What's the Right Starting Point for Your Romance Novel?

What needs to happen before chapter 1 begins

Novelists often worry about starting their stories at the right point in time. Romance requires a unique approach, and the advice given for other genres of fiction doesn’t always apply.

When you’re outlining a romance, I recommend thinking not so much about what occurs externally at the start of the story but considering when is the right time for the characters internally. That is: What makes right now the optimal time for these characters to fall in love?

We’re taught that things like forced proximity, meet cutes, and ticking clocks create momentum for couples to fall in love. But the story doesn’t start because two characters are stuck on the same sports team. It doesn’t begin because the handsome real estate developer happens to walk into the small business owner’s shop or because the werewolf has only thirty days to find a mate. The story starts because the characters are emotionally ready for it to begin.

It might not seem like it. They’ll still have a lot of work to do, maybe even therapy sessions to attend, before they can get to their happy ending. But the story will start when they’re emotionally open to love, whether they realize it or not.

Let’s look at examples

In Invitation to the Blues by Roan Parrish, the protagonist Jude attempts to take his own life about one year before the story starts. The book captures mental illness in a raw and honest way, but it also takes place after Jude’s biggest spiral. Here’s what Parrish said in an interview about why this starting point made sense:

You know, if I’d been writing a book in a different genre, I think I would’ve started Jude’s story in another place. But since I was writing romance, I knew I wanted to begin after Jude had met Faron and was in a place where he could recognize Faron as someone he needed in his life. There’s always the appeal of beginning in the most dramatic place, for narrative reasons. But depression is its own drama (it spikes and ebbs based on its own tricky non-logic), and it can also flatten external drama. So I needed to begin in a place where Jude was feeling settled enough for a connection with Faron to be on the table, and mentally in a place where it wouldn’t simply be Faron’s job to get Jude to that place.

The more painful your character’s backstory, the more time they’ll need for healing before they’re ready for love—healing that will generally take place off the page, prior to chapter 1. In Cat Sebastian’s You Should Be So Lucky, the main characters have two different obstacles: Eddie O’Leary, a baseball player, was traded onto a new team he feels unsure about, and Mark Bailey, a journalist, is grieving his late partner; he’s isolated, sad, and unable to move on.

One of these problems is obviously more serious than the other. That’s reflected in the story start times: Eddie was traded onto his new baseball team a handful of weeks before chapter 1 begins, while Mark has already been grieving for a year. When the story opens, Mark is just starting to consider the possibility of connecting with other people.

Regina Black’s The Art of Scandal might appear to break this rule of thumb: it starts at the precise moment that the protagonist Rachel realizes her husband is cheating on her and her marriage is over. Here’s the opening sentence:

When your husband of thirteen years sends a close-up of his erect penis, you should not, under any circumstances, ask him why he sent it.

This starts with the pinnacle of drama, but importantly, it doesn’t begin at the pinnacle of Rachel’s emotional pain. She’s not madly in love with her husband and unable to imagine leaving him. Two paragraphs later, she has this thought process:

Maybe [the picture] wasn’t him. She tried to remember the last time she’d seen Matt’s penis up close but could only picture him drunkenly peeing against their neighbor’s crape myrtle after last year’s Fourth of July barbecue.

This book is not a second chance romance. She’s not interested in getting back with her husband. She’s encountering big problems, but they’re framed through the lens of comedy, so the reader understands that Rachel is not emotionally scarred by her husband’s infidelity.

Contrast the beginning with the start of Kennedy Ryan’s Before I Let Go, which is a second chance romance about a married-then-divorced couple:

Do people remember the exact moment they fall in love?

I do. Yasmin brought me homemade chicken noodle soup when I was so sick it hurt to blink.

This is incredibly tender and soft, and we already know, without having ever seen him on the page, that the husband from The Art of Scandal never gave his wife chicken noodle soup. At the end of chapter 1, Rachel runs out of her husband’s house:

“It’s almost midnight!” Matt [her husband] shouted. “Where are you going? We’re not finished talking, Rachel!”

There was a liquor bottle in a red velvet sack on the gift table. She grabbed it on the way out the door. A hard gust of wind slammed into her face, smothering her briefly before it eased and she could breathe again. She could hear Matt’s footfalls against the foyer tiles. He matched her pace but didn’t go much faster. He didn’t want to catch her.

Everything about this opening chapter is gorgeous and worth studying, but here it’s clearly laid out that this is not the high point of Rachel’s pain. In fact, this is the moment she can breathe again. As the reader finds out later, her trauma already happened years before, which was what led to her marrying the wrong man in the first place. This is great external drama, but it’s also an opportunity for healing. Rachel leaves an unhappy home, at midnight, with liquor in her hand. She’s been trapped in a routine for years, and on this particular night, she changes. That’s when the story begins.

In summary

Don’t start the story at the peak of a character’s pain/trauma. Do start it when the character is just beginning to be open to love. They’re not ready to give someone their affection and trust just yet, but the potential is there. The path from that potential to its fruition is what every romance tracks.

Until next time,

Hannah Varacalli

Copy & Developmental Editor
www.hveditorial.com