So, I may not be the most well-read person on Earth—far from it, in my experience—but as I mentioned earlier, there is an interesting fact that romantic subplots are super common, partly due to being “the most common subplot” of real life.  Yet so many, in both life and novels, are very, very poorly executed.  [...]

Be it the anti-climax, the “bad guy wins”, or even the “inventive, original way for the good guy to win,” twist endings are huge.  I daresay, to some extend, they are required.  Even Lord of the Rings, which is about as straight forward of a hero-quest plot as you can get, has a twist in [...]

So, I live a life with few regrets.  Granted, there are things I think back on and wonder how life would have gone if I had done differently, but even then, I cannot change these things, and even if I could, there is no way to tell how things would be different if you did. [...]

So, one of the comments to come out of the aforementioned “Strong Female Protagonists” panel at D*Con was that every needs to really buckle down and learn how to write a romantic subplot.  Why?  Well, because there is a reason it is the most common subplot in books: because it is the most common subplot [...]