Shannon Stacey


By request: How to plot a romantic suspense

In fishing for a decent blog topic, I was prompted to “blog about how to plot a decent romantic suspense”. Sure. It beats the entry I was going to do on how Big Spankable Asses is a great title to stick in a genre that’s constantly fighting porn accusations.

Anyway. Just to take a few whacks at the horse, the Devlin Group books aren’t romantic suspense, they’re action-adventure romance. But…I’ll do my best. Anything for a friend, you know.

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 :censor:”, 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.

And…voila!

7 comments to “By request: How to plot a romantic suspense”

  1. Jaci Burton
    Comment
    1
      · January 9th, 2007 at 10:50 am · Link

    :type: :coffee:

    Thanks Shan. That solved all my problems.

    :lmao:



  2. Karen Templeton
    Comment
    2
      · January 9th, 2007 at 12:34 pm · Link

    Well, hell. And here all these years I was convinced I couldn’t possibly write RS. :crazy:

    :lmao:



  3. Michelle
    Comment
    3
      · January 9th, 2007 at 12:49 pm · Link

    Sweet! Thanks, I will use all of that in my next RS :cheesy:



  4. Charlene
    Comment
    4
      · January 9th, 2007 at 2:12 pm · Link

    It’s scary how well this describes my back-burner project with motorcycle stunts. :wtf:



  5. Wax
    Comment
    5
      · January 9th, 2007 at 4:44 pm · Link

    NOW she tells me…



  6. Anna Lucia
    Comment
    6
      · January 10th, 2007 at 9:09 am · Link

    Once again, I’m convinced Shan and I were separated at birth…

    Wait, you were joking…. ? But this IS how I write a RS….



  7. Natalie J. Damschroder
    Comment
    7
      · January 10th, 2007 at 3:38 pm · Link

    Oh, man. This is so me. Except I do the inventing right off the bat and never bother to pretend to research stuff. :)

    No, seriously, I do do research when I have to. I just prefer to make up stuff so I don’t have to. :nod:







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