What do you think of romantic novels?

Look at you guys, making me not want to stab myself in the eye repeatedly with a sharp pencil. I'm blessed!!!!

 

I cut my Romance teeth, when I was very young, on the Romance/Mystery (then contemporary-ish) novels written by Mary Stewart (who later went on to write other fantastic non-Romance stories, including the Arthurian saga that began with The Crystal Cave.)

She set the bar VERY high for me. She was an evocative writer, whose love of settings and her characters' emotional evolution really shone through the stories. As an interesting side note, she is credited with being the first author to combine Romance and Mystery into one genre, and she spawned many others who worked that combined genre. That genre was very popular back in the late 50s and early 60s.

I can't remember any instance where Mary Stewart employed a romantic triangle. Because of the mystery aspect of her stories, there was usually some danger/suspense involved, and the protagonist's romantic interest usually helped her solve the mystery. But on a few occasions he was also a suspect, early on, so the setup was never entirely formulaic. The protagonist's romantic interest was sometimes an old friend or lover, sometimes somebody new, on one occasion an employer, and on one occasion a cousin!

Her settings were varied, but were places she'd spent a lot of time. Greece. France. Scotland (Isle of Skye.) She was English herself, but married a Scottish archaelogist, and spent a lot of time traveling with him, before settling in Edinburgh to live out her very long life ...she was in her late 90s when she died, not that long ago.

At any rate, her books were bestsellers, and I think they got a lot of people reading Romance who would otherwise not have done. Mystery was also a huge bestselling genre at the time, and she captured many fans of Mystery as well. Her characters—even the 'villains'—were always interesting and three-dimensional. She was good.

I don't write mysteries or Romance, but I think she has influenced my own storytelling style. I find myself hearing her 'voice' as I write. Once or twice I've found myself using a phrase or employing an image that I realised was hers. (I changed them!)

 

It's worth remembering Sturgeon's Law--90% of romances are bad, because 90% of any genre will be bad.

Like sci-fi, I think romances suffer badly from genre snobbery. Even with something like One Day or The Time-Traveller's Wife where the romance is central to the story, a romance that finds critical acclaim has somehow "transcended the genre".

 

I like romances well enough. I always enjoy a good love story, though I usually want something else to be happening around it too. I'm not sure about pure romance stories, though it may be because I see so few of them that I rarely run across the really good ones.

 

According to @Laurin Kelly 's definition where the story "must have a central love story and an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending," The Time Traveller's Wife doesn't really count because it ends with (spoilers) his death and years of grief on her part before her eventual death. So only two out of three.

 

Here's the deal, at least from someone who strictly adheres to the definition as a writer and a reader. If I'm sad at the end, it's not genre Romance. Any tears had better be happy ones.

Genre Romance writers don't bait and switch their readers. We know what they're here for. I'm not gonna advertise a donut but deliver a bagel because hey, they're both round and baked in an oven.

 

When I hear romantic novel, I think "fill in the blanks".

But I could say that about all genre fiction.

Truth be told I just tend not to like that sort of relationship story. A Farewell to Arms is more my speed. The Hunger Games was solid. But in both of those, romance doesn't takeover everything else for the entire duration of the book / series.

I like movies such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Silver Linings Playbook, 500 Days of Summer, and Good Will Hunting. There's romance in all of those, but either I like how it's handled in a more bittersweet way (easier for me to relate to the characters), or how it's not the main focus but still plays an important role in the story.

One exception is Your Name. That's my favorite movie of all time, and it has a happy romantic ending. It's just a crazy rollercoaster and at some points has you thinking you're going to be completely thrown off the ride and fall a hundred feet to your death.

So yeah, in short I guess I don't really like romance novels. It just so happens I've found more movies - with romance elements - that appeal to me, as their portrayal of romance leaves me feeling more satisfied.

Interestingly, almost all of my writing involves romance to a significant degree. So it's not like I hate it or something. Far from it in fact.

 

I really like romance novels. They're challenging to write.
All my stories have a strong element of romance in them so far.

