Speed of romance?

Ok, so I am looking for both your opinions as writers and also your personal tastes in the matter. What happened was in my work, which spans about a month's time, two of the characters go from first meeting to essentially dating. Now mind you, they never say "I love you," and they never sacrifice themselves for each other, but in the last few days before the climax, they sleep together and basically are together after that point.

The problem arose when one of my readers told me that they felt that relationship happened way too fast for them having only known each other for a month. I disagree. I left it as is but kept the comment in the back of my head. The problem is, in the sequel/my current WIP, the book takes place in only a two week span. If a month may seem fast for some people, is 2 weeks going to seem too fast for the romantic relationship that develops in that book? Especially since I would consider it an even more powerful and intense affection than in the previous book.

 

There isn't any set time frame for romance. What really matters is intensity. People can have known each other for ages before they get together sometimes; if say they were friends of friends or they met at the office they could have talked every day for years and not have struck up a romance even if they are destined to be together, because they haven't shared anything intense. On the other hand you can fall for someone in a few days or weeks if you meet in the right circumstances. If circumstances hurl you together into something big and stressful and exciting then you can absolutely fall for someone with the snap of your fingers.

Intense emotions make for intense relationships. They make you feel lots, and that's important because love is a big emotion. And of course when you are sharing really intense experiences that's something that really matters and that leaves a mark on you. You see the best of each other too, see the most attractive parts of their personality. When you see the depth of someone's strength or loyalty then you can really appreciate them in a way that you wouldn't seeing them every day at the office. It builds a lot of trust too to go through something big and intense together. And when you come back from that kind of experience then it's normal to lean on each other, to hold on to the people who understand and really value them.

I can tell you from personal experience that you can absolutely fall for people quickly. Maybe not quite love at first sight, but within a few weeks? Yeah, no problems at all. As long as the two of them are sharing something exciting and emotional and are connecting together then, well, yeah it can happen fast. I've absolutely been there. Even if I didn't say I love you, I knew. I could feel us spiraling around each other and I didn't for a second wonder if it was too fast. It was just so obvious to me; meeting someone so vivid and sharing intense things.

So you can definitely do faster romances. Especially since you aren't even going to have your characters start saying I love you all over the place, I wouldn't see it as being too fast on paper. What matters is if it feels too fast to the characters. If they are normal people doing normal dating stuff then maybe it is too fast for them to be all gooey together right away. But if they've run into each other in the midst of some drama? Or if they meet and feel it crackling off each other; if they look in each others eyes and see the fire there and they want to spend every moment smoldering together just waiting for something to catch fire? Yeah, no problems. Especially if they get to see each other under stress and being the best of them, yeah that's just fine.

But you do need to show the intensity. It doesn't have to be them getting shot at or something; it could be a good deal more mundane but it does still need to happen. Something beyond the the normal run of life that makes it something special. Maybe he's in an unhappy marriage and has been quietly pleading for someone to show up. Maybe she just really needed someone to help her get her passion back. But something needs to happen to make them both feel that this is something that matters and they aren't going to let go of.

 

I've just got out of one where I was lucky to make love once a year; I emphatically refute the idea that this was working.

 

On a personal level, I don't believe in true romance (for me), because I've only ever had bad experiences with it, but the times I've been in "love" weren't of any particular "speed". Fast and hard, slow and steady. I think it just really depends on the pace you're going for in the story itself. I'm jaded from all of my failed attempts in real life, so I don't normally incorporate successful or idealized romance into my stories, but from what I have experienced, just as every individual is different, every relationship (romantic or otherwise) is also different. Don't worry about what one or two people think about your pacing, just write the romance in the way you feel is natural to your preferences =)

 

Love can certainly happen very quickly. In fact, in my own experience, genuine attraction is pretty much instant. What you choose to DO about that attraction can take some time. People who are most fearful of emotion or making themselves vulnerable to it are the ones who take the longest to acknowledge what is happening. But the attraction really should be there right away, in my own opinion. That's chemistry at work.

