It seems as though the romcom is basking in the contemporary spotlight at the moment. As BookTok continues to thrive and exert its influence, readers are flocking toward the delicious escapism of romcoms and the pleasure of a satisfying trope—and who doesn’t love enemies-to-lovers? The influx of social media discussion around romcoms has also brought more attention toward ‘spice,’ meaning how explicitly writers approach intimacy. A lot of readers say the spicier, the better. But how do you write spicy scenes in a way that complements your story, suits your characters, and doesn’t make your reader cringe?
This is where Talia Hibbert comes in. As the leading voice of diverse, complex and sexy romances, Talia tackles ‘spice’ with grace and care for her characters while keeping things steamy. Talia’s novel, Get a Life, Chloe Brown, was a USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestseller, winning 2019’s Ripped Bodice Award for Excellence in Romantic Fiction. She has since published 16 novels, including the Brown Sisters series, the Midnight Heat collection, and a trilogy of holiday romances. At the center of her novels are recognizable, real, and diverse characters, bringing visibility to identities often excluded from the romance genre.
Hibbert joins important voices in contemporary romance who write steamy page-turners where the characters look nothing like they did a generation ago—and that’s a wonderful thing.
—Washington Post
We were delighted to welcome Talia Hibbert to The Novelry for a live writing class on all things romcom and the path to publication. As part of our Fall season of events, Talia’s session on the diverse and steamy romcom wonderfully set the tone prior to our live classes with Bridgerton author Julia Quinn, and Kate Sawyer, bestselling author of This Family. At The Novelry, writers can expect monthly genre workshops, classes with bestselling guest authors, and regular sessions with publishing professionals, as well as a thriving romance department led by author coaches Libby Page, Colleen Oakley, Bea Fitzgerald and Heather Webb, and a team of experienced Big Five editors.
In this article, we share the five tips that we learned from Talia Hibbert in her live writing class with The Novelry. If you’re writing contemporary romance, YA romance, romantasy, or you just want to know how to write convincing romantic relationships, read on for advice from bestselling romance author Talia Hibbert. You’ll also find exclusive insights on writing spice according to the Talia-approved method.
Looking for some romance writing prompts or a guide to starting your own romance novel? You’ll find these at The Novelry’s creative writing blog, along with plenty of tips and tricks for writers of all stages.
1. Structure your romcom around one central question
How do you approach the planning of your novel? Are you a meticulous plotter, or do you find writing to a structural plan rigid and oppressive?
Writers of any genre—romcoms, fantasy, historical, et cetera—will know that your writing style is unique to you. But if you’re like Talia Hibbert, you like to have a roadmap before you start writing. Creating too thorough an outline before you start writing is redundant, however, as the story will inevitably change as you write.
So how do you stay connected and faithful to your story without an elaborate plan? To stay grounded, Talia suggests keeping one central question in mind.
The most important thing is figuring out what I want the hook and the heart of the story to be. When I’m writing, I ask myself on frustrating days—who cares? Why do I care? Why do readers care? The most important thing is asking this question.
—Talia Hibbert
When writing a romcom, what matters most is the heart of the story. For Talia, reminding herself why she cares about her story is what propels her through the more frustrating periods of writing. Readers of Talia Hibbert’s romances know that at the heart of her novels are representation and celebration. It’s also about the journey of her characters—characters based on the people Talia loves and surrounds herself with. Knowing that readers will find themselves represented in your novel is a great way to stay committed to your work—but finding your own why, your own understanding of what your readers are drawn to, is your personal priority that will keep you steady throughout your writing journey.
Make sure you’re always excited by what you’re doing and that it always matters to you.
—Talia Hibbert
2. Write real experiences of desire
Romances come in all spice levels. There’s an audience for every level—from innocent, closed-door policy all the way to super-spicy, explicit open-door scenes, so write at the level you feel comfortable, and at the level you enjoy reading.
But first, you might be wondering what the purpose of spice is. For Talia:
When I read romance novels in all levels of heat, I frequently find it more effective to join characters in the bedroom if they’re in the bedroom because that’s a part of a relationship, and it is a point of communication and intimacy. If you’re reading a book because you love reading about communication and intimacy, which is the point of romance for a lot of people, then of course you want to follow it to its conclusion there.
—Talia Hibbert
If you are intending to include some steamier moments in your novel, you might be considering how best to reveal the desire between your characters. As Talia says, opening the door (as it were) to these scenes highlights what readers want to see in romances: communication and intimacy, physically expressed and demonstrated. The intimate scenes in Talia’s novels are spicy and exciting, but just as importantly, they reflect real-world experiences—a feature adored by her readers.
What do we mean by real experiences? Not necessarily your own experiences, but real in that they reflect the world we live in, in all its diversity, complexity, and even miscommunications.
Remember that readers love to feel seen in romcoms, and identifying with a protagonist helps hook you into a storyline. Talia Hibbert wrote out of real experiences that were generally dismissed in the romance genre: specifically, the experiences of disabled characters, who were too often excluded from leading romantic roles.
