Dear Romance Authors: Please Tease Us More

Dear Romance Authors,

We need to discuss something.

You have entire fictional worlds sitting on your laptops.

Men we haven’t met yet. Women we’re going to want as best friends. Couples who are approximately three chapters away from ruining our emotional stability. First kisses. Betrayals. Secret marriages. Terrible decisions. Grovels. Plot twists. And probably at least one man who is going to make us reconsider every fictional boyfriend we’ve previously pledged allegiance to.

And sometimes?

You’re being entirely too quiet about it.

Respectfully, please tease us more.

Because romance readers don’t only fall in love with books when we finally open them.

Sometimes, we fall in love with the anticipation.

We Want the Crumbs

Give us the suspicious quote with absolutely no context.

Give us:

“Who did this to you?”

And then disappear.

You do not need to explain yourself.

In fact, please don’t.

Let us investigate.

Give us the tiny excerpt that makes us immediately wonder who these people are and why they’re looking at each other like that.

Give us the character introduction that tells us he’s six-foot-whatever, emotionally unavailable, irritatingly competent, and absolutely convinced he will never fall in love.

Perfect.

We’ve seen enough.

Send him over.

Give us a playlist song that suddenly becomes suspicious once we’ve read Chapter Twenty-Seven.

Give us a text conversation between the characters.

A fake voicemail.

A blurry aesthetic.

A line from Chapter Twelve.

A photograph of something important with no explanation whatsoever.

A “you’ll understand later” post that means absolutely nothing to us today and emotionally destroys us three months from now.

Let us collect the crumbs.

Because every crumb gives us another reason to wonder.

And wondering is powerful.

Anticipation Is Part of the Romance

Think about what romance itself does to us.

The almost-touch.

The lingering stare.

The conversation that means more than either character is willing to admit.

The are-they-going-to-kiss?

The OH MY GOD JUST KISS ALREADY.

We love anticipation inside romance novels.

So why wouldn’t we love it before the book arrives?

There is something delicious about knowing just enough to become curious without knowing enough to satisfy that curiosity.

That’s where readers start making theories.

That’s where screenshots get sent to group chats with:

EXCUSE ME???

That’s where someone tags their romance-reading best friend.

That’s where readers start choosing sides before they’ve even met the characters properly.

That’s where a fictional person starts becoming someone we’re waiting for.

You aren’t simply announcing a book anymore.

You’re letting us experience the beginning of the obsession.

Your Characters Can Start Existing Before Release Day

This is the part I desperately want more romance authors to play with.

Let your characters escape the book.

Imagine we’re three weeks from release and your heroine posts her dating profile.

The next day, we get the hero’s reaction to it.

Maybe he’s unimpressed.

Maybe he’s jealous.

Maybe they’re enemies and he leaves the world’s most irritating comment.

Maybe they’re already married and now we have questions.

Or give us their text messages.

Their search histories.

Their group chats.

Their dating app profiles.

A fake tabloid headline from inside their world.

A voicemail one character absolutely should not have left.

A “day in the life” video.

A dramatic reenactment of an argument.

A fake interview with your hero where he insists he does not have feelings for her while providing seventeen pieces of evidence that this man is catastrophically in love.

Give us book drama.

Give us fictional gossip.

Make me feel like I somehow stumbled onto these people’s business and now I’m invested.

Because the moment readers start talking about characters like they’re real?

Oh, you’re in dangerous territory.

The fun kind.

And Please Don’t Think Every Post Has to Sell the Book

This might be my favorite part.

Sometimes the content can simply be fun.

Not:

Preorder now.

Not:

Available everywhere.

Not even:

Here’s what my book is about.

Just something that makes a romance reader stop scrolling and think:

Wait. Who are these people?

That’s enough.

Curiosity can do some beautiful work.

Because if I see a thirty-second video of two fictional characters having the pettiest argument imaginable and the chemistry is chemistry-ing?

I’m going to investigate.

Who are they?

What book are they from?

Why do they hate each other?

Why does he look jealous?

Are they actually enemies?

WHEN DO THEY KISS?

Congratulations.

I have wandered directly into your world under my own power.

Give Us Something to Participate In

Readers don’t always want to be advertised at.

Sometimes we want to play.

Let us choose which character we’d trust on a road trip.

Ask which fictional man we’d call to hide a body.

Let us predict who falls first.

Give us three quotes and make us guess which belongs to the hero.

Make us choose between two terrible romantic decisions.

Drop evidence and let us solve something.

Ask us which trope we think is hiding inside the book.

Let us name the group chat.

Let us argue over which character owes the other the bigger apology.

Give readers a tiny doorway into the story and watch what happens when they start walking through it.

Because participation creates something an ordinary advertisement can’t manufacture:

a memory.

We were there.

We guessed wrong.

We chose him.

We defended her.

We screamed over that teaser.

And when release day finally arrives, we’re not meeting complete strangers.

We’ve been waiting for them.

Of Course, Don’t Give Us Everything

Please understand me.

I am not requesting spoilers.

There is an art to this.

Show us the spark without showing us the fire.

Give us the tension without explaining the payoff.

Let us see that somebody is jealous without telling us what happens next.

Show us the sentence that makes absolutely no sense until we’ve read the book.

Make us think we understand something.

And then let us discover that we were spectacularly wrong.

Because teasing works when there is still something left to discover.

And romance readers?

We are exceptionally good at wanting more.

So, Dear Romance Authors…

Consider this your affectionate invitation to torment us.

Lovingly.

Strategically.

Creatively.

You spent months—or years—building these characters and their world.

You don’t have to wait until release day to let us fall for them.

Give us glimpses.

Give us mysteries.

Give us personality.

Give us inside jokes we won’t understand until later.

Give us character drama that has us opening the comments like we’re neighborhood aunties who just heard shouting next door.

Give us one tiny piece of information and allow the Romance Reader Investigation Department to wildly overreact.

Because sometimes the best thing you can give a reader isn’t the answer.

It’s the unbearable need to know what happens next.

And if there’s one thing romance readers have proven again and again…

We’ll follow that feeling straight into another chapter.

Keep writing. We’ll keep falling.
Until the next letter,
🖤 Romanceaholic
Love stories. Taken seriously.