same thing only different

I’m trying to outline a bunch of books at once that feature interconnected couples. It’s super fun creating my own arena to play in. Basically, I’m picking the tropes I want to write about (best friends-to-lovers, “teach me your manwhore ways,” grouchy bear/sunshine, amnesia) and then figuring out how to fit them in the same world.

Cool.

 But this is what I’m struggling with:

How to make the books all different, when the structure of them is all the same.

Like mysteries, romance novels have a definite structure: People meet. There’s a reason why they can’t fall in love. But they do it anyway. We’re along for the ride and hopefully experience all of the emotions getting to the ending.

Reading a romance novel is the spectator sport for people who love to watch others falling in love, and at least I personally can’t get enough of it. I simply love love stories. Period. And I don’t care that they’re all the same. Even when I read a book and know that something bad usually happens at 75/80% of the book that makes me think they are going to go their separate ways. Even when I want to stop reading because that point is too painful. But I trust the book to solve the problem, because (by definition) a romance novel has a satisfying ending with a HEA or happy for now. (If it doesn’t, it’s a love story, not a romance.)

I don’t think I’ve ever actually read two identical books—even those that are retellings of classic fairytales—because there is always variation. Books have lessons the characters learn. Ways they grow and change. Development of a theme we want to explore (like trust or forgiveness or becoming your true self). 

But at some level, they’re all the same.

I read a book recently that quoted someone else as saying all books have two plots—a stranger comes to town or a person goes on a journey. But even that summary is really one plot—no?—just told from different perspectives.

So, back to my point. How do I structure a series of books to do what I want them to do and follow the rules for romance and have the emotional highs and lows I want to read—and not have them all be the same? As I’m brainstorming, I’ll want to write a particular plot point and reject it because I did it before. I’ll want a character to have an issue and realize I’ve already talked about that.

But I think the answer (and I’m writing this post to remind myself) is that we are all in this life together. We all have similarities and it’s in the details that makes things different. So long as I stick to the truth of the story, I think I’ll be fine.

Thoughts? Do you like it when an author delivers the same type of story again and again? Or do you like her to mix it up? I imagine it’s somewhere in the middle. You want the security of knowing you will like the book because you’ve read the author’s work before and liked it. But you don’t want to be bored by reading the same thing you already read.