The lead character of Talia Hibbert’s famous novel Get a Life, Chloe Brown has fibromyalgia and deals with insomnia as well as chronic pain. Are these inhibitions to desire or sexuality? Absolutely not. Instead, they require a different rendering of steamy scenes—a real consideration of the intricacies of each character’s needs and desires. What this results in are sexy, believable scenes that emphasize the intimacy and trust between each character.
It began to feel significant to write characters who mainstream society might argue were less desirable being explicitly desired. I especially enjoyed doing that with disabled characters. I found it really interesting when I was writing Chloe Brown, and Chloe deals with chronic pain. I really liked the fact that I had never read a disabled character having scenes like that, and I got to write that and make it clear that she was still desirable and knew what she wanted and was wanted in turn.
—Talia Hibbert
So, for Talia, writing spice is necessary to reflect the real experiences of desire that are traditionally undervalued in the romance genre. Considering intimacy scenes in this way might help relieve some pressure; they don’t have to be perfect, but they should feel real.
3. Balance conflict with romance and tension
What does every good romcom need? Passion.
Utilizing different forms of conflict in your romance novel can create and build tension, leading to fiery and passionate exchanges, which, as we know, are essential for a well-paced romance plot.
If you’re wondering what the different kinds of internal and external conflict are, and how to incorporate them effectively into your story, you’ll find this article by Krystle Appiah, Senior Editor at The Novelry, helpful to read.
In our live writing class with Talia Hibbert, Talia discussed the way she interweaves the light romance of her novels with necessary conflict. What she creates is a delicate balance between romance and tension; between conflict and cohesion. This conflict is, unsurprisingly, driven by her characters.
The key to conflict starts with each character. Another thing I like about romance is that, rather than it being one person’s journey, usually in the genre it’s multiple people’s journeys. That’s a natural way for conflict to happen because people are inherently kind of self-absorbed. Even if that’s not your personality, you have your own perspective before anyone else’s... It’s so easy for conflict to arise if two people are experiencing or interpreting the world very differently, or if they think they’re moving toward different goals.
—Talia Hibbert
4. Don’t run away from tropes—run into them
Tropes are a defining feature of the romance genre. They offer readers an easily accessible method of categorization, allowing them to seek out similar romance novels to ones they’ve enjoyed.
Romance is buzzing with contemporary tropes: some popular favorites are enemies-to-lovers, grumpy x sunshine, office romance, and forced proximity, all of which have their own fanbases on social media platforms like TikTok.
It’s easy to dismiss tropes for being, by definition, formulaic and predictable. It’s also easy to assume that tropes can be shoehorned into any plot in order to suit contemporary romance trends.
But really, what’s most interesting about tropes arises when you really dig into them, and when you ask just what it is that makes them so appealing to readers. Talia Hibbert advises writers working with tropes to really love the trope:
Once you get into what makes tropes heart-wrenching, that’s what makes them work.
—Talia Hibbert
As an example, Talia cited the fan-fiction favorite of enemies-to-lovers and what that represents to readers: someone seeing the very worst version of yourself and still choosing to love you. It’s comforting. So instead of recoiling from tropes, or feeling pressured to include them, ask yourself why these tropes are so successful, and what you specifically want to say by using them.
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5. Raise the stakes higher than you think
Granted, romcoms aren’t necessarily famed for their high stakes, life-or-death moments or suspense-filled ultimatums. Nonetheless, as Talia has already stated, romance novels need tension, and they need conflict. Raising the stakes is the most effective way of producing this tension and keeping your readers hooked.
As our editor Josie Humber put it, stakes are the consequences if your character doesn’t achieve their goals. Stakes don’t have to be dramatic, but they do need to be present.
In Talia Hibbert’s experience, there’s a fine line between too few stakes and too high stakes. The way to spot this is whether you feel your story is dragging or, alternatively, if there is simply far too much going on to keep up with. Another way that Talia monitors the stakes level of her novels is by asking herself this important question:
I try to think: what would I like to read? ... I tend to work at a story until it feels compelling enough for me personally to enjoy, which often requires more stakes than I enjoy writing.
—Talia Hibbert
Authors tend to advise writers to write the book you want to read (for example, see Bonnie Garmus’s advice for writers at The Novelry blog) and Talia’s advice aligns with these words of wisdom. When she writes her adult romcoms, she’s writing for herself in the present, but when she’s writing her YA series, she writes for the teenagers in her life, or for a past version of herself, and thinks about what she would have wanted back then. So, this writing pearl applies to writers of all genres, including children’s and Young Adult fiction.
Final piece of advice
Talia’s advice to our writing community at The Novelry was to keep going forward. She said that writers tend to have a vision of the perfect book while they’re writing, when in her experience, that ‘perfect book’ is written in thousands of bits and pieces and in several drafts. Ultimately, Talia’s advice is to:
Stop trying to write a book and try to write a draft! Stick to it and keep going!
—Talia Hibbert
Writers can find the recording of this live writing class with Talia Hibbert in their membership area at The Novelry. Our writers can also look forward to more live writing classes with bestselling authors of romance, crime and suspense, fantasy, children’s and Young Adult fiction.
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