I was recently in the middle of plotting a romance novel when I happened upon a quote from the movie Sleepless in Seattle. (I love quotes. They’re on my list of most favorite things—right up there with sad songs and Red Bull) The line was this: “It was a million little things that, when you added them all up, they meant we were supposed to be together.” Wow! If that isn’t what writing romantic fiction is all about!
We all know the building blocks of a good love story. The classic meet cute; that torturous will they or won’t they; that heartbreaking black moment; and of course the happily ever after. Don’t call it formulaic—call it a recipe for success! If you’ve studied plotting for any genre, you know every plot is a formula. Heist movies, action flicks, thriller novels—trust me, once you’ve read about Save The Cat or Hero’s Journey, you’ll never watch a movie again without spotting the story beats plain as day.
Now even in those non-romantic stories there is most likely going to be a love story, or the B plot as it is sometimes referred to, and after focusing on romance plotting for so long, I can’t watch the B plot anymore without making it the A plot. And that’s great, because love is literally all around us, in all different bingeable genres!
The best part about a love story in a television series is it goes on FOR YEARS. Most romance novels only have two to four hundred words to take us through this roller coaster of emotions. And movies? Ninety minutes to fall in love! What? (Thank God for those montage sequences.) But TV gives us seasons upon seasons on binging your ship. Sure, that means cliffhangers and possibly years between the moment that chemistry sparks, and the moment when your ship is finally realized, but it also means you can have a plethora of your favorite romance beats! If you live for the angst of the black moment, a series often gives you multiple. If your jam is that ‘not in a million years’ moment where the characters (falsely) deny their destiny, maybe you get to see those adorable idiots lie to themselves for twelve seasons! Or even better, they can grand gesture over and over and over again!
If you’re always looking for the love story everywhere you go, it’s a great time to be alive. It’s love in the time of Netflix, guys. So here is a romance writer’s guide to the greatest ships on television. What made us fall in love with their love? And what were some of the best romance beats in this ship’s arc? I’ve got a huge list, so I’m just going to pluck one of my favorite’s and get started.
For the first ship in this series, I’m going with a classic B plot romance that BECAME the series after awhile. In the show The Office, we came for the comedy, but we stayed for the romance. That’s right, Jim Halpert and Pam Beesly quickly turned this sitcom into a straight up friends to lovers romance novel! And what a glorious slow burn it was.