Скачать или смотреть The Mask Your Romance Characters Wear | Writing Emotional Armor That Blocks Love

In the last session, you uncovered the emotional wound that taught your romance characters love is unsafe.

In this writing sprint, you explore what they did with that knowledge. This is the mask.

The competence, confidence, indifference, or control your characters perform so no one sees what they actually feel.

In this guided romance writing sprint, you’ll write two 25-minute scenes.

One where your heroine is outwardly capable while hiding fear, loneliness, or longing

One where your hero performs strength, discipline, or authority to avoid being seen

This mask isn’t fake. It works. It just costs intimacy.

By writing characters who are good at surviving—but bad at connecting—you’ll create deeper emotional tension, clearer motivation, and more believable resistance to love.

This exercise helps romance writers:
-Show emotion through action instead of exposition
-Write emotional armor without flattening character voice
-Build slow-burn intimacy and subtext-driven tension
-Strengthen character psychology in romance and romantasy

This writing sprint is ideal for:
-Romance writers at any stage
-Slow burn and character-driven romance
-Enemies to lovers and guarded protagonists
-Writers struggling with “flat” or overly competent characters

Write first. Don’t edit. Let the mask do the work.

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Download the Romance Roadmap: https://ineswrites.com/romancemap
For more writing advice, follow Ines Johnson on Substack: https://ineswrites.substack.com