Romance - The Genre Nobody Admits They Read

Excellent article, Rebecca.

This article is now in the Features section of Writing Essentials.

Because seriously, what do women *really* read on the beach? Keats? Or Nora Roberts? Dickens? Or Johanna Lindsey?

Neither! I read Patricia Cornwell.

The problem with romances is that they are too formulaic. The sex isn't the problem. The problem is that for too many authors, her nipples "salute the sun/sky/moon" and the plot is too predictable. Couple meets under weird and frankluy not very believable circumstances. Fall unwillinglyin love. Have a stupid disagreement/misunderstanding that would never happen if they imply communicated like normal people--and he acted like men women actually date rather than like a macho pig. They finally have sex and the whole scene is predicable. You know they will get together on the end so why bother to read the whole stupidly predictble book for a predictable ending? Gimme a good thriller any day.

BTW, for a number of years i plowed through a good number of Harlequin offereings because somebody suggestd they might be suitable encouragement to read for some of my more advanced ESL students. I was trying to select a collection that would encourage their reading. They never liked them and I found they didn't appeal to my female students.

HUH, I can not begin to answer your questions.

Interesting. I think whether or not women admit to reading Romance depends on a lot of factors. I have found quite a number of women who admit to reading Romance. More than say 20 years ago. But it does depend on a lot of factors: whom you ask is probably the number one variable.

Well, all plots have a "formula" if you look hard enough. Consider my 13 fantasy cliches (http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977035734). Just like in mysteries, we find out "whodunnit", in romance, you must have an HEA (happily ever after). If you didn't have the HEA, then it's women's fiction, not romance. If the hero and heroine don't get together at the end, then it's not "romance" as is accepted as the norm for the genre.

Otherwise, it's straight erotica (strictly for the sex) or it's women's fiction (like Gone With the Wind).

So saying reading romance is silly because you know they're going to get together at the end is like saying it's silly to read mysteries because you're going to find out who did it at the end.

And yeah, if you're using Harlequin as the measuring stick of the genre, then I can see your point. A lot of those Silhouette Desires and Intrigues *are* canned romance, I'll concede that. But I'll also say not every book is an eye-roller.

And most publishers nowadays frown upon what's called "purple prose", which consists of his "throbbing rod" and her "flower petals" or "love chalice" some such - terminology from the '80's. LOL If you find wording like that in today's books, then that publisher probably won't be around much longer. :P Perhaps that "purple prose" is what hurt the genre in the first place.

~~Becka

I used to read Romance novels. I had bookcases filled with them. I turned a friend of mine onto them, but then she stopped reading them because she was tired of the most beautiful girl in France going on these outlandish adventures, etc. My reaction was nobody wants to read about the ugliest girl in France. We want to escape and that's why we read them. I find no shame in admitting to reading or writing them.

I don't typically read romance. I'm not snobby about it; it's just that I only have so much time for reading and there are other genres I prefer. I really do love a good horror novel best of all but find more than half my reading these days is non-fiction.

I occasionally pick up a romance off my moms shelf, (she is one of those people with dozens, if not hundreds of romance novels) and I thoroughly enjoy most of them. I prefer historical romance, personally, but I prefer fantasy, horror, and mystery. I think with romance it has that attached stigma of the "purple prose" as Becka mentioned above. A lot of it is canned tripe. The couple always resists, passion overtakes them after circumstances (usually very bizarre ones) force them together, and boom, love happens. Love just doesn't work that way. I know they are supposed to be an escape from our everyday lives, yada yada, but once in a while it is nice to hear about a couple that might actually exist, it makes it seem like it could happen to you. The chances of most people being stuck on a ranch with ye olde hunky bachelor is slim to none. It is somewhat more interesting to hear about people that met a bit more realistically, at least once in a while. I really liked your article, though, and if you have any romantic fiction floating around, I'd love to read more of your stuff.

I remember getting hooked on Barbara Cartland's romance novels at about the age of 11..... but after voraciously reading about 20 of them (she wrote HUNDREDS!) - I discovered, even at that young age, that the stories were all the same. Good looking simple lass, finding love that appeared to be unattainable, but happened in the closing 2 pages.

We call them bodice-rippers here - and I can't remember the last time I read one...!

I don't understand why someone wouldn't want to admit. Its one of the first on my list! Don't get enough romance at home, these books make up for it. They take you into a whole new world! I LOVE THEM!!!!

I agree with Dorine Houston - I used to read Westerns and I put Romance in the same league - enjoyable if you want an easy read, but nowhere near true literature. Not that it is snobby but it is like comparing the Pirates of the Carribean with The Godfather or something. The issue is the characterisations are not deep enough and the plots ARE formulaic. (I read the occasional modern romance among crime, chick lit, fantasy, sci-fi and top-line literature, eg, the stuff that wins the Nobel prize and the Booker prize. Romance doesn't even come close to the creativity of some other genres or the pure word beauty of true literature. Sad but true).

Perhaps that is it, Moysant, that romance isn't filled with "word beauty" as you put it, but I must admit, that is one of the reasons I don't read older classics, because if I have to "chew" the words before I can process them, and re-read the page three times just to understand the point - even when the passage is written in plain English - that's when it starts to rub me the wrong way.

I'm not saying that's bad in any way, to each his own, really.

But I must disagree with you about no creativity in romance. There "has" to be a conflict - in ANY story - and due to the nature of the romance, it will most likely be within the love story. Most romance is two people learning to love each other despite the odds, or despite the crap life throws at them or despite whatever villain is in their way. The romance's driving force is the power of love. Sounds corny, I know, but that's the crux.

If romances were stories about every day love, let's face it, they'd be boring. No one wants to read about a few dates, meeting the family, popping the question, and getting married. People want conflict, and that's what's in these books. Are they formulaic? Sure. But most fiction is. There are only like 10 plots in the world - it's how you write them that make them "new and exciting".

But if you don't think romance is creative, then you haven't perused the romance aisle in a long time. LOL There's more than contemporaries and historicals nowadays. There are shapeshifters, vampires, ghosts, angels, demons, cops, marines, Navy SEALs, cowboys, Indians, wizards, aliens, all sorts of strange and unusual stuff. Readers are "tired" of the same ol', therefore authors have accomodated them. I, myself, have written romances about a malevolent secret agency that mutated the DNA of men to turn them into shape-shifters. I've written books about powerful magical talismans made by the dragons that must be found at all costs or fall into the wrong hands. I've written a book about a time-traveling "Time Tourist" who derails the timeline in the past and must get it back on track, no matter the cost.

I don't know about you, but I think those are pretty creative ideas... :P

Romances are supposed to be emotional, and without the conflict of "boy loses girl" somewhere in the story - even though you know they'll eventually get back together - it wouldn't "pull at your heartstrings."

So, Jane Austen. Literature? Or crappy romance? Cause I'll tell you what. Her books are "formulaic" as well when you get down to it.

~~Becka

Lots of Americans seem to love a writer called Diane Gabaldon, who has written a series of 'time travel' novels, set partly in Scotland. I have tried to read the first one, on more than one occasion, to no avail. The research and factual stuff was way off beam in that first book - and the author admitted that she wrote it without having travelled to Scotland at all. She has since done so - but I've no idea if her books are now more factual and 'real' than the first one.

I find it incredible that there is a whole section of 'Highland Romances' with the romance genre. All Highland lairds striding out through the heather dressed in kilts and brandishing claymores. The characters seem to have totally inappropriate names (for the period)... Sorry, they are not my choice of reading.

Jane Austen? Well, when she wrote, she was a pioneer and formulaic they might be, but she was writing about HER period in history, so the writing rings 'true'!

LOL Ishbel @ Highland Lairds. I think it's more the love of the era rather than telling stories of truth. Research is a must if you're going to write stories in history. An author friend of mine HATES the movie Braveheart, because of the blatant historical innaccuracies, such as kilt-wearing (which didn't happen until later in history) among other things.

A lot of readers cannot read historicals due to the hygiene factor. LOL But it's more for the "flavor" of the time rather than dwelling on the fact Hrothgar hasn't brushed is teeth in three weeks. :P

As for Jane Austen being a pioneer, I do agree with you. But that doesn't make her books any less romance-y. True, they're not filled with tawdry sex... lol But the truth is, if romance doesn't have sex, it doesn't sell. I've written both hot romances and sweet romances. Guess which one I made more money off of?

~~Becka

Don't get me started about Braveheart.... It's the absolute liberties taken with history in some of these bodice rippers that really gets my goat!

I wrote about Romance and the NY Times on DearAuthor.com, and one of the things I see over and over again is the denigration of genre Romance as "formulaic" -- as opposed, of course, to mysteries, thrillers, horror, chick lit, and any other genre fiction. Genre is all *about* formula, or at the very least, formalistic boundaries within which stories are to be told.

I must admit that it feels completely illogical to me to say that Romance is formulaic but, say, mysteries aren't -- unless, of course, I was a mystery reader and not a Romance reader. Because then I would be able to make all sorts of generalizations about Romance that would not seem to apply to mysteries because, well, I *knew* mysteries, and what I got out of them went beyond the formula. On a superficial level, ALL genre fiction is formulaic -- like a sonnet is formulaic. But when one becomes immersed in a genre, the formula gives way to all sorts of other things that make one an engaged reader. I am not into thrillers, mysteries, or horror, not because I find anything wrong with these genres, but simply because they do not speak to me the way SF, Fantasy, and Romance do. I think this is all about the natural tastes each of us have as readers, that some fiction appeals to our palate and some doesn't. But for some reason, there seems to be this informal license to bash Romance as a certain way -- that is, all 2100 or so books published a year in the genre. I think it's simply become a shorthand response, but to me such generalizations are not particularly valid for any genre.

As for the literature v. Romance debate, especially as other genre fiction figures into that alleged polarity, I think the opposition is misleading. Not all lit fic is true literature, either. And just to clarify, let me admit that I hold a Ph.D. in English from one of the real shark pit critical theory schools, so I have a little bit of experience in the arena of literary analysis. That doesn't make my opinion on this gold, but as someone who spent many, many, many, many years reading ONLY literary fiction, then teaching it, and also writing about it, I would like to make two observations from my perspective about the Romance v. literature debate:

1. Literature in the broadest sense includes all genre fiction, as well as lit fic and classic literature. All these works both reflect and shape a certain cultural literacy and are part of an ongoing cultural dialogue, both reflecting and reflecting on a given historical or cultural moment. To some degree, I think the hierarchies of specialness have created a mutual antagonism (e.g. the genre readers who think lit fic is all pretentious depressing bile) that covers over the fact that different books offer different things to a reader. And different doesn't necessarily mean better. I read widely because different books, different genres, different media, even, facilitate different experiences for me, but each is satisfying in its own way. A "happy ending" for me is that incredible feeling of being emotionally and intellectually moved by a book, and that can and does happen for me with quite a variety of books and genres.

2. I don't think any type of literature is inherently escapist or realistic. Otherwise, how would be compare Gabriel Garcia Marquez's magical realism with, say, William Gibson's cyberpunk phase. Or how would we compare Emily Bronte's almost surrealistic Romanticism in Wuthering Heights with, say, Judith Ivory's gritty historical realism in Black Silk. Reading, to some degree, is all about transportation out of one moment and into another, and books that seem to lead the reader farthest away can hit very close to home. Again, I think the whole "escapist" label is another euphemism for "irrelevant," and to me, no genre is irrelevant. Are some Romances "fluffy"? Hell, yes. But some aren't. Just like some mysteries are light and chatty and some aren't. Are some Romances badly crafted? Hell, yes. But so are some thrillers. Bottom line, I guess, is that it's the generalizations that bother me most of all, because they inevitably seem aimed at shooing Romance into some dark, musty corner, leaving the literary and cultural playground to the "real" books, an inclination which strikes me as insulting as it is wrongheaded.

Robin

"An author friend of mine HATES the movie Braveheart, because of the blatant historical innaccuracies, such as kilt-wearing (which didn't happen until later in history) among other things."

Yeah, like that whole droit de seigneur nonsense (lord's first night" that Braveheart popularized but has been exposed as a historical myth (see Alain Boreau, The Lord's First Night: The Myth of the Droit de Cuissage). Which, I guess, just sets up the point I'd make about generalizing about the historical accuracy of historical Romance. Since Braveheart is not historical Romance, clearly such historical warping occurs EVERYWHERE, but again, Romance seems to be a great punching bag.

There is a big debate in Romance communities about how important accuracy is to historical Romance, with many of us very, very adamant that an author should see history as another character in her novel, and should take care to create a strong sense of authenticity, at least, even if she takes certain liberties. Susan Johnson was wonderful in writing actual footnotes in her books, and authors like Jo Beverly, Judith Ivory, Laura Kinsale, Jo Goodman, Lydia Joyce and others are very dedicated to historical research. But there are also many readers who don't care one whit for historical accuracy, and there are many books for them, as well. It's a big genre, after all.

I love the romance genre- in fact I am reading as many paranormal romances as I can get my hands on. I think the problem is that there are some excellent books out there that are well written, with interesting plots and characters, but then there are romance books that are just terrible. I think that is part of the reason why the romance genre is looked down upon. However, there are so many choices in romance novels that a reader could find something they liked if they looked hard enough.

Tony,

I'll agree with you about the porn statement, because my own husband has said the same to me about what I write, and I don't even write erotic! I'm thinking in the back of my mind, "Well you should read books by some of my friends if you think what *I* write is porn..." lol

But it's not "porn" in the traditional sense. A porno movie, for example, is usually a thinly veiled plot for sex. While, yes, some books in the genre might have this label, if it's strictly for the sex, then it's erotica, NOT romance.

A romance novel involves deeper feelings of commitment, not just some horny housewife waiting for the UPS guy. So while, yes, the couple has sex, and you are "in the bedroom" with them, it goes beyond sex for sex's sake, and in that, rises above mere "porn", which is sex for titilation, not to move the story forward or the relationship forward (or backward) in any way.

~~Becka

As a guy, I find it hard to comment on this genre as it is aimed at the way women perceive love, romance and sex. However silly romantic movies achieve respectabilty, and have earned recognition for such stars as Kate Hudson and Reese Witherspoon.

I think our society is very weird and arbitrary about the context in which we discuss sex. I think that this genre was suppressed as non-serious by our recently male dominated business world. A man could not admit to an interest in romance novels because, as I understand it, they do not feature the wham bam thank you ma'am kind of sex (think of Ian Fleming's treatment of women) that we guys are supposed to favor. As a guy I can admit to loving Ian Fleming, but not Danielle Steele.

I think that's your problem. Maybe one day this macho taboo will be broken. Good luck ;).

Rebecca, I agree with you that the way the romance genre is treated often smacks of hypocrisy. I think the most likely reason why it's considered differently from even other genre fiction is because it's supposed to be for women only. In the paradigm we live in, that means, by definition, secondary, less important, less serious, etc. That's pretty annoying, I agree.

But you commit the same generalization you point out in the critics of the genre: you seem to suggest all women read romance, we just don't admit it. That's not true. Some of us really don't. Not because we have anything against it--we just have different interests and personalities.

Yesterday I read Philip Roth by the poolside, and the day before it was Douglas Adams. Before that Watership Down ("the bunny book") recommended by a friend here on gather. In other words, whatever I happen to be reading goes with me, unless the book is too expensive to expose to the elements :-)

(The beach is nice here, but the water's too cold....)

