#23: The 6 Scenes Every Romance Novel Needs

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Savannah Gilbo

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4.9 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 8 September 2020

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In today's episode, we're going to talk about the key scenes that every romance novel needs to have in order to work and to satisfy fans of the genre. Here's a preview of what's included: [01:45] Romance novels center around two individuals falling in love despite the odds, despite the risks, and despite the opposing forces in their life. These stories usually end in "happily ever after," or at the very least, "happily for now." [02:15] Readers choose romance novels because they want to expe...

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there, Savannah here. Before we get into today's episode, I wanted to share our next book
0:05.0	pick with you because I'm super excited to dig into this book and see how and why it works.
0:10.0	Our next meeting is coming up on November 16th at 4 p.m. Pacific, 7 p.m. Eastern, and we're going to be
0:16.0	digging into the fourth wing by Rebecca Yarrows.
0:19.1	Abigail and I are so excited to deconstruct this book and these meetings are always so much fun.
0:24.1	They're interactive so in addition to our presentation on why we think this story works
0:28.8	and why we think it resonates with readers, there are also polls and lots of opportunities to chat with other
0:34.4	writers and ask us questions and you know just participate in a group discussion
0:38.8	about a really awesome book. As always our aim is to analyze a novel and translate our learnings into
0:44.8	actionable tips, tools, and strategies that you can take and implement in your own
0:48.8	writing right away. So if you want to join us or if you want to learn more about how the book club works, go to
0:54.4	Savannah Gilboe.com forward slash book.
0:57.7	One more time, that's Savannah Gilboe.com forward slash book
1:01.1	dash club. Hope to see you there. So usually this breakup is only
1:04.7	temporary until each of the characters overcome whatever's holding them back
1:08.8	from true love. So essentially they can't yet live happily ever after because one or both of them
1:14.4	hasn't learned the lesson of the story yet. So that internal wound or that false
1:18.6	belief is just too much and it's still holding them back from happiness. And speaking of that this scene usually happens around the end of
1:27.0	Act 2 so right around that all is lost moment when all hope really does
1:31.4	seem lost and the best breakup scenes or the best separation scenes are the ones in which it
1:36.5	seems super unlikely that the characters are going to reunite at the end.
1:40.8	So yes the reader expects there to be a happily ever after ending, but you do kind of want the readers to have their doubts about how they're actually going to get together or if they're going to get together, right?
	...

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