You’ve heard time and time again when writing love stories: don’t glamorize abuse, don’t write instant romances, make sure love interest is a character too, and not beautiful and nothing else.
Okay, so that’s how NOT to write romantic chemistry? But how does one write romantic chemistry?
Years ago, I read the book, The 5 Love Languages by Dr. Gary Chapman. A book which to this day has really helped my own marriage.
Turns out, the Love Languages also a great way to write believable character chemistry!
The 5 Love Languages
- Words of Encouragement – Does one of your characters like being told comforting and encouraging things? Are they the sort of hero that after being beaten down by the villain, all it takes is their lover or friends cheering them on so they can get back up and keep fighting?
- Quality Time – This character would love nothing more than a grand adventure with their lover by their side. Spending time together, having conversations, and anything that involves being in eachother’s company.
- Receiving Gifts – We’re not talking about a militaristic princess here (though if you have a such a character, go for it!), this is a character who loves recieving mementos from their lover. When they defeat a villain together and partake in the spoils, they might feel treasured when their lover finds a bauble among the trove and gives it to said character.
- Acts of Service – The first thing that comes to mind is the princess who falls deeply in love with the knight who does grand gestures.
- Physical Touch – This character loves tickles, cuddles, touches, hand holding, anything relating to touch. To this character, physical closeness and emotional closeness go hand in hand.
Turns out using the 5 Love Languages as a writing tool had a lot of (amazing) unintended consequences.
Whenever I got stumped on writing my romantic subplot, I would always defer to the love languages. How do you show the characters are falling in love for the first time? Well, what’s their love language, and how does their soon-to-be lover express it?
There, I solved insta-romance forever!
What about dramatic tension in the relationship? Well, does the lover STOP expressing their love in your characters love language? How do they learn to reconnect? How do they overcome these obstacles in their relationship?
When I used the 5 love languages as inspiration for my own story, it not only helped me write romantic chemistry, but it helped with character development, and to a lesser extent, lore-building.
Example of How This Advice Made my Story Awesome
Worldbuilding For example, in my comic, Dragonrider’s Dance, the dragon’s Love Language is receiving gifts. She especially values drawings given to her by her lover (this is where I got the idea to make him good at drawing). This put me on a bit of a world-building rabbit hole and helped me answer some questions as to why dragons value treasure so much. This is where I had the idea to give dragons the ability to know the history of an object by touching it (for example, they know the journeys of knights who’ve all owned the same sword).
