LOVE INTERESTS - Terrible Writing Advice

CULT LEADER: Praise be to the Cuthulu and to this video’s sponsor Dashlane! CULTISTS: Cuthulu fhtagn! Love is in the air. You can tell because the plot just came to a screeching halt. That’s right. One of the most commonly requested topics is romance so today we take on one of the key elements of writing a romance plot line, the love interest! Now I won’t be covering the how to write a love interest for a story in the romance genre, but fear not romance fans. Those are on my list. Oh romance novel alpha and beta males. Don’t you worry. It will be your turn eventually. Instead, I would like to focus on non-romance genres and how writers can integrate a love interest into their story with all the grace, subtly, and elegance of a strategic carpet bombing campaign. So let’s go a courting and introduce a love interest into our story. First we should use our creativity, ingenuity, and careful planning to cheat and take as many short cuts as possible! You see, I don’t want to actually put a love interest into the story because romance is hard to write. However, every story must feature a love interest because… every story must have a romantic sub-plot no matter the genre. That means our love interest should get little to no screen time and we should find a way to get her out of my hair ASAP. Oh no. She has been captured by the villain! How dastardly and vile of our antagonist and convenient and effort saving for me! This will surely ratchet up the tension while saving me the trouble of writing about the love interest since I have reduced her to the same level of a macguffin! We could just replace our love interest with a briefcase and the story wouldn’t be any different. I am sure that reducing the love interest to the level of an object with garner no criticism whatsoever. With our poor love interest in the clutches of the vile villain what will happen to her now? Oh don’t worry. The worst thing she will endure is the villain might force her to marry him. He may be a mass murdering psychopath who will stop at nothing to achieve his dreams of total world conquest, but he is a stanch traditionalist when it comes it marriage. The only thing he likes more than hijacked nuclear weapons is starting a nuclear family. But she won’t have to worry about that. The hero will rescue her during the love interest’s forced wedding to the villain. Besides, we can sidestep the entire plot if we want to. Instead, after the love interest’s abduction, neither her nor the villain are mentioned again until the climax of the story. She has already served her purpose by motivating the hero to go on his quest. You see, the love interest is the reward that will be handed over to the hero after he defeats the bad guy. Maybe I should put the love interest in a loot box? I mean we could use the distressed damsel’s point of view to get an inside perspective to what the villain is planning, show off her cleverness by having her find a way to send information to the heroes, characterize the villain trough his interactions with her, or take over his entire operation and become the villain herself. We can’t do any of that because it undercuts the original reason for having our love interested captured in the first place and that’s to save effort better spent on giving our chosen one protagonist yet more powers and abilities. Or we can use the effort saved on writing a love interest to instead add more love interests for the protagonist. Wait a minute... But what if a writer actually wants to include a romantic plot line in their story and not simply play lip-service to it? Well a romance side plot needs fuel. One would think that the best way to fuel the romantic side plot is to have natural and engaging interactions that showcase the chemistry that the two love interests share. But we are going to use the cheap alternative! L-U-S-T! That’s right! Long Unresolved Sexual Tension. Most often shortened to UST, UST is essential to dragging out any tortured romance side plot in fiction. You see, we can’t have people who are attracted to each other just get together. First we have to milk that romance plot line for all it’s worth by constantly teasing the audience with the ‘possibility’ of characters entering a romantic relationship but never actually deliver! Now UST is a very potent fuel. A little goes a long way. Which is why a writer should just pour it on like there is no tomorrow! Max that acceleration on the UST until the red string of fate becomes a hangman’s noose for the story! Make sure to constantly break up the flow of the plot to show us how the characters are pining to be together but lack any kind of spine to actually ask the other out. Their love should gradually blossom like a beautiful ivy. A beautiful invasive ivy that inevitably strangles everything around it as the romance side plot takes over the story. Oh no! I’ve gone too far. It looks like the couple might actually hook up before even the halfway point! This is unacceptable! At this rate, I might have to write an actual romantic relationship! I can’t write those! I can’t even maintain one of those in real life! How can I stop this UST from going too far? Better add a moment killer. Uh oh, it looks like someone else just blundered in and ruined the moment. Thankfully it will never occur to the eloping characters to just ask the third person to leave? The best thing about moment killers is that a writer can use these indefinitely without any repercussions no matter how contrived the interruptions become. Comedic sidekicks are the best at ruining romantic moments, and the story’s tension, and like the entire story. Yeah you little comic relief stains you will get your own Terrible Writing Advice video one day, mark my words. How else can we ruin the moment? Oh right. By getting back to the actual plot! No reason the villain can’t ruin the romantic moment. It’s never too late for the love interest to be captured no matter how hyper competent she was before. A simple arm grab can disable even the most fearsome warrior woman. I feel like I am forgetting something obvious. Like what else could I do to amp up the romantic side plot? Surely there is something, like an obvious reoccurring gag, that I could use. Eh. I can’t think of anything. Oh wait. I got it! I need a… reason to pair off the side characters! The story is nearing its end so I better pair the spares. Did any of these couples share even a single scene together? Did any of these last minute match ups share even a drop of chemistry? Well it doesn’t matter! Hit’em and ship’em. No time to worry about anything else. Now foolish writers may question the need for the story to have a love interest at all. Is the teenage protagonist too emotionally immature to handle something as complicated as a romantic relationship? Our protagonist needs to master their magic powers before evil destroys the world in mere days. I’m sure we can pencil in a date in there somewhere. Every story must feature a love interest no matter how much it detracts from the main story. But let’s be honest. I’m just stalling because I don’t want to actually commit to resolving the romantic side plot for the love interest for fear of angering fans. When a writer finds themselves in this position, the best thing to do is to simply not resolve any of the romantic pairings. That’s right. All of the characters are still in relationship limbo by the end of the story. Not like this will utterly infuriate anyone invested in the outcome of the romantic pairing. A writer cannot for sure pair off the characters until near the end of the series so we can keep running the story off of UST indefinitely. Or I guess you just awkwardly tie up the romantic pairings at the last minute of the story and send your fandom spiraling into a never ending civil war. CULT LEADER: Cuthulu fhtagn my brothers! The end of the Terrible Writing Advice expanded universe draws near as was prophesied by the Great Old Ones! CULTISTS: Cuthulu fhtagn! CULT LEADER: Yes! It is time! We must spread the word! COUNTRY CULTIST: About how people need to get right with Cuthulu or face the enteral consequences? CULT LEADER: Well yes. That. And that this video is sponsored by Dashlane. You see my followers, Dashlane is a password manager that stores and auto-fills passwords across all of a user’s devices with patented security architecture. It can generate secure passwords so you don’t have to remember every stinking password because I still can’t get on my deviant art account after I lost that sticky note! NERD CULTIST: Um. We already know about Dashlane. We’ve been using it for weeks. CULT LEADER: What? COUNTRY CULTIST:: Yeah. Soon the Great Old Ones will rise from their slumber to lay waste to mankind so I’m not wasting any more time on remembering passwords. Especially for all of the shopping I’ve been doing which Dashlane makes checkout easy and secure. It’s really easy to sign up for plus it works across all major platforms; Android, Windows, Mac, and iOS. Like my iphone! NERD CULTIST: You have an iPhone? You apple fans are like a cult. CULT LEADER: You are all already in a cult! My cult! And I thought I forbid all worldly possessions! COUNTRY CULTIST:: Yes. We know. Cuthulu rises from the depths of R'lyeh to devour the souls of all mankind. But until that happens I’m going to clock some hours in on Anthem. If I can figure out when it launches. NERD CULTIST: Yes we will drown the world in endless terror and blood, but at least we are not EA. CULT LEADER: This is unacceptable! I forbid this blatant worldly consumerism. We are Cuthulu’s chosen! Our purpose is to bring fire and death and oh is that on sale? The first 200 people who use the promo code "TWA" get 10% off Dashlane Premium by going to Dashlane.com/TWA. Link is in the description below! CONSPIRACY GUY: Did you think you could steal our sponsor and get away with it? CULT LEADER: What? CONSPIRACY GUY: Don’t play dumb with with! You tried to kill me with one of your discount abominations. And I know you hacked my password and stole what was rightfully ours. 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Channel: Terrible Writing Advice

Views: 567,047

Rating: 4.9698553 out of 5

Keywords: Terrible Writing Advice, writing, Bad advice, sarcasm, Novel, Novel writing, Writing a book, book, J.P. Beaubien, J.P.Beaubien, Parody, Terrible, JPBeaubien, JP Beaubien, Love Interests, Romantic Side Plot, Writing Love Interests, The Great Shippng Wars, Shipping, Dashlane, password manager, passwords, identity theft, internet security, digital wallet, identity management, autofill, auto login, password generator, remember password, digital identity, organizer, organization tool

Id: NgZyhH35hM4

Length: 10min 3sec (603 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 11 2019