Romance writing contests are a great way to share your stories

Reading a romance novel can stir your emotions and make you feel like you’re the one falling in love. The best love stories are dramatic, emotional, intimate, and interesting. Romance readers live for a story that draws them in and doesn’t let go even after the book ends. The feeling of finding love is something we chase and want to experience over and over again.

If you’ve been reading the romance genre for a long time, you probably have some favorite stories you go back to often. Stories that never fail to get you in your feels. Many of us have even let our minds wander about how the story could have ended differently. Is there any way the ending could have been happier? Or more realistic? You’ve probably rewritten an ending or favorite scene in a book a hundred times in your head. Maybe you even wrote yourself into the story as a mysterious new love interest.

Enter a writing contest to show your skills

Our writing contests allow you to share your creativity and storytelling prowess. We have writing contests every week, and we accept both fanfiction and original stories. For fanfiction, the rules are simple: take your favorite novel or latest obsession and continue the story from the end. So, the couple gets married and lives happily ever after. What does that look like for these particular characters? Do they stay happy forever, or does something change?

However you see fit to keep the story going, write it in 3,000 words or less and share it with our community. We are all dying to see what you will come up with. For original submissions, we ask that you keep them under 5,000 words. And if your story is on the steamier side, please include a disclaimer in your submission.

Take all those romantic daydreams and dramatic fantasies and put them to good use. Unleash your creative side and share a love story that only you can write. If it’s really good, it will be featured in our list of great romance writing for the next month. But don’t let the pressure get to you. The goal is for everyone to have fun writing their own love stories and to share them among the community of romance readers.

Having trouble getting started?

That’s okay. Just get some words on the page. Even if those first few sentences are terrible, write them anyway. You can always edit out what you don’t like. Don’t let the fear of sounding cliche stop you from writing your story.

First of all, there is a huge audience that lives for cliche love stories. So, if that’s your thing, go ahead and write it for yourself and the people who enjoy it. Secondly, let your first ideas be a starting point for better ones. If your story starts off like something you’ve heard before, keep writing and tinker with the plot as you go along. You could totally be the next great romance author, but don’t write with that goal in mind. Just have fun.

Writing good fanfiction

It might be tempting to use fanfiction as a way to remove flaws and imperfections from the character in the story. But good fanfiction should follow the same rules and structure as all writing. Make the characters feel real and relatable. Show them making mistakes. Reveal their shortcomings. The trick is to do all that in a meaningful way that drives the story. Make sure the pace of the story allows things to happen naturally and unforced.

We all appreciate a love story with a good ending, but it’s the journey along the way that makes it worth it. When writing fanfiction, make sure every scene in the story works toward the final payoff. Whether fanfiction or not, romance readers are here to get wrapped up in the story and fall in love right along with the main characters.

If you’re feeling low on creative inspiration, try reading some good romance novels to help get the wheels turning. We don’t encourage blatant rip-offs but reading a moving story can activate your imagination and give you a starting point for your own love story. Here are some classic romance novels to help you get started:

All of those novels are critically acclaimed as great overall stories. They also happen to be amazing romance novels. Some of the books listed have been made into movies or TV shows. That doesn’t validate it as a good story, since many all-time great novels have never been adapted to film, but you can also watch the film to help your imagination along.

Whether you want to create something new with existing characters by writing fanfiction or write an original piece, RomanceReviews.com welcomes your submissions.