You can certainly take time to get to know a longtime acquaintance better, begin to see all their good qualities, to realise that you have lots in common, that you like being together, that there aren't many flashpoints that would scupper the relationship, etc. And you can end up in an extremely good relationship that way as well. But that spark, that instant 'I know you' moment ...that seems to happen right away. If you've known this person for years and never really felt that about them ...well, you might build a good relationship with them, but it's not the same thing.

When you fall in love (as opposed to 'grow to love') you can't get that person out of your head. You don't notice anybody else when they're in the room. And the most amazing thing is THEY NOTICE YOU as well. It's mutual. It's not adoration from afar. It's a sudden click that happens to both of you. What happens afterwards can vary, and you can spend a lot of time telling yourself it's not really happening. OR it can't be real. Or it can't last. Or it's impossible. Or you might be wrong and it's wishful thinking, even though you know you're not wrong and that it's actually happening. You might devise tests to make sure. But that click is unmistakeable, as people who have experienced it know.

If you haven't experienced it, that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It just means it hasn't happened to you. Lots of things happen to other people that haven't happened to you. This is just one of those things.

What your beta reader MIGHT be reacting to in your story, @Jak of Hearts , is that the romance—as you've written it—may not be very convincing as it is now. Your characters meet and suddenly they're 'together.' That sudden attraction has to be genuine, or it will seem premature. I'd work on creating that genuine spark, and let the timetable take care of itself. Timing will be down to many other factors besides the attraction.

 

My opinion: I would call it infatuation, not love really, because you don't know much about someone instantly and are filling in a lot of gaps with your own imagination.

I read not long ago that a lot of new relationships break up at around the three month mark because that's time enough for the first lust/infatuation to fade as real facts about the other person crowd out the partners' imaginations about each other. Of course, sometimes both people still like each other anyway and then it becomes something more solid.

But it can definitely be hot and exciting, immediately.

 

I agree about infatuation and also lust—both can be strong and temporary. Affection can also grow into love.

But the kind of 'instant knowing' I mean is truly different. I know several couples ...friends of mine ...who had the instant attraction and are still happily married nearly 50 years later. It did happen instantly. And some of them got married almost right away.

It's exciting, but it's also very calming. It's just that you 'know.' You really do. And that doesn't change.

It does happen. It just doesn't happen to everybody, and it doesn't mean you'll always end up getting married ...because other factors come into it. But when you've met 'the one' that doesn't change. And it lasts a lifetime. It does happen.

 

Just such a thing happened to an older Scottish man with a twinkle in his eye and a Canadian girl fresh out of school, barely 18 and traveling alone by train. They met on a train, and so it goes, fell in love at first sight. They would travel the world, settle for a time in New Zealand, and years later return to Canada to start a proper life. Their misfortune began, some might say, when the young woman became pregnant with the one that became me.
I was told my dad was 32 when he met my mom... but I've done the math, and dear mother, he was 36!

It's hard to take that my parents were, for a time, as free spirited and liberal as I ever care to be.

 

It could be a problem with your story failing to mesh with that particular reader's expectations, or as mentioned above, it could be (not saying it is) that you haven't done a sufficiently good job of writing it in a plausible way.

I've seen quite a variety of speeds in my own personal and near-personal experiences. My best friend (let's call him Bob) and his wife (Kelly) are on the slow end of things; he was introduced to her through her friendship with another one of our friend's (William) wives (Sarah) (this chart gets really complicated, and I'm not telling you the half of it because statute of limitations). The thing is, Kelly was married at the time that Bob met her, soon to be divorced.* After she got divorced, Bob asked her out (because she was/is pretty hot, and he wanted to get his... well, yeah) but she turned him down. Her ex-husband was a highly educated and accomplished guy, and my buddy was still meandering his way through college a few years late, so she-

-started hooking up with a bouncer/biker type, then pinballed off a couple other men on the rougher side of life while Bob went through a series of whatever was open to him getting his paws on them, with a couple near-engagement misses mixed in. Eventually, probably seven years or so after they first met, Bob and Kelly finally hit it off, and they've been married for probably fifteen years, got two kids, a dog, all that.

