How do you write a short, sweet (and spicy!) romance story?
Let’s find out and then write one together!
During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we do a stream about “how to write a romantic short story.”
Watch the full video here or scroll down for highlights.
- There are MANY types of short stories: flash fiction, anecdotes, vignettes, fables/fairy tales, abstract pieces, sketch stories, slice of life, and many more.
- But today I want to focus on the TRADITIONAL short story, one with a beginning, middle and end, a rising action, climax, and resolution
- And we’ll go one step further than that, to talk about ROMANTIC short stories
The First and Most Important Step
- Read a LOT of short stories
- You can’t write one until you’ve read at least 100 of them
- Here’s just a few of my favorites to get started:
- The Lottery by Shirley Jackson
- The Egg by Andy Weir
- An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Ambrose Bierce
- The Jaunt by Stephen King
- The Necklace by Guy de Maupassant
- The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe
- The Monkey’s Paw by W. W. Jacobs
- The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry
- The Open Window by Saki
- To Build a Fire by Jack London
Three Traditional Short Story Basics
- 1,000 to 5,000 words, but can go up to 10,000
- Depending on the story you want to tell, it might be best to concentrate on just one day, one night, one hour, one scene
- One character POV
- It’s going to be hard to tell a traditional story story with multiple POVs and not have it become long/abstract
- A “twist” ending, one that is unexpected and satisfying
- We don’t have a ton of time with the story, so this is how you leave an impression
Five Romance Story Basics
#1. Main character and love interest should have both complementary and contrasting traits
- You’ve Got Mail: they both love books and own bookstores, but she’s a quirky owner of a little store and he’s a serious owner of a chain store
- Example A: they’re both the number 1 and 2 students in their class, but he’s shy and she’s aggressive
- Example B: they’re both cutting class, him because of overprotective parents, her because of abusive parents
#2. The main character should grow/change over the course of the story
- One of the big selling points of romance is that love changes people, so it’s good to have that happen in your story
- You’ve Got Mail: the woman realizes there’s more to life than preserving the past, the man realizes that there’s more to business than cold numbers
- Example A: the number 1 girl learns that you don’t have to be bloodthirsty to win
- Example B: the boy realizes that he’s missing out on a lot of other things in life
#3. Needs a secondary story/conflict that integrates the romance
- The conflict cannot just be the romance (will they or won’t they???), need something else to fuel it
- This is part of the reason Twilight/Fifty Shades are boring, because for the most part their only conflict is the romance
- You’ve Got Mail: the woman is trying to keep the bookstore she inherited from her parents alive in New York when a big chain store moves in
- Example A: there’s a science fair competition, with the winner getting bonus credit which could push girl to number 1, she and boy both work on their entries
- Example B: she wants to go to a concert and he wants to help her get there
#4. Avoid cliches or twist/expand them in new ways
- Misunderstanding causes a falling out… maybe it’s not a misunderstanding, and they actually do have a falling out
- Takes of glasses/gets a haircut and becomes beautiful… maybe they mess up the makeover and have a laugh over it
- The evil ex… maybe the ex is a good person and helps out the main character
#5. Has to have a happy ending, not necessarily “happily ever after,” but happy
- Part of the genre, just as much as magic in fantasy and technology in sci-fi
- You’ve Got Mail: of course they end up together and everything is fine
- Example A: girl wins science fair, but she gives the award to boy since he helped her so much, making him valedictorian instead of her, but she asks him to prom and he says yes, making her feel like the real winner
- Example B: abused girl escapes her situation thanks to boy, realizes she needs to work on herself first and they separate, but now with new confidence boy approaches new girl at end
Chat then voted that we write a romantic short story with this plot: a man and woman have built cabins near each other and begin talking, developing a love, but are kept from each other by a rushing river between the cabins.
Here’s what we came up with:
Andrew was sent by his company to the northern Wyoming wilderness, right along the Python River. He was sent to scout the area as a potential site for a new industrial farm for Wilmington Farm Enterprises. Land was cheap, and resources were plentiful, so it seemed like the perfect place.
For Andrew, it was basically a paid vacation. He’d get to spend a month by himself in the wilderness, with twenty-three hours a day to himself. After his one hour of cataloguing was done each day, he was free to hang out in his pop-up cabin, play around with his company drone, and get some good hiking and fishing in.
