How do you write a good love story?

How do you write a good love story?

...

Turn into cars at the end.

They both tragically die at the end over a silly misunderstanding.

The trick to romance in genre fiction is make it a part of the larger story. The interesting part of the romance is what the characters do for each other, not to each other. The pining and blushing and smooching is never as fun as the triumphs and failures they experience because of how the romance affects their lives.

Build up the romance by teasing and toying with it. Make the hero really earn his girlfriend. Then kill her

>Then kill her
Doesn't that discourage getting invested in these things, in the long run? I mean, I can understand that being a desirable outcome, if the hero is played by a sweaty neckbeard.

It only discourages people if you do it all the time.

Granted I'm also talking in a more narrativist sense. In an actual game you shouldn't plan that far ahead. But you also shouldn't pull your punches. If the player's waifu is in a situation where logic dictates she should die then she should die.

honestly that should be said for any beloved NPC, take care of your belongings. If the Daughteru squad is the one being sent in infront of your squad then maybe, just maybe, train them before hand, give them a pep talk. fuckin, tell em good luck or something. my players just watched them walk into the slaughter.

Wait, the syntax on that last part left me confused.
Do you mean you're going to kill her off, or make the hero kill her off?

either would be narratively effective.

True. I was just hoping for clarification.

you don't. they write themselves.

I meant you the writer/gm kill her.

Just make it feel natural though. Nothing's more bullshit than a blatantly contrived scenario where nothing the player does saves his girlfriend. That's too convenient.

Not endangering a player's loved one is the biggest plot twist.

You gotta give it heart, OP!
Heart!

A romance movie have the same narrative structure as an action movie. Don't believe me? It's true. Check it yourself.

give me a couple examples for ease of comparison

I wished I believed in romance more than Bioware. I just can't write it unless one of the pair gets impaled on a pike, set on fire, or betrays the other and then impales them on a pike or sets them on fire. Generally, I prefer unrequited, melancholy, quiet suffering whenever possible, which really doesn't go over well with a lot of the role-players out there.

Titanic. Just change the music and it becomes an action movie.

There's even a deleted scene where he's chasen by a guy with a pistol and shots hin. In the theatrical cut you only see the insknuation that he will chase him with a concealed pistol and the aftermath with the thug with an unexplained head wound.

Not a good example because it was written by a guy who exclusively makes action movies. And who wrote the romance as a backbone for the action scenes.

Explain how your average rom-com is structured in the same way as your average action movie.

make your audience have a reason to fucking care about what happens, have a larger story going on to keep things interesting, start off with romance not even being hinted at in the beginning

The characters should grow to care about each other through actions they have done together.

Have them in situations were they get to experience each other's defining character traits, have them reveal their souls to one another through the actions they take or have them just enjoy being in each others company

never have them go full tilt lovey dovey right of the bat, most people will not find it believable.

Start with solid characters, no one will read a love story if the characters are flat and boring, they will just wish they were dead.

You know for a blind sickly semi-retard, she was pretty hot

You have to care about the character. There has to be one thing keeping you attached to them emotionally. That's how I write but everyone is different

/thread

fpbp

Only retarded that shouldn't be playing "write" stories for rpgs.

you don't. Romance is inherently boring.
all the most popular and beloved love stories are actually stories about the obstacles to love.
The only way is to write a story with an interesting plot and interwinve a love story within that plot, but a love story by itself is boring.

Don't put benis in vagoo. Put benis in anis.

Don't treat love like some force that conquers all obstacles regardless of logic. It's just yet another emotion, like melancholy or the feeling you get after taking a really good shit.

don't forget that love is a stronger emotion than almost any other, but it's much more than that. It's a basis for the strongest bons you can make, it's a basic need of humans.
Empires hae been made and lost for love. People change careers or kill for love.
It's one of the most powerful driving forces of humans

The trouble is, that attitude towards romance leads to detachment from the setting - if the players aren't 'buying in' to the idea of enjoying tragic love stories, then they just think they're being punished for engaging with your setting.
Sadly, other than scouting out players for buy-in, I'm not sure how to get around the problem.

