when I game with my wife and another couple, I always lose. No matter what game it is. Women always, ALWAYS treat each other with deference, if not outright alliance. The other woman will always be nice to her husband. My wife is completely ruthless. Which means I have three enemies, no allies, and everyone else has at least one other player who will not actively seek his destruction.
anyway, romance. If you want to try it, fuzzy, you should. I mean, it'd make life more enjoyable for you, I think.
There are some conventions that I've heard of that have to be observed. Many people call SF/F escapist literature, but romance is the ULTIMATE escapist, from what I understand. The readers what to be able to fantasize about being in the protagonist's point of view. This means now trailer park managers for female leads and stuff like that. It's a respectable job, but no one dreams of being one.
One of the three I've read did this pretty well, in terms of capturing what the target audience needed. The main character was slightly overweight and pushing 40. Then, she's in an accident, and her guardian angel tranfers her to a body in the American Revolution period. The body is, of course, 18, fit, and very shapely. The end of the story has her and the guy whe's in love with come back to her own time and inhabit bodies here again. There's a target audience who can think "This can happen to me" but they still get the ultimate fantasy of the perfect people.
I think if you make characters with multiple dimensions, not ones simply designed to be the coolest thing ever, you can make an impression. Oh, yes, the character still has to be enviable, but giving her hobbies or habits that aren't there just to be cool, that would make it more interesting.
I don't know that the plot has to be THAT original, either. Many plots of very good books are not that original when you look at them. Ok, it has to be something that doesn't look like a carbon copy, but it doesn't have to be completely new and different. I don't think enough about romance as a plot, myself though. I think of it as something that happens while other somethings are happening. Either that or someone decides they are in love, chases after their victim, and then either wins him/her or realizes the person she/he should have liked was someone else all along. Very "Some Kind of Wonderful" but also the experience of my own life.