The boss only had warned him about two things in the Python area. One was the river itself. It had a mean undertow that had a nasty reputation of sucking people down to their deaths, so he wasn’t supposed to go in it or on it at any cost. The other warning was that the area had a population of one: a hermit who had been there for a few years, and that the boss was hoping Andrew could help shoo away during his time there. Andrew figured a few scares and honks from his drone would be all it’d take to send the crazy old hermit packing.
Until he saw that the hermit was a woman his age.
The Python River was about a hundred feet wide, separating Andrew and the hermit’s campsites. She didn’t look like the typical hermit, her brown hair was done up in a bit of a wild braid her tan skin had some dirt smudges on it, but she was wearing jeans, a button-up shirt, and hiking boots. With a proper shower she’d fit fight back into society. She had a small cabin of her own the size of a shed built entirely out of wood, complete with a campfire area in front, animals skins and clothes hanging to dry, and some sort of brick enclosure that looked like it opened into the underground to keep things cool.
Andrew waved and yelled a hello to her the first time he saw her, thinking he might as well get to know his new neighbor. But even from a hundred feet away, her scowl could peel the bark off a tree. She ignored him and went about her business. Andrew shrugged and set up his own dwelling.
The pop-up cabin was nothing short of magic. All Andrew had to do was lay down the long metallic sheet on the flat ground, plug it into his portable generator, press a button in the corner, and then it folded outward like the top of a convertible. Within a minute, he had a cabin of his own, twice as big as the hermit’s and twice as sturdy. He glanced over the river at her with a big, toothy grin, hoping that maybe she’d be watching and look impressed. Of course, she wasn’t there.
Andrew unpacked the rest of his supplies, filling up the cabin with the gas stove, sleeping bag, blankets, and of course, a hundred cans of Spam, a hundred boxes of Velveeta shells, and a few Snickers and twinkies for desserts. Plenty to see him through the month.
With his first day’s chores out of the way, Andrew decided to try out his new toy: the Wilmington Farm drone. With a few flips and switches, Lovecraft—as Andrew decided to call it—was up in the air, zooming around the trees along with the birds. Feeling a little feisty, Andrew brought it down on the other side of the river, close to the hermit’s cabin. The wind from its rotors blew up dirt and dust all over, making the hermit’s skins and clothes flap from the breeze.
But only for a moment. The next, an arrow came searing through the air, right above Lovecraft, shooting deep into the forest. The hermit came around from the back of her cabin, bow loaded with a fresh arrow, aiming right at Andrew himself.
He quickly pulled the drone back to his side of the shore, and the hermit lowered her bow, disappearing into her cabin. As Lovecraft landed next to him and he shut it off, Andrew breathed a sigh of relief that the river between him and the hermit was uncrossable. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about waking up in the middle of the night to a stone dagger held to his neck.
Over the next week, Andrew went about his duties cataloguing the area. All he had to do was provide surveying specs for the boss, along with flora and fauna sightings. It didn’t even take him the hour he’d expected, and with the rest of the day open to him, he decided to do some exploring.
The first item on his list was fishing. The deadliness of the Python river made it even more alluring, and Andrew was looking forward to his first real encounter with it. Carrying his fishing rod and tackle box, he walked up to the edge of the rocky bank, sat down, and peered into the blackness.
Up close, the Python didn’t look as terrifying as he’d expected. It just looked like a regular deep river. But Andrew had been warned about its deceiving looks. The entire thing had a killer undertow that had sucked down dozens of people over the years. In fact, no one even knew how deep the river was, since it was too dangerous to check. The only ones who knew were the dead bodies at the bottom.
Careful to keep at least five feet between him and the edge of the water, Andrew cast out his line, sat down, and enjoyed the clear, sunny air.
Meanwhile, across the river, Miss Hermit was doing fishing of her own. She had a long wooden spear with a sharp tip. He chuckled when he saw her with it, wondering if she was expecting the fish to jump out of the water so she could pierce them.
Instead, she crawled right up to the edge of the rocks, leaned an inch away from the inky water, then thrust the spear down.
