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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=92.1) ysabetwordsmith | |
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I don't read or write a great deal of romance, but it can be fun as a subplot. Recently I happened to be reading some, and I noticed something: the #1 conflict between hero and heroine seems to be a misunderstanding in which he thinks she doesn't love him and she thinks he doesn't love her, so they don't get together until the end of the book, when the truth is revealed and magically solves most or all of their problems. This is true even in several books where other things should be causing more of the conflict. I am wondering how widespread this is across the romance genre, because I suspect it goes a long way towards my usual feeling of "Nothing is happening, this is stupid." (I rarely enjoy romantic smalltalk from live people, so it tends to bore me in fiction too.) I'm also interested in alternatives. I can think of a few books with romantic plotlines where something other than a misunderstanding played a major role. Shards of Honor, for instance, featured a star-spanning culture clash erupting into warfare. Some other possible conflicts: * The characters were raised so differently that it creates many differences in how they do everyday things, so that they have a hard time fitting together. * The characters hold deeply opposed religious/political/other views that spark interpersonal disputes and make their relatives uncomfortable, and which cannot easily be abandoned. * The characters live far apart. It is difficult for them to spend time together, even though they both want to. * The characters live in a context where extreme social disapproval makes it difficult or even dangerous for them to be together, which will continue as long as they are in a relationship. Or even alive, for some cases. * The characters don't have a language in common. One or both will have to learn a new language, which for most people is exhaustive and frustrating. * There is an inherent physical risk to them being together, especially in a sexual way. This is most prevalent in speculative fiction with a vampiric or lycanthropic or alien partner but there are other possibilities. * The characters have opposing professions, which they are unwilling or unable to change. * One character wants children and the other does not (or cannot have them). No matter how much they love each other, they want fundamentally different things from life in that regard. * One character is handicapped. The other is not used to working around that and feels uncomfortable. Once in a while, I see one of those other factors played as the prevailing conflict that the characters must come to terms with before affirming their relationship. Most of the time, though, even when these very big issues are on the board -- these things that frequently lead to breakups -- they are usually overshadowed by Misunderstanding #1, as if love solves everything. It doesn't. It really, really doesn't. It can make you determined to solve everything, but that's a different story. That's a different story, and that's the kind I want to read, and write myself. One of the other things that got me thinking about this was the planned relationship between Fala and Rai in Torn World. She's Northern, he's Southern; relationships are strained between those cultures, but they can't easily ignore each other anymore. Their everyday lives are so different as to have almost no overlap. Social support for the relationship is variable; some of their relatives are okay with it, but the expectations are so wildly different that even "support" can spark outbursts. Their homes are very far apart; they have to figure out where or when they could be together and whether they can stand to separate sometimes. At the time they meet, they are both handicapped: Rai was born blind, and Fala lost her legs in a wilderness accident. It doesn't help that he's relatively comfortable with his handicap and she isn't with hers yet. Their languages share a common root (Ancient) but have evolved differently for Fala (Northern) and Rai (Southern). The grammar and function words are similar, but a lot of the content words are very different. That puts a drag on the conversation. They're lucky that both of them are smart, fast learners -- and Rai has a stupendous memory. Do they love each other? Once they get over some initial awkwardness, yes, they both understand that part just fine. It doesn't help much with problem-solving. It just keeps them in a place where they need to solve those problems. Sort of like the difference between holding someone over a fire vs. giving them a fire extinguisher. Tags: family skills, fantasy, reading, romance, science fiction, torn world
Current Mood:  thoughtful
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>>I think this is as much a characterisation thing as anything else, though. As, reading through your list, I have people who both stop at one or another and go " . . . . . hrm" and ones that immediately offer solutions. <<
Yes. Some people are problem-solvers. In some relationships, that's an asset; in others it gets in the way. Sometimes both. Some people are good at solving certain types of problems, or don't consider a given issue to be a big deal, where it might be a huge obstacle for someone else.
>> (It's probably a general indication of local alignment, however, that your last one gets a universal "GET comfortable.")<<
Interesting local alignment! In my experience, some people can learn to deal with a disability (someone else's, or their own), some try and fail, some walk away. Some stay and are destroyed by it. That can be a very insidious way to die -- being in a situation where there's always more energy going out than coming in, a slow trickling decline until the person doesn't have enough left to fight off a disease or avoid an accident.
Major issues take energy to deal with. Some people have more energy than others; some things are cheap for one person but expensive for another, energy-wise. You have to keep an eye on the net balance of your relationships, to make sure they're not sucking all the life out of you ... and that you're not doing that to someone else.
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I can tell you that for readers who've lived through the kinds of conflicts you're listing, they kind of ruin the escapism that romance is meant to be. (and sometimes they don't, but I'll get to that below)
For instance, I divorced because my ex basically hoodwinked me into moving "temporarily" from my beloved Pacific Northwest back to his beloved Ohio, theoretically just long enough for him to go to graduate school. He got within a two-hour drive of his seven brothers and sisters, and I never was able to pry him loose again. Finally, the only way I was able to go home was alone. Now I suppose we could have compromised and moved to Nebraska or something, and both been miserable, but IME, there's no way to compromise on geography -- one person simply has to give in. Reading a romance where a "compