Fantasy and romance are each some of the biggest genres in literature out there and have been some of the biggest for what feels like forever. Now, of course, there are people (like myself) who enjoy it when stories combine the two elements together. The rapidly growing combination of fantasy and romance has created an entire subgenre which has been dubbed “romantasy.” Romantasy novels are a fusion between the two respective genres, combining epic fantasy tales with dramatic stories of love in the midst of the fantasy worlds. As a fan of romantasy and an avid reader of the subgenre, here is a comprehensive guide to writing romantasy books.
The Popularity of Romantasy
There have been a lot of books recently that have been gaining a lot of traction online, which helped boost romantasy as a genre more and more. Of course, romantasy has been around for a long time, but it’s really been blowing up with the rise of Booktok, a community on TikTok of book readers and reviewers. Booktok promotes a lot of romantasy books, and I’m sure you’ve heard of a few (Fourth Wing, ACOTAR, etc…).
A lot of authors lately have been creating romantasy tales, exploring the worlds of fae, demon princes, mercenaries and assassins and more, while spinning traditional romance stories.
If you want to learn how to outline a romance novel, you can check out my article about it.
Major Features of Romantasy
Romantasy novels and stories tend to have common features across the subgenre, and here they are listed below:
- World Building: Romantasy novels are still set within the fantasy genre, meaning that they will include a decently good level of world building. World building allows for them to set themselves apart from a standard romance novel and showcases to the reader the fantasy pieces in a more contextualized form.
- Magical Systems: As with any fantasy novel, even if the magic is not central to the story, the magic system exists to some extent in the background. Magic helps set apart the real world from the fantasy world and makes things that happen in fantasy novels more believable.
- Romance: Of course, a good romantasy novel needs a romance story at its center. However you decide to curate this romance, whether it be enemies-to-lovers, star-crossed lovers, or something of that sort, you need a romance at the center of the story.
- Dynamic Characters: Characters in a good romantasy story, or really any story, must be dynamic. Dynamic means that they change, adjust, and grow over the course of the story. They may start out one way, but by the end, they need to have gone through some sort of character growth.
- Conflict and Adventure: Most romantasy stories include some sort of adventure, quest, and plenty of conflict. Conflict allows for the love to be tested or to grow, and adventure lets them grow close together. It’s also a great way to introduce forced proximity, which is a great way of getting two characters to fall in love. If they’re around each other all day, they’re bound to grow feelings for each other.
World Building in Romantasy
As I said earlier, world building is a very important feature of fantasy, and by extension, romantasy as well. World building is something that I talk about a lot on my blog because I do think that it’s an extremely important piece of the writing process. World building is intricate, dynamic, and ever-growing, but it’s a very vital thing to include in fantasy. Without world building, you leave readers wondering where they’re at, what’s happening, and it doesn’t give a feeling of a solid story.
I won’t go insanely in-depth in this article, because I would be here all day just talking about world building, but I’ll give some brief pointers on the major aspects of world building that you need to take care of. For more world building information, you can check out my ultimate beginner’s guide. Within that article, you’ll find links to more in-depth subject articles as well.
The important thing to remember is that you don’t want to overwhelm your readers with information and make them confused. Keep your world building organized. I recommend checking out my article on the best world building tools so you can organize your ideas.
Major Aspects of World-Building
- The Location: One part of the world building is the location of the story. This can be a country, an island, a kingdom, a nation-state, a city, etc… Basically, this place needs to be the overall umbrella for the setting of your story and needs to be fleshed out with geographical features, relative location to other important places, and more.
- Society, Culture and Religion: Another major part of world building is the society, the culture, and the religion of your location. These things help to create a more well-rounded world and also let your readers feel like they are immersed more in the story.
- Magic System: Like I said earlier, the magic system is a very important aspect of the world building process and is important for a good fantasy story. Take time to learn how to curate your magic system and take time to come up with its elements and aspects. You can check out my article on this for more info.
- Lore: Lore is something that any world building project will require to some extent. This includes things like history and mythology of your world, but overall goes in-depth on things that exist or existed in your world. This can include folklore or stories about things like creation and existence.
- Language: A more in-depth process, but creating a language for a fantasy world is a really good idea. It creates a much more believable world. You obviously don’t have to write in that language, but letting the reader know that this world includes a language will make your world feel more grounded and should influence things like the names of people and places.
Character Development
At the heart of a good romantasy story are the two characters who are the subject of the love story. These two characters must be dynamic, developed, well-rounded, grounded in the world, and interesting. However you decide to write them, it should feel believable to the reader, even if one is a Fae or something like that.
Tips for Making Your Characters Well-Developed
- Backstory: A good character has some sort of backstory, otherwise, why are they doing what they’re doing? They need to have something that feels believable. Perhaps the character was imprisoned for a crime they didn’t commit, or maybe they lost their family in a war. The backstory helps to shape the way we are introduced to the character.
- Motivations and Goals: All characters in stories have motivations and have goals. They wouldn’t just be existing in the world and interacting with the main storyline if they weren’t motivated to do so.
- Growth and Change: As I’ve been saying before, growth and change is IMPORTANT! I can’t stress this enough, but even if your character is an actual psychopath (cough, cough, looking at you Blide Stevens), you need to give them something that changes them. This something needs to be believable as well, but it should change them in a way that impacts the overall flow of the story.
Big Tip Ahead: Balancing the Romance with the Fantasy
Another really big aspect of romantasy is the ability to balance the romance story with the fantasy elements of your world. A big mistake I see authors do is advertise their story as romantasy, but the book has barely any fantasy or barely any romance. That’s not romantasy. You can’t write a romance story with a sprinkle of fantasy in it and expect that to be satisfactory. You need to put effort into the fantasy world! It’s a big aspect of your story!
The romance plotline needs to be interacting with the fantasy world almost the entire time, and I mean that. An example of this would be a favorite of mine, A Court of Thorns and Roses. The romance is very clearly present and central to the story, but the world is also always there. It’s always impacting the romance story and it’s always playing a role in the development of the characters.
Another example I have is actually a video game called Baldur’s Gate 3. Chances are, if you’re a fan of romantasy, you already know about BG3, but if you don’t, Baldur’s Gate 3 is a role-playing game where you create a character and meet several companions in the world. You can obviously form a romantic connection with these companions, but the romance is really grounded in the overall world and it exists within the context of the world in a believable way. Nothing overpowers the other. I really recommend Baldur’s Gate 3. It’s a great game!
I actually made my Tav look like Rhysand. Sorry, not sorry.
Romantasy is a great subgenre and if you writing in both fantasy and romance, I recommend you blend the two. You can really create some amazing stories when you do so!
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