Since i've been holding forth on various aspects of writing romance novels lately, i thought i'd reprise a blog i originally wrote for the wonderful Jianne Carlo with a few additional variations.
I was having a conversation today with a
friend who doesn’t read romance. In fact, he doesn’t really read fiction. I was
explaining the twists and turns of the plot of a new book I’m writing and I
found myself telling him how very complex good romance is. I listened to myself
saying it and thought, son of a gun it’s true. Now I will be the first to admit
that most people don’t think of our genre this way. They think of romance as
the simplest of fiction. Boy meets girl, boys loses girl, boys finds girl again
and they live happily ever after. Of course, in my case it’s boy meets boy but
the principal is the same. They call it a formula.
But think about it. Virtually all
fiction has some formula. Certainly mystery has a lot of rules and suspense is
riddled with them. I guess you could argue that Joyce’s Ulysses had no formula, but maybe breaking the rules was a formula
of its own. Now, think about romance. We not only have to create an interesting
plot with three-dimensional characters who have problems of their own -- we
also have to make them fall in love! They have to fall in love somewhat
believably, have obstacles that keep them apart also believably, and make it appear at least for
a time that they won’t get together, and then, in spite of it all, they end up happy.
I thought about my recent menage, Genetic Celebrity. The main characters are a young business manager who is a homebody chef by preference, a powerhouse female modeling agent who is ten years older than the chef, and a 20 year old, androgynous street kid who is an amazing combination of street-wise and naive.These are three wildly different people with unique goals who had to be brought together. We had to see them fall in love and believe it! We had to think just for a moment that they might not make it. We had to smile and cry a little when they did. Whew, who says romance is simple.
In Beach
Balls, the central conflict is over a land development deal that could
be threatening homeowners with severe toxicity. But into this story come my two
heroes who have to meet and fall in at least lust without knowing they are on
opposite sides of a big battle.
Right now i'm writing a short story--a simple short story! But every character needs a back story and motivation, and somehow i have to get two men who have just met to fall in love in a real way -- all in six thousand words.
It’s been many a century since
“romance” was a tight formula plot with two-dimensional characters that always
ended in a wedding. In fact, we might argue, that today ours is one of the most
complex genres to write. But maybe we better just keep it between us! LOL
Posts
Everyone knows relationships aren't easy. So how can writing a genre that's all about relationships be anything but challenging? As for short stories, I think they're much harder to write than longer works in some ways. You've got almost no time to introduce the characters and their world as you dive into the plot, so everything has to develop very, very quickly.
ReplyDeleteI agree on short stories. Not only do you need to know everything about every character, you have to let the reader know without using up your word budget.
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