When a writer sets out to fulfill the dream of having a daytime fantasy published by Mills & Boon they are expected to firmly grasp a series of vital notions about what it takes to write a successful, printable romance story. Self-help guides and manuals of these assembly instructions are easily found on the shelves of a down-market bookstore and on this very internet you are currently enjoying. We are helpfully pointed to the core ingredients of writing romance fiction. What makes for a good heroine, how to write the most desired of men besides giving him blue eyes and thick black hair. How to create a satisfying happy ending and how to structure your story around components that don’t necessarily accommodate the structure needed for a compelling story. Many tips and hints can be found on Bewildered Heart itself, saving troubled writers the act of using a different website. However, all these technical story-telling points are worthless without first understanding the very essence of romance.
After all, finding out what romance is can be tricky without potentially upsetting a paramour. An internet search will yield the same disappointing results Bewildered Heart yielded when researching this article. Sure, there are guides on how to be romantic, although romantic itself isn’t clearly defined, and there are guides on how to create romantic fiction that delivers on the former word, but there remains a lack of conclusive information on the very subject, what it means and why the public are seemingly so obsessed with reading and watching it. We learned this by our reading of Lauryn Chandler’s Romantics Anonymous, which argued that romance was continually returning to the ungrateful arms of old loves who had previously screwed you over, and that this form of romance should be avoided. Yet, while this does sound like a constructive description, the book concluded that, in the case of the two main characters, reconciling with an old love who had previously screwed you over is one path to happiness. So, what can be learned from Romantics Anonymous, besides that Lauryn Chandler does not know what romance is?
Happily for us, Malvina Yock is here to explain. Why must we listen to Yock, you ask, as overly paranoid as always. Well, she did run a romance bookstore named Rendezvous, and she is a published romance writer, apparently, which makes her far more qualified than Bewildered Heart pretends to be, so let’s read on. ‘Floundering readers often define romance as 'Mills and Boons'. These well-known books have been around for years and are blatantly, gloriously romantic. Delightful reads.’ Well, she’s off to a shaky start with that assertion. Still, are we wrong to think of romance novels solely as Mills & Boon’s? Of course we are. No one would argue such a thing. There are many writers being published outside of Harlequin and the like, as Yock goes on to list. We’re not here for the obvious lessons. Get to the good stuff.
‘Romantic fiction is essentially a love story between a man and a woman, with a happy ending. That's it.’ That’s it? That does sound a lot like it, actually. No wonder all the people we were only moments ago chastising for their literary snobbery show such literary snobbery toward romantic fiction. ‘Romance readers will desert any author who cheats them out of their happy-ever-after ending by killing off the hero or heroine, or parting them forever. The hero and heroine do have an 'ever after', and it is most definitely happy.’ Hang on, but what about all those tremendous romantic books and films where at the end someone dies or can’t marry the other, because he is a cynical bar owner and she’s married to a revolutionary? What about our greatest love stories of all, such as Love Story and Romeo & Juliet?
‘Great love stories such as Love Story and Romeo and Juliet, etc., are certainly marvellous love stories, but they aren't 'romance'. They are love stories which end tragically, or anti-climactically in terms of the relationship, not happily-ever-after.’ This is an important distinction between love and romance, in which romance is casually defined by its structure. Romance, therefore, becomes a subgenre within the larger ‘love’ genre, in which all stories involve heterosexual couplings, and end however they please. A novel such as Maurice then, belongs to a whole separate genre we should probably classify under Fantasy, or Prohibited. So many shared subgenres within other subgenres, indistinctly labeled, as if only to complicate a genre defined by its simplicity.
Yock goes onto discuss the current trends of Romance, as they existed when the article was written in 2001. Still, it’s difficult to imagine many major changes besides a new and despicable preoccupation with vampires. ‘Readers like well-written, tight, taut suspense but they like it hand-in-hand with a romance that is also tight, taut and terrific, and driven by the suspense plot.’ Tight, taut and terrific extends to characters, to boot. So, romantic thrillers are big now, with running away from explosions shouting and firing guns now counted as a potential date. ‘Another interesting growth area is paranormals. Writers have almost reinvented the sub-genre with intense sensuality and blazing passion, balanced against horrifying violence and bloodshed.’ Ooh, sounds intriguing, and those who want their paranormal romances without any intensity, sensuality, passion, violence and bloodshed know exactly where to turn.
‘Another welcome trend is for lighter, more comic romantic fiction. The stuff of love and laughter.’ So, is there any subgenre that’s on the wane? It appears as if readers want action, suspense, horror, the supernatural and light laughs, although only the most ambitious writer would attempt a combination of more than one of those. What other trends can we make note of, now we’ve abandoned any pretense that this article is going to define romance for us? ‘One of the biggest changes I've noticed through the 90's is the characterisation of the hero and heroine. Totally gone, and good riddance, is the overdone, overblown swooning heroine (falling out of her bodice) who relies on the hero to rescue her. Today's heroines are empowered. They are feminine, fabulous and powerful.’ Let Bewildered Heart second that ‘Good riddance’, for masculine, dowdy and fragile women incapable of emotion were a blight on story-telling. Thankfully, modern heroines are only weak in their characterisation and no longer in their character.
But wait, there’s a forthcoming contradiction to render the previous statement an estimation, at best. ‘This is where authors do tread a fine line, romance readers still have a Cinderella fantasy, or enjoy watching a big, strong, tough hero rescue the heroine.’ Oh. So the heroine can no longer rely on being rescued, but must still be rescued, if only as a willing act to bolster the male’s ego. The conclusion one can reach from Yock’s indeterminate guesswork is that romance readers aren’t certain what they want and it is within this quandary that new writers can strike, offering the latest romance novel as the latest apex of fictional love, to which the romance readers will emerge from the shadows, their lips and hands quivering in anticipation, hungry and bleary-eyed, desperate and salivating, having scraped enough pennies together to pay the price. ‘The market is as large and specialised as any other fiction genre… Readers finish each book with a sigh and a smile, and rush out for their next 'fix'.’
Bewildered Heart is surely not the first to notice a clear discrepancy between what is written about romance fiction and the books themselves. Although we aim to dismantle Mills & Boon, as a genre within itself, the wider picture of romance remains frustratingly fuzzy. Yock argues quality of writing is second only in appeal to namebrand recognition, and therefore the likes of Linda Howard, Nora Roberts and Jayne Ann Krentz dominate the market through their years of building a loyal fanbase with a dependably satisfying bibliography. However, the books we have examined are poorly-written in every case, and often the author is so well-established they have taken to churning out titles with worrying regularity and diminishing quality.
For writers beginning in their careers, or struggling to have their voices read, the obstacles can seem as insurmountable as they are in nearly every other profession. Nevertheless, all the self-help guides and articles such as Yock’s, or this one, claim to be helpful and a necessary read on your schooling to success, but nearly every intention and conclusion is immediately tempered with an opposing alternative. Therefore, if no one is sure what works or why what works does work all the opinions are immaterial to the writer’s own ambition, and should thus be ignored and overcome. Unless that is incorrect, and there is a very obvious formula and actually the readers know what they want, but aren’t telling to keep us authors honest. You’ll never know until you try, and succeed or fail, after which you still won’t know.
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