Don't Over Think Your Story

I find that so many romance authors make huge mistakes when it comes to plotting their stories. The stories end up trying to do too much. Plots get so complicated with external issues and backstories that really mean nothing to the story. In the end, this story misses the central thesis - the romance. So, why does this happen?

In most cases, as an author is writing, authors will stop and over-think the situation, or critique partners will meddle in the writing. And, this stems from questions such as:  "Why did this happen?", or "Why would the character do this?" While these are certainly valuable questions, you can see how this could lead the author down the rabbit hole. 

Authors can easily prevent this from happening by simply looking at these characters as real people and not as characters from a soap opera. Let's look at some easy solutions:

Heroine doesn't want to accept the flirting from her hot colleague at work: This one has two potential solutions. The easiest is that she is committed to her job and just is not ready to move into a relationship. We have all been in these situations. People can simply not be in the mood. We don't need to create a backstory or anything to justify our behavior. This is just a personality trait. Another solution could be based on employee interactions within the office. The character just believes that there should not be employee relationships. Simple enough.

The character seems always angry and cynical about life. Again, this can be a character trait. We don't need to have rely on a backstory of some parent who pushed the character in this direction. This person just can be this way.

The same goes for getting characters together in their story. Questions such as "I have to have a reason for the two characters to talk about the situation at work." Again, what do people do? They have to create a dinner date or a lunch date (because how else would they have a relationship?) and to get them out of the office to talk about things. I don't know about you, but I have a lot of conversations about things going on at work, with colleagues, while we are at work. We are sitting in the break room. We are walking down the hall to a meeting. You name it, there are opportunities. 

In the end, you don't need to create bizarre backstories. You don't have to create random characters to have conversations. You don't have to make excuses. Just think about how people would do things in regular life and you should be good to go.