Andrew nearly cried out when he saw her do it, terrified that she’d fall in and drown. But before he could even sit up in shock, she was already on her feet, safely away from the water, with a wriggling fish stuck through the tip of her spear. She glanced at Andrew only briefly, gave him a smirk, then walked away.
Andrew didn’t catch any fish that day.
Or the next week either. After two weeks of living in the wilderness, he was getting a little sick of Velveeta and Spam every day. Fresh fish, rabbit, bird, anything was sounding like a delicacy at this point. But he had two more weeks to go, he had to tough it out. That’s what he told himself as he lay snuggled in his sleeping bag, munching on a Snicker’s bar, as a storm beat down outside.
It had rained a bit before, but this was the first real storm Andrew had been through in Python. Water beat down from above like waterfalls were gushing from the clouds. Thunder cracked so loud it sounded like explosions were happening right outside the cabin. Thankfully it was completely sealed from the elements, so Andrew and Lovecraft didn’t have to worry about anything. Except Miss Hermit.
As Andrew lay there, he hoped that she was doing okay. She seemed pretty adept at living on her own, but this storm was something else. Although even if she was in trouble, it’s not like there was much he could do about it anyway. The river between them was more of a barrier than any wall could ever be.
But when another crack of lightning came so close it rumbled the ground, Andrew couldn’t wait around any longer. He had to know she was okay. He threw on his raincoat, grabbed a flashlight, opened the metal door, and stepped outside.
It was like walking into a pitch-black swimming pool. The only light came from the moon and the emergency light on top of Andrew’s cabin. It was enough for him to flick on the flashlight and shine it across the river.
The rain was so thick it was hard to see anything, but one thing was clear: Miss Hermit’s cabin was in trouble. The brick pit was gone, the campfire area was flooded by the river, and the roof of the cabin had caved in. Andrew could see flashes of Miss Hermit as she dashed around outside, seemingly desperate to patch up her home.
Without spending another moment thinking about it, Andrew ran into his cabin and put together an emergency pack for her: his spare raincoat, his spare waterproof sleeping bag, and two bottles of water. He wrapped them in a tarp, tied it up with twine, and attached it to Lovecraft. The maximum weight for it to carry was forty pounds, but that was in good weather. Andrew would need to pray to the elder gods that it would find its way across.
He brought it outside into the torrent of rain, and turned it on. Surprisingly, it rose into the air, but could only get up a few feet from being pelted so hard. Andrew begged it to try its hardest, and as if Lovecraft could hear him, the drone began to chug across the river, mere feet from falling into its eternal depths.
Andrew had never focused so hard on anything as piloting that drone. Every small movement it took wobbling closer to the surface of the water, his heart would stop, and only begin beating again once it rose a little higher. He didn’t blink or breathe the entire time, silently yelling at it to just keep going a little further.
Just as Lovecraft reached the other side, it collapsed to the rocky bank, no longer responding to Andrew’s controls. He yelled out as loud as he could to the other side, shining the flashlight as wildly as he could between bursts of thunder and lightning, trying to get Miss Hermit’s attention.
He only saw her for a moment. She came down to the drone, picked it up, then dashed away with it in her arms. Andrew scanned the other side of the river with his light for any sign of her, but he couldn’t find anything. He felt relieved that at least the package had been delivered, and he went back into his now-slightly-moist cabin for the night.
The next morning, the storm was gone. Andrew went out to survey the damage. The outside of his cabin was fine, the emergency light still on and shining, but the ground was a mess. Fallen trees, leaves everywhere, dead fish sprawled around stinking. But he didn’t care about any of that, he only looked to the other side of the river, to see how Miss Hermit was doing.
He didn’t see her, but he saw something just as good: the tarp he’d sent her was secured over the roof of her cabin with the twine, and the raincoat he’d sent her was hanging out to dry nearby. Not feeling especially hopeful, Andrew turned on the drone’s remote and tried to pilot it, to see if it still worked.
To his shock, as soon as he pressed the control, a whirring sound came from across the river. Little Lovecraft hovered in the air out of the cabin and toward Andrew over the river. But there was something different about it; something hanging from beneath it.
When Andrew piloted the drone back over to him, he saw what it was: dry animal hide. He must’ve accidentally snagged it on the way out. He could probably send it back over to her later.
