The Question of Compromise

[sartorias]

Yesterday's discussion about synopses led to this exchange, which I thought might be useful for further exploration.

green_knight made a response to a line from fashionista_35's comment, I fall firmly in the shooting myself in the foot category in that I refuse to compromise.

by saying: It's a continuum. I've looked at some of the things I've written on this topic (

Comments

[anonymous]

If I recall their blog correctly, Bob Mayer fought for the "hero has sex with other woman" scene by arguing that no unattached straight male would pass up a willing woman waiting for him in his bed. But of course, Mayer does not originally come from the romance genre.

I suspect that the readership for paranormals, romantic urban fantasy, SF romance, etc... is somewhat different from the traditional romance readership. For example, I used to be a die-hard SFF reader and came to paranormals and urban fantasy, after being thoroughly disappointed by one new and highly recommended SFF book after the other. Then I discovered the whole crossover area between romance and SFF and found books that still gave me the SFF kick I craved but with better characterization and more believable relationships. I can't be the only one who took that path.

I read a lot of romance/SFF crossover books for my PhD thesis (which means that I see the good, the bad and the ugly) and I've found that those books and authors that are most popular among hardcore romance readers, including those who claim to hate paranormals, are frequently the least interesting ones.

As for contemporaries, the lack of realism is annoying. I mean, how many 28-year-old virgins, who dress like their grandmothers and have never listened to any music or watched any film made post WWII, can fall in love with Texas billionaire ranchers or studly FBI agents or Greek tycoons who behave as if feminism never happened? There are good contemporaries with great characters who actually feel like real people living in the here and now, but it can take some effort to find them. And don't even get me started on historical romances, many of which are so lacking in accuracy, that I usually avoid that subgenre altogether, unless a book/author comes highly recommended.

I like a good love story and my attempts at novel writing so far all had a romance plot, but the genre taboos and odd hangups of some readers can really be frustrating. Some time ago, I read a post on a romance messageboard entitled "How did you get past the adultery in Outlander?" and thought, "Torture, rape, domestic abuse, time travel and you worry about the adultery, which is perfectly excusable in the context of the plot?"

Cora

[sartorias]

Yes--this is exactly why I tend to skim over a lot of cross-over novels that lean heavily on the romance tropes; these constraining rules make the stories too much like one another, too predictable.

[anonymous]

The saddest thing is that you hear a lot of romance readers complain that they are sick of paranormals (or regencies or romantic suspense or whatever), because there are too many of those books and they're all the same. Yet those same readers often balk at anything that touches upon one taboo or the other.

Cora

[sartorias]

Yep. Talk about sending mixed signals!!!

[ex_fashioni]

And not just that, but the editors, when asked at panels what they're looking for, will inevitably say something to the tune of, "Oh, we're looking for something different-- something a little out of the box, that pushes the envelope." And you send them what they say they're looking for, and it oftentimes gets turned down with the excuse of "It's too different. It'll be too difficult to sell to our readers."

AUGH!