Five Tips on Writing with Heart

Create a flawed protagonist
Readers need to be rooting for your protagonist! That means they can’t feel too perfect, too unrelatable, too finished. Sure, for romance writing they should probably be likeable, but make sure they’re also loveably flawed. If ‘flawed’ isn’t the one for you, maybe think of it as ‘wounded’.

Give them something to fight against
We love an underdog story! It’s just human nature. Inject some real heart into your plot by creating adversity for your wounded protagonist to overcome. Keep them apart from their love interest by any means necessary, give them goals they need to achieve in order to accept true love into their life, and watch them go!

Have fun with the writing
If the writing feels heavy and laborious while you’re doing it, it might not feel particularly fun to read. What can you strip out from a scene or a chapter that leaves you only with fun, sparky moments that propel the plot along? Do yourself and your readers a favour and leave out all the writing that feels too much like admin!

Don’t hold back
Make the highs high and the lows low. Take your protagonist and their romantic scenarios to the giddy heights of infatuation and the profound depths of despair, make romantic scenes as swoonsome as you want and sex scenes as spicy as you can handle. This gives the opportunity for your protagonist to experience big feelings, which is great for writing with heart. 

Indulge the fantasy
It’s your world! Anything can happen! Don’t feel too constrained by reality or plausibility - if you want your protagonist to strike up a relationship with a pop star or a billionaire philanthropist or their high school sweetheart, focus more on making the story itself satisfying than whether you think that would ever happen. It’s wish-fulfilment, it’s real-life fantasy.

Bethany Rutter is a journalist and blogger who writes about fat bodies, plus size fashion and body politics including the benefits and limitations of body positivity. Her debut novel, No Big Deal, was published by Macmillan Children’s in 2019 and her second novel, Melt My Heart, was published by Macmillan Children’s in 2020, and was shortlisted for the YA Book Prize 2021. Her adult debut, Welcome To Your Life, was be published by HarperFiction in May 2022. She works in marketing at a plus-size fashion brand and is an occasional DJ. Her writing has appeared in the Guardian, Telegraph Magazine, Vogue, Dazed, RedOnline, The Debrief and others. She co-hosts the podcast What Page Are You On? and is the author of Plus+, a coffee table book offering style inspiration for everyone. Follow Bethany on Instagram.