Some thoughts on writing romances and exactly what defines said romance

I was critiquing a romance novel last night and it became very clear the book that I was reviewing was not a romance at all so I thought I would run down my own thoughts on what makes a romance and maybe why.

If a romance were a person it would be much more of an optimist than a pessimist. A romance is not cynical, it doesn't have harsh language, the heroine is unattached and so is her hero, the general feeling is one of hope and excitement in the midst of problems and concerns and there is a lot introspection into the feelings and motivations of your characters.

I read a fair amount of "genre" fiction. I guess westerns are the exception as I have just read a few. I have read thousands of romances, horror, mysteries, science fiction and fantasy. Romance is the most rigid form of writing I know if you aren't talking about structured poetry or screenwriting.

A romance is the story of two people falling in love. They must be unattached. The story is told from her perspective, although in gay romance you will of course find the story from the protagonist's POV, regardless of gender. You will find some of the story from other people's POV, but very little of it.

The reader should find it very easy to get inside the heroine's head, to think her thoughts, feel her feelings, worry about her problems and experience her joys

Everyone knows that two people are going to meet, fall in love, have problems and work them out. That's the way it works whether you are writing a rom-com script or a romance novel. The thing that makes the story is the story and the thoughts and feeling of your heroine.

In a way the writing is a lot like foreplay. First kisses are special, dreamy or awkward or interrupted but they are always a plot point in that they turn the story around and send it in a new direction. The first kiss is a point of no return. The hero and heroine can’t go back to pretending they aren’t attracted to each other because they obviously are. They might pretend they aren't interested but now the chances of fooling each other or themselves are greatly reduced. Since it’s so important let it be important. Build up to it. What does she think when he starts to kiss her? Is she excited, scared, nervous, crazy with lust, is she the one who makes the move? If so then how does he react?

The older romances used to really offend me. The guys were total pigs and then they were changed by the love of a good woman, like that is ever going to happen. Plus what kind of woman is attracted to a guy who treats her so poorly? We want a heroine who is smart and sassy and takes no crap from anyone. We want her to be what we would be if we were in different circumstances.

That's another reason she has to be single. She's the dream woman, a woman who is totally free which means she has all her options open. Sometimes The Bridges of Madison County is used as an argument against these romance rules but the problem is that not only is that a terrible, terrible book, it’s not a romance. It’s a story of infidelity and the couple doesn’t get together. It’s no more a romance than Romeo and Juliet is a romance. It’s no more a romance than a sonnet is a limerick.

It’s important to keep a romance a romance. It's okay to have a mystery in your romance. My favourite romances all have a mystery. Amanda Quick, Jane Anne Krentz, Kathleen Woodiwiss, Janet Evonavich, they all have mysteries but they are romances first and foremost.

I have known people for years and years and years, going back twenty years now, who want to write a romance to make money. They don't have a particularly compelling story they want to tell. They don't want to be swept away by their own story and fall in love with it and their characters. They have read that romances outsell all other fictions and they think that is the way to break in. Maybe someday someone will do that. I haven't ever seen it happen.

I think an editor can tell when someone doesn't respect what they are writing. I'm also reminded of Neil Gaiman talking about writing he did strictly for the money and how he never ends up with the money and hates the whole process.

These people who are in it for the money have often read zero romances, or one, or two and then they want to push the envelope with the rules of romance writing. You can certainly say you don’t care about the rules and rules are made to be broken and I very much agree to a certain point but as a mostly unpublished author who is attempting to publish something in a very rigid field I don’t know why you would want to.

Let's say you end up with a book that you think is barely within the guidelines of a particular romance imprint. You submit to a romance editor who starts to read it, expecting it to be a romance well within guidelines. Instead it's quite different. Her mind was prepared for one thing and now she has something else.

It’s kind of like when you pick up what you think is a coke and it turns out to be iced tea. It tastes terrible, almost dangerously terrible and you want to spit it out because it’s not what your mouth and brain are expecting. Or even when you really really want a particular food and you go to dinner and you order it and then they tell you they are out of that dish. No matter what you get to eat instead it just won’t do the trick.