10 Heart-Warming and Heart-Wrenching Scenes for your Romantic Thriller
Hi writerly friends!
Welcome back! This week, we’re talking about five heart-warming and 5 heart-wrenching scenes to write into your romance novel! I can’t remember where I first heard of writing different/alternate scenes to get you unstuck from a difficult scene, but I figured I’d put my own spin on it! You don’t actually have to include these in your story but they’re excellent writing prompts to set within the realm of your own story and it makes a great writing exercise if you’re stuck in the middle of a scene.
Lock them up ❤️😂
While this sounds more like a heart-wrenching scene, I have seen some pretty funny scenes come out of characters being locked in a room with one another. Consider what dialogue you could use here and how this memory will help build their character prior to the story.
Kill someone 💔
I don’t mean literally! But kill your characters to see how their leaving the story changes the outcome. Consider how the other characters would react if the main character died. How would the story go from there? How would it ever get told?
Photo by Rodolfo Clix.
I wouldn’t exactly do this if the story its told in first person and in the POV of the character you chose to kill, but consider how the story would be different if he remaining characters had to carry the story to completion after the death of your MC.
What could go wrong? ❤️😂
As yourself this question when writing a scene you’re stuck in the middle of and then write exactly what can go wrong. I did this in one of my short stories and it worked wonders. This is especially great for best-friends-to-lovers stories where comical situations only bring the friendship even closer.
Their pet escaped 💔
This can go either really well or really badly depending on how you write it. Pretend as if of your characters pet has escaped and they enlist the help of their best friend of love interest to rescue it. This can come out very Cheetah Girls, or dog runs away for good. The point of this is to put your characters in an emotionally demanding situation to see how they’ll react under pressure.
It’s their wedding day ❤️
If you know two of your characters will end up together, write out their wedding day down to all of the nitty gritty details like dress sizes, color palettes, types of flowers, menu and everything in between. Vividly write it out and include the character’s stress of trying to have a perfect wedding day along with the immense joy of getting married to their soulmate.
Kidnapped or runaway? 💔
Write an entire chapter where your main character gets kidnapped and its up to their friends, family, or love interest to find and rescue them. This can be an especially heart-wrenching scene if the kidnapper gives them a ransom or time limit. This can be an especially heart-warming scene if the character in question isn’t in fact kidnappe, but rather they run away and their love interest is the only one who can convince them to come back. If the love interest runs away with them to make sure they’re safe, it will be extra sweet!
They’ve been drugged ❤️😂
Again, this sounds like a heart-wrenching scene, but I promise, it’s not. Remember the part of Stranger things when Steve and Robin were drugged by the Russians and they were so loopy and useless to their friends? Write your characters into the exact same situation and see what kind of hilarious dialogue comes out of it and how they get to know each other better. One rule though, don’t re-watch Stranger Things until after you’ve done this so that you won’t accidentally plagiarize! Not cool!
They’ve been framed 💔
Write an entire scene where your main character just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time and they were framed for a terrible crime in their hometown. Write everything from their emotions and thought process to how their friends and family would prove their innocence. If they have any enemies, write how they’d help stack the cards against them. If you want, you can even write them going to jail and document their experience.
Talent show contestants ❤️😂
Write your characters into a good old-fashioned high-school-style talent show. Write out their process for figuring out their talents and deciding what they’ll do for the show, the actual show, and everything afterward. Consider what would happen if they messed up on stage and if their friends or love interest would step in to save them from embarrassment, or if they’d run off stage, sobbing. What would it take your main character to win the talent show?
Dreams and nightmares 💔❤️
While this works for both heart-wrenching and heart-warming categories, write what kind of dreams your characters would have. Write about what their subconscious shows them and describe them in vivid detail. If they have nightmares, write the wild things they see and if they have happy dreams, show us what kind of dreams would make them stay in bed longer.
And that’s it for my five heart-warming and five heart-wrenching scenes to write when your stuck in the middle of a scene. What did you think of these prompts? Do you like writing about other scenes to get yourself unstuck? Are there any other prompts I could have included? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below, and as always, thanks’ for reading!
