{"id":188968,"date":"2014-09-29T21:52:09","date_gmt":"2014-09-29T21:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2014\/09\/29\/sorry-to-bother-you-i-was-wondering-if-you-had\/"},"modified":"2014-09-29T21:52:09","modified_gmt":"2014-09-29T21:52:09","slug":"sorry-to-bother-you-i-was-wondering-if-you-had","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/2014\/09\/29\/sorry-to-bother-you-i-was-wondering-if-you-had\/","title":{"rendered":"Sorry to bother you – I was wondering if you had any advice for writing romantic characters? I have a bad habit of writing all my characters aromantic\/not-in-a-relationship and I have a creative writing test on Tuesday and my character for that needs to be in a relationship and flirt… And you’re a writer. A good one. So I was wondering if you had any tips on writing romance and flirting? Yeah. Sorry."},"content":{"rendered":"

loveanddeathandartandtaxes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

merindab<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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I hope it\u2019s okay I answer this public? And thank you for the compliment.<\/p>\n

Maybe I have a small advantage of being married 16 years. Or I just like Jack Harkness, a lot. I would say the big thing is the small things.If you want to be in a relationship, you notice the small things. You know what they like in their tea or coffee. You laugh at their jokes. If you\u2019ve been a relationship for a while you have your inside jokes and shared experiences. If you\u2019re just meeting someone, take a tip from Jack Harkness, smile, meet their eyes and introduce yourself. It\u2019s a fine line between being creepy and being warm, but it\u2019s about paying attention to the other person, and making sure they know you\u2019re the center of their attention.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also about being patient. That\u2019s how I tend to write\/think of Mystrade. Greg is warm and friendly, Mycroft is standofish and aloof. But he melts the ice simply by being there and letting Mycroft know he is willing to take as much time as he needs. John and Sherlock can have a similar dynamic, depending on how you\u2019re writing them.<\/p>\n

Like I said, in a more long term relationship, it\u2019s about getting to know the other person. You get to know their lines, what jokes go too far, what things from the past you shouldn\u2019t bring up if you want to keep \u00a0you head attached to your shoulders. Real relationships have ups and downs, fights and moments of love. It can be as simple as holding hands. It can be as complicated as watching the sunrise together.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

writing passive romantic interest is fun and tricky too \ud83d\ude42 if your characters are into each other, make sure the reader knows it. give us little sentences telling us how they\u2019re feeling, or what they think of their person. all the things Merinda mentioned are super correct but especially if you\u2019re going for as-yet-unresolved romantic tension – the audience needs a window into at least one of the character\u2019s heads.<\/p>\n

when your characters shift from passive (interest) to active (flirting), you can\u2019t lose this! the biggest difference between friendly flirty banter and creepy hitting-on is intent, which shows in the body language and tiny variations in tone. your narration, with a careful (not necessarily overly fancy, just\u2026 careful) selection of words works magic here.<\/p>\n

it\u2019s possibly a dumb obvious thing to say, but draw on yourself and your own feelings – or your friends. i\u2019m not overly similar to john or sherlock (or greg or mycroft or newt or hermann) but if i think about my conflict of wanting to protect my friends and simultaneously feeling directionless, i can write john. if i think about pretending to ignore things that might hurt me for so long that i\u2019m unsure how to respond to things when they almost definitely won\u2019t hurt, i can write sherlock. (exasperated fondness for my sister\/coworkers? greg. writing mycroft is like what you think you want when everything is a goddamn mess, and you have no resources to control it. \u201coh god did my mouth just make those words\u201d = newt. herms is me as an older sibling desperate not to be outshone, with a dash of sherlock\u2019s emotional avoidance) that\u2019s a big simplification, of course, but a start. i can say \u201cwhen i felt\/feel like this, how would i react?\u201d i then have a starting point i can then modify depending on the character\u2019s situation.<\/p>\n

building a whole existence outside the story helps greatly. this is where fanfic is a huge help\/crutch, because it\u2019s easy to think\/talk about headcanons and AUs and\u00a0how the characters would act\/react in new situations<\/em>. if you\u2019re writing original fiction with an ensemble cast, i think my biggest pitfall was having one fleshed-out character and one-dimensional supporting cast. if you\u2019re writing just about a couple of people, i think it\u2019s important to avoid making them either\u00a0too\u00a0<\/em>polar-opposites or too<\/em> perfectly-matched.<\/p>\n

and finally, find someone who can give you some tough love support. someone who likes how you write but isn\u2019t afraid to tell you where you need to pick up the slack. if i can moan about fanfic for a second, there is a lot, seriously so much, great writing, and also truckloads of pretty good writing, but it\u2019s jumbled in with a lot of stuff that\u2019s\u2026 you know, mediocre or sub-par, and it makes me despair a little when they only get praise without critique? like, yeah, harsh truths hurt, but if you refuse them, you\u2019re really doing yourself a disservice. (i guess that\u2019s some life advice that applies to more than just writing.)<\/p>\n

i need to stop saying stuff. the most important thing is to enjoy yourself. #platitude<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

loveanddeathandartandtaxes: merindab: I hope it\u2019s okay I answer this public? And thank you for the compliment. Maybe I have a small advantage of being married 16 years. Or I just like Jack Harkness, a lot. I would say the big thing is the small things.If you want to be in a relationship, you notice the … <\/p>\n

Continue reading “Sorry to bother you – I was wondering if you had any advice for writing romantic characters? I have a bad habit of writing all my characters aromantic\/not-in-a-relationship and I have a creative writing test on Tuesday and my character for that needs to be in a relationship and flirt… And you’re a writer. A good one. So I was wondering if you had any tips on writing romance and flirting? Yeah. Sorry.”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[731,4,6469],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188968"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188968\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.merindab.com\/private\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}