Roses are red, violets are blue
Feb. 14th, 2026 02:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
author_by_night posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
fan_writers Good morning, afternoon, whatever time it is for you when you find this post!
In honor of Valentine's Day, I thought we might talk about writing relationships. A few questions:
I've provided my own answers in the comments.
In honor of Valentine's Day, I thought we might talk about writing relationships. A few questions:
- Is there anything you find challenging about writing relationships?
- What do you love about writing relationships?
- Have you ever tried writing for a ship (or even just a trope) you normally don't? What was the outcome?*
- Favorite tropes/tags/themes to write?
- Any other observations?
I've provided my own answers in the comments.
no subject
Date: 2026-02-14 07:54 pm (UTC)Is there anything you find challenging about writing relationships?: As someone who's not much of a romantic, I do sometimes struggle with writing romantic moments. I do better portraying my couple characters interacting.
That being said...
What do you love about writing relationships? I love that even though I'm not a romantic person, I am often able to feel just how much my characters love each other. It's brought me to tears before. Especially when I do manage to write a purely romantic moment.
Have you ever tried writing for a ship (or even just a trope) you normally don't? What was the outcome? Yes. Since a lot of you know Heated Rivalry, I'm using that as a placeholder for my more obscure fandom. "Shane" and "Ilya" are canon, which is what I usually write. But a fic challenge prompted us to write Shane and Ilya with someone else. So I tried writing a fic where Shane ended up with Scott. I couldn't do it. I just couldn't. It made me too sad to imagine them not being together.
I do wish someone else had tried! I would've read it, I just couldn't write it.
On the flip side, I was challenged to write Draco/Ginny for a Harry Potter fic prompt.* Draco/Ginny wasn't my usual ship, but I actually really enjoyed writing them together.
*Looong before we knew what a piece of crap JKR is.
Favorite tropes/tags/themes to write? I'm not sure I really have a favorite? I like to play around with canon a bit - different first meetings, episode AUs, even backstory.
Any other observations? Not really!
no subject
Date: 2026-02-15 12:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-02-14 09:15 pm (UTC)Is there anything you find challenging about writing relationships?
Sometimes it can be very challenging to get them to the point where they actually *will* have a relationship, if it's a get-together fic. Gen is a bit less tricky that way because relationship fic has a clearly defined endpoint (at the very least they need to kiss or otherwise do whatever they're here in the fic to do) and so to get them into a relationship, you have to actually make them get there, and some characters are very resistant to it, especially since so many of the pairings I like to write fall into the enemies/rivals-to-lovers area. "JUST KISS ALREADY," I wail as what was supposed to be a short one-shot crawls into five-digit word counts ...
What do you love about writing relationships?
I think compared to writing gen, it's possible to go harder on the emotions and the physical contact. You can really dial up the intensity. I do love gen and I do also write fairly emotionally intense gen, but it's also more difficult - though not impossible! - to get one character to like, bury their face in someone else's neck and cry, or OTT expressions of devotion, stuff like that. I enjoy that about relationship writing, and I also really like the kinds of messiness that you can get in a relationship when you add sexual or romantic yearnings to a (gen) relationship that's already messy and complicated and emotionally fraught, as a lot of the ones I write about often are.
Have you ever tried writing for a ship (or even just a trope) you normally don't? What was the outcome?
Yes, quite a bit. I don't just write things I ship, I also write rarepairs in exchanges quite a bit (or at least I used to, I don't seem to do it as much anymore because I've been more monofannish lately) or just test out pairings in fanfic that I would not normally have considered. It's interesting and fun. Sometimes it's made me go "oh, I think I do ship that, actually!" but just as often, it's simply an interesting what-if to explore.
Favorite tropes/tags/themes to write?
Sex pollen is one of my faves! Also h/c, cuddling and bed-sharing and stuff like that. I really like characters touching each other. And as noted above, messiness in relationships is fun for me. I like writing characters who are so prickly that they wouldn't do regular expressions of romance/devotion, and have to approach it sideways. Or they do do it, but in odd or interesting ways.
no subject
Date: 2026-02-15 12:42 am (UTC)And sex-pollen, ha! How do you manage the somewhat dubcon aspect of that, or is it part of the attraction?
no subject
Date: 2026-02-15 02:40 am (UTC)I do wonder about that! Not in any conscious way - the fanfic feeling is just the same, and *I* don't feel any different, but I'm sure that after writing so much of it, I could be more open to those feelings than I used to be. I think the actual shift in being willing to write pairings where I didn't used to be came before the romance writing, though; I think it might've been the other way around.
And sex-pollen, ha! How do you manage the somewhat dubcon aspect of that, or is it part of the attraction?
