NANOWRIMO | ROMANCE | CHOOSE YOUR OWN ROMANCE
Writing a Choose Your Own Romance
Putting readers in control of choosing the love the path to love.
Imagine your best friend. She’s at a cross-road in her life. Maybe her current relationship isn’t working, but she isn’t ready to walk away, yet. A new man comes into her life. Should she, or shouldn’t she?
Maybe her relationship is on a break, and she’s not cheating.
Maybe the new man is an emotional connection, a slow burn building to an inferno.
Maybe, just as she thinks loving two men is an impossible choice, something happens and she suddenly has a third man in her life.
In a choose your own romance, at each step, the choice is the reader’s to make.
At each new cross-road, the reader can chose to fight for the original relationship, or take the path less travelled.
Three men.
Three loves.
Whenever I start a new book, the heroine becomes my best friend. In Choose Your Own Romance, she get’s three potential loves. Each of them real and could become her happily ever after.
Which means when writing, I have to fall in love with three men.
And I need to plot the structure. Luckily, my NaNoWriMo project isn’t my first choose your own romance. I have a plan for a plan:
A choose your own romance has three acts with three major events. After each event, the reader is invited to make a choice. The last choice leads to one of three happily ever afters.
Having written eight choose your own romances, I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve. It all starts with my four main characters. Then, I plot out one full story line, with more detail around the major events.
Then, I go back and plot out the second story line. Sometimes, this fills in more detail for the events. The timeline is important because some readers will go back to the beginning and re-read the book with a different ending.
The second act is always the most difficult to write. Keeping consistency between the cross-over events, and rewriting her actions from a different perspective.
Then, there is the third and final story line. What’s strange, is that often this is the hardest man to write.
In The Rockstar’s Wife, I almost ignored the third option altogether. Which would have been a shame, because he is the reader’s favorite. (Spoiler alert, I do have a fav but I’ll never tell.)
In The Unfaithful Wife, the third option almost stole my heart. At one point, I almost discarded the choose your own concept to write Nina and #3. But, I’m glad I didn’t. You’ll have to read The Unfaithful Wife and then Shattered Hearts to understand why Nina is one of my favorite heroines, and I could never do her wrong.
What I can admit is the my favorite chapter to write is the last major event. There is something about blowing apart her life, knowing the future is in her hands. (Actually, it’s in the reader’s hands, but you know what I mean.)
So, now you’ve seen what a choose your own romance looks like, check out The Rockstar’s Wife and get to know Deacon Galis and his daughter, Athena. You might even meet a certain songwriter before Athena realizes he could be the one.
Follow me and next time we’ll see a day in the life of Athena. It’s a great way of getting to know a new character. Athena Galis. Your next favorite heroine and where you’ll get to choose her path to love.
