Bri CastelliniJuly 9, 2026

The Most Insidious Villain in Romance Writing: Stakes of Reputation

When “I’m rubber and you’re glue” isn’t a winning strategy

Reputation is a tricky thing. It’s intangible, but also vital in frequently tangible ways. So how do the stakes of reputation work in romance, and how can you test if you’ve gone far enough for the intangibility to feel pressing rather than an abstract concept?

Want to learn about the 10 other narrative stakes, and get extra recommendations for the books that absolutely nail it? We’re leading our first workshop – What’s At Stake: How Unputdownable Novels Keep You Hooked– at the end of July! RSVP now.

When reputation works

Consequences outside the self

One of the easiest ways to ensure that reputation loss has the legs to carry you through an entire, satisfying story is to externalize their consequences. It’s easy enough to tell a character to have a stiff upper lip about gossip and speculation when it’s only hurting themselves, and that hurt is primarily emotional. But what happens when the harm to your protagonist’s reputation has radiating effects on their ambitions, their family, their friends, their community at large?

A good example: Devil in Spring by Lisa Kleypas*

Early on in this book, the eccentric, independent Pandora is caught in a “it’s not what it looks like!!” compromising position with social powerhouse Gabriel, the heir to a title. Her reputation, and his by extension (though to a lesser extent, Because Patriarchy) is in danger if they do not marry at once and “make things right.”

We’re used to this sort of set up in historical romance- ruined into marriage is a trope in and of itself. But Pandora doesn’t really care about her own reputation for its own sake. She didn’t really have plans to get married, ever, so being a worse prospect is kind of fine? But there are two complicating factors outside of her own growing attraction to Gabriel:

She wants to start a board game company, and to get the credit for her creations as she’s always dreamed, she can’t be ruined. Eccentric spinster was going to be trial enough as a marketing angle
Her beloved twin sister Cassandra is also currently unmarried, and will weather the consequences of the reputation ruination alongside her

Pandora might not care about the loss of reputation for her own self esteem like many historical heroines before her… but there are consequences beyond her own feelings that make the stakes of her deciding whether or not to marry Gabriel far more complex and interesting. The tension of making an irreversible decision like marriage (in a world where divorce is impossible) and ceding her entire legal identity and protection to a stranger is where we get the engine for this story.

Consequences of identity

That’s not to say you have to have tangible negative results for a loss of reputation to feel powerful and motivating. Our ability to see ourselves a certain way without the nasty effects of cognitive dissonance is what allows most of us to keep getting up in the morning, and the potential of losing that has existential implications. When the character is otherwise doing good by their community or family, and we see them as a pillar of society (or they see themselves this way), reputation stakes can really turn up the temperature for the narrative. Who are we if we can’t live up to our own reputation?

A good example: The High Dive by Chelsea Fagan*

This is a second chance contemporary romance (yes, reputation stakes work outside of historical contexts!) about two college friends-turned-something-more-turned-enemies being forced to reunite on the super yacht of mutual friends ahead of a wedding. Alex, our heroine, works for a leftist political party and is a public-enough figure (even just within her office, but certainly she is a representative of her party), while Danial, our hero, is in private equity. The only two scholarship kids in their friend group, they’ve gone in very different directions post-graduation with regards to professionally and socially aligning with or against wealth.

Much of the internal conflict for Alex in joining her friends in the first place, let alone letting herself enjoy her time with them, has to do with her internal sense of ethics and wealth politics. Her reputation as an anti-capitalist is vital to her job, yes, but also to her sense of self. She’s taken her bitterness at her working class upbringing and her inability to fit in with her wealthy peers and constructed an identity in opposition to all the pain that capitalism has wrought in her life. The tension in this book has roots in how her participation in this opulent social gathering, and her growing renewed relationship with Danial (who she considers a traitor for taking the opposite path in regards to capitalism), will have irreversible implications for her reputation externally and internally. Who is she if she’s not drawing a hard line about capitalism? Who is she if she isn’t defined the way she’s been for so many years? Who wants to ask those kinds of questions just by attending a friend’s wedding??

So what about when reputation doesn’t work… and what should you consider when resolving a reputation stakes story? That’s for our paid subscribers, so if you’re not one yet…

*these links are affiliate links to Bookshop.org, and if you purchase the book via them, The Rogue MFA gets a small cut

When it doesn’t work and how to fix/resolve

When reputation doesn’t work

As with most stakes, reputation fails as a compelling narrative device if failure to uphold it does not feel like it matters. For instance, when it doesn’t start a chain reaction of consequences, or there isn’t any fall out aside from their own pride. If Pandora’s loss of reputation in Devil in Spring was solely about her own ability to attend ton events, a thing she doesn’t care about, we wouldn’t care about her reputation either. If Alex’s loss of reputation in The High Dive meant that her coworkers thought her trip was a little gauche but had no further implications about who she was or how she fits into the organization, then the displays of awesome opulence would be words on a page rather than a story.

