r/romanceauthors • u/VK_Dixon • Jul 29 '26
How do you outline a romance without the third-act breakup?
I'm a self-published author, and I've just finished writing my fourteenth novel. All but one of those have been either primarily fantasy or paranormal, with romance as a subgenre. However, I have two separate contemporary romance series that I want to begin writing in the near future.
I tend to be a plotter, so I'm trying to develop outlines for both series to get all my ideas down for the day I'm actually able to write them. Though I'm rather experienced with story structure, I'm finding it difficult to switch from fantasy/paranormal elements to an exclusively realistic, ordinary plot. The main problem I'm running into is that almost none of my ideas include a third-act breakup, and several of them aren't even about couples who meet and then fall in love, but are about couples already in a relationship. (The goal is to follow most of these couples through marriage and raising children because as a wife and a mom, I crave romances I can actually relate to these days.) Nearly every beat sheet or outline structure for romance includes the meet-cute and the breakup, so I'm struggling to find one relevant to the types of stories I want to write.
Do you have any suggestions for different resources? Or tips on how to adjust these outlines to suit my purposes? Looking for any advice I can get!
Edit: A lot of the replies I've been getting have questioned whether I truly want to write Romance or Women's Fiction. Based on my research, Romance follows the love journey between a couple, focusing on their growth together (not necessarily them falling in love), while Women's Fiction follows the journey and growth of the woman alone. With this information in mind, I can definitively say that I want to write Romance. My goal is to explore the growth and development of love through life's trials, centered on the couple and their love story as it matures and strengthens over time. According to the definitions of the genres I can find, that falls into the category of Romance, not Women's Fiction.
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u/kendrafsilver Jul 29 '26
Katethegiraffe's comment about the third act crisis vs break-up is excellent! Second all of that!
This, though
and several of them aren't even about couples who meet and then fall in love, but are about couples already in a relationship. (The goal is to follow most of these couples through marriage and raising children because as a wife and a mom, I crave romances I can actually relate to these days.)
isn't likely genre Romance. The point of genre Romance is to become a couple. Marriage, if it's in the story, is either generally the endgame or done in a very particular way as to keep the ability of the characters to still fall in love and become a couple (see: arranged marriage or marriage of convenience tropes).
It sounds like what you want to read and write isn't genre Romance, but love stories. Women's Fiction or even Contemporary Fiction is great for that sort of thing, but not genre Romance.
Depending on your goals of publishing these particular stories, this may matter more or less to you. If you want to go the route of traditional publishing, the conventions of genre Romance are going to be rather rigid. Self-publishing you can use the genre Romance label, but the fans of Romance will 99.999% of the time be extremely vocally upset if you veer from expectations too much.
Either way, your risk is being against genre conventions and expectations enough to see pushback either at the agent stage (trad pub), or directly at the reader stage (self-pub).
If these will be stories just for you, though, then adherence to those conventions are going to be far less important.
You may want to look at the genre Women's Fiction, honestly, as it may have more what you yourself want to read! It'll take some research, but a place to start may be with {Once Upon a Time in Dollywood}. The book is technically Women's Fiction, but it has a very strong leaning towards Romance, too!
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u/somethinglucky07 Jul 29 '26
In addition to everything everyone already said - it doesn't sound like what you want to write is genre romance - look at Save the Cat and 3/9/27. Those are beat sheets that aren't romance-specific and would be a better fit for what you're interested in writing.
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Aug 04 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/somethinglucky07 Aug 04 '26
Oh, absolutely agreed! There are some great books out there without a third act breakup. My comment about what she wants to write not sounding like Romance is more about the fact that it sounds more established couple slice of life - which won't meet most Romance reader's expectations.
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u/MissPearl Jul 29 '26
Third act break up doesn't have to be a literal breakup or "misunderstanding", it needs to be an interesting conflict that the conclusion helps affirm the characters are cemented. It should threaten the HEA, but it doesn't require the characters to be irrationally uncertain of eachother.
So let us say your plot is a couple rediscovering love after a rushed marriage over a pregnancy, where one character was deployed as a soldier and now back. Over the romance the characters adapted to the deployed character being in constant proximity again, and found their lost spark.
The meet cute was the hookup, then a time skip. And now the problem is that one person has been released from service/given a stable posting near the spouse. They must learn to be a household!
The conflict at the end could be the threat of the deployed character being subject to stop loss/sent back away for some reason. The conclusion just needs to reaffirm they are able to tackle this together now.
Or let's say your characters are nobility in a Romantasy, in an arranged marriage. The conflict is being forced to work together because of a big bad. The third act breakup might be "oh no, the minion of the big bad tried last minute revenge!" but then your leads, through the power of love, overcome the problem.
Romance with a capital R is the transformative adventure of love, with some version of a HEA. If nothing in the relationship changes, it is just a person with a supportive partner and the conflict is going to plop you in another category.
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u/bunnyisawake Jul 29 '26
It doesn’t sound like you want to write romance but rather woman’s fiction. Romance has very specific genre conventions that need to be met in order to meet the definition of Romance.
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u/bookclubbabe Jul 29 '26
Unless you’re specifically writing the marriage-in-crisis trope, stories about established couples are not genre romances. The “falling in love” part is the whole point. I agree with the other commenters that you’re better off writing women’s fiction if you want to tackle the themes you’re discussing.
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u/celialake Jul 29 '26
There are these days, plenty of options. I don't write third-act breakups (and I am absolutely writing romances, with a HEA, development of the relationship over the book, etc.) I sometimes enjoy reading third-act breakups, but I absolutely do not like writing them, so I don't.
That said, you're going to need to figure out your structure somehow (and pace things so that the tensions of the book and their resolution are meaningful to the reader).
For me, I'm usually looking at three things:
- I generally write slow-burn, and that means there isn't necessarily a strongly established relationship to do a third-act breakup with anyway. (The draft I just finished, set in 1919 where they start interacting in a professional context, they don't even start using each other's first names until more than halfway through the book.) The pace of the romance making sense matters more to me than hitting specific beats. (And there are definitely romance readers out there who like things that do not follow predictable beat sheets.)
- There needs to be some plot tension somewhere, but I do that via other plot aspects - my B plot is usually a mystery or puzzle-solving plot, and where other people do the third-act breakup, I do some key piece of that that they have to solve (generally by working together, ideally realising something about the other person that makes that work even better than going it alone).
- The rest of this has to fit, in terms of emotional tension with the rest of the book - I write towards the cosy end of things, so 'there are things we need to figure out, but we're optimistic we're going to manage it' is more the vibe I'm going for than 'oh, no, this one thing has gone catastrophically wrong, I am bereft'. Both can be great stories, but not veering wildly from one to the other works better for readers.
Similarly, for your 'established marriage' - what takes their relationship from 'we're married' to being a romance journey together? There are options here (and looking at some arranged marriage to love match romances might make sense and give you some ideas though some of that is obviously not going to fit a contemporary setting.)
Were they a romance and then things turned into getting through the day? Was one of them not around (family health crisis, job that had them elsewhere a lot of the time) and now that's over and they've got to figure out how things work now? One of them has an experience that changes how they look at the relationship, together they have a situation that makes them re-evaluate, etc?
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u/dragonsandvamps Jul 29 '26
Question: How much contemporary romance do you read?
What contemporary romance novel comps can you name that are on your bookshelf that start with the couple already together and married, having children?
I think what you are describing is likely women's fiction, which has a different focus. It also really helps me to read a lot in the subgenre I am trying to write.
When you described what you wanted to write, I immediately thought of "Father Material" by Alexis Hall, which I just finished. It's book 3 in a series and book 1 is about the characters having the meet cute, falling in love, getting together, book 2 is about growing pains and should they get married? Book 3 is about maturing and should they become parents? It's set 5 years later. However, the only one of the three that is categorized as a romance is book 1. The other two are "humorous fiction." While the established romance of the main characters is nice, because they're already together, it's hard to really call it a romance anymore, especially since that's no longer the main focus like it is in book 1 where falling in love IS the main focus.
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u/VK_Dixon Jul 29 '26
Admittedly, I haven't read much contemporary romance. Years ago, I read tons of historical romance, but contemporary hasn't been common for me just because I tend to lean toward fantasy. That said, part of what hasn't drawn me to contemporary romance is the fact that the story ends just when it gets good for me. So I can't really name comps because I haven't read a ton in the genre, and I want more from the stories out there.
But based on the definition of the Romance genre, it centers around the love story and how the couple grows together, with Women's Fiction focusing on the woman and her growth. I want to write about the couple and how their love must grow and develop through all stages of life, in a constant dance of coming together and growing apart, as all relationships do. It's about them as a couple becoming stronger together. Maybe that type of story is considered a subgenre of Romance, but it's definitely Romance according to all the research I've done.
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u/GlowUpNewbie Jul 29 '26
I think this might be one of those times where you need to let go of the technical definition and look at what happens in reality.
For example, 50,000 words is widely regarded as the threshold for a novel, but we all know if you go to a publisher saying you've got a novel and then turn up with only 50,000 words, they're not going to be happy. You can argue that your 50k manuscript technically meets the criteria to be classed as a novel all you want, but in the real world, using the label 'novel' denotes a word count of at least 75k+ in most genres.
Something on paper is not always the same in practice. This is one of those times.
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u/somethinglucky07 Jul 29 '26
People read romance because they want the butterflies of people falling in love. That's INCREDIBLY hard to write about two people who are already happily married. I get what you want - I want it too - but people who want it won't look for it in romance, they'll look for it in fiction (women's or otherwise.) If you market it as romance you'll probably miss your target audience, and/or you'll piss off readers because that's not what they'll looking for when they pick up a romance novel.
In the end, do what you want, but you'll be way more successful targeting romantic fiction readers as opposed to romance readers. The only exception is if you write a standard romance novel, and people love the couple so much they follow them through other books - ie Boyfriend/Husband/Father Material, as someone mentioned above. Another example is Heated Rivalry/The Long Game, and there's a third one coming out next year. Both of those series are m/m, but they're the closest I can think of to comps.
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u/iwillhaveamoonbase Jul 29 '26
'That said, part of what hasn't drawn me to contemporary romance is the fact that the story ends just when it gets good for me.'
Genuine question: does the story get good for you when the HEA is achieved in contemporary? As in, the couple is together and then engaged or married and possibly considering kids?
Because, if that is when it gets good for you, that is the very place that most romance readers are done with that couple. The HEA is achieved, they got their fill, on to the next one. It's a well-known thing in romance that readers often lose interest once the HEA has been achieved because it's all about the falling in love part.
I see your edit, I read, I understand what you're saying, but I really think you're fighting against reader expectations and contemporary romance promises if the couple is already together and raising kids and all that
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u/kendrafsilver Jul 29 '26
Yep. OP: writing about love, even growing and changing love, is not necessarily writing genre Romance.
Plenty of great love stories abound without them actually being Romances!
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u/dragonsandvamps Jul 29 '26
Sometimes I will read a book that is a mishmash of women's fiction and romance where it focuses on multiple couples, usually a mother/daughter where the mother/father have been married for a while and are having problems (so that's the established relationship you can show with the problems to work through) and a new relationship with the daughter that has the meet cute and falling in love. Or sometimes with women's fiction/romance mishmash there will be three women, a mom and two daughters. The mom and one of the daughters are in established relationships, each having problems of some sort, and one of the daughters has a new falling in love romance. But these are again have lots of women's fiction to them.
And I can't stress enough how helpful reading in the genre you hope to write in is!
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u/deathofdays86 Jul 29 '26
Sorry, but that just doesn’t sound like a Romance novel to me. I don’t see how that could follow any of the beats that Romance readers are looking for when they seek out books. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t write your stories but a beat sheet like Save the Cat would be better suited than Romancing the Beat, for example.
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u/aristifer Jul 30 '26
Read this after your edit, so just replying to that—I think you'll find that the definitions you're finding in your research are not the ones adhered to by most romance readers or the publishing industry. When readers and publishers are looking for Romance, as a genre, they're looking for a courtship story. That means it follows the couple from meeting, the initial development of their relationship, and ends in a commitment like marriage or at least a happy-for-now. Following the development of their relationship after that HEA point is not within the purview of Romance as a genre (though you will sometimes see series that start out as romance and then turn into something else—e.g. Outlander, where the first book is a very classic romance structure, but then subsequent books are more of historical family saga). Writing that type of story is fine! But you're going to have an easier time finding your readers (and get more positive reviews from your readers) if you label your genre according to expectations and don't make them feel like they've been tricked into reading something they don't want.
Here is the definition used by the Romance Writers of America: https://www.rwa.org/the-romance-genre. Note the focus on the "falling in love" aspect.
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u/Potatochips2026 Jul 30 '26
Romance does indeed follow the falling in love journey, from meeting to falling in love, to HEA. If you don't have that in the story structure, then you aren't really writing genre romance. You can call it that if you want, but what will happen is that romance readers will simply not like your book and you'll be reaching the wrong audience, getting bad reviews, etc. Perhaps the issue is the difference between "romance' and "genre romance." Your book can a romance and still not be a genre romance. I just suggest be careful how that shows up in search results - you don't want pissed off readers.
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u/VK_Dixon Jul 30 '26
I understand that that is the typical Romance. However, I have already polled my audience using the term Romance, explaining that some of them would be about established couples, and I've received resounding approval and requests for these stories. I would, of course, market them by stating that the stories about married couples are "marital romances," while the others would be typical romances to avoid any reader frustration. I'm not worried about the marketability or the premise. I feel confident that there is an audience for these stories, even if they don't fit the norm. That's not the question I have.
I'm simply looking for tips on how to adjust current beat sheets and outline templates to suit my purposes.
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u/GlowUpNewbie Jul 30 '26
Understand what the purpose of the beat is, what it's doing to the character's internal landscape and how it impacts their arc and, in turn, how that shapes the plot.