It's a feature, not a bug. ;) I like messy emotions, and it doesn't get much messier than that! Actually, with sex pollen and similar tropes, I tend to like dealing with the aftermath better than the actual sex. My usual preferred variant is that both people are either basically fine with it but think the other person wouldn't be, or are drowning in guilt and need to be reassured that the other person doesn't blame them for it. Delicious delicious angst.
no subject
Date: 2026-02-14 10:45 pm (UTC)I started out in fanfiction with high-rated short fics, always about my OTP. Then I gradually moved to longer, plottier stories, often in AU settings, and into some genfics. I seem to have become less romantic as I've gotten older, and am not sure if that's a common thing or just a me thing! But in my current fandom (based on a romance) I'm back into high-rated romance again, so who knows - it may be driven as much by the fandom. I think writing romance as such is always a bit of a challenge for me - I dislike heavy angst and tend to smack my characters together with less preamble than many writers, so the eventual relationship might not always feel fully earned. Sometimes I manage that with plot - glimpses of the relationship developing with a moderate amount of plot in between, rather than pages of emotional navel-gazing (which I'm not good at and have less patience with).
What do you love about writing relationships?
I do enjoy figuring out how to get my characters together, especially in unusual settings or AUs, or where (as so often) there are barriers between them. I also enjoy writing sex scenes and kissing, and I think I've become better at integrating those properly into the story, rather than the older expectation in some of my earlier fandoms that the writer owed the reader at least one culminating sex scene. (or a sex scene per chapter!) I also love writing dialogue and humour, which may be one reason I struggle a little with pure romance - can't always take it seriously!
Have you ever tried writing for a ship (or even just a trope) you normally don't? What was the outcome?I started out very OTP about it, but have since written a lot of other secondary pairings in all my fandoms. I usually enjoy it, but have occasionally had difficulties in very small fandoms, for example for Yuletide, trying to write a pairing that I had no real feelings for.
Tropes are fine - I love the writing challenge of trying out a new trope, or putting a twist on a well-known one. One of my faves is crack-taken-seriously, so yeah, once again, not very romantic!
Favorite tropes/tags/themes to write?
In relationships tropes, I like amnesia where they have to discover or rediscover each other, established relationships - with tenderness and affection more than pure romance, apocafic where they find each other in the ruins of the former world, quests and road trips where the relationship gradually develops, complete AU settings where they're still drawn to each other no matter how different the setting, and complex relationships like foursomes and other poly relationships. Often more than one of the above, combined. :)
Any other observations?
In a new fandom I almost always start off being excited by the main OTP, then gradually explore other ships (and gen) after getting that out of my system.
no subject
Date: 2026-02-14 11:40 pm (UTC)Then I realised, oh, what was probably meant is 'writing relationships', with the emphasis on 'relationships'. That is, writing stories that have relationships in them.
I choose to answer to meaning one as that was the first one that sprang to my mind. :D
Is there anything you find challenging about writing relationships?
I am wary of co-writing as I've heard people were burnt by it. I do have writing buddies, though, but we don't write the same story together. What I have loved in the past, in the heyday of LJ, was writing for friends: birthday fics especially. Yuletide is a bit of that still.
What do you love about writing relationships?
See above (I didn't read all the questions before embarking on the answers.)
Have you ever tried writing for a ship (or even just a trope) you normally don't? What was the outcome?*
Now, this one isn't open to two different interpretations, heh. Although I did perversely think of an actual ocean liner tall ship type of thing. Argh. Short answer: Yes. I have. Can't remember all the times. I try to twist it into my own thing and make it fun but sometimes it's a bit of a struggle (yuletide, I'm looking at you).
Favorite tropes/tags/themes to write?
There was only one bed. Rare pairings. I live for the rare and the weird. People saying 'um'.
Any other observations?
no subject
Date: 2026-02-15 12:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-02-15 12:55 am (UTC)Romantic, platonic, and QPR 'ships are something of a backbone to my writing, even the gen stuff, as I am ALL ABOUT character dynamics with each other and their canon. So not really. Except smut. It's like fighting: whose limb is where?
What do you love about writing relationships?
A chance to dig into what makes them tick with each other. How does one affect the other, and what changes do they evolve into due to their relationships?
Have you ever tried writing for a ship (or even just a trope) you normally don't? What was the outcome?
I have written 'ships that were not my cup of tea. I have written tropes that were not to my taste. I find it a good challenge to take on, and sometimes, it is great. One of my better Elfquest stories involved a character I normally struggle with, in a relationship I was not sold on, and it turned out damn good.
Favorite tropes/tags/themes to write?