Devil in Spring works because a loss of Pandora’s reputation means:

Cassandra (her twin) will be rejected by society and live unhappily ever after
Her career dreams are caput

And her only option to protect her reputation is an irreversible decision (marriage) that has its own stakes (livelihood and life & death, in particular).

The High Dive works because a loss of Alex’s reputation means:

Her career dreams are caput
Her sense of self is so altered she will have to change everything about her life for the worse

And her only option to protect her reputation means severing ties with the man she loves.

Resolving Reputation

Sometimes, the resolution of reputational stakes is submitting to or accepting the consequences of the loss and finding a new way forward that’s harder, but ultimately more true to the characters and their journeys.

Other times, the resolution comes down to the fact that no one wants to be the source of pain for the people they love and/or their ambitions, or be forced to live a miserable life. So the story becomes mitigating the miserable life you chose to stave off your reputational damage. Finding common ground with an unwanted spouse, prioritizing new ambitions, or rising so far in power that nothing can ever take your reputation away from you ever again.

Bri CastelliniJune 25, 2026

How to Use Pinterest For World Building Before You Write a Single Word

It’s like tracing a drawing but with words

Last week, Kelly walked you through using Pinterest as a tool for designing and keeping track of characters. This week, I’m doing the same, but for world-building. Need we say more?

Exterior References

Half of my search terms for new projects are things like “parts of a house” or “kinds of shelf mushrooms” because I need the component vocabulary when describing my version of something. But even with those component parts labeled, a lot of times even finding a place to start can be totally overwhelming.

If you’ve got major location centerpieces with real-world equivalents, like a particular construction of house, a famous landmark or biome, or even a kind of clothing, that’s one of the first things I’d mine Pinterest for. Then, you can use it as a direct reference, first to literally capture what you see without having to invent a thing. From there, armed with your component parts diagrams, you can make adjustments to your own taste and the needs of your narrative.

Interior References

We talked about using set design to help describe the unique flourishes of spaces your characters occupy, but you do still need a sense of the layout of the room, and having to invent a fake house and decorations and a floor plan is a lot. My advice here is to organize a section (Pinterest’s version of a sub-folder within a larger board):

Per character and/or location, find a staged room or rooms with similar layouts
Dot the sections with additional important elements to each space

Now, the next time you need a character to reference the location of the couch, or to remember if this is the bedroom with the special lamp, you can easily go double check.

Iconic Objects

What are the objects with important narrative resonance in your story? What might pepper your characters’ homes, their offices, their midday walk? What tangible sigils will come up over and over as the story expands? Instagram grid-worthy latte art in colorful mugs, dusty tomes, a feisty black cat, art supplies, a particular flower… all of that fills out your main project board to define your primary imagery. Let them ground you and help make the world around your characters uniquely tactile.

Research

For my paranormal romance, a major part of the plot centered around dampening the symptoms of a curse, and I wanted to use as much apothecary and medicine as I could for my fake tinctures. Pinterest is naturally lousy with aesthetic infographics of medicinal/magical herbs and plants, and so I used that as my baseline and also pinned outside research alongside them when Pinterest’s own archives weren’t specific enough. I also used it to find and pin recipes for the characters to make.

It’s a more fun representation of research than a real bibliography, and I have a visual memory that makes it easier to recall things when there’s a clear image or color I can associate with information.

Color

Another thing I gleaned from my time as a filmmaker is the importance of light and color in setting the tone for your project. Is this a project defined by bright, bold, saturated colors, or muted jewel tones? Does it frequently take place at night, or in full sun? Like a crow, I collect shiny things for each of my project boards that follow a particular aesthetic or color palette aligned with the tone and imagery of the story. Then, when I need inspiration or just to get back into the world, I can feast my eyes on my visual collage and be transported.

Choosing colors early will also help with marketing & cover design; your designer will absolutely ask what you have in mind, and if you already have a curated color identity for your story, that process will be all the easier!

Join our Writing Community Hour over on The Rogue MFA YouTube channel (which meets every other Thursday evening at 4pm PST/ 7pm EST), where we’ll be building routine and community with YOU. Subscribe to get notified, and if you’re even a little bit interested, please fill out our quick survey so we can expand these in the future with you in mind.

Bri CastelliniJune 11, 2026

How Filmmaking Made Me a Better Descriptive Writer

When I was in college, the most defining feedback on my work came from my advisor Kathlene, who told me:

You have really funny, distinct characters… but it’s like they’re talking in a dark room

Which was fair. I hated, and still certainly struggle with, describing things. It’s never my first priority, never what excites me most in the drafting phase. I’m a character writer, not a world-builder. Not sure if that’s been made clear yet.

So I took this advice all the way to a graduate degree in Writing and Producing for Television, a style of writing that actively discourages you from describing things too much on the page because then you’re stealing opportunities for the directors and cinematographers to put their stamp on the visuals. I only have to write dialog?! Sign me up!

Then a pandemic happened, and a romance novel hyperfixation, and suddenly, I found myself back in the prose trenches. However, *Wicked voice* I had been changed for good. Specifically, because of production design, though perhaps I’ll be back in a few months to tell you about some other ways filmmaking influenced and improved my writing (foreshadowing).

