Writing a Healthy Romance....

Healthy romances still have conflict. Dad wants to go to a beachside resort because he's exhausted from work and wants to relax; mum wants to go camping with the kids and do loads of adventure stuff. There's only one school holiday and they can't do both. How is the issue resolved? How does each person feel? Sure, in a "healthy relationship" it's not going to be an all-out shouting match (although those can happen even in healthy relationships), but someone is still going to be disappointed and someone else is going to feel guilty about knowingly overruling their partner to do something that they know the other partner doesn't want to do. How do the KIDS feel? How does that affect the parents?

How they reconcile this conflict is what makes the relationship healthy, not the absence of conflict. DO they reconcile the conflict? WE know that the relationship is "healthy" and they get back on the same page eventually, but THEY don't know that - they can't see the future. Maybe they're having regrets, maybe everything is on the rocks, maybe they're stressed by external factors (subplots and the main plot) and not making the best and most rational decisions on a moment-to-moment basis. Maybe they DO have a shouting match, and suddenly they're doubting the whole fucking relationship, kids and all! Consumed by anger and regret, they sulk and brood and sulk and brood until...?

Someone once said that faith is meaningless without doubt, so try applying that to your healthy relationship.

If you up the stakes from a school holiday to a murder, or overthrowing an empire, or other YA pulp plots then suddenly you might even have something interesting.

/r/writing Thread