Many years ago, somebody told me as a baby writer that I had to have a consummated romance involving my main character or “Nobody would read my books.”

It actually made me less interested in writing romance. Of all of my books, only the Lost Guardians series has a lot of romance in it and, bluntly, the characters insisted.

However, I will say that if you broaden it, it’s not untrue.

Your main character has to have relationships. Those can be relatively light…the relationship you might have with a team mate or crewmate. Or they can be all-consuming. But even an all-consuming relationship doesn’t need to be a romance.

Let’s look a little bit at some other relationships that you can hinge a story on.