True enough, Aniko. I will amend my statement to say that not every woman reads romance, but of those who do, not all of them admit to it. :)

Heck, I know AUTHORS who have pen names and are horrified to tell their family what they write. Of course, they write the naughty stuff... :P

~~Becka

As a romance author myself, I can relate to what you are saying. My first novel is ready for publishing, but because it is a genre romance (fantasy romance) we're having a very hard time. I have a bookcase full of romance, so does my mum, just about everyone I know has read at least one romance, yet they are the hardest to write, hardest to get published, yet most widely read. I think that as someone said, romances are based on the same stereotype. Girl meets boy, girl loves boy, loses boy, gets boy back and whatever happens in between. However, now, there are little twists happening to romance. Supernatural romance (paranormal romance) is big at the moment but it's still the same plot structure. Deep down, people like to read books with happy endings and characters who are over the top but still make you think "she sounds just like me". Then there is the problem of people being afraid of sounding shallow and unintelligent if they say they love reading romances. For me, there's nothing better than curling up with a good romance. I love to fall in love and as I have the love of my life, I write about people falling in love. I think romance authors are only just beginning to be considered legit authors. I have heard it's so much harder to write a romance than any other genre of novel. One day **sigh** soon, I hope, the romance writer will be held in as high esteeem as any other novelist.

By the way, I'm not happy that international writers aren't allowed to enter the Romance First Chapter competition!

Kat

I think Jack hits the nail square when he says romances deal with how women think about relationships and sex as compared to men. I real a wide variety of genre fiction and select my material more by author than whether it's a romance, mystery or fantasy. I laugh sometimes at the way men write the women in their books and probably men laugh at the some women portray a man's thoughts. My first romance novel is coming out later this week and I'm proud of it. I spend most of my time writing fantasy but I've yet to sell one of those. So I'll keep on reading everything, promote my romances and be glad so many people are reading that genre. It still outsells other fiction and by a huge margin.

Just wanted to say I loved this artical. Thought provocing.
One idea I had why people might not take romance novels seriouly is because of the internal conflicts of the characters. Many times part of the conflict is a charcaters struggle to forgive and forget the past but because the novels usual take place in the novels present time you only get to learn about the pivetal event that left the emotional scar on the character not what lead up to the event. Also the hero in romance novels are mostly Alpha males and being so the personalitys can only be so different. I'm not saying that every hero is created the same but that they are usually strong,honest,leaders,dominate, and very responsable.
I think women love romance novels not so much for the romance but for the power trip. Lets face I love the idea of bringing that strong dominate male that no one can concure and bring him to him knees. The idea of being the heros one weakness is very heady.
I loved everyones thoughts

There are a lot of varying thoughts on this matter, and in a way, I feel compelled to agree with all of them. While romance novels may be interesting at first, it just seems that too many of them are extremely similar. The plot and even characters seem...just stretched out--old, and sort of dull. If I could find a romance novel that twisted up the factors, I would read it in a heartbeat, but that's probably why they don't get a whole lot of attention in the media. Many of them are just cliche, and the romance novels that DO deserve recognition are hidden in the masses.

Literature is a form of escapism. While I agree that many romance stories are simplistic, I feel the same way about other genres. I think that poor writing and story telling is a symptom of the ease of producing a finished product, the computer as opposed to the pen has allowed the so so writer to compete with the master. But that is as it is and like I said occurs in every area of writing. Every genre has some degree of formula attached to it and every genre has writing that explodes out of any rules attached to it. Talented writers are found in every genre. Talented writers create fiction that one day will be literature. Remember, that Dickens wrote pulp fiction in his day, how many years after his death did it become literature?

You can't blow off romance any more than you can blow off sci-fi or horror or any genre as not being worth reading. I think when people consider romance they think back to the early 70's and the harlequin formula series romance. Romance and love stories pervade through history and entwine within literature. I think the issue is women's roles in society. Romance and women's fiction empowers women and that can be a very threatening thing.

Look back through all the bestsellers list in all the non-fiction categories and see if romance and sex are not written within almost every story just like murder, suspense and horror are written into many a romance. Romance and love are a potent part of society and one I think many are afraid to acknowledge.

Ryshia

Think how many people say, "I never watch TV, really," and you know they are lying...

In all honesty, though, I had never been a reader of them until I picked up a couple on the "new books" shelf at my library. At my library! In Cincinnati, where we spell it with a C because there is no Sin allowed here.

One title just happened to intrigue me, and then as I read it I was amazed at the graphicness of description. Then I picked up one called "Close Encounters of the Sexy Kind."

My goodness! If they are buying these things at the Cincinnati Public Library, I think they are coming out from under the bed big time.

Cheers!