Conflict in Romance Novels

We all know that conflict is at the heart of every great romance novel, right? Getting the conflict right is often the hardest part of plotting a romance novel – and when you lock onto a strong, tight conflict, the book can start to sing. 

But with category romance novels, where the focus is so firmly fixed on the couple at the centre of the story, that conflict can take on a slightly different dimension. So it’s important to know how to use the conflict rules to make your conflict as strong as it can be.

The classic conflict square looks like this:

The Conflict Square

It’s easy to see how it works. The protagonist has a goal that’s being thwarted by the antagonist, while also stopping the antagonist from reaching their goal. (Simple to describe, harder to write though!) 

But in a romance, the central characters are the lovers (hero and heroine, hero and hero, heroine and heroine, and any other permutations you want to write or read!) and while you need conflict between them to drive the story, a straightforward conflict square like this doesn’t always work. 

Because with the classic protagonist/antagonist square, the whole point is that one of them loses. In a romance, we want them both to get their happy ending.

This doesn’t mean that the conflict square is redundant in romance, however. (Otherwise, I wouldn’t be writing a post called Three Ways A Conflict Square Can Fix Your Romance Novel now, would I?)

Here are three ways I’ve used the conflict square theory when writing category romance novels.

Then comes the really tricky part. 

For a tight, locked conflict, these things need to cross. The antagonist has to behind what’s stopping the protagonist, and vice versa.

In this square, we want the heroine to save the pancake cafe and for the antagonist to lose. Which means I might write the antagonist as an unsympathetic character – a bully, a cheat, someone we want to lose his job because he deserves it. He definitely wouldn’t be the love interest. (That would be the drifter passing through town who stays to help the heroine, or the best friend pancake chef she suddenly starts seeing in a new light when they work on the Save The Pancake Cafe campaign together.)

But of course, this is purely external conflict – which means it doesn’t cover the emotional conflict between the two romantic leads in the story. For that, you need…

The Hybrid Conflict Square

Okay, yes, technically this is a rectangle. But stick with me on this one, yeah?

This takes the conflict you built in the classic square, and takes it a step further by making one of the romantic leads the antagonist. 

Now, if the protagonist in this example is the heroine and the antagonist her love interest, you need to reconcile them at the end of the story – basically, the antagonist needs to realise that they’re wrong, repent, and change their ways so they can live happily ever after. Of course, it’ll be the protagonist who helps them realise this over the course of the novel, as they fall in love. (Naturally, this can work either way round for the two lead characters.)

And that process – the changing – is what takes this from purely external conflict to internal conflict (which is another blog post all of its own). 

In this version, the hero is doing what he thinks is best at the start, but learns from the heroine and starts to change, meaning in the end he wants to lose – in fact, losing becomes winning for him. The goal he started with isn’t the one he finishes with. (In my stories, neither the hero or heroine tends to end up with what they thought they wanted at the start of the novel – their goal. Instead, I try to give them what they need to find true and lasting love.) 

The key with this one is to make sure that the external conflict is echoed by real emotional conflict that the characters resolve together. And for that, I use… 

Here, it’s less about external goals and conflicts (although I’ll do another square for them too – but after this one, so the external conflict reflects the internal one). It’s about their characters, their limiting beliefs or weaknesses, and what they have to teach the other person. The heroine’s strengths are what combat the hero’s weaknesses and teach him the life lesson he needs to learn – about himself, or about love. And the same works in reverse, too. Only together can they become the people they need to be to find their HEA. 

So, let’s start filling this in. 

Awakening His Shy Cinderella

This example comes from my December 2020 Mills and Boon release, Awakening His Shy Cinderella. 

As you can see, the internal conflict, or their weaknesses, are what is keeping them apart. And the lessons they teach each other are what bring them together. 

Keeping this conflict – and the path to its resolution – front and centre as I’m writing really helps me to create tight first drafts where I know the conflict works. 

What do you think? Is it something you might give a try? Let me know in the comments, or drop me a line on social media!

Further Reading: 

I first came across the idea of the Conflict Box on the He Wrote, She Wrote blog, which Jenny Crusie and Bob Meyer wrote back in 2007. They’re now reviving the whole blog, and writing new posts to go with the old ones showing how their writing processes and beliefs have changed. It’s utterly fascinating if you’re at all interested in writing processes!

You can find the new and original posts on Conflict here:

He Wrote, She Wrote Again – Conflict

And for more on how I write my romance novels, check out these past posts on Time to Write:

How I Write Romance, Part 1

How I Write Romance, Part 2