B Plot

When most people think of romance, they think of people in their early twenties to mid-thirties finding the love of their lives. However, romances also happen between older couples.

Let’s start with the basic structure of a romance. Both love interests have internal conflicts that prevent them from entering a romantic relationship. Internal conflicts cause external conflicts (conflict between the love interests). For the love interests to have their happily ever after, they must first resolve internal matters and focus on external issues by working out their differences.

There are two types of setups in a romance. The first is the love interests don’t know each other at the beginning of the story, get to know one another, and resolve their matters by the end of the book. The second is the love interests are in an existing relationship that is on the rocks.  The love interests need to work to maintain and strengthen the relationship.

Whether you write younger characters or older ones, those structures remain the same. I’ll let you in on a secret about writing romances with older characters—there’s a lot of emotional depth to mine. I’m certain you’ll find emotionally mature nineteen-year-olds who have been through a lot and conduct themselves with poise and grace. Let’s not forget different historical times when most women were raised to marry by the age of twenty. That’s a different mindset than the way most people raise their children in Canada in 2021.

When you write older characters, especially characters with a lot of history between them, there’s a tremendous opportunity to explore emotion, resiliency, pain, loss, and triumph. Romances work because of emotional payoffs. Every romance reader knows there will be a happily ever after, but they don’t know how the characters will get there.

A forty-year-old who is divorced and has one child has different emotional baggage than a twenty-year-old who has never been in love. The constraints on the forty-year-old’s life are different than those of the unattached, non-parent, twenty-year-old. Making time to date when raising a child, working full-time, dealing with an ex who does all they can to make your life miserable while dealing with all of the other bumps and hiccups life throws at you is difficult.

Romances explore choices and how they relate to conflict. Let’s take that forty-year-old single parent and call him Léonard. He works full time, and he has to pay alimony to the ex. His commute is extended because he has to swing by the daycare/babysitter to pick up his daughter Claudette. He has to clean and cook and help Claudette with her homework. A fellow like that is going to be more practical in his approach to finding a romantic partner. Léonard isn’t likely to hang out in pubs and clubs, he’s unlikely to have a lot of time for hobby groups, and he probably won’t take a four-day vacation to a resort because he had a good deal (Claudette has school, after all).

Léonard is more likely to meet a potential love interest at one of Claudette’s after school activities, or through a neighbour, or a friend. When Léonard meets the potential love interest, he has to evaluate the potential not only through his lenses (do they get along, is he attracted to her, do they share similar interests, and so on), but also through Claudette’s perspective. Any love interest that isn’t interested in being with a man with a child, well, for responsible fathers, that’s a non-starter.  

Let’s take a moment to consider some of the emotional issues Léonard faces when considering dating. He was married for six years and dated his ex for an additional two years. Prior to that relationship, he had two other serious, long-term relationships. Each relationship was different, but each relationship also left him with unique scars. One woman wanted children right away when he wasn’t ready. One woman wanted to travel the world working gig to gig, while he had to stay in one place to develop his career. And his marriage, while things were good at first when Léonard and his ex were aligned with interests, hobbies, wanting to start a family, the toll of running a family tore them apart.

These different decisions have impacted him and alter the way he views a potential love interest. Léonard needs to weigh his past hurts versus a stable life for his daughter versus his current reality of being a single parent (time constraints, resource constraints, the messiness of coordinating schedules when a love interest also has split-time with their children) versus his interest in dating.

These constraints and conflicts are interesting to explore. How each person and romantic couple addresses these constraints allow for an enriching experience for the reader.

Some questions to ask when developing romances between people who are divorced with children still at home

• How much does the ex still loom in the picture?
• What are realistic expectations as to how much time the couple can spend alone versus childcare responsibilities?
• How do complicated family arrangements (blended families with different parental structures) impact the ability of the couple to act in the best interest of the couple?
• What are the sleeping arrangements? (This is particularly relevant if you’re writing a high heat romance and are writing sex scenes. What are realistic conditions in which the couple can have a sleepover?)

Let’s age the characters up a bit. Let’s say you’re writing a romance in which the romantic leaders are sixty years old. Let’s say you’re writing Céline, and she’s sixty-two years old. Her first husband died of a heart attack ten years ago. They were married twenty-eight years. It took her years to overcome the grief, and last year she met Pierre.

Céline has three adult children and four grandchildren. She may or may not work full-time. In the years since her husband’s death, she’s taken up new hobbies and has reinvigorated her social life because her husband wasn’t the type to go out. She’s sixty-one. She’s likely to have health issues, and she’s likely to be the primary care provider for her parents or aunt and the emergency babysitter for her grandchildren. There are a lot of pulls on her time.

She’s also likely been through a lot of emotional pain (given that she’s lived longer than a twenty-year-old). She might be more set in her ways for some things, behind the times on many other things, and wise in some areas.

If you write Céline the way you would a twenty-year-old, you’re cheating the character and the reader. You’re depriving the reader of an emotional experience gained for the school of hard knocks, and you’re depriving Céline of the ability to apply all of her knowledge and insight to resolving the issue that needs to be resolved. Remember, Céline’s been around sixty-one years. Maybe there’s a pattern or a similar situation that keeps popping up in her life that she has to learn to move past it. Maybe now, after decades of failing, she has the self-confidence to do something she’s always wanted to do. Maybe she can guide her grandchildren in a way she wished she could have with her children.

Questions to ask when writing older characters:

• Have they grown more patient or impatient with age?
• Are they more vocal about pointing out issues and problems than they were when they were twenty?
• How have they stayed the same since they were a child?
• How have they changed?
• What are three major events that have changed how they behave, act, and feel?

In what way does their health impact their daily life? If you write high heat romances, you’ll need to incorporate some aspects of health and perhaps the need for pharmaceutical supports.

The structure of a romance between twenty-year-olds is the same as writing one between sixty-year-olds. What changes are the emotional depth, the amount of baggage each character has to resolve, and the tools each character brings to the table to address their issues.

Writing romances between older couples can be richly rewarding. Don’t be afraid to stack the conflicts and constraints each character faces. Explore realistic meet-cutes and flesh out each character’s world. Romance is romance.

Keep an eye out of James' and Mirabelle's story. He's fifty years old with four adult children and she's forty five. I'm in the last stages of editing it and will release it in fall 2021. If you liked the excerpt (still in draft) and/or this blog post, please consider chipping in one dollar towards a professional cover for their book. 

Thank you to @SStaatz for the topic suggestion. 

Let's keep the conversation going on Twitter. Reach out to me @reneegendron and let me know how you write romances with older characters.