When Does It Stop Being "Romance"?

[Tea]

I've been thinking about this a lot since I started my Camp NaNoWriMo project.

I already knew (or at least I told myself I knew) this, but it's becoming increasingly clear that I'm writing something that I would categorise as Romance (big R) for Camp NaNo, but that the series I've based the NaNo project off isn't really romance: it's (big F) fantasy and steampunk with slight romantic elements.

Thinking about how unabashedly (big R) romance (with a dash of fantasy and steampunk) the NaNo project is, I started wondering about where the line gets drawn.

The only thing I could come up with is that most of novels that I would stick in the Romance genre follow a basic template that looks a lot like the stages of the old Ms Pac-man video game:

1. They meet
2. The chase
3. (optional) Junior

But what about romance series that feature the same couple over and over instead of devoting Books 2-whatever to secondary characters? Are the books of such series all still Romance in your eyes?

[Danielle The Book Huntress , Sees Love in All Colors]

Nowadays, that's becoming very flexible. My opinion is that it's not romance if the story fails to have at least some significant focus on the romance between the characters. If you look at the In Death series by JD Robb, those are primarily mystery, but Robb also manages to showcase the strong, ongoing love story between Eve and Rourke.

[Kim]

I used to think that I wrote romance, but what I realize is that I don't really follow the "rules" for romances. I write about relationships, I write about love, but I tend to write about people who behave badly and that is a no-no for romance. They cheat, they smoke (yup, been criticized for writing about people who smoke and was told this undermined my character's like-ability), they lie.

[TinaNoir]

I think the industry definition of (R)omance is something like:

1- the focus of the story is the developing relationship of a couple

and

2- A happy or 'optimistic' ending for that couple's relationship.

Writers of course include all sorts of subplots, obstacles, settings, non-natural elements etc. But all that is supposedly gravy. The actual purpose of the story is to build a romantic relationship between the two main protagonist toward a happy conclusion.

Now, individual readers will argue there are all sorts of additional restrictions (no cheating, only hetero couples etc.) but those are individual preferences, imo. Honestly, how could anyone exclude same sex couples as viable protagonists in a romance?

Multi-volume books absolutely meet the criteria, imo, as long as each book contributes to the 'focusing on the building a romantic relationship' part and at the end of each installment you are left with the idea that eventually at the end of however many series, the couple will end of HEA, then yeah, definitely romance.

I think a good example of a series that started out romance but later became Urban Fantasy was the Black Dagger brotherhood. The early 3 or 4 books were typical romance trajectory, one couple, HEA & ILU at the end of their book. But by the time we got to Dead Ghost Jane, it broke rule #2 for a lot of people and the rest of the series kinda moved way outside of the Romance realm.

[Tea]

Tina, the industry standard is exactly what I was getting at. Only, it seems that with many multi-volume series – especially since the advent of strong(er than before) e-book and self-publishing industries – I've primarily run into one of two things: the soap opera-ish break-up/make-up cycle and a lack of any real growth in the relationship(s).

Years ago, I read plenty of series where each story in the added something new to my understanding of the relationship and the couples only got stronger with each book. These days, even with books from trad publishers, that hasn't often the case. And yet the latter series are still marketed as Romance.

On the other hand, I've just read a series that did the something close to the opposite of the one you mentioned. It started out as a very strong Urban Fantasy, but eventually moved towards Romance – to the point where its final books were all published by Harlequin's Luna imprint.

Come to think of it, that wasn't the only series I've seen change as it was moved from another publisher to one of Harlequin's imprints. In fact, Luna has been the culprit more than once!

[Arch , Mod]

Romance to me = Strong chemistry, spending time together (candlelight dinner, walking in a park, etc.) I have read a lot of books that's label as romance and their is no romance in the story. I do like a story where characters are paired together, because the story is supposed to be a romance story. I can tell when the hero and heroine are forced to be together. In a lot of the stories the hero's body is a character of its own. A nice body does not equal love. Sex does not equal love. I find stories like that boring. I want to see why the hero and heroine are attracted to one another. I want to see why the hero and heroine would " yes to marriage" or even willing to die for the other.

I am a romance writer and I like showing why my characters are together.

I also like to see the married couple become parents. I love how Sam and Alyssa are
with baby Sam bka Ash.

[Vivienne]

Kim: I also thought that my stories were romance with a happily never after ending but discovered that in order for a story to be categorize as romance it must have a happily every after or happily for now ending. I don't necessarily agree with this concept but I understand that my stories would never be classified as romance, because they focus on hoaxes, deception , scandal and fraud.