I am very polyamorous in my shipping. Working multiple people into a dynamic that supports each one is sort of my jam. This includes remembering how to support asexuals in a mostly sexual relationship, how to balance emotional needs within the grouping, and how they handle themselves against the world, separately or together.
no subject
Date: 2026-02-15 02:04 am (UTC)(But that's not quite true, come to think of it; I've created OCs whose backstory came with relationships of their own, and even a couple of OCs who have fallen in love with canon characters, although never requited, since that character clearly doesn't love them in canon. It wasn't so much a question of 'what character can I create to pair off with my favourite' as of 'how would this character's actions induce a change in the canon plot'. All the same, I *don't* deliberately take characters and set out to write a given 'pairing'; it is, as always, a matter of 'I have a given character and a given situation; what happens?' And if all that happens is 'the characters go to bed with one another', then for me that isn't a useful plot outcome...)
What I appreciate about writing romantic relationships is that it provides lots of possibilities for angst among the characters -- it was years before I wrote a relationship that didn't end with one or other of the characters dead and/or suicidal, and I still remember the uncertain feeling of trying to navigate my way through the unknown territory of happiness!
I have, as mentioned above, ended up writing a story in which the viewpoint character ended up falling in love with a canon character (without even realising that this is the case until the final chapter, and in the full knowledge that the emotion is and will always be unrequited, since the character is canonically in love with somebody else and this continues to be the case...) I think it did come out quite well, both as a piece of angst and as an AU variation on the canon relationship through the eyes of an external observer, but after I'd finished I was more than ever convinced that I could never write a Mills & Boon romance, something which I'd always assumed!
I also wrote, as a conscious challenge, a "Split up your favourite pairing" story, which featured a couple who *do* split up tragically in canon, an outcome for which I'd written several AUs (and some canon-compliant angst). It was a slight cheat since I used the split to achieve a happier ending for both parties, who both come out of it alive and friends -- and, as required by the terms of the challenge, very definitely single rather than 'jumping ships' to an alternative pairing as in canon :-p
Looking back on what I've written, one of my favourite tropes is probably relationship *within* marriage, as opposed to the 'get-together fic'; because as a rule I'm writing people who already have a known existing relationship in canon, it's not a matter of 'how to make them get there' but of 'how did they get to here', and with different backstory details (while remaining consistent to any known canon details) every time. Which I suppose is a sort of backwards get-together :-)
More generally -- well, angst! People who love each other but lash out and hurt each other out of their own pain (as opposed to Enemies to Lovers); people who have lost or destroyed something that they now understand to be irretrievably valuable. Sex, where it exists, that is almost totally subliminal (the characters may well be thinking about it, but not explicitly, or even doing it, but not explicitly). I almost never use the word 'love', either, whatever the characters are feeling; they don't talk about it in those terms, and they certainly don't *say* it to one another save as an extreme bald devastating statement.
no subject
Date: 2026-02-15 02:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-02-15 09:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-02-15 02:29 pm (UTC)Not more than writing anything else. I feel like my writing tends to be very character driven and often that includes relationship, whether romantic or platonic or anything else. It used to be far more or the non-romantic kind, but these days it's almost all shippy.
What do you love about writing relationships?
Mostly, I think I love exploring the characters and how the relationship between them works. I really can't think of a better answer, no matter how much I think about it.
Have you ever tried writing for a ship (or even just a trope) you normally don't? What was the outcome?
Quite a few times actually! Sometimes as gifts for people I know enjoy a ship that I'm not into, or that I'm more or less indifferent to, or sometimes things that I kind of hate or that squicks me even. Sometimes as a challenge to myself to write something different. If I keep writing the same things over and over I become bored! (But I do write the same things a lot, I just need something different sometimes.) And I do write a lot of smut these days (I didn't used to write any really before I got into Guardian fandom) and I mostly find that boring if I'm reading it, but it is interesting to figure out and see how it works with the characters and their relationship.
As for the outcome, well, I don't think anyone can tell when I'm not into something. But I'm not sure. I put in every effort not to let it show in my writing that this isn't something I personally enjoy. I still find the writing rewarding.
Favorite tropes/tags/themes to write?
Some weird and silly AUs. Lots of getting together. Time travel.
Any other observations?
I think starting to write for Guardian changed a lot about my writing. I used to write gen! Or non-canon shops. But I loved the canonical main pair in Guardian and suddenly nearly all my fic is shippy. Somehow I started writing smut. And AUs, which I did not like before.
I sort of miss writing gen. I don't want to stop writing what I'm writing now, but I also want to write more gen fic in addition to that. I'm just not entirely sure I know how to anymore!