Reading: Romance Tropes and Narrative
I want to throw a few thoughts out and see if anyone agrees, or this is just my idiosyncratic tastes. But first, though I want to jot down some ideas about narrative devices, with a riff on why romance novel tropes don't work for me in the following instances, I'm stating up front here that I would so rather avoid sneers and slams at romance. There are plenty who don't like romance tropes, which is fine, but slamdunks don't foster discussion. They shut it down, at most causing bickering. Rather not have that, it seems all heat and zero light.
Okay, then. I will cover what I like in romance really quickly just for groundwork. This is not nineteenth century Romance, but category romance--usually with covers in large smoopy letters and passionate clinches, despite years of bitter complaint by authors. Generally speaking, if it's got humor, I'm in, at least for a time. If there's no humor, or I can't perceive humor (we all know humor varies like everything else) then there have to be really strong elements to draw me in. Kate Elliott's work is not known for much humor, but I'm a fan because her characters are so complex, her worldbuilding intriguing. She does a lot of other things I like, so I'm into her books, but already I've gotten off of romance and into fantasy.
Back to romance! I love Jennifer Crusie. Very seldom disappoints me. A few of hers I won't read again, but some of them I've reread. They are not just funny, they move along, the subsidiary characters are interesting and complex with goals and lives of their own. There was another who came highly recommended for her lyrical, lush writing, etc etc, I believe it was Laura Kinsale. (Didn't keep them, and my memory is for images, a typically smoopy cover, and not for names.) I tried three, all highly recommended. I'm sure the author is talented, that the historical research was impeccable, but in none of them could I get past about page fifty: no humor whatsoever, long, long, incredibly long descriptions in intimate space with a lot of emo and angst.
By intimate space, I mean that the emotional landscape is the plot, at least for that scene, if not for the entire novel. In many romances, we experience everything the heroine feels/thinks/wants, and ride along with her as she agonizes over what the hero's intent is. In some novels, the author switches back and forth, showing the h/h through the other's eyes, until the eventual consummation of understanding.
When an entire novel is in intimate space, unless it's really stylish and funny, I tend to get claustrophobic; there's little action, but most of all, there is little for me to figure out.
I'm not against wedding bell endings. A romance has a happy ending. I know that when I open the book, and if I'm in the mood for that type of story, well, I rely on the predictability and look for unexpectedness in how they get there. Where I definitely short circuit is when romance tropes are mapped over action novels. Take the recent (and extremely popular, so I suspect I'm in the corner by myself) Spymaster's Woman I think the title was, by Joanna Bourne. I just couldn't get into it because I couldn't believe in the danger, despite the opening with the main characters captured by Napoleon's goons, and slated for possible torture and execution. The reason why I couldn't believe in the danger was because the hero and heroine spent far more time being in lust with one another in intimate space than in dramatic space, that is, interacting with the world outside of their emotions.
The single author who's caught my attention by mixing adventure with romance is Suzanne Brockmann, but after I got accustomed to her plot points, I gradually began losing my momentum. Before that, she could keep me hooked because the attraction was balanced with equally intense scenes of danger, fear, grief--she switches at a snapping pace between intimate and dramatic spaces.
Bujold is a genius at mixing intimate and dramatic spaces.
When the romance is mapped over a space opera or historical adventure, sometimes the intimate space takes over the story, robbing it of dramatic tension, because the main energy is the h/h's relationship. Stephenie Meyer's vampire novel Twilight is basically a very, VERY long series of intimate scenes, without any sex. Pages and pages and pages of it, and so many thousands of fans lapped that novel up, her third nearly bumped Harry Potter 7 to second position for a day.
I can see why adolescents adore that novel. When you're a teen, and deep in your first experience of attraction, life is just like that! (If, that is, you actually get the attention of your love object. Even if he isn't a marble-chested vampire. In which case you get the vicarious experience of being the adored instead of being the hopeless adorer.)
At the other end of the spectrum there are novels written with marvelously opaque clues to the inner lives of the characters. Modern literature is filled with the literary descendants of Virginia Woolf, to name one who successfully hid clues to her characters' intentions by subtleties of body language, and by forcing the reader to figure out motivations through the reactions of other characters. The problem there, for me, though, is that too often the heavy hand of Realism is pressing on the story, making every character a small bundle of conflicting greeds, fears, and mixed motivations about trivial things. I already know what it's like to be locked inside the monkey skull. I want my reading to throw possibility open, wide as the stars.
