Shannon Stacey

Rerun: How to plot a Romantic Suspense

I originally posted this in January of ’07, but I happen to have a friend putting together a romantic suspense proposal so I thought I’d post it again. Anything to help out a friend!

How To Plot A Romantic Suspense in 10 Steps:

1. Watch a kick-ass car chase on TV and think “Wouldn’t it have been cool if they…” and then write that scene.

2. Write a wicked hot adrenaline-sex scene.

3. Stumble across a gunmaker’s site which offers a quiz on finding the perfect handgun for you. Get halfway through it before realizing answering in your hero’s POV might cause an infestation of men with earpieces and black SUVs. Yell “Oh crap!”, click the red X and barricade your door. Then make up a fictional, kick-ass experimental gun.

4. Think “Ooooh, knives are cool” and write a scene in which the heroine pins the hero’s clothes to the wall before having her way with him.

5. Write in a stealth helo because they’re really cool.

6. Ignore all articles on satellite and communication technology because it might prove you made up all that shit.

7. Write another wicked hot adrenaline-sex scene.

8. Make the hero have to jump out of a moving vehicle/airplane/train.

9. Blow some shit up.

10. Come up with a good excuse to tie all those scenes together. This should include, but not be limited to, coming up with characters, villains, a premise. Maybe some goals, motivation and conflict type stuff. Plot points. Character arcs. Black moment. Shit like that.


5 comments to “Rerun: How to plot a Romantic Suspense”

  1. Charlene
      · January 27th, 2009 at 10:59 pm · Link

    You forgot “And they lived happily ever after. The End!” (How my 5 yr old ends all her stories. Complete with exclamation mark.)

  2. Jaci Burton
      · January 28th, 2009 at 10:11 am · Link

    So….that’s how you do it.

  3. Brandy W
      · January 28th, 2009 at 1:58 pm · Link

    I love it. Can that be the book there. :boogie: I’m really enjoying your blog by the way. Glad I made it over here.

  4. Shannon
      · January 29th, 2009 at 11:02 am · Link

    Thank you, Brandy! I’m glad you made it over here, too!

    There’s no knife in DG3, and the sex isn’t necessarily adrenaline-driven, but most everything else is there.

    And a :sled:

  5. ArkansasCyndi
      · January 31st, 2009 at 11:46 am · Link

    I CANNOT believe I have struggled with a RS ms :gaah:

    If I had just visited here first, I could have done this :rulez:

    Gotta go watch me some TV while writing :thumb:

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