: Re: How would a knight act around a princess? In my current book, the main character is a knight and in one of the beginning scenes, he interacts with the princess. He's intimidated because of

@Sent2472441

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I like that they're not romantic interests. It seems to always be romantic these days. In modern movies, and a bunch of YA books, it's often mandatory that they fall in love/have sex/sexual tension. It's like, a law or something of stories these days. But you DON'T. The sheer number of stories that have the woman be the romantic interest is just mind-boggling, and kinda transparently forced.

One example I like from a great author is David and Megan from The Reckoners by Brandon Sanderson. David sees Megan for the first time and is awestruck. He's almost never met a girl before, and he's actually surprised that she sees right through his transparent wooing attempts. At first he doesn't know what he did wrong to offend her, but she's quickly made up her mind about him. He does win her over later, but he has to work for it. Prove he's not as clueless as he seems (he comes off a naive kid at first though).

That's an example where the romantic interest is clearly not interested, at least not at first, and she's just that much stronger than he is.

Somewhere along the line, a lot of people decided that every story has to have a romance subplot. It's so in-vogue that a lot of other readers I know are getting sick of it. I mean sure, love, sex and relationships are part of the normal human experience, and it's messy, and books can help us navigate our own. To have that missing is to make people really sad and frustrated, so love does make life better. Not easier, just more bearable with someone by your side and on your side. (Being a hopeless romantic in a hookup culture is a special kind of Hell!)

Not many mainstream books or movies or games deal with man-woman relationships as anything BUT romantic or sexual, or at least with tension or potential. It's in the Hollywood Handbook. Don't bother looking it up. :p (Hey, that's a great title for a book I could write on the three main story-telling industries, ie the big buck ones - books, games and movies).

Harry Potter was originally supposed to end up with Hermione because of course he was. I loved how she and Ron ended up together instead. They are a classic opposites-attract deal. Harry is the every teen. Hermione is little miss genius, while Ron is ginger loser. Pretty much every fan liked that better. It might have been more interesting if Harry never actually got a girlfriend that it ever worked out with, though. (He did end up marrying his biggest fan, Ginny, ie Ron's star-struck younger sister. At least you know there that she likes him for him, not his fame. That's not a bad way to do it. Him NOT getting a girl, at least in the seven books so far, would certainly make for an interesting alternative to the standard rules of books, where all characters that are good end up happily ever after. Happy endings are always more popular, but sad endings are where you can really show your teeth as a writer. You can also show you aren't pandering to the fans by having a non-romantic, non-sexual friendship. It'd be a good idea to give readers a break from the kinds of stories where it has to be a HEA.

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