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First, the formula for all romances:
Girl meets boy and both feel instant mutual attraction,
but there are problems that prevent them from getting together,
which gives them time to get to know each other and fall irresistibly in-love,
but the problems keep escalating until they are forced apart.
But just when all looks utterly doomed
they discover how to overcome their problems,
and the happy ending
never tells how they eventually end up
in reality.
Second, how to write it badly:
be coy and prudish about sex,
use every cliché,
tell, don't show,
imagine outside the realm of the writer's experience,
have a thin plot line with lots of plot holes,
have a weak heroine and an impossibly perfect man,
use a predictably exotic setting
don't flesh out the characters as whole human beings,
don't incorporate deeper issues and themes.
Girl meets boy and both feel instant mutual attraction,
but there are problems that prevent them from getting together,
which gives them time to get to know each other and fall irresistibly in-love,
but the problems keep escalating until they are forced apart.
But just when all looks utterly doomed
they discover how to overcome their problems,
and the happy ending
never tells how they eventually end up
in reality.
Second, how to write it badly:
be coy and prudish about sex,
use every cliché,
tell, don't show,
imagine outside the realm of the writer's experience,
have a thin plot line with lots of plot holes,
have a weak heroine and an impossibly perfect man,
use a predictably exotic setting
don't flesh out the characters as whole human beings,
don't incorporate deeper issues and themes.