Red Roses and Paper Hearts

Since Valentine’s day is coming up, and last week’s worldbuild wednesday was delayed; I think this week’s topic should be romance. What does romance look in your world, and why should it look that way is something I think seldom few have ever thought about. Generally romance writers lean on their culture’s tropes for romance to make their stories more relatable. Often at the cost of the worldbuilding. How could we fix that?

The first thing would be to develop a culture, or if needed cultures, and work within their framework. While I can hear some rumblings about how that could alienate the audience; I think if one keeps the core of romance the same the story will resonate anyway and the differences will stand out in what looks like one of the most competitive genres out there. While I will concede that building a full culture is generally overkill for most stories; that doesn’t mean sketching out the bones of the culture won’t be invaluable. The bones that are needed would be the ones that dictate the roles of men and women, and how they are to interact. Even then it’s just the bones there’s a lot one can work with.

For example mull over this set of questions: What is the role of men in their relationship with women? What is the role of women in the relationship with men? Who chooses to initiate a romantic relationship? What is the assumed goal of a romantic relationship? What does the 'standard’ love story look like? I could go on however that should set up most if not all the background 'culture’ that’s needed. If one creates more the better the story will be. I will put in a warning, don’t loose the story for the culture. While worldbuilding is fun to do don't forget the reason for doing it.

Yet I would recommend creating a scenario that highlights the Venn diagram between Earth and your created world. For example if I was going to write a romance story in a stereotypical fantasy; I would set it during the fall harvest, or the coming of spring to highlight how the society is tied to their farms. Perhaps the story revolves around the end of harvest festival and the dances, feast and events there of. Our lead man, we will call him Joe, is hoping to catch the eye of, we will call our leading lady Rachel, in attempt to win her favor before the girls pick dance partners for the final day of the harvest festival. His fears of rejection are quite common, if anything writing akin to a guy asking the girl to prom or homecoming wouldn’t be unfair.

Yet it isn’t a story about prom or homecoming. It’s a story of Joe working up to ask her out to the dance, but working to end up in Rachel’s group to ‘pick from’ though some seemingly convoluted set of games jockeying for the prefect spot in the line up. Not good good else Joe will end up in the rejected by Hanna and her click. Putting our dashing hero in the rejected bin, where Rachel might pick him up at the dance should she reject her slate of suitors. Yet not too poorly else Joe will be forced to dance with Melissa and she’s just the worst. On Rachel’s end she’s also trying to not score too high, else Joe will never be able to be in her set and well rejecting your entire set is quite shameful. Too low and Elizabeth will snap him up, the harlot. Perhaps this is a three viewpoint story alternating between Joe and Rachel and Rachel’s older sister Edith who is trying to put the two together since neither of them have caught on they both have completely fallen for each other.

Likewise inventing a courtship ritual, or romantic holiday is a good way to help stand out, and show off the worldbuilding. This can be something that the worldbuilder thinks is a good idea. Something that fits with the mythos they have created or, and much more commonly, their solutions to the gripes with how things currently work. Keep in mind these are not exclusive categories.

An example I could pull of this from Slonminma, would be the more polar regions “Sprite Catching”. The sprites are now seen akin to a half snow fairy and half gradian angel. They tend to want to be chased and if you can catch one she’ll either ask to be taken home to give the man a blessing or simply ask him marry her in the wastes. He won’t know until he finds her. Those using these in world stories of sprites are enough to give a framing for a romance that will set it well within the world. Perhaps there is a play where the leads are in a play retelling a famous story of a man and the sprite he chased after. Theater based romances are common after all. Likewise that outline of a myth could be the basis for a plot, a man is chasing after a woman and when he finally catches her she purposes on the spot. This could highlight how he’s completed her challenges, proven himself more than worthy and now she wishes to repay his devotion with her own.

That is perhaps only one way of taking that story and using it. Because I’ve built out this concept of sprite catching I could make it an event as well. The event is apart of the winter festival, roughly a twenty one day period centered on the winter solstice. It’s fun, feasting, decorated cities, singing and dancing. A few days if not a week before the winter solstice they will hold the Sprite Chasing. It’s based off of the folk tails of lone traveling men being goaded chasing a sprite into the snowy wastes.

Single men are sorted by age, and told to gather what gear and supplies they think they’ll need and are pushed into a circle at twilight. These men are to stand so they can’t see behind them and are to wait until the bell rings. Women on the other hand are to dress up in rather impractical dresses, generally the colder the dress the more appropriate, and are the sprites. Told which group of men is what and who is roughly who and told to go tag a man before then stand a ways off from the men in a larger circle, generally in sight of the men they tagged if they did. At the first bell the men turn around and the women dart off. At the second bell a few moments later the men take off after the women. When a man catches a sprite he asks what she wants to do, go home or stay the night with him. I’ll leave the individual concussions of the event to your imagination.

That event alone could frame a dozen romances with different couples. Or be the capstone of a single couple’s story. Likewise that event could start off a romance in more than a few ways. Man saves woman from freezing to death when she looses everyone. Man catches woman and things go from there. Man catches wrong woman and over the next year turns out that she was the right one, with next year’s event being the ending of the story. So on and so forth.

Yet worldbuilding can give even more options for romance. For example how many symbols of romance are there in your world. What are they? Are they similar to the ones we know or are they different? Remember that Venn diagram from before when I was talking about situations. Well do it again with symbols. Maybe there are subtle differences, maybe they are huge. Perhaps different colors, flowers, snacks or whatnot. Are larger symbols better ore are smaller ones that are personalized better? Is it better to make things or buy things. Perhaps there are different things that are in vouge for each month. Is there an astrology for romantic symbols? It is certainly possible, although don’t expect many men to keep up with all of it.

With that I’ll leave you for next week with another Worldbuild Wednesday.