When he landed the drone and reached down to remove the skin, he saw that there was something on it. Flipping it over, there was a message carved into the back of the leathery skin, filled in with charcoal. It read:
Thanks! <3
Andrew peered up from the skin. Across the river, Miss Hermit was there, standing up in the waterproof sleeping bag and drinking one of the water bottles.
“My name’s Tiffany!” she yelled from across the river.
“I’m Andrew!” he yelled back.
And that was the start of a beautiful relationship.
For the next two weeks, Andrew and Tiffany exchanged gifts with each other using Lovecraft as their go-between. Andrew sent Tiffany hot and cheesy bowls of Velveeta, with a Snicker’s bar for dessert, and she sent him freshly-caught fish and plucked birds, which she instructed him how to cook by yelling across the river.
Both of them wanted to actually meet the other, but they both knew the dangers of the abyssal river between them. Neither of them had a boat, and even if they did, it wouldn’t be worth the risk. One small tip is all it would take to send them to the exclusive club of people who know how deep the Python River is.
So instead, they came up with a plan. On Andrew’s last day, they would both follow the river going the same way, until they found a way to meet up with each other. As long as they kept the same pace, they’d have to meet up at some point.
With his bags considerably lighter than when he’d first arrived, Andrew was ready to go. Across the river, Tiffany was the same. She had her own backpack, made with the tarp that he had sent her, loaded with enough food to last a few days. Hopefully it wouldn’t take that long.
The two of them marched in tandem on opposite sides of the river, yelling back and forth to each other to make sure they were still together. The river expanded and collapsed: sometimes they were so far away from each other they could barely hear the others’ echoes, sometimes they were so close that Andrew could see the deep green of Tiffany’s eyes that he’d never noticed before. It was tempting to jump across at those points, but reason prevailed.
Until they came to the fork in the river. It spread out in two different directions, Tiffany’s side going one way, and Andrew’s side going the other. According to the map on Andrew’s phone, eventually the river came back together further down, so they’d be fine. They’d just have to spend a day apart, at most.
As they started off in their separate directions, they kept calling back and forth to each other, until their voices disappeared, absorbed by the bubbling river and trees. Loneliness hit Andrew hard, but they’d meet up again soon.
But as he kept walking, the river meandered in ways he hadn’t expected. Upon further inspection of the map on his phone, his side of the fork was longer than Tiffany’s, and both of them weaved in and out in weird ways. Panicked, Andrew ran as hard as he could, hoping that he’d get to the meeting point before Tiffany got there and wondered where he was.
The trip that should have taken him ten hours only took five. Andrew arrived at the merging point out of breath, and collapsed on the ground. Once he regained himself, he sat up and prepared to wait.
He waited a day. Then two. Then three. But there was no sign of Tiffany.
Desperately checking his phone map again, Andrew realized with horror that Tiffany’s side split off into other, smaller tributaries. She must’ve followed a different one, and now could be in any of a hundred different places. With no phone number, no email address, no trained carrier pigeons, it would be impossible to find her. He was already going to be three days late back to work, he couldn’t spend any more time out here.
Dejected, Andrew began the long trek back to his car, waiting for him where he’d set up camp days ago. He looked across the river one more time at Tiffany’s cabin. It was empty.
The first day back at work was rough. Everyone at Wilmington Farms wanted to hear what it’d been like for Andrew hanging out at Python for a month by himself. He would’ve loved to gush about it, but every memory was painfully tinged by Tiffany’s absence.
He plastered on a smile, and did the one thing that he felt would be at least honoring her in the only way he could: he changed his report to say that the area was unsuitable for the industrial farm, and they should search elsewhere. At least now the spot that Tiffany loved would remain the way it was.
At the end of the day, Andrew walked through the lobby, ready to head home. There was a nice woman at the front desk with brown hair and green eyes who kind of reminded him of Tiffany if she’d cut her hair and taken about eighty showers. He thought for a moment about striking up a conversation with her, but then decided against it. He needed some healing time before he tried that again.
“Excuse me,” the woman said to the receptionist. “Does a man named Andrew work here?”
Be sure to check out the video for more comments, explanations, and great ideas from chat!
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Featured image: Pakutaso (edited by me)