Short & Sweet: Plot and Conflict in Short Romance

This is the third of five chapters in my crash course on writing short romance. For more information, read the introductory post for this series. A list of my stories that are referenced in this chapter can be found at the end of today’s post.

In the last installment, I made some general comments about the structure of a short romance. This (shorter) chapter will focus more precisely on the conflict that drives the plot of your story.

If you’ve been writing fiction for any length of time, you’ve probably heard someone say that every story needs a conflict. This is true not just for novels, but for short-form fiction as well. Generally speaking, in short romance, there are three main types of conflict.

External conflict comes at the characters from outside their relationship. Examples of this type of conflict include pressure or disapproval from family members, a weather emergency that impacts travel plans, a new job that will separate the characters, or any other situation that conspires to keep the characters from falling or staying in love.

Internal conflict happens inside the character whose point of view the reader inhabits. Conflicts of this type involve the character’s feelings about himself or herself, about trusting other people, falling in love, feeling worthy, etc. These are the mental blocks that hold a character back from a relationship, or the mistaken ideas the character has about what a relationship would be like, or what it would mean to fall in love.

The other kind of conflict you find in romance is a direct conflict between the two main characters that is keeping them from being together. This conflict might be driven by internal or external conflicts as well.

The word conflict can sometimes make it sound like a writer needs to include an earth-shattering problem to overcome in every single story. This is why, when I write short fiction, I prefer to think of conflict as simply tension. What is the tension your reader wants to see you resolve? Whatever that is will be the plot of your story. It doesn’t have to be a large, dramatic difficulty to be an effective conflict.

One way to guarantee that your story will have tension is to employ some tropes. Most romance readers have a favorite trope - that is, a concept or premise that is commonly used in the genre and follows a particular pattern. Here’s a quick rundown of some of the popular ones I’ve seen in clean romance:

• Friends to lovers

• Enemies to lovers

• Secret billionaire

• Brother’s best friend

• Best friend’s brother

• Workplace romance

• Marriage of convenience

• Fake relationship

• Amnesia

• Second chance romance

• Grumpy/sunshine

• Insta-love

• Opposites attract

• Single mom/dad

• Forced proximity

A trope is simply a shorthand way of expressing the key point of tension in your short story. In an enemies to lovers story, the reader wants to know how two characters who dislike each other will end up not just working things out, but falling in love. In a “brother’s best friend” story, there is the engaging question of whether the brother will approve of his best friend getting together with his sister. Workplace romance raises questions about how falling in love will impact life at the office. In fake relationships and marriages of convenience, there’s the worry over people finding out the relationship isn’t real. Many of these tropes lend themselves to immediate sources of tension, and most tropes can be scaled down appropriately to accommodate the short story format.

To give you a better idea of what I mean by tension or conflict, here are some examples from my own stories.

In “Parade Route to Romance,” Mandy and her nephew Aaron have decorated their golf cart for the fourth of July parade and they’re all ready to line up when Mandy realizes the cart didn’t charge as it was supposed to, and it can’t be driven anywhere. This external conflict gives the hero, Lee, the opportunity to step in and save the day by inviting Mandy and Aaron to ride with him. The forced proximity of being in the golf cart with Lee gives Mandy the chance to become interested in him, and they end the story with plans to watch the fireworks together that night.

In “The Diamond Detective,” I included an external conflict and an internal conflict. Externally, Giles is feeling the pressure of the ticking clock as his reservation for the dinner where he plans to propose to Lana draws closer and closer with no sign that he and Lana will be there on time. Internally, he is conflicted over Lana’s constant amateur sleuthing, a tension that resolves when he and Lana witness another couple’s proposal, and he realizes he doesn’t need the perfect moment, he just needs her. (This couple is a good example of “opposites attract.”)

In “Gnome One But You,” an instant conflict arises when Hazel, already having a bad morning trying and failing to live up to her sister-in-law’s expectations for what a nanny should be like, witnesses Jeremy accidentally breaking a garden gnome with his lawn trimmer. She is irritated by how unfazed he is, and also by his charm and sense of humor – until the next time they meet, he gives her a compliment she just can’t forget.

In “Whamageddon Love Story,” the tension arises from the fact that Dustin and Melanie have just lost at their game of trying not to hear Wham during December. What will this mean for their relationship? Thankfully, it inspires them to admit their feelings.

None of these conflicts is huge or dramatic, but even low-stakes stories like these need to have something driving them besides just the desire for a happy ending. Every romance ends the same way, but to make your story stand out, you need to create tension that will help your reader invest in your specific characters’ connection and its unique outcome.

Now that I’ve shown you how to drive a wedge or two between your characters, you might be wondering when I’m going to talk about how to bring them together. That’s in the next chapter, all about character development and romantic chemistry in clean romance.

Stories Mentioned in This Chapter

• “Parade Route to Romance,” Micromance Magazine, July 2025

• “The Diamond Detective,” Spark Flash Fiction, Winter 2024

• Gnome One But You, ebook available on Amazon, April 2025

• Whamageddon Love Story, Micromance Magazine, November 2024

Questions?

As the course progresses, if you have a question, I am collecting them using this form. Anything that is not addressed elsewhere in the course will be part of a bonus Q&A post at the end. You can sign your name or remain anonymous. The only field in the form is a place to ask your question. Thanks for being here!

Buy Me a Diet Coke

This course and all the content on my Substack are completely free, but if you enjoy it and feel so inclined, you can buy me a Diet Coke.