Enough about me. Why don’t YOU care?
In 2017, I was invited to be part of a panel discussing the Happily Ever After. As a romance author, I was, and was expected to be, on the “pro HEA” side. The other panelists were filmmakers, who described their process when working on their independent projects as more “free” to choose an ending, because in their industry a media giant is associated with the happy ending.
When I think about that panel I think about creative industries where people make things they personally hate, and then when they’re “free” they swing the ending in the opposite direction. In this case, no HEA.
But what if the characters you’re writing about, the “voiceless” you chose to give a voice to, deserve love and not suffering?
In discussions I’ve had over and over, until the year 2025, I’ve encountered Filipino writers who not only avoid the HEA like the plague in their own work and reading choices, they also want all of us to stop writing it, it seems. I’ve always responded with a defense of the genre, my choices, but now…maybe I’ll have a new way of approaching this discussion.
When I write, I design characters that I end up loving. Maybe this is not something that all writers feel about their main characters, but this is how I work. I can be intentional about this and design characters to appeal to certain people; or I could go with the flow and design a character that will not bore me as I write 40,000 words about them.
If I design my character to the point that I love them, to the point that I know a reader will love them, how do I write about the world being cruel to them without giving them the relief and comfort and safety of experiencing real love?
I know why I write romance. I know that I do not have to write romance all the time, and sometimes I don’t.
When I choose to write romance, I know why I write HEA. For Filipino characters, in the Philippines.
Do you know why you don’t want to?
Do you just not know how?
The post Enough about me. Why don’t YOU care? first appeared on Mina V. Esguerra.
