: Re: How do you write boy & girl protagonists without turning them into a love story? I've played with the idea of a multi-book fantasy story for years, where a female and male protagonists' lives

@Annie587

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One possibility is: Just Do It. Write the story where they always relate to each other as friends or co-workers, and the issue of romance just never comes up. I've had many female co-workers over the years whom I have never thought of as potential romantic partners, and to the best of my knowledge none of them were pining away for me.

Two: Give a specific reason why one or both don't want to get attached. They are already involved with someone else. They are too devoted to their work to have time for a romantic partner. They were previously married and the spouse died and they vowed never to get involved with anyone else. Etc. Depending on how it's presented, any of these could be a setup for a romance: one person starts out totally uninterested in romance but then the other overwhelms them. But if done right, if you just say, hey, here's why Bob will never get involved with a woman, and then leave it at that, it should work.

Three: Make the woman physically unattractive. No one is surprised if a man is not romantically interested in an unattractive woman, no matter how wonderful she may be in other ways. This one isn't particularly symmetrical: women care a lot less about how a man looks than men care about how a woman looks. The sort of things that make a man undesirable to women as a romantic partner are likely to also make him unappealing to readers, though maybe you could come up with something.

Addendum in response to comments

Let me clarify my last point. You could certainly make any character, male or female, unappealing as a romantic prospect by making them rude, selfish, stupid, etc. But that would make the character unappealing to the reader, also, and in general you want your heroes and heroines to be likable. (Not necessarily, but usually.) But if you make a female character physically unattractive, she could still be a totally likable character, but a less likely romantic prospect for the hero.

I'm a little puzzled at the posters who say this idea is offensive or that it isn't true. Are you saying that men DON'T care about a woman's physical beauty when looking for a romantic partner? According to the Economist, cosmetics is a 0 BILLION per year industry (http://www.economist.com/node/1795852). Women's magazines are routinely filled with beauty tips. Apparently a lot of women think that men care how they look. OF COURSE it's not the only factor. I didn't say it was. I said "no one is surprised if" etc, i.e. it's an important factor. Maybe you think men are being shallow or unfair when they look for a pretty girl. But as best as I can make it out, you are saying that it isn't true because you don't like it. But of course those are very different ideas. I don't like the fact that people start wars and kill each other. But if someone suggested that a way to make a proposed story plot work would be to set it during a war, I wouldn't flag that answer as offensive on the grounds that I don't like war, or see any relevance in pointing out that countries often resolve their differences without going to war. Maybe I'm missing what you're trying to say.

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