Romance substory in action story?

questions
#1

Wondering if anyone has any thoughts about romance subplots in a story that is mostly focused on action.

I know in Wonder Woman, the MC and IC had a romance which made up the RS, which worked great, but what about when the IC isn’t the romantic interest? The closest example I can think of at the moment is Raiders of the Lost Arc – Marion isn’t the IC, but there’s a clear subplot that explores her and Indy’s romance and differing attitudes. So would that be considered a substory with a separate OS, MC, IC, and RS? Or is it better to think of the love interest as one of the OS characters (in the action plot) who interacts with the MC?
Thanks!

#2

Romance sub-plots are the best!

My recommendation for writing this would be to start with the assumption of no separate storyform. Then try to incorporate all of the conflict within the romance using the OS story points (and/or possibly MC throughline story points if you think this romance is highlighting the MC’s personal issues).

There also might be some relationship conflict coming from the two lovebirds’ OS character elements, differences of approach towards the story Goal.

If you try the above and it really doesn’t seem to fit, that’s when you can start considering a separate storyform with its own throughlines. Still, you might be better off kind of winging that, and trying to make it fit the main story as much as possible, unless you really want to deal with separate storyforms.

This exact thing came up in a story I’m working on. I was originally thinking there was a sub-story for the romance, but when I looked at it more closely I realized everything fit within the OS, and maybe a bit within MC throughline. The Symptom and Response, in particular, fit really well!

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#3

A Contagonist might be a charming and exciting way to go. I just saw The Accountant, and I thought of your post. First off, The Accountant reminded me of A Man for All Seasons in that I was left with a rare aha sigh in it coming together. I guess if they get a linear MC right, it’s a slam dunk. However, this movie was a flipped version of Man for All Season’s storyform, somewhere, and it really worked. What is very interesting, it appears they did the opposite with the contagonists,

Man had the contagonist in the face for the whole film and Accountant had an end reveal, imho. The emotional scenes at the end of the last action scene is probably what you are looking for, where the mc/protagonist casually winds up his protagonist goal, with the ic off stage somewhere doing the ic thing (whatever it is in the movie), YET the mc/protagonist is in one of the most fantastic and satisfying emotional confrontations in the history of film and storytelling in any form, including print…and it appears to be with the contagonist.

I can see the contagonist romantic going hinder-see me, hinder-see me, the protagonist does the goal at the same time finally noticing, what? me? all this time you’ve been interested in me?

#4

Thanks! That’s a helpful way to look at it.