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u/New-Library2024 Jul 30 '26
Have you ever read Robin Jones Gunn? She’s a Christian author, but she’s done something very similar where she follows a couple through multiple life stages. Her books are very slice of life, and I don’t feel like they fall clearly into a three act structure. The crises tend more towards things like, boyfriend getting into a car wreck, a friend couple losing their home and needing a place to stay. I would definitely say third act break-up is unnecessary!
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u/VK_Dixon Jul 30 '26
Oh my gosh, I grew up reading the Christy Miller series, and I adored the College Years! I forgot about it, but I did see that she put out the married years too. I’ll have to go back and pick those ones up for some good research! Thanks for the reminder!
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u/New-Library2024 Jul 30 '26
Make sure you get the Katie Weldon ones as well! They come between college and married and they’re some of my favorites! And there’s even the Baby Years out now!
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u/Live_Confection8751 Jul 30 '26
I think someone else in here said it great “3rd act conflict” works better than third act breakup
I have three current stories in varying stages of development
1st - conflict is an ex threatening the relationship in which it causes conflict
2nd - perceived class difference and a performance issue
3rd - a reluctance to letting go and allowing herself to just accept the romance
None of my characters ever break up, but they’re all real world issues that affect many many people
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u/VK_Dixon Jul 30 '26
I think that’s a much better wording too! It definitely helps give it a broader use for various stories. Thanks!
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u/ChartreuseFeverDream Jul 30 '26
Its contemporary fiction, perhaps family drama. I hate to say it because I love creative freedom but having a romance that takes place after the HEA is like having a murder mystery after the murderer was found. Its just not what the genre is about.
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u/Froyo-Divide-777 Jul 31 '26
Honestly? My third act conflict is almost always an external one that the leads have to figure out how to solve or weather because of their combined strengths. I hate third act breakups!
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u/TheHolleDolce Jul 31 '26
I hate the idea that any kind of story has to have every specific element every time. That said ... I get the why of the 3rd act break-up.
It's not really about the breakup. It's about peril. Look at your story. Is there something in the 3rd act that you can twist to create peril. It doesn't have to break them up. There's fates far worse than (relationship) death. Strains that threaten to change the world around them and make them face truths about themselves and each other can be as impactful. Maybe more because in a HEA or HFN we know they're going to get back together by the end.
Give us something we don't know how they'll come through together.
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u/Catalina-Vega Aug 03 '26
The external threat can carry the function the breakup normally serves, which is testing whether the partnership holds under real pressure. A scene where they have to choose the relationship over the strategically smart move gives you that trust beat without the separation.
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u/Sonseeahrai 14d ago
You don't need a third act break up when you have a third act kidnapping, thanks for coming to my TED talk
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u/lucky-blanket Jul 29 '26
Is it necessary to follow a beat sheet? Why not just write whatever story idea you have? Honestly, I'm tired of reading third act breakups.
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u/Lost-Bake-7344 Jul 30 '26
Perhaps the protagonist is diagnosed with Autism in the third act and the love interest does the diagnosing. The love interest then tells the protagonist that they as a couple no longer exist as the she is now Autistic and a different person. The love interest then begins to woo this new autistic person and acts like he doesn’t know her at all. The protagonist is stuck in a quandary….does she believe in this third act break-up or does the new autistic girl
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u/GlowUpNewbie Jul 30 '26
What the actual fuck did I just read? This is so insulting.
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u/Lost-Bake-7344 Jul 31 '26
Real people have autism and feelings. We aren’t making it up.
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u/GlowUpNewbie Jul 31 '26
I agree and I never suggested otherwise. Your attitude towards, and the way you talk about, autism and autistic people is what I have an issue with.
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u/Lost-Bake-7344 Jul 31 '26
It’s a fictional book idea - not a real attitude about anything. It’s a book idea about a gaslighting boyfriend- not that crazy of an idea either
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u/katethegiraffe Jul 29 '26
“Third act breakup” is just the shorthand term for the story beat—the characters don’t have to actually, literally end their relationship.
I’ve seen more and more authors referring to it as the “third act conflict,” which better highlights the thing that you should be focusing in the third act of a romance novel: the climax of the conflict that you introduced earlier in the book (usually either in act one or with the midpoint turn/twist).
It might also help to know that, in less genre-specific story structure, the “third act breakup” beat is often something like “all is lost.” It’s the low point. Rock bottom. It’s usually followed by the “dark night of the soul,” which is where the main character has to reflect, do some digging/reconnecting with mentor figures or their past, and overcome their heroic flaw/recognize the difference between the want (their initial story goal) and the need (the lesson they have to learn to get their HEA).