On the other hand, I met Mrs. A professionally once, and by accident outside of work that same day. We had a drink together, exchanged phone numbers, did a couple of classically social/dating things, and ended up spending all of every weekend together after probably four or five dates, then after a short engagement, got married. Not Disney, there's been the occasional hiccup, but things went from "What's your number?" to "It's your turn to cook breakfast" pretty quickly.

Push things too far (getting married to Mr. Friday Night on Sunday, or having The Remains of the Day end with wedding bells), and most people won't be happy, but even in those extremes, there's room for a good story. Rent Next Stop: Wonderland for an example of a romance that doesn't even happen and is still incredibly romantic.

I think I'm rambling, I hope this helps in some way, sorry.

 

My ex and I met at a party and we were almost inseparable from the first night. Officially we didn't say we were together until we had known each other a month, but truth is we were a couple from the start. He said "I love you" after about a week. It was too soon - but still. This relationship lasted a few weeks short of six years, so I'd say it was a rather successful one even though it went fast in the beginning.

A month feels fine to me. Two weeks might feel a bit rushed in a book, but it's not impossible that it could happen!

 

I had pretty much the same thing with my ex. We met once at a party when I was 19, sat and talked all night even when everyone else had passed out and that was pretty much a done deal. I can't claim eleven years of happiness after that, but we went from meeting to being a couple very quickly. Very much the same with another of my girlfriends; we had met a few times (she was in the first ones English A-level class - don't ask too many questions about the timelines; yes they cross over) but at their prom when everyone else was being awful we spent the night smoking and drinking whiskey together and she stole my bowtie and wore it for the rest of the night and the rest as they say is history. Just these single nights where there was a spark and it just kept sparking for a long time after. Hell, even breaking up with my most recent ex; the same old thing still works. A night spent just sitting talking together and laughing feels like I'm a teenager again. There's other stuff there, other problems that in the end we couldn't work out, but the thing that got us together never went away.

That's one of the things about romance; when you meet someone who you can talk with, who you can laugh with, who shares a point of view and makes you excited to wake to see them... It's something magic. Sometimes it takes you a long time to break the ice and to really see who someone is. Sometimes you just see it in a flash and feel it in your stomach and you're spellbound. But of course you do have to write this stuff to work like this. You can't take it as read that the reader gets what's happening.

 

I could only give credence to the comment you were given if (and only if) the elements of said "fast romance", as you wrote them, didn't seem to support that end result. As others have mentioned, I've had relationships simmer over long periods, and ones where the pot boiled over the very night I met the person.

Truth be told - and at face value without knowing any other details - the comment feels rather moralizing rather than constructive.

 

But that's not necessarily an unfair criticism; it's maybe unhelpful to a writer but if the person giving feedback is just being honest about how they see it then there isn't much more you can ask of them. Some people find that kind of whirlwind romance to be either unrealistic or at least an omen of bad things; that such things never last and really they are just asking for trouble. And that is a point of view. I can't say that I agree with them but it's not that much of a surprise that in a community of creative, bohemian types most of us are down for some whirlwind romance.

As with all reader feedback it's important to understand what they are really saying. Because you can read "too fast" in lots of ways. It could mean they don't buy these people getting together so quickly. But equally it could mean that this style of romance is just not to their taste; and that's something important too. It depends on the book and the audience as to what is really going to work. It's no good saying that whirlwinds are realistic and totally normal when the audience says that they just don't like it no matter how realistic it is.

 

Also, I wouldn't put too much into one person's opinion. Don't we know people say all kinds of off-the-wall things. If a few people mentioned that the romance didn't ring true, that might be different.

 

I wanted to quote this to emphasize it.

I've been reading a lot of the stories in this thread. Romance can happen a lot of different ways in real life. It can happen very quickly or very slowly. You can "know" right away, or it might take years.

But the thing is, real life doesn't matter one way or another. In real life, it's possible you'll win the lottery tomorrow and it will solve all your problems. If you wrote that in fiction, the reader would feel cheated.

At the end of the day: if the reader isn't convinced or satisfied, then they're not convinced or satisfied.

