: Re: Characterization: is there any guidance for writing "the romantic interest"? I've recently been researching and discussing characters and character roles, mostly off the back of feedback on a romance

@Sarah872

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Usually if the love interest is uninteresting, it's because the author isn't very interested in him or her as a character. There's any number of (often quite successful) books and movies where the love interest is basically a symbol, or a object, or plays a functional role in the story but doesn't have any inner life of his or her own.

It seems to me that going down an enumerated list of "attractive" traits is exactly the wrong way to solve this --if it needs to be solved. It may be that your story doesn't required a fully realized love interest for one reason or another. But if that's not the case, you need to create a character you actually find interesting --and NOT just because that person matches your own mental list of for a dream girl or boy. An interesting love interest would be interesting even if he or she wasn't the love interest.

Consider the love interest in Almost Famous. What makes her compelling is that she has her own story arc, even including a love interest of her own (that is not the main character). Her story basically stands alone without his. That's a lot of what makes her so attractive to the main character (a thinly disguised stand-in for the writer) and in turn to us, the viewer.

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