Thanks Danieljack!
Just to clarify a few other points as well.
Less experienced (and often younger) romance scammers, and those with little patience will often "fall in love" immediately, and may even ask for money at the first chat. This will scare away many victims, and may cause paying victims to realize the truth sooner, but they quickly move to new victims so they accept this.
But there are many romance scammers out there that are much more experienced. These scammers have learned that taking their time to convince the victims the relationship is real will ultimately lead to a bigger payout. They will spend weeks to months setting up the fictitious relationship. They will have a much larger supply of scripts (often better written) but they will make the effort to answer at least some of the questions asked of them. They may even send flowers and other items. They do this to make the relationship seem much more real, and to make you think that they are spending their own money on your "relationship." Of course they don't actually pay for them themselves--the scammers purchase those items with stolen credit card numbers that they purchase from hackers, or they even use credit cards belonging to other victims.
These experienced scammers will wait weeks, months, sometimes even a year before coming to the money requests. They will avoid asking for extremely large sums of money, at least in the beginning. They will use tools to create fake webcam, and may even register domains or create fake websites to support their stories. They will have a female ready to handle phone calls (or will use soundboards or similar tools.) They do all of this because they know that in the end, their efforts will likely pay off.