—Payton
How To Write The Perfect Meet Cute
Glen Powell as Charlie Young and Zoey Deutch as Harper in Set It Up. Gif by Payton Hayes.
Hello, writerly friends!
Today, we’re discussing the meet cute. What the heck even is a meet cute anyways? Well, according to Google, is an amusing or charming first encounter between two characters that leads to the development of a romantic relationship between them.
Of course, the way you do the meet cute is completely and totally up to you—it can be cute, funny, or disastrous and comical. How you do a meet cute is completely subjective and can be created in a number of ways, but today I am going to show you how to make a meet cute even cuter—like the cutest it could possibly be.
When the reader sees the meeting coming, characters do not
While you can craft a meet cute where both the reader and characters do not see it coming, I think it’s extra interesting when the reader does, because it’s like this little secret between the writer and the reader. I really love meet cutes that do this. It’s like the sense of rising dread you get when you’re reading parts of a story with building tension—except that it’s a good kind of dread because you want the characters to end up meeting. The reader knows something good will come out of this chance encounter, only they know it’s coming, and the characters do not.
Flinn is surprised when Rapunzel hits him with a frying pan during Disney’s Tangled’s meet cute (2010).
A great example of this kind of meet cute is in Disney’s Tangled, when Flynn Rider is running from the law and seeks refuge in Rapunzel’s conveniently hidden tower. We already know Rapunzel is inside and he definitely climbed up the wrong tower. The scene that follows does not disappoint, when Rapunzel smacks him in the face with a frying pan for climbing through her window. I would consider this a comical meet cute, but it works extra well because the viewer knows what will happen before the characters and it builds for extra spicy first meeting.
Joe Bradley wakes a sleeping Princess Ann in Roman Holiday (1953).
Another example of a meet cute where the viewer/reader knows of the meeting before the characters actually meet is Roman Holiday, when Princess Ann shirks her royal responsibilities to see Rome for herself and eventually ends up falling asleep on a street. When the scene shifts to Gregory Peck playing cards with the guys, viewers just know the two are going to meet. After his night out, we see him walking down the same street Ann has fallen asleep on and we’re already anticipating their meeting.
Milo Ventimiglia as Jess Mariano and Alexis Bledel as Rory Gilmore in Gilmore Girls (2000).
Another example of a meet cute where the characters don’t know they’ll be meeting it is in Gilmore Girls, Season 2, Episode 5. Not only does this episode include Jess' first appearance, but it's also the first episode that Rory and he meet. He steals her copy of Allen Ginsberg's "Howl," only to return it to her later in the episode with notes in the margins because Ginsberg is love, you guys. Ah, Jess Mariano — you book thieving-and-annotating bad boy. When Jess swipes Howl from Rory’s room during that ill-fated dinner hosted by Lorelai, and then returns it filled with margin notes, Rory was definitely impressed. (And so were we.) This scene effectively sets up the characters before they even know each other, themselves and shows us that there’s more than meets the eye, both for the mischievous Jess and their tumultuous relationship down the line.
This kind of meet cute makes the reader feel smarter because they know something the characters don’t. This is why it feels like a special little secret between the reader and the writer because the reader feels like he or she has already figured the story out. This is especially effective if you have plot twists and turns later on in the story, because the ground work for the surprises will already be laid out for you.
Characters don’t know they’ll be seeing a lot of each other
Piggybacking on the idea that the characters don’t know they’ll end up together, another meet cute that works really well in many stories is when the characters don’t know they’ll be seeing a lot of each other and/or aren’t too thrilled about it. This is especially fun for awkward situations where the character thinks “oh well, I’ll never see them again anyways,” and then come to find out that they will be seeing them again, and a lot more at that. Awkward is cute, writers.
Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Dido Elizabeth Belle and Sam Reid as John Davinière in Belle.
Pro tip: a sense of awkwardness or secondhand embarrassment is a fantastic feeling to give the reader. It’s as strong as , if not stronger than fear or desire, because its such a vulnerable emotion and it’s one we go out of our way to avoid. If you can invoke this in your reader, then congratulations, you’ve effectively written something that makes people feel.
A great example of this type of meet cute is in the movie Belle, when Dido and John run into each other on her late-night walk. She is startled at first when she finds that he actually came bringing news for her uncle and even more so when she discovers her uncle is John’s tutor and they’ll be seeing a lot more of each other.
Another example of this type of meet cute is in Jane Eyre when Jane first meets Mr. Rochester, he doesn’t tell her who he is, but later when she returns home, she recognizes his dog and realizes the true identity of the man she’d met on the road, earlier that day.
This kind of meet cute is really great because not only does it introduce a whole new level of awkward! but it also allows us to get to know the characters before they know each other and makes their relationship down the road, a lot cuter.
Irony, or something happening that would never happen later in the story
Megan Follows as Anne Shirley and Jonathan Crombie as Gilbert Blythe in Anne of Green Gables (1985).
This is probably one of the most powerful, yet hard to pull off versions of the meet cute, but if you can nail it, it can prove for a really effective first meeting and adds dept to the relationship later. Using irony in your meet cute makes the meeting 100x better because when these two characters are in love some day and they look back on their relationship later, it will be so funny to look back and think about how ironic their first encounter really was.
One great example of the use of irony in a meet cute is in Anne of Green Gables when Anne Shirley breaks Gilbert Blythe’s slate over his head out of temper when he teases her repeatedly. This was a very effective and ironic meet cute because the two characters would never behave in such a way after they’d gotten together but it really makes for a memorable first meeting.
“I've loved you ever since that day you broke your slate over my head in school." Oh Gil❤️
The second meeting is even more awkward
Okay, the only thing better than making your reader feel the palpable awkwardness is making them feel it twice! (Or three times if you’re gutsy enough!) This kind of meet cute is incredibly effective, especially if you tie it in with the first two where 1) only the reader knows they will meet and 2) they don’t know they’ll run into each other a lot more following the first meeting. This makes for a really, really strong meet cute where the characters and the reader are almost swimming the awkward emotions and the only way to move past it is to keep reading and see how it plays out.
The first meeting happens and once it’s over and done, you can bring it back around for the second meeting which is filled to the brim with potential for even more awkwardness, shyness, embarrassment and dramatic meet cute goodness!
An example of this meet cute is in Downton Abbey when Mary Talbot and Matthew Crawley meet for the first time, she walks in on Matthew saying some offhanded things to his mother. He is talking about how he will likely be shoved into an arranged marriage with one of the Talbot daughters since their parents had heard he was a bachelor. She says she hopes she isn’t interrupting anything but of course, that proves to be the case when they meet again later and its super awkward.
Callback to the meet cute
Megan Follows as Anne Shirley and Jonathan Crombie as Gilbert Blythe in Anne of Green Gables (1985).
All of these are great ways to effectively nail the meet cute for your characters, but you get bonus points for bringing it back up later on in the story. It’s really fun to see the characters in love reflecting on their embarrassing first meeting and makes for a great treat for the reader. A callback is a really effective literary device where something happens in the beginning of the story and is later referenced towards the end of the story in another context, essentially calling it back to the reader’s memory.
Audrey Hepburn as Princess Ann and Gregory Peck as Joe Bradley in Roman Holiday (1953).
Some particularly cute examples of this callback to the meet cute is in Anne of Green Gables when Gil calls her Carrot, endearingly, in Roman Holiday when Princess Ann says “So happy, Mister Bradley,” in reference to her muttering “So happy” in her sleep on the street, and in Jane Eyre when Mr. Rochester says, “You always were a witch” to Jane in reference to their very first meeting when he’d said “Get away from me, witch!”
These are just a few really well-done meet cutes and you’ll find it’s always the little things that make these meeting iconic, memorable, and downright adorable.
That’s it for the secrets to the perfect meet cute. Try using them all and let me know what you think. Do you prefer to use one version over another or do you like using them together? Do you ever call back to your meet cutes? What is the most important element of a meet cute? And what are some of your favorite meet cutes? Let me know in the comments below!
Further reading:
Thumbnail photo by Natalie.
—Payton