 

No, of course it's not something to really worry you unless it's something that you hear a lot. It's just one opinion and as anyone who has been on the internet can tell you; you can find someone who thinks pretty much whatever you fancy. One person who says this romance is too fast, another who says it's too slow, another who says they've been abducted by aliens. But you do have to be a bit cautious with how you process feedback and look for what they are actually trying to tell you.

In the end the way to handle this kind of thing is just to ask people what they mean; did they think it didn't work or did they think it worked but they didn't like it?

 

I met my husband in 1991 when we hooked up at a party in college the first weekend of our sophomore year. We've been together ever since without a single breakup or time off from the relationship. We were just "it" for each other from the moment we met each other, and I honestly can't imagine being with another person besides him. So yeah, it does happen.

Turning back to fiction though, it usually takes 2-3 months for my MC's to fall for each other, though in Gravity it's more like 9 months because of what a mess Jaeden is physically and emotionally at the start of the book. I think one month is totally doable as long as like others above have suggested you've spent enough time building the relationship over that period of time.

 

Honestly I think it depends on the book and the style of relationship. If the book is primarily focused on the romance, well, you need to give us enough happening with their romance in order to make a good book. If they just jump together and are really happy then you really aren't going to get a whole narrative out of it. If the romance is the primary narrative then yeah I agree taking 12 weeks isn't unreasonable, that's a reasonable length for a story.

But if the romance is a sub-plot or at least isn't the primary focus of the book then you can almost please yourself as long as you write it well. My style of romance writing is kinda intense and immediate; two characters clinging on to each other for dear life as they try not to fall apart. And that generally gives rise to fairly fast courtships. My first book is set over the course of four days of real time; four days of psychotically stressful skulduggery with hugely high stakes that takes the characters out past the limit of their ability to cope. They lean on each other, save each others careers, verbally spar, flirt and finally win the day together. After all that it never struck me as being too fast for them to end the book as a couple. They are both these weird, intense people who've kinda spent their whole lives looking for each other and in the end they do and that's just... What it is. They see the best of each other, and the worst and they both want it so why not? You can do it very fast.

But then, well, the romance in the second book I wrote is extremely slow burning. A year of book time, or his whole life, depending on your point of view. He's young and nervous and has absolutely no idea what he's doing so it's played very slow. They start the book as being something akin to mother and son and end up as a couple; both of them have to change how they see each other. That takes a lot of time. He has to become a young man, find himself and his confidence. And slowly they'll grow into something else. And to be honest, the romance itself doesn't even really bloom in that first book, they just get to the point of starting to be a couple when they get their knees kicked out from under them. It won't really be consummated until the second book. Sometimes taking time is what it needs to make it really work.

And in the end all you can do is find the speed that works for your book and for the space you have in the narrative. If you need to speed it up then you can do that; just by giving it that edge of "Where have you been my whole life?"; of characters that have kinda been waiting for something to come along and finally see the flash of it in this new person. That'll get you moving very fast. And if you want to spread it out then you can just decompress it a bit and give them more space to talk and bounce off each other without being quite so sizzling.

In the end it's just finding the right speed for the characters and the book. If you think it's running fine as it then screw it, stick with it. But you can do it at any speed you like.

 

To me I think you are taking your feedback at face value and missing the underlying subtext. They don't really think the relationship moved too fast. I'm sure the same people didn't think twice about Romeo and Juliet unless they were specifically told after that the whole story took place in like a few days. Shakespeare sold the relationship and that's what you have to do too. People will suspend the disbelief if they are sold on something well.

 

Everyone knows that real true romance is in Vegas, where the 24hr chaples are.

Seriously though just listen to what the others have offered, and try doing a bit of
applicable research. Some people are in it after the first date, and some simmer
for weeks and months.

Though since you are not bound by reality, she can be the envy of Venus,
and he can be richer than the Rockefellers. Truly a lie and match made
in heaven considering they will not bicker about the one thing all couples
bicker about. (Fun fact: 88% of Women (US) find money to be very important
in a relationship.) So romance is a ruse to get at your wallet guys.

https://www.statisticbrain.com/dating-relationship-stats/

 

I feel this conversation may be going it's own way...