Production Design: What Your Space Says About You

My very first film collaboration was on my web series, Brains, a zombie series about Alison Sumner (played by me) as she vlogged her college experience after the apocalypse started to let up and the internet came back. We were very much influenced by the narrative vlogs of the time (the series ran from 2015-2017) like The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and Carmilla, so naturally much of our time was spent in the character Alison’s dorm room.

Prior to being a filmmaker myself, I didn’t really spend a lot of time viewing media consciously considering the spaces characters inhabited. That didn’t mean I wasn’t absorbing something, though.

My production designer Page Schumacher (who now stages window displays professionally and also did our zombie makeup) was given $12 and free range, and here’s what we created together:

Important details:

Torn posters. This was the post-apocalypse, many of Alison’s fellow students had fled campus or died, and Alison is a practical girl. We imagined that Alison, at some point, looted her classmates’ former dorm rooms, which led to an eclectic series of very basic-looking dorm room posters that were a little worse for the wear. World building: everything still exists, but in a state of disrepair, and likely much of her decor was looted. Also, the character prioritized science-y imagery, indicating she’s a STEM student
Anatomically corrected phrenology poster. The centerpiece of our torn and looted posters was a phrenology poster (a eugenics pseudoscience) that Page went through and corrected with the anatomically correct areas of the brain, as Alison was a neuropsychology major. Much of the show is about Alison and her friends’ study of the brain (zombie and human alike… get it?? Brains??) and Page reasoned that when Alison found this nonsense phrenology poster, she liked a colorful brain poster but disliked its pseudoscience. World building: the character’s voice and priorities, not to mention her course of study.
Skeleton endocrine system covering its balls. Made by my friend Chris in AP Psychology in high school and then gifted to me at the end of the semester, I was delighted this made it into Alison’s production design for three reasons- 1, an Easter Egg for my friend, 2, more skull/science imagery that felt on-brand, and 3, the articulated paper limbs allowed us to give the skeleton various poses in different episodes, aiding the tone of the show. This was a comedy series (or, as my director once called it, a horror series the protagonist thinks is a rom com), so this helped us add subtle levity to the frame so that no matter how dark things got for the characters, we knew there’s always a joke lurking as a counterbalance. World building: tone
Ruffled sheets & discarded clothes. Alison, despite being a Type-A Science Girlie, is also kind of a mess. Emotionally, but also literally. World building: externalizing a character’s inner turmoil
The color red. Early in the series, Alison states her thesis: she’s trying to seduce a cute boy in her class/survivor group, and while she ingratiates herself into his life, she’s also trying to subtly push him in the right direction (while also not-so-subtly flirting like a maniac). She’s doing this with color psychology- red stimulates your adrenal glands and primes your brain for sexy times (given that it’s present on someone you’re already theoretically hypothetically attracted to). As a result, there’s a clear bias in her looting towards items of decor and clothing with a prominent red accent. World building: the character’s hyperfocus, but also, a tone indicator- bold saturated colors implies a brighter and more comic-book-like tone, versus a gritty The Walking Dead-style project

And this relates to prose…how?

Before filmmaking, my reaction to feedback inquiring about character’s spaces was “I mentioned they’re in a living room. You’ve seen a living room before. Use your imagination.”

But spaces tell us about more than just the physical scenarios the characters find themselves in- they tell us about the tone of the piece in the language used, they tell us about the people who live there and their priorities, and they also tell us how the people who live in those spaces want to be perceived by others. It’s world building, yes, but it’s also character design, and the way a character reflects on their own space in describing it to readers, or a new character reacts upon being invited in, are extremely telling.

So now, when I get to a point in a novel draft where I’m entering a new place, I think… how would I dress this set?

What does YOUR space say?

Take a look around you right now, even if you aren’t at home (but especially if you are):

What are the primary colors of the space around you, and how do they make you feel?
What are unique items or elements within the space that mark it as this space and not another?
Is it cluttered, messy, neat, spare?
If you were to tell me about the person who designed this space based solely on how looks, what would you say?

A living room isn’t just a living room. An office isn’t just an office. Humans made the world and sell the trinkets and place the trinkets just so and all of that tells us something, or can. The curtains might just be blue… but if the writer chose to give them color, what can we learn just from that?

If it didn’t matter, it wouldn’t have been written down, and if you, like me, sometimes struggle with things that in your mind don’t matter, consider making them matter. If I’m bored when I’m writing the description to a scene, then that’s not the scene’s fault. It’s a necessity to describe the rooms where my characters exist… but it doesn’t have to be a chore, and thanks to filmmaking, and zombies, and my friend Page, it’s not anymore.

Learn more about The Rogue MFA and our community here. When you’re ready to rock, join our Writing Community Hour over on The Rogue MFA YouTube channel (which meets every other Thursday evening at 4pm PST/ 7pm EST), where we’ll be building routine and community with YOU. Subscribe to get notified, and if you’re even a little bit interested, please fill out our quick survey so we can expand these in the future with you in mind.