 

Kay, I feel like I have to address something here that's based on a sentiment I've been picking up and not aimed at anyone specific. Bear with me, this is probably going to be a little long:

There was a novel I read years ago, that was my introduction to romance novels, and it was ridiculous. I wish I could remember the title, or the author, because I've honestly been looking for a copy of it for years (hopefully someone here might recognize what book I'm talking about), but it is honestly in the top 20 most entertaining books I've read.

The summary is, our spunky protagonist, recently-ish broke up from a relationship decides to leave town (Los Angeles, I think), but on the way to the airport gets into a car accident and goes into a coma. But surprise, what actually happens is that her consciousness gets transferred to the body of her cat, and her ex, being the person listed on her next of kin/only person in town that knows her, is called to take care of the cat and make life and death decisions for her. During this time she is antagonized by being a cat, and all of the problems that entails when trying to figure out how to not be a cat anymore while being dependent on another human being with which she shares a huge communication divide. During this time she begins to appreciate her ex, her ex gains maturity after caring for another living creature, and she starts to remember why they fell in love in the first place. But then in the second half, stakes are raised by the ticking time bomb of her becoming more cat like and starts to feel her self fading away (like Greg Kinnear) while her human body starts developing coma problems and they know that if something doesn't happen soon, she'll be gone forever (and the cat probably suffer from emotional problems because of it). In the end, she gets better, the cat is saved, the two get re-engaged, there's symbolism with a puzzle ring he won at a carnival for her on their first date, and the three of them live happily ever after.

The entire story follows the romance formula to the letter, but the author wrote such an insane story within the confines of that formula, that it doesn't really matter. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that just because a story is -- quote unquote -- formulaic, that doesn't mean it can't be original or good. Shakespeare's was not a hack because his sonnets all followed the same rhyming scheme. It takes skill, a lot of skill, to write good, entertaining, and memorable stories within the confines of those formulas -- more skill than goes into a lot of the structureless drivel being written out there. Formulas and tropes are not bad, not only that, but they're kind of unavoidable, and trying to avoid them doesn't make something good, of fresh, or even edgy. The last season of Game of Thrones was, by the writers admission, built largely on trying to avoid audience expectations -- at one point even rewriting episodes because someone guessed a major twist on reddit -- and it sucked.

So people should probably quite bashing formulas for the sake of... something, something, artistic purity, bandwagons, et cetera... because; a) formulas are neutral, it's how you use them that matters, and; b) even if you think you're avoiding formulas, there's a 98 percent chance you really aren't, you just don't have the scope yet to see it. So, if you find your soul being crushed and artistic expression repressed and chafed under the unimaginable burden formulas and plot structures bring to bear on your tender being, do as the man said, "Get gud, scrub.

I guess you could say he's the real Wicker Man Con-Air National Treasure.

 

Definitely! Very well said; and Lord knows I adore my fair share of "pulp" fiction. Yes, including Pulp Fiction.

 

I love romance books even the daffy, stupid ones. There's just something nice about seeing two people finding each other and beating all obstacles that might keep them apart.

 

Would you give me some examples?

 

I agree... there are too many bad romance novels. Little good (great) ones

 

Thank you Laurin!

 

I listened to an alien romance book today. The alien race was raping humans as part of a "settlement agreement" as a breeding program. I don't know about you, but I don't view rape as anything sexy or romantic. One minute the MC is trying to kill her rapist, the next she has Stockholm syndrome and is falling in love. This is what people hate about romance!

 

Welcome to the club, my friend. I hate as well that trope. Very boring.

 

First I don't tend to lean towards romance really, even as a teenager I wasn't into it. My friends were watching teen romance and I was watching spy thrillers and psychological horrors. I have seen teens who watch a TV just for the romance and get so carried away and sensitive about their "ship". Same with books.

I prefer a slow burn over a "love at first sight" and I like them to stay realistic to life. How many sixteen year olds get with their first crush and stay with them for life? So do. But most don't. Humans are not penguins. I don't tend to like the best friend with a secret crush, or the cliche good looking guy who always seem to have black hair and silver/blue eyes. Sometimes they are brooding an anti-women until the ultra beautiful protag floats into their lives on a fluffy cloud. I dislike the love triangle.