Okay, then. I will cover what I like in romance really quickly just for groundwork. This is not nineteenth century Romance, but category romance--usually with covers in large smoopy letters and passionate clinches, despite years of bitter complaint by authors. Generally speaking, if it's got humor, I'm in, at least for a time. If there's no humor, or I can't perceive humor (we all know humor varies like everything else) then there have to be really strong elements to draw me in. Kate Elliott's work is not known for much humor, but I'm a fan because her characters are so complex, her worldbuilding intriguing. She does a lot of other things I like, so I'm into her books, but already I've gotten off of romance and into fantasy.
Back to romance! I love Jennifer Crusie. Very seldom disappoints me. A few of hers I won't read again, but some of them I've reread. They are not just funny, they move along, the subsidiary characters are interesting and complex with goals and lives of their own. There was another who came highly recommended for her lyrical, lush writing, etc etc, I believe it was Laura Kinsale. (Didn't keep them, and my memory is for images, a typically smoopy cover, and not for names.) I tried three, all highly recommended. I'm sure the author is talented, that the historical research was impeccable, but in none of them could I get past about page fifty: no humor whatsoever, long, long, incredibly long descriptions in intimate space with a lot of emo and angst.
By intimate space, I mean that the emotional landscape is the plot, at least for that scene, if not for the entire novel. In many romances, we experience everything the heroine feels/thinks/wants, and ride along with her as she agonizes over what the hero's intent is. In some novels, the author switches back and forth, showing the h/h through the other's eyes, until the eventual consummation of understanding.
When an entire novel is in intimate space, unless it's really stylish and funny, I tend to get claustrophobic; there's little action, but most of all, there is little for me to figure out.
I'm not against wedding bell endings. A romance has a happy ending. I know that when I open the book, and if I'm in the mood for that type of story, well, I rely on the predictability and look for unexpectedness in how they get there. Where I definitely short circuit is when romance tropes are mapped over action novels. Take the recent (and extremely popular, so I suspect I'm in the corner by myself) Spymaster's Woman I think the title was, by Joanna Bourne. I just couldn't get into it because I couldn't believe in the danger, despite the opening with the main characters captured by Napoleon's goons, and slated for possible torture and execution. The reason why I couldn't believe in the danger was because the hero and heroine spent far more time being in lust with one another in intimate space than in dramatic space, that is, interacting with the world outside of their emotions.
The single author who's caught my attention by mixing adventure with romance is Suzanne Brockmann, but after I got accustomed to her plot points, I gradually began losing my momentum. Before that, she could keep me hooked because the attraction was balanced with equally intense scenes of danger, fear, grief--she switches at a snapping pace between intimate and dramatic spaces.
Bujold is a genius at mixing intimate and dramatic spaces.
When the romance is mapped over a space opera or historical adventure, sometimes the intimate space takes over the story, robbing it of dramatic tension, because the main energy is the h/h's relationship. Stephenie Meyer's vampire novel Twilight is basically a very, VERY long series of intimate scenes, without any sex. Pages and pages and pages of it, and so many thousands of fans lapped that novel up, her third nearly bumped Harry Potter 7 to second position for a day.
I can see why adolescents adore that novel. When you're a teen, and deep in your first experience of attraction, life is just like that! (If, that is, you actually get the attention of your love object. Even if he isn't a marble-chested vampire. In which case you get the vicarious experience of being the adored instead of being the hopeless adorer.)
At the other end of the spectrum there are novels written with marvelously opaque clues to the inner lives of the characters. Modern literature is filled with the literary descendants of Virginia Woolf, to name one who successfully hid clues to her characters' intentions by subtleties of body language, and by forcing the reader to figure out motivations through the reactions of other characters. The problem there, for me, though, is that too often the heavy hand of Realism is pressing on the story, making every character a small bundle of conflicting greeds, fears, and mixed motivations about trivial things. I already know what it's like to be locked inside the monkey skull. I want my reading to throw possibility open, wide as the stars.