Romance Starter Kit

Outline your romance novel with the ultimate Romance starter kit

A romance is an age-old tale that’s captured hearts for millennia by asking a single question: will they or won’t they? But the story comes in the gap between, which shows two people changing, resisting, and breaking until they defy the odds to reach each other. And that’s where your planning should also start.

This starter kit gives you everything the genre asks of its writer, in four connected boards. Like every genre starter kit in Studio, it’s built around what its genre believes about stories — and romance believes the relationship is the heart of the plot. You get:

• The Outline board — your love story based on the traditional romance arc, mapped across thirteen guided beats in four acts, from Ordinary, Boring Life to Happily Ever After.
• The Characters board — mirrored Love Interest profiles for both of your leads, built to develop each one through the other’s eyes, plus cards for the best friend and the rival.
• The Essentials board — trope, conflict, theme, and stakes: the cards that keep the promises your book is making.
• The Places board — a Location card for the settings that force your leads together, from the small-town inn to the office they can’t both quit.

Take your leads through all thirteen beats

The Romance Structure unfolds across 13 beats, each of which will be a card on your Outline board:

• Ordinary, Boring Life. Here are our protagonists! Two people, two routines, two lives running on straight lines with no overlap. Surely no one will ruin this.
• The Meet Cute. Someone ruins this.
• Push and Pull. They are not interested. To be clear: not interested. Anyway, here’s a detailed log of every time they’ve thought about each other today.
• Locked In. What’s this? A fake engagement? One bed left at the inn? A binding contract someone signed voluntarily? However it happened — nobody’s going anywhere now.
• A Crack in the Armor. Oh no, did a real feeling just slip out? Quick, everyone pretend that didn’t just happen.
• Closer and Closer. Except maybe it’s too late, because the falling is already well underway.
• Everything Changes. A kiss! A confession! A discovery! A betrayal! Whatever form it takes, it can’t be taken back — and neither of them can pretend otherwise.
• Storm Clouds. And right on cue, here also comes the weather. The doubts creep back in, and the old defenses come out of retirement.
• Breaking Point. The fight. The big one.
• Rock Bottom. It’s over.
• The Lightbulb. Or is it?
• The Grand Gesture. Here comes the show-stopper: the run, the letter, the speech in the rain to win their love back.
• Happily Ever After. The question, answered. They will, and they do.

To help you create a beat-by-beat record of two people becoming right for each other, your Outline board will also provide:

• The canvas — a plain-language explanation of the beat, with Elizabeth and Darcy (and a cameo from Harry and Sally) showing how the masters played it, plus space to sketch your version.
• The mood tracker — one emoji field per love interest, so your outline doubles as an at-a-glance map of two emotional arcs. 😊🙂 at the Meet Cute; 💔😤 by Breaking Point.
• A check-in with each lead — both on the outside they’re presenting and the inside they actually feel.
• The plot — what actually happens in this beat, and why the story’s machinery makes it inevitable.
• The relationship — how they feel about each other right now, and how justified they are in thinking so.
• The road ahead — a bridge to the next beat, so your outline builds momentum instead of stalling between chapters.

And every card is fully customizable: rename beats to match your story’s vocabulary, trim what your romance doesn’t need, add your own questions, and reorder freely. Think of the beats as a dance that you can improvise along the way to suit your story.

Write two leads who were made for each other

A romance story is unique in that it lives or dies on the strength of two characters, not one. So our Love Interest profile in your Characters board is specifically designed to help you create strong leads in both protagonists — and it guides you forward the way romance itself does: through the other’s eyes. What’s their first impression? Write it from @Love Interest’s POV. Their style? Have @Love Interest dress them up.

Six sections carry this lens from surface to soul — Looks & Appearance all the way down to Chemistry & Romance. You’ll cover first impressions to attachment styles, love languages, and the question that unlocks the third act: what bigger pattern keeps their relationships from working, and what does loving this person help them finally see?

Then comes the question every romance must answer. Given everything you’ve developed: why @Love Interest, of all people? Your answer will help define how readers stop wondering whether these two end up together, and start wondering how they ever lived apart.

Link your lovers to the world that keeps throwing them together

A love story is only as compelling as the people falling into it, which is why these four boards are connected, not collected. Every beat card carries @-mention fields for its settings and characters: plan your Meet Cute in your Outline board, tag the small-town bakery from your Places board and the infuriatingly charming stranger behind the counter from your Characters board, and every profile is one click away while you plot.

Give your guarded heroine, your grumpy love interest, and your meddling best friend who saw this coming from chapter one each a profile; give the inn with one bed its card and the city they keep almost-kissing in its own; then weave them through the romance beat by beat. Every element of your love story stays connected — and consistent.

Best of all, when Happily Ever After is checked off, your first chapter starts right here in Reedsy Studio — with your outline within arm’s reach for the entire draft.

Your romance, saved and synced on every device

Reedsy Studio automatically saves every change you make, so your kit is always current, always backed up, and always where you left it. And because Studio works on any device, you can chart the Meet Cute on your laptop and rewrite the Grand Gesture on your phone, wherever the butterflies find you.

From first spark to finished romance, all in Reedsy Studio

This kit is built on the traditional arc that romance has run on since Elizabeth Bennet first refused Mr. Darcy, distilled by Reedsy into an interactive beat sheet built for romance novelists.

And it’s just the beginning of what Studio can do. The same free app that holds your kit is where you can plan, write, and format the whole book.

The Romance starter kit includes:

• Four connected boards: Outline, Characters, Places, and Essentials
• All thirteen beats of the romance arc, grouped into four acts, with Elizabeth and Darcy worked through beside every beat
• Seven-part beat cards: a canvas, a two-lead mood tracker, check-ins with each love interest, plot and relationship workshops, and a bridge to the next beat
• Two mirrored Love Interest profiles — looks, psychology, history, and chemistry, each developed through the other’s eyes — plus Best Friend and Rival cards
• Essentials cards for Trope (promise, deliver, sell), Conflict, Theme, and Stakes & Consequences, all @-linkable from any beat

Beyond the kit, Studio provides:

• A full library of planning templates — story structures, outlines, characters, and worldbuilding
• A distraction-free manuscript editor for drafting and revision
• Professional typesetting: export print-ready PDF and EPUB files
• Automatic saving, cross-device syncing, and collaboration tools

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