I don't like damsels in distress. I find most romances tend to follow a formula and that alone makes it dull for me. I know what to expect. Love is a part of life but it's not a part I put a huge amount of focus on.

 

When I was like 9, I read my first romance novel, which was called 'The Best of Friends' and was from like the eighties (? There's nothing I found on Google about it) and was about a high school geek girl who befriends the popular girl and falls for the popular guy. I wasn't super impressed but I read it like five times because the guy said 'hell' once and they got orange juliuses at the mall and it made me feel very sophisticated to read about that. Then I got my hands on a Danielle Steele book my mom borrowed about a woman falling in love with her imaginary friend from childhood and I decided I was done with the romance genre.

When I started 'seriously' writing at like 11, it was mostly fan fiction (for middle grade novels and superhero cartoons rip) and a lot of it involved shipping (and angst, cause I was 11) but I never really was that interested in reading an entire book dedicated just to romance. For me, the little drabbles I wrote about Ant Man and the Wasp were interesting because I already had context for them outside of the romance I was writing. I didn't want to just focus on the meetup and the build up and the etc etc etc. So romance novels where the entire focus was the characters falling in love, and we didn't know them before or after, or outside of the context of the romance plot, did not interest me at all, even though romance itself continued to be prevelent in my writing as I got older.

But there is very very little I love more in the world than a terrible, low budget, full of inconsistencies romance movie (HALLMARK), except maybe a fantastic, high budget period drama, and I have always been on the peripherals of the historical romance novel community because as a history lover I am always reading blog posts on medieval hair care or Georgian undergarments, and a lot of those are written by historical romance novelists. And I had just finished my first 'real' historical fiction novel, my brain was tired of meticulously researching and wanted something I was familiar with, and I kind of decided to write my own historical romance, so I embarked on a lot of 'market research' in the Kindle bookstore...I can say I really don't mind a romance novel, but a lot of authors, especially the 99c self published sort, really put almost no effort in. So I can understand why so many people are against romance novels. A lot of them really really suck. And a lot of them are about controversial, polarizing, or just niche things like cowboys or the mafia (?) or Regency dukes that only a small amount of people actually want to read about.

So how do I absolutely best like my romance? In a book about something else, as a subplot in a larger conflict...but as soon as I get one of those, I immediately head over to the internet to see if anyone has done any shipping romantic writing about my couple du jour yet. So my thought is that a romance novel is best successful when it makes me care about the characters beyond or outside of the romantic arc and give them 100% of an identity outside of what's going on between the hero and heroine. If I like a couple enough I will want to wallow in their romance like a hippo in a mud pool, but I have to like them for non-romance reasons.
Except there's also a second type of romance reader, which I'm not and a lot of people here are not but all the people who like my book on Goodreads are, who have specific desires and expectations for a romantic novel which they want met. And I get that. If I put four more main plots into my novels aside from the romance that took center stage, it wouldn't really be a romance anymore. In the genre, the point is that the whole book is about the love story. But I think there definitely has to be more there for it to be a 'good' read—everyone seems to know this superficially, which is why in addition to kissing the heroine, every Hallmark businessman also learns the true meaning of Christmas by the end of his movie, to show that he's changed more than just relationship statuses but also in a personal, psyche sort of way.

But most romance works don't get it across in a way that actually seems to matter or make me care. But I don't think that's a mark against the genre, just the fact that romance authors seem to take the formulaicness of 'happy ending' and all the other necessities of a romance as a sign they can be totally lazy. And yeah, there are lazy romance authors just like there are fantasy writers who are regurgitating a worse version of LOTR and sci if authors who are telling the same story as anyone who ever thought about space. But I would argue the standards are lower in romance, because the simplicity and lightness of romance is a selling point for a lot of people. I don't even dislike the formulaicness of the romance genre, as either a writer or a reader. Unpredictability is overrated and not expected nearly as much as we think it is. We have a vague idea of what's going to happen at the end of most of the media we consume and that's pretty much fine, cause it's what happens along the way that's important, and how it makes us feel. But it's also a great opportunity to either 1) use a traditional premise but allow your characters and their circumstances to leap off the page and be different, and drive the story in an interesting way or 2) subvert some tropes in an interesting way. (I think that's why historical romances are more tolerable to be even if the writing isnt 100%, because the historical aspect is there to distract me from the story so it makes it more interesting.)