A good rule is to ensure that the relationship itself (whether it's the focus of the story or a subplot) is INTERESTING. The best way to do this is to make sure the characters aren't 100% suited for each other - a relationship where the characters love each other despite their respective flaws is infinitely more interesting than a relationship where two people get along perfectly without any struggles or hardships.

>the feeling you get after taking a really good shit
You compare being in love to taking a dump?

Both feel good, and both end with you being lightened of a load. The only difference is that a good shit ending never leads to suicide.

Look up the RedLetterMedia for Star Wars: Attack of the Clones, particularly part 2 and the analysis of the Anakin/Padme romance.

Take careful notes, then do the opposite of what happened in the movie.

Dont involve degenerates stuff such like cuckoldry or cuckoldry.

>Explain how your average rom-com is structured in the same way as your average action movie.

Not that user, but I can give it a shot.

>ACTION MOVIE:
>ACT 1: Things are going great for our protagonist. His life is right where he wants it, he has a 10/10 girlfriend, and... uh-oh, something just happened to ruin his life, now he's in a shitty situation. The only one who's still on his side is the girl who's ugly because she wears glasses.
>ACT 2: It's pretty rough for our protagonist, having lost all the great stuff he had. He'll have to kill a lot of people and take a lot of punches to get back where he was.
>ACT 3: Finally, our protagonist confronts the villain who's masterminded his fall from grace, and it turns out that his girlfriend was also evil and working with the bad guy and is also evil. Just as he's about to die, the ugly girl with glasses shows up and shoots both the villain and the 10/10 girl. Our protagonist realizes that this girl is his true love after she takes off her glasses and becomes hot.

>ROMCOM MOVIE
>ACT 1: Things are going great for our protagonist. His life is right where he wants it, he has a 10/10 girlfriend and... uh-oh, something just happened to cause his girlfriend to dump him. The only one who's still on his side is the girl who's ugly because she wears glasses.
>ACT 2: It's pretty rough for our protagonist, having lost all the great sex he had. He'll have to talk to a lot of people he doesn't like and take a lot of flak from his ex's friends to get back where he was.
>ACT 3: Finally, our protagonist confronts the villain who's masterminded his breakup, and it turns out that his girlfriend was also evil and working with the bad guy and is also evil. Just as he's about to cry, the ugly girl with glasses shows up and disses both the villain and the 10/10 girl. Our protagonist realizes that this girl is his true love after she takes off her glasses and becomes hot.

>The moral of the story is "don't judge a book by its cover"
>It's expressed by making the ugly girl hot when she removes her glasses
Why do so many movies keep doing this? It defeats the point and tells you that you *should* judge a book by its cover, but that sometimes a cover needs a good polishing. This isn't difficult to get right, so why do movies keep doing this? Is it because it's difficult to empathize with an ugly character (meaning that it actually requires competent writing)?

I think it's the eyebrows, but maybe that's just me

One of the best romance stories I've seen in a long time was actually in Sword Art Online Abridged.
Dysfunctional as hell, but still sweet and believable.

Are you retarded or someth-
>spoiler
MY NIGGA!

Yeah, nobody wants to look at uggos.

You either write a good story and weave the romance into the background so that the rest of the story carries it while working with it or just make a story where only one of the parties involved is in love and the other manipulates them for their personal gain while no one is the wiser and have it end tragically.

make way for best girl

make way for best girl

Why would you send anyone to that accursed place?

I fucking love you Veeky Forums.

Character dynamics, conflict, tragedy leading into either more tragedy, or a happy end.

I mean, generally it's more about how well the characters in question interact. They gotta contrast and support each other, narratively speaking. It should feel natural.

The romcom protagonist would more often be told from the perspective of the girl with glasses, but other than that pretty good.

>Can't think of a single 'degenerate' thing aside from 'cuck'.

Man, you sure are an original and super cool person, huh?

>best gril
>isn't pic related
No.

Goddamn lesbians