Three Things K-Dramas Understand About Romance That’re Worth Learning by Gala Russ
Let’s welcome back Gala Russ as she shares with us “Three Things K-Dramas Understand About Romance That’re Worth Learning.” Enjoy!
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This year, K-dramas reminded me of three important fundamentals of addictive storytelling.
If you’ve been reading my newsletter for a while, you know they’ve become a bit of an obsession.
K-Pop Demon Hunters movie dropped me into K-dramas almost by accident.
I was skeptical about this new-to-me genre.
Are they perfect?
No.
But several months and many shows later, it’s become clear that the screenwriters and directors creating them have a strong grasp of core story principles: story engine, long-form narrative momentum, and showing romance on the page.
1. Story Engine and Long-Form Narrative Momentum
Instead of events occurring because the author needs them to, a strong engine is driven by characters who want something, make choices, and trigger consequences that force the story to continue.
When this engine is working, scenes feel connected and purposeful; when it isn’t, the story starts to feel episodic or meandering.
Long-form narrative momentum creates sustained narrative tension where every success introduces a new complication, and every failure opens a new opportunity.
The situation keeps shifting instead of resolving and each choice raises the stakes.
K-dramas are especially good at emotional breakthroughs that cause viewers to tune into the following episode because they must know what happens next.
This is something I often see missing in early rounds of developmental edits, where emotional moments are treated as arrivals instead of turning points.
When scenes feel disconnected, it’s often because the emotional win or loss wasn’t allowed to change anything that followed.
Look at your story and notice whether wins and losses function as an ending — which can work closer to the final quarter of the book — or whether they push the character into higher stakes, harder choices, and more complicated consequences.
2. Romance Is Built in Moments
Another thing K-dramas show is what actually builds love over time.
If you’ve ever watched the ending of one, you’ve likely seen a sequence of moments pulled from across the story: caretaking, shared routines, quiet understanding, vulnerability, attraction, and choice.
These scenes function as evidence, reminding the viewer of the small, cumulative interactions that made the relationship believable and worth rooting for.
A single grand gesture isn’t enough to carry a romance.
For it to feel earned, it has to be built on the page through scenes where they pay attention to each other, through liking things about the love interest, and through characters consistently showing up for each other in ways that feel specific to who they are.
If you had to gather the moments that truly define your couple, the ones that show why these two people matter to each other, what would they be?
Which scenes would you want a reader to remember?
3. Slowing Down the Moment
When something significant is happening emotionally in K-Dramas, time stretches.
A glance lasts longer.
A pause says more than words.
The camera lingers or gives us multiple angles because the director wants the viewer to feel the weight of what’s unfolding, not just register that it happened.
That sense of slowness gives emotion space to land.
Like a pause after a good joke that lets the audience lean into their laughter, the sentences or paragraphs of an emotional moment give the reader time to sink into their feelings and experience them in their own body.
On the page, this translates to allowing important moments to take up words and resisting the urge to rush past the very thing the reader has been waiting for.
Often the emotional power isn’t in the action itself, but in the getting there, in the hesitation, in the awareness that something has shifted and cannot be undone.
In your story, look at the moment they first held hands, first kissed, or crossed another romantic threshold.
How many sentences or paragraphs does each of those moments take?
Is there enough space for the reader to stop thinking about plot or mystery and simply live inside the emotion unfolding on the page?
These are just three things K-dramas have reminded me lately.
The biggest lesson though?
Emotional depth in romance isn’t mysterious or reserved for a chosen few who “get it.”
Romance is something that can be built through clear character wants and conflicts, through scene structure that advances the story, through enough meaningful interaction to make love feel real, and through the willingness to slow down when the emotional temperature rises.
These are writing craft skills that can be learned.
And when something feels off on the page, it’s often a sign that there’s a principle underneath waiting to be understood, not a sign that you weren’t born to be a writer.
An Invitation to Reflect on Craft
What have you been reading or watching lately?
Hit reply and let me know.
I hope my reflections give you a different way to notice what the stories that move you are actually doing, and a little reassurance that craft, when approached with curiosity and patience, really does make a difference.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Gala Russ is a book coach and an author of seven novels (under the pen name Willa Drew).
Through her workshops and one-on-one sessions, she works with writers who want to finish their novels or create a self-publishing business.
To learn more, subscribe to Gala’s newsletter here or connect with her at galarussauthor.com or on social media.
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