Reading: Romance Tropes and Narrative

[sartorias]

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.

Comments

[barbarienne]

My experience/taste is very similar to yours. I have read a few romance novels that were well-written, good books with interesting characters, but the whole business of having the relationship as the primary focus of the book just doesn't float my boat. I was always more interested in the other things going on. (And, notably, in one novel, I found the secondary characters' secondary romance much more enjoyable, simply because I didn't have to endure any inner monologues of how nice the hero or heroine was to look at.)

But I ADORE romance as a later order of business. Give me a political-intrigue story with a romance as a subplot/complication, and I will eat it up with a spoon. I may even get weepy (as I did during Dorothy Dunnett's 6th Francis Crawford novel, when Francis was trying to protect Pippa by claiming not to love her. I was on the bus and crying and that was embarrassing, but the scene was so delicious).

And...maybe that's what it is. A lot of romance novels spend a lot of time on the clothes and the shmoopy ogling, the physical sensations of lust. But for all that, they don't let you experience the characters' feelings. Most seem to "tell" about a character's backstory so directly that it defuses my engagement with them emotionally. They're doing stuff, but I don't feel as if I am immersed in their problems. When given larger plot issues, and the opportunity to interpret characters' behavior and draw inferences for myself, I become much more engaged in the book, and consequently much more engaged in the emotional stakes of the romance.

[sartorias]

Yes! I think for me, being told in explicit and lengthy detail all the minuatae of emotional experience keeps me from that empathetic flush. I get a truer, deeper evocation from brief but convincing reactions than pages and pages of detailed exploration of emotional landscaping. Obviously, the success of such books means that there are those who really want that exclosive focus on emotions.

[onyxhawke]

1) I love the icon.
2) gods what a brilliant mind you have. (this means i agree with you.)