Writing a romance is hard.

I read a book about writing romance, that basically gave out a boiler template of how to plot your romance. Fill in the blanks and off you go.

I actually used tarot cards to figure out a plot and characters. It came up as a romance. Good, romance is good because that’s a very hot market. Paranormal romance is a really big market too, so yeah, I can see this. And YA romance? It has its own shelf in B&N. I’m in for this.

So the plot is that a girl, who doesn’t know she’s part mermaid, spends a summer in a seaside fishing town, gets in the ocean, changes into a mermaid, is seduced by the mer-prince, refuses for the human that she left on land, and comes back to land to spend the rest of her summer with the landlubber.

Beautiful.

But I can’t get the MC to get beyond a bundle of nerves and fear. She’s acting like Bella. But then, from what i’ve skimmed, most of the YA girls are either feisty bitches or dingbats. Making her feisty would overshadow the hero. Making her a dingbat would just be a Twilight ripoff.

How difficult it is to be original. I was thinking of giving it up but I haven’t gotten any other ideas.

Yet.