So I am cool with (and participate in) the genre. But the actual efforts...like any genre in the world...vary.

Also, I have a very low tolerance for people making stupid decisions that involve sex (like having it where they can be discovered, when that would be catastrophically bad, just because they really want to.) I can't really have any sympathy for protagonists who get themselves into consequences if they were just dumb and desperate to get off. So romance novels do lose points for that but maybe I'm just devoid of sympathy.

 

Yes. The movie Your Name is best art I ever saw in genre. I don't remember anything bad in it. Other than atom bombardment replaced by meteor in plot. But this is necessary part of plot. And everyone was saved at the end.

 

Personly, romance novels are the one genre I stay away from. To me, they are always superficial, shallow and I never really seem to connect to the characters as well. But if a novel has a well-written and explored romance between two characters without it being the main focus, those books are usually fine.

 

I don’t typically read Romance (genre) but I have absolutely nothing against it.

I’m sorry, but the soapiness and formulaicness is on par with with what I find in scifi, fantasy, comic books, manga, Asian dramas, et cetera. It isn’t a fault in my mind because none of the others are really faulted to the same degree.

For instance, I love the live action drama 花より男子 (Hana Yori Dango) but I hate 꽃보다 남자 (Kkot Boda Namja). They are literally the same romance story “Boys Over Flowers” (name is sorta a pun in original Japanese) it’s just one follows the typical formulas of Japanese drama and the other follows the formula of South Korean dramas. I can count on one hand the number of Korean dramas I like but absurd cutesy Japanese dramas I spread all up on my morning toast. Both are equally formulaic and overused-trope-filled, it’s just a personal taste thing.

So while it might not be my cup of tea, it’s still someone’s shot of bourbon.

So I find no fault in Romance novels under the same principal.

Besides, a quote of film critic Pauline Kael I love to use (particularly in explanation for my adoration for the dumpster fire that is Schumacker’s Batman & Robin, among others):

“Movies are so rarely great art that if we cannot appreciate great trash we have very little reason to be interested in them.”

This to me applies to most media.

Now for the “girly” aspect, I have mostly male friends but at least a strong third or more are total saps for stereotyped girl genres—chick flix, period romances, shoujo manga, Romance novels, et cetera. One of my two female friends can’t stand the genres and likes fantasy and sci-fi and gritty crime dramas without even hint of romantic subplots. I feel like people are dimissive and overly harsh on things designated as “for girls.” Like others have said, dad airport novels like Jack Reacher are not demeaned as problematic in their portrayal of relationships or formulaic self-insert fantasy but most of them have just as much of a surplus of ridiculously poorly written stories and by-the-numbers plots.

I don’t know, I just say like what you like unapologetically.

I love cutesy shoujo anime like 君に届け and gorgeous self-insert opulence porn like John Wick. Is there much merit to either in the excellence of the execution? I think so, but I’ll stand by my personal love of them regardless.

In the immortal words of Roxy Striar, “I don’t want to yuck somebody’s yum.”

 

I read Bet Me... The Com was gone after Chp 6 in that Rom-Com novel.
Then it was a slog to the less than ideal ending.
Who new that the author was really pushing their foot, Elvis, donut,
and chicken Marsala fetishes.

So the joke were on me for reading a Rom novel.

 

Personally, I don’t think much of typical romance novels. The more commercial ones tend to be pithy and lack what I consider to be real depth. The classic epic romance novels are another animal- Thornbirds, Shögun, Room With a View, Rebecca.

If you’re concerned with the genre being not worth your time, then make it worth your time. Write something that has all the depth and dimension you might think it missing.

The ideas are unimportant, it’s what you do with them that matters.