Urban Fantasy/Paranormal Romance
*Cross-posted from my blog, where I've been talking about some of the thoughts and ideas that came up at Romantic Times last week*
One really interesting RT panel was devoted to defining the (often blurry) line between urban fantasy and paranormal romance. Jackie Kessler (who, by the way, just sold an awesome-sounding YA that you can read about here) suggested that in urban fantasy, the focus is usually on good vs. evil. It could be an external struggle, it could be an internal struggle, there may or may not be an apocalypse at stake, and shades of gray can abound, but at the end of the day, she suggested the heart of UF was good vs. evil; whereas the central focus in paranormal romance is usually the evolution of and relationship between a primary couple and their eventual happy ending. Jeaniene Frost came back and countered, ever so gently, that there are some paranormal romances that center as much or more on good vs. evil as on the couple in question and identified the romance genre expectation of an HEA (Happily Ever After) as the driving difference between paranormal romance and urban fantasy. In other words, in a paranormal romance series, at the end of the series, the couple has to be together; in an urban fantasy, they don't. So if you're going to blow up your primary love interest (not that I've ever come VERY, VERY close to doing that or anything), your readers will probably react less violently if you're shelved in fantasy than if you're shelved in romance, because the HEA expectation is built into the romance genre.
There is a very good chance that I've completely butchered what both of these fine ladies said (and I'm sure they might weigh in here themselves!), but I was super interested in the progression of the panel, and over on twitter, some of my Castle buddies requested answers, so I thought I'd try to reconstruct some of the dialogue from the panel AND throw out a couple more pieces of food for thought.
Piece the First: I spent a lot of the panel thinking about the role that secondary love interests play in a lot of the Fangs/Fur/Fey type books I read (and, for that matter, on a lot of the television shows I watch). If romance requires that "the" couple gets a happily ever after, it seems like the identity of "the" couple would have to be a lot more explicit; whereas, in a non-romance genre, you might still get a happy ending- just not the one you anticipated in the beginning. In other words, I was wondering if secondary (and tertiary) love interests are more common in urban fantasy than paranormal romance and if they actually present more of a threat to the initial couple, and then I got to thinking about whether or not that might give a heroine more room to evolve independently of her hero(es) or if it just lends itself to a different kind of growth.
Piece the Second: I realized, during the course of the panel, that when I tried to mentally translate this debate into the YA realm, I stumbled. I think there are several reasons for this- first, because YA generally isn't broken down into genres for shelving (ie there is no YA "romance" section), publishers don't have to distinguish between fantasy and romance, and readers might come into a given book with fewer genre expectations. Second, YA romance- in general- seems less focused on HEA, because there's something seemingly odd about having ANY "ever after" at the age of fifteen, especially in contemporary fiction. Recently, there's been a surge in historical romance and supernatural romances in YA, and I think those do tend to offer a little more ever after, but at the same time, I wonder if the age of protagonists in YA lends itself to a blurring of paranormal romance and urban fantasy lines.
Here ends my rambling- I'd love to hear what all of you think.
-Jen Barnes
One really interesting RT panel was devoted to defining the (often blurry) line between urban fantasy and paranormal romance. Jackie Kessler (who, by the way, just sold an awesome-sounding YA that you can read about here) suggested that in urban fantasy, the focus is usually on good vs. evil. It could be an external struggle, it could be an internal struggle, there may or may not be an apocalypse at stake, and shades of gray can abound, but at the end of the day, she suggested the heart of UF was good vs. evil; whereas the central focus in paranormal romance is usually the evolution of and relationship between a primary couple and their eventual happy ending. Jeaniene Frost came back and countered, ever so gently, that there are some paranormal romances that center as much or more on good vs. evil as on the couple in question and identified the romance genre expectation of an HEA (Happily Ever After) as the driving difference between paranormal romance and urban fantasy. In other words, in a paranormal romance series, at the end of the series, the couple has to be together; in an urban fantasy, they don't. So if you're going to blow up your primary love interest (not that I've ever come VERY, VERY close to doing that or anything), your readers will probably react less violently if you're shelved in fantasy than if you're shelved in romance, because the HEA expectation is built into the romance genre.
There is a very good chance that I've completely butchered what both of these fine ladies said (and I'm sure they might weigh in here themselves!), but I was super interested in the progression of the panel, and over on twitter, some of my Castle buddies requested answers, so I thought I'd try to reconstruct some of the dialogue from the panel AND throw out a couple more pieces of food for thought.
Piece the First: I spent a lot of the panel thinking about the role that secondary love interests play in a lot of the Fangs/Fur/Fey type books I read (and, for that matter, on a lot of the television shows I watch). If romance requires that "the" couple gets a happily ever after, it seems like the identity of "the" couple would have to be a lot more explicit; whereas, in a non-romance genre, you might still get a happy ending- just not the one you anticipated in the beginning. In other words, I was wondering if secondary (and tertiary) love interests are more common in urban fantasy than paranormal romance and if they actually present more of a threat to the initial couple, and then I got to thinking about whether or not that might give a heroine more room to evolve independently of her hero(es) or if it just lends itself to a different kind of growth.
Piece the Second: I realized, during the course of the panel, that when I tried to mentally translate this debate into the YA realm, I stumbled. I think there are several reasons for this- first, because YA generally isn't broken down into genres for shelving (ie there is no YA "romance" section), publishers don't have to distinguish between fantasy and romance, and readers might come into a given book with fewer genre expectations. Second, YA romance- in general- seems less focused on HEA, because there's something seemingly odd about having ANY "ever after" at the age of fifteen, especially in contemporary fiction. Recently, there's been a surge in historical romance and supernatural romances in YA, and I think those do tend to offer a little more ever after, but at the same time, I wonder if the age of protagonists in YA lends itself to a blurring of paranormal romance and urban fantasy lines.
Here ends my rambling- I'd love to hear what all of you think.
-Jen Barnes