Structure Your Queer Romance Story: It’s Unavoidable—It Doesn’t Have to Be Confining
The structure of your story goes back to the box of puzzle pieces all authors work from, especially queer romance authors. Yes, you work from the same puzzle box as every other queer romance author. The frame on which you hang those puzzle pieces might even look the same. That can be frustrating when you’re trying to create something that’s never existed before. Indeed, J.D. Lasica says the following:
As authors, we have a natural tendency to rebel at the idea that our stories can be pigeonholed or typecast. We resist the notion that our heartbreaking works of staggering genius can be considered anything but wholly original.
I’ve always been a big fan of rules. Well, rules that make sense, at least. Prior to last April, though, I knew very little about the “rules” of story structure. I knew how a well-written queer romance story made me feel. What I didn’t know was why it made me feel that way, what sorcery was used to make up such an emotionally impactful story. Turns out it’s thanks to structure that I’ve felt the plethora of emotions I have over the years.
“[Structure] is the bare bones of the piece, all connected to form a solid, uniform foundation upon which you, the writer and the creator, will build something unique,” says Scott Francis.
So, let’s get into structure at both the plot level and scene level.
Photo by Daniel McCullough on Unsplash
Structure Options at the Plot Level
Executive Director of Marketing & Communications for Gotham Ghostwriters Jess Zafarris points out that “to build a great story structure that will carry you through to a finished novel, you have to take a closer look at your plot and work out kinks that may come up as you’re writing.”
Aside from Gwen Hayes’s Romancing the Beat Structure, queer romance authors have a few framework choices on which to build their novels.
Three-Act Structure
Known as the grandfather of storytelling, Aristotle posited that “stories are a chain of cause-and-effect actions, with each action inspiring subsequent actions until a story reaches its end.”
- Act I: The Setup: Introduce your characters as they exist in their normal world. Prepare them for the adventure that comes from the inciting incident. Whether willingly or unwillingly, your protagonist has no choice but to see the conflict through to the end.
- Act II: Rising Action, Midpoint, and Crisis Point: Conflicts and obstacles abound. Characters make small and major decisions that inevitably lead them to the false victory that is the midpoint, followed by the subsequent crash of the crisis point, where all seems lost.
- Act III: Climax and Denouement: Your protagonist faces a reckoning, internally and externally, that leads them to confronting the story’s antagonist. In romance, the antagonist is their biggest internal weakness that they must overcome in order to earn their Happy Ending.
How you get from one act to the next is up to you as the author. The obstacles your particular characters face, the internal and external battles they have to contend with, and their decisions leading up to and away from the final climactic moment? Mix them up and patch them together in a way that clearly shows your reader that Scenario A caused Scenario B, and thus your protagonist made Choice C as a result.
Hero’s Journey
Queer fantasy romance explores the grand adventure that fantasy calls for while centering the personal evolution of its queer characters. Joseph Campbell analyzed and popularized this framework in his groundbreaking craft book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. Like the three-act structure, it’s separated into three phases: the departure, the initiation, and the return.
- Departure: Your character appears in their Ordinary World, where they receive the Call to Adventure. Initial Refusal of the Call leads to Meeting with the Mentor. From there, your protagonist Crosses the Threshold into the Special World.
- Initiation: The biggest example often used with this structural choice is Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. Frodo faces Tests, gains Allies, and confronts his Enemies repeatedly. Leading up to the battle at Mordor (the Innermost Cave), Frodo works to prove himself worthy through various conflicts. Finally, he goes through the Ordeal of destroying the One Ring and gets the Reward of a job well done.
- Return: The Road Back takes your protagonist back to their Ordinary World, though they are markedly changed. They face one final battle through a Resurrection. Through emotional turmoil, they accept that their old way of life is no more. To Return with the Elixer, they can now help better the world around them.
Queer characters in the fantasy realm go through the twelve stages just as non-queer characters would, so consider this as you pen out your queer romance high fantasy, speculative fantasy fiction, or sci-fi novel.
Fichtean Curve
Stuart Horwitz says, “Writers everywhere need help building something beautiful, solid, and original, and that takes a method.”
As much as I love and appreciate Hayes’s work in Romancing the Beat, it’s been the Fichtean Curve structure that has most affected my storytelling process. This framework is especially suited for character-driven stories. The “curve” consists of rising action, the climax, and falling action. To me, it provides the perfect overlay for the “Hole-Hearted to Whole-Hearted” principle that Hayes discusses.
Readers don’t expect psychological thriller-level tension in their romance stories. On the other hand, creating a romance story doesn’t mean taking it easy on your characters or readers, either. This structure builds on “crisis” after “crisis” with periods of relief in between. Each crisis has bigger effects on the protagonists and their relationships (with each other and those around them).
Most importantly, the final “crisis” serves as the climactic moment. It’s when the protagonist must either choose fear or choose love. Lose what they’ve fought for two-thirds of the book to find, or confront the inner demon and conquer it to find their own Happy Ending. Take heed of Sue Mell’s words:
Sticking forks in the roads of your character’s lives is an important way to create conflict, build tension, and even start your story.
Using this form for queer romantic suspense especially gives you a chance to seamlessly build love and show action. It’s the method to your romance’s madness. Written smoothly, and with the romance centered the entire ride, the Fichtean Curve offers a final option for creating a unique story with a unique pace.
Structure Options at the Scene Level
One of this month’s craft book recommendations is Jordan Rosenfeld’s Make a Scene. Rosenfeld goes into detail about getting scene structure in place in a way that makes your story pop. I’ve read a couple other books by Rosenfeld, but this one is easily the most effective. Just like your novel as a whole, each scene has a beginning, middle, and end.
Think of scenes as mini plots within your narrative. To put it differently, each scene is a chance to show readers a shortened version of the story’s structure. In fact, Jim Adam specifies, “Structure is the way scenes are organized so as to provide a clear beginning, middle, and end to a story” (emphasis added).
To create a well-structured scene, answer a few questions.
What is my protagonist trying to accomplish?
Your protagonist must go into every scene with intention. Either they want something and they’re trying to get it. Or they tried to get something, failed, and are now dealing with the consequences and coming up with a new course of action.
What level of effect am I trying to get across?
This goes back to the principle of causality I’ve discussed in prior blogs. When you order big and small events in a logical way, the emotional impact on your protagonist compounds. As a result, the same effect is compounded in your reader.
What impact will this have on the story’s larger structure?
I created a document in Scrivener that has the Romancing the Beat framework in table format. Using split-screen, I review my WIP’s current outline and compare events to where the framework says they “should” be. At the same time, knowing my preference for the Fichtean Curve, I also ensure my crisis events happen in strategic-enough places to blend in seamlessly with Hayes’s structural description.
Your overall story has a beginning, middle, and end. Regardless of which framework you pick for the larger narrative, you still have to ensure your scene’s structure matches the characters’ intentions and the emotional effect you want them to experience because of their decisions.
Photo by ConvertKit (Soon to be KIt) on Unsplash
To Sum It All Up
I desperately want to tell you to plot out as much of your story as you can using structure. Simultaneously, I’m obligated to push the message that there is no One Right Way to put a story together. Janice Hardy, though, explains it better.
Structure isn’t the same as an outline, and it doesn’t require you to know everything about your story before you write your first draft. It’s storytelling at its most basic—it starts with the introduction of a problem, character overcomes obstacles to resolve that problem, character resolves the problem.
Even if you pants your way through your early drafts, self-editing will show you the structural holes you’ve missed. If you get the inkling that something isn’t meshing up the way you thought? Check your structure and your story beats. Regardless of the framework you use, your story’s events and characters’ actions have to make sense to your reader.
Hardy adds, “A good structure is like a series of well-placed traffic signs. They don’t define the destination; they just help you find your way there.”
Reflecting On Your Story One Word At A Time!
