Scott [Reynolds] -- I'm writing a romantic drama and I've been there. With that sort of development, you're working with moments, incredibly efficient and impactful bits that serve to connect people in the midst of the larger story moving forward. It's hard to put those moments in a big-picture outline because, as important and transformative as they are, they're still not often story events in and of themselves. They're contained, but so necessary; without that relationship development, later decisions won't ring true. My unsolicited advice is to take heart in the big structure you've had to map out because it's going to help you more than you realize. When you start writing the scenes, you're simply not going to have all the necessary moments for the development of the relationship the first run through. But you'll be able to keep on writing and moving forward because you know where you're going in the story even though you know there are tiny missing bits along the way. The important thing is that you know those wisps of nuance are missing and you can feel their absence instinctively. As you go back and read what you've written, you'll see where a moment will be necessary here and there, or where one that you did include the first time really is important but isn't in exactly the right spot to effect the necessary change in the context of the overall relationship and story. My personal choice so far has been *not* to put the moments in right away, but rather to wait until I'm in full-on editing phase; it's far, far too easy to drown in the quicksand of tinkering at the expense of time spent writing new pages. Instead I have a document file specifically for keeping notes on old pages, identified by scene, so I can have those notes as I edit after the fact. Sometimes my notes aren't specific so much as "So-and-so needs to react more to [X]," sometimes with a big fat question mark so I can chew on it some more. In the meantime I can relax and write, secure in the knowledge that I won't forget a glance or a reaction I need to weave in later. I imagine this is like carving a sculpture of a human, first bringing out the basic structure (that's a head, that's an arm, it's bent just so) and then going back to bring out wrinkles in the clothes and details in the face, tweaking the expression just so. Visual artists study anatomy, too. The nuance is the raised brow, but first we need to know where the face is and we have to make sure we don't accidentally plaster the eyebrow on the upper lip. I actually have no idea what I'm doing, but I hope my take on the challenge helped a little. I don't recall if there are others in the Quest writing romantic anything; drop me a line if you want/if it's permitted. Have fun on that road ahead of you!

Carmen, This is great unsolicited advice, and pretty much my approach. I'm embracing the structure stuff because it's showing me a lot of what I normally miss when I just "write from the gut", but I know that the gut is what's going to really nail down the details, so it's all about that balance.