- What's up, my friend? Abbie here and welcome back
to WritersLife Wednesdays, where we come together to help
you make your story matter and make your author dreams come true. Today we are talking all about
chemistry, more specifically, seven quick and easy ways that you can instantly add
chemistry to your romantic couple in your book and make
your readers fall in love. And no, it is not just a
matter of longing looks and accidental touches and almost kisses. Chemistry is not just sexual tension. It is way more complex than that. Chemistry is that magic ingredient
that makes us spellbound watching these two characters
navigate the story together. It's that X factor that we can't explain, that special spicy spark that makes these two
characters insanely shippable. And for anyone who doesn't know, shipping characters is
not putting them in a box and dropping them in the post. It is wanting them to be together so badly that your face hurts from smiling so much at their most basic
interactions with each other. You don't even think about
your own relationships in life anymore because
you're too busy obsessing over how perfect these
two are for each other. You find yourself scrolling
through fan art of them. You hear a love song on the radio and you immediately think
of this fictional couple. You ship them so hard they have taken over your life, basically. If you want to write a couple like this and make your romance
insanely emotional, believable and addictive, this video is for you. And the best part is you don't
have to start from scratch. The tips that I'm going to share with you in this video are things that you can immediately
start implementing no matter where you are in the story. You're going to be amazed by how much it amps up the chemistry and takes your romance to the next level. Grab a notebook and let's get started. Why does your story matter? Good question. What if I told you that there's a science
behind every great story? I don't just teach you how to write, I teach you how to change the world with your story and make
your author dreams come true. Number one, forced proximity. Okay, yes, this is the only one bed trope, but it doesn't have to be
the only one bed trope. There are so many ways
to force your characters into close proximity with each other. The possibilities are endless, but this is the number one best way to start turning up the heat on your chemistry burner. (titters) Get them alone together
as much as possible. Get them trapped alone together in some situation where they need to rely upon each other
for support or survival. Forced proximity creates
all kinds of tension and it also creates great
opportunities for your characters to open up to each other and to learn to trust each other more. Also creates opportunities
for your characters to share secrets with each other. Which leads me to number two,
and that is shared secrets. Let your characters be
vulnerable with each other. This is a major building block
of a romantic relationship because love is one part trust, one part joy, one part magic. So when the time is right, let your characters open up a
little bit and share something with this other character that
nobody else knows about them. When I know something about
you that nobody else knows and you know something about
me that nobody else knows, we are instantly closer. (snaps fingers) It's amazing. It's so simple, but so
effective if you time it right. Number three, and one of my
personal favorites is nicknames. But not just a nickname that
every other character uses for this character. It has to be a nickname that only the love interest
calls this character. Maybe it's something cute and affectionate or maybe it's something
scathing and critical about one of their biggest faults or failures. You decide, but nicknames are such a fun and easy way to add that layer
of intimacy and friendliness. There is commitment in a nickname. It's like, this person is sticking around and I like them enough to
have a special name for them. The fandoms love it. Let me tell you right now as a fangirl of many different romances, I lose it when the
fictional couple has cute or funny or sarcastic
nicknames for each other. And trick number four,
which is kind of similar to nicknames but not
quite, is inside jokes. Bonus points if these
inside jokes are references to events that happened
to these two characters. Extra bonus points if the events that the reference is to happened only to these two characters and nobody else understands the reference. I feel like private jokes are
so underrated and so underused in stories, and they're so much fun and they add that layer of chemistry because it's like something that only these two characters understand. It's something they share
and nobody else gets. It's like they're in
their own little reality when they're having this
private inside joke. Right away, you can see
that that adds chemistry, that adds a layer of
intimacy and closeness. So throughout your story, look for little opportunities
where you can weave in references and jokes
to events that happened to just these two characters
when they were alone together, dealing with something earlier in the story or earlier in their lives. Before we continue onto
chemistry trick number five, I want to quickly interrupt myself to tell you guys that I'm going to be hosting a special
live training this weekend, diving even deeper into the topic of writing swoon-worthy
romantic chemistry. So right now, in this video,
I'm giving you some quick and dirty tips, just quick ways that you can instantly amp
up the romantic chemistry in your story. But in the live training, we're going to go even deeper and take it from a more foundational
character-driven standpoint. We're going to unpack the whole
topic of romantic chemistry and building relationships
between two characters, and we're gonna dive pretty deep into it. So in the live training, we're going to cover the
number one golden rule for creating emotional,
passionate relationships between characters. How to use your characters'
existing personalities to clash and complement each other. Powerful ways to bring your characters
together using the events of the plot. How to use the "weapon,
weakness, want" rule to make your characters super-shippable. The importance of relationship arcs. And how to friend-zone
characters that you don't want to be together. We're going to cover it all. So if you want to take your
romance to the next level and craft an unforgettable relationship that your readers will be obsessed with, this live training is for you. It's happening Sunday, April 30th at 1:00 PM Eastern Standard Time. And if you can't make it to
the livestream, don't worry. You'll still have access
to watch the replay as many times as you want. So click the link below this video to save your spot at the live training. And remember, when you join my Patreon at the live training
pass level to get access to watch this event, you also get access to my entire archive of
previous live trainings. That's over 12 different
training sessions diving deep into topics about writing and publishing and character development. Lots to explore over there
and I think you're going to love this new live training
that I'm doing this weekend. So I hope to see you there. Okay, back to our chemistry tricks. Number five, heightened perception
of each other's emotions. Like when nobody else notices that this character is struggling with something emotionally, the love interest character
is the only one who notices and the only one who tries to help or support them in some way. Ah, I love this so much
when I see this in stories! Again, it's that intimacy thing when you know somebody so well that you can decode the slightest shift in their face expression, or you can just sense when
something is bothering them. I am obsessed with moments like this in stories because it's so romantic without ever involving
any physical intimacy. It shows how close these characters are without ever coming out and
telling us that they're close. We can see it. They feel each other's emotions, they're made for each other! Number six, protectiveness. Bonus points if the protective instinct
is not even something that they premeditate or think about ever, it's just this primal reaction like I must protect the
love interest character at all costs. Not just from a dangerous situation, but also from emotional pain too. Showing character A being super-protective of character B is a super-effective way to show us how much they care. And sometimes the
characters are protective of each other against their own will and I hardly need add,
their own better judgment. Seriously, you can even
do this with enemies to lovers romance during the transition from hate to love where
your characters are like, "Why am I trying to protect this person? I hate them." It's so cute. And number seven, constant
reminders of each other. They're always on each other's mind, even when they're not together. It's always like, "She would hate this" or "He would love this." Or "If she was here, she would
be saying this right now." Or "I wonder what he'll say
when he finds out about this." Basically, everything
reminds these characters of each other. It's a subtle but powerful
way to show the strength of the bond between these two characters. And again, it even works in
hate to love relationships. You know, when these
two characters are apart and they're venting to their friends about how
annoying the other one is and how insufferable they are and how hard they're to get along with, and just criticizing them (chuckles) and they can't shut up about them, even though they hate each other. Chances are they don't
actually hate each other. You would in fact need an actual sword to cut through their chemistry. Okay, boom, that's it. My seven top, quick and
easy, effective ways to instantly give your
characters more chemistry (Abbie imitating bomb exploding) and make your readers fall in love and doodle fan art for
the rest of their lives. You're welcome. If you want to dive deeper
into writing romance and craft an emotional,
believable, compelling, addictive relationship from
the ground up, you don't want to miss my live training
coming up this weekend, all about writing unforgettable,
romantic chemistry. We're going to unpack this
whole topic start to finish, and I'm going to give you
tons of ideas and prompts and story examples to help
you better visualize all of this and to take your
romance to the next level. So click the link below this video to save your spot at the live training. It's happening Sunday, April 30th at 1:00 PM Eastern Standard Time. And if you can't make it to
the live stream, don't worry. You'll still have access
to watch the replay as many times as you want and you will have access
to watch my entire archive of live trainings all about
writing and publishing. I hope to see you there this weekend. Until then, my friend,
smash that like button if you liked this video. Share it with a writing friend who needs
help adding more chemistry to their romance. And be sure to subscribe to this channel if you haven't already because I post writing
videos every single Wednesday and I would love to have
you here in the community. Until next week, my friend, rock on. (Abbie imitating wind swooshing) And a lot of times with
the ending of a story, you have this beautiful moment where your character arc comes full circle and your character learns something as a result of everything
that they've been through. And it can be a moment
where they finally wake up to the fact that their misbelief has been
a misbelief this whole time.
