At the moment’s submit is by writer and e-book coach Susanne Dunlap.

For those who consider creativity as a freewheeling and boundless exercise, including guidelines could appear counterintuitive. However analysis exhibits that clean canvases (whether or not they’re literal or figurative) can truly hinder creativity by permitting your ideas to float to essentially the most acquainted and least unique locations.

By comparability, “constraints drive us to maneuver away from what is clear,” stated Zorana Ivcevic Pringle, a senior analysis scientist on the Yale Middle for Emotional Intelligence and the writer of The Creativity Alternative. “They assist us put our artistic vitality to productive use.”

—From the Properly publication of the New York Occasions, Tuesday, June 3, 2025

There are those that will immediately agree with the remark above, and people who will view it with skepticism. As soon as upon a time, I might need fallen into the latter group.

However ever since I began difficult myself to put in writing romance (Regency romance, to be particular), I’ve come to know that placing boundaries round your creativity can truly stimulate it somewhat than inhibit it.

For me, it has largely to do with having a container for my story. I used to be by no means an outliner. I was a pure pantser, simply charging in with a imprecise thought and spilling no matter got here to me onto the web page. I’ve develop into extra of a plantser now as I’ve developed a deeper and extra nuanced understanding of story construction and its function for a reader. However the romance style pushed me to transcend my consolation zone in embracing these structural boundaries.

So what are the constraints in romance that may encourage a author to be extra artistic, extra ingenious? 

First constraint: a fortunately ever after

In romance, that pleased ending is a requirement. You can not kill off one or different of your protagonists and name it a romance. You may name it romantic, actually, however readers of romance are in search of that feel-good ending—even when they’ve wept alongside the way in which because the protagonists undergo their trials and tribulations.

The explanation this constraint forces a author to be extra artistic is that it’s an ending the reader already is aware of is coming. And from the very starting, they most likely additionally know who will likely be concerned, which two persons are going to finish up collectively regardless of all appearances.

This forces a author to dig deep into the characters to create plausible explanation why they don’t come collectively instantly when the chemistry is clearly on the web page. It makes a author discover methods to include backstory that steadily reveal the ache or issue that has induced one protagonist to really feel unworthy and the opposite to be untrusting, as an example.

It additionally makes it crucial that feelings and ideas are clearly on the web page. Characters need to act in methods in keeping with what’s occurring inside them, but when the reader doesn’t know what that inside motivation is, actions can really feel arbitrary.

I’ve actually needed to push myself to convey extra interiority to the reader skillfully, to indicate it somewhat than inform it—which entails a lot soul-searching and lots of rewrites.

Second constraint: a well-defined construction

My writing ambitions have been born method again once I was in my 20s and an enormous devotee of Virginia Woolf and different literary authors. I nonetheless love studying these books, those the place you simply pause and replicate and benefit from the sheer great thing about the prose.

Lots of these authors additionally experimented with construction, subverting the anticipated storytelling formulae. Within the arms of sensible writers, these experiments could be thrilling.

However a real romance has a construction that has been honed over time and confirmed to create the narrative drive that retains readers turning the pages. Dealt with clumsily, the construction can really really feel like a system a reader has seen time and again.

In order that’s the problem: Adhere to the anticipated beats—meet-cute, rising need, midpoint of affection, problems and thrusting aside, grand gesture that will get them again collectively, and so forth.—in a method that satisfies the reader and makes the underlying system really feel new and shocking. (For anybody who needs a really detailed dialogue of the beats, I like to recommend Romancing the Beat by Gwen Hayes.)

Rising to that problem has been enjoyable and rewarding, and once more, pushed me to dig deep and be extra artistic.

Third constraint: reader expectations

I’ve heard so many aspiring writers say they’re writing to fulfill themselves, to be that solitary genius in a tower who doesn’t care what anybody else thinks, they’re going to put in writing that story they’ve had of their hearts for years and years.

And to them I say, go for it.

However the actuality is that until somebody reads your e-book, you haven’t actually achieved your fond aim. And when you’ve got any aspirations to put in writing romance, assembly reader expectations, placing your self squarely within the sneakers of the reader and the way they may expertise your story, is crucial proper from the start.

Romance readers are voracious, they usually know what they need. As soon as they discover an writer who delivers that for them, they may learn all the pieces that writer has to supply. However to enter that privileged cohort, you actually need to know what’s going to fulfill the readers of your specific subgenre.

As an example, in my subgenre—Regency romance—readers don’t tolerate historic inaccuracy and characters whose actions are far outdoors the bounds of what would have been thought of correct on the time.

How does understanding that stimulate my creativity? Since I don’t relish or need to create passive feminine protagonists, I want to seek out plausible methods through which a lady on the time would have pushed the boundaries and what circumstances in her life might need enabled her to try this—to call only one instance.

In romantasy, the principles of your fantasy world need to not solely be constant, however they have to additionally straight have an effect on the course of the romance itself.

As to small-town, mob, western, billionaire, or some other of the handfuls of in style romance sub-genres, you’d higher have accomplished your analysis by initially studying the comps, being attentive to what distinguishes the most well-liked of them, and listening to all that as you write.

Fourth constraint: collection

I don’t know of any profitable romance writer who has not written a collection. A collection could be roughly related—all the pieces from stand-alone novels linked by setting to novels that work their method via a complete prolonged household’s love lives.

That is intently associated to the earlier constraint: assembly reader expectations. For those who’re fortunate sufficient to ring a bell with readers they usually resolve to learn your subsequent e-book and it’s completely nothing like the primary one, they most likely received’t prefer it.

A collection additionally helps you develop an writer persona, to “model” your self. The type of the covers, the titles, and so forth. inform readers at a look what to anticipate, that after they choose up that second or third e-book, they’ll most likely take pleasure in it simply as a lot as the primary.

I assumed I couldn’t probably write a collection. What I found, although, was that not solely may I accomplish that, however that there are added joys to returning to characters you’ve already launched in earlier books however hadn’t developed totally. Additionally, for Regency romance, not having to begin afresh with analysis means the writing could be faster.

What this discovery additionally pushed me to do was to consider these essential subsidiary characters with a view to their probably turning into protagonists within the subsequent e-book. Meaning making them extra complicated, giving them significant backstory, and extra.

Last ideas

I’d urge any author who secretly yearns to put in writing within the romance style not to take a look at it as a simple method to get a e-book written, however as a rewarding problem in craft and storytelling. Shake off the damaging associations which have induced romance to be regarded down on by some. Glorious writers work within the style. You can write a very good e-book that fulfills all the necessities of a romance. It’s as much as you. And the fantastic factor is that readers are desperate to get their arms on what you’ve written, offered you deal with their expectations and the constraints of romance with respect.

You would possibly shock your self, as I did. Embracing the restrictions of romance unleashed my creativity and made the phrases pour out of me and onto the web page.