers meet – inciting incident of the beginning hook;
- Lovers first kiss – after the complication and before the crisis of the beginning hook, so not one of the global beats;
- Confession of love and lovers break up – inciting incident of the middle build;
- Proof of love – climax of the ending payoff;
- Lovers reunite (but part ways) – resolution of the ending payoff.
In this way, I had my first five important scenes of the story.
Conventions of The Love Story Genre
As well as the obligatory scenes, there are also conventions of the genre to consider, which may or may not amount to scenes in and of themselves, but which do need to feature in the story.
For the love story genre, these conventions are:
- Rivals;
- Moral Weight (the distinction between right and wrong behaviour – at least one of the lovers needs to have a serious moral flaw that they need to contend with in order to move forward in their life);
- Helpers (characters that aid the lovers);
- Hinderers (characters that harm the lovers or stand in the lovers’ way);
- Gender Divide (men and women want different things);
- External Need (some form of external pressure on the lovers’ relationship. In Pride and Prejudice, for instance, Mrs. Bennet wants to marry off her daughters as soon as she possibly can);
- Forces at Play Beyond the Lovers’ Control;
- Forces at Play Within the Lovers’ Control;
- Rituals (some activity that the lovers share);
- Secrets—lots and lots of secrets.
So the next task was to figure out where these would fit into the story. These conventions play out across multiple scenes in my novel, but there are particular scenes where I introduce the rivals, where I introduce the helpers and hinderers, where particular secrets are exposed. Once I had figured out how I was going to fit these conventions into my global story, I had about fifteen scenes, spread over three acts, that gave me the basic framework for my story. Once I had that, I had to come up with scenes and sequences of scenes that would plug the gaps between each of those points, driving the action along—a task that was much easier now that I had fifteen points of reference. As Coyne suggests, it’s kind of like plotting a road trip and fixing the major destinations on the way. The particular roads you should take to reach each destination become more obvious once you have the stops clearly defined.
Write Your Outline
In the end, I came up with about forty scenes in total. In doing this, I found Stephen Pressfield’s clothesline method to be really helpful (here’s the clothesline I made for my story). Then, for each scene, I wrote a brief synopsis (80 – 150 words). The beauty of the Story Grid method is that not only does your global story break down into the five commandments, but so should each individual scene. The synopsis for most of my forty scenes had an inciting incident, complication, crisis, climax, and resolution. By filling in the details of these five commandments for each of my scenes, I had a pretty comprehensive plot outline that enabled me to feel confident about embarking on my writing journey.
Now, this might seem like overkill, especially if you’re a pantser, but it worked for me. Without it, I’m not sure I could ever have started—the blank page would have been just too overwhelming. On an endnote, however, it’s important to say that just because you have an outline, it doesn’t mean you have to stick to it. I’d written several thousand words when I realised that one of the central ideas I had for my story just wasn’t going to work. It was a fantastical idea and had no place in the realistic setting of the world I was building. So I got rid of it, re-jigging my scenes and the ending payoff to suit. Thankfully, I didn’t have to rewrite any of the scenes I’d already drafted, realising early enough how stupid the idea was and moving on.
Are you a plotter or a pantser? Is creating an outline before you begin writing a useful process? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Read Part 1 of How to Write a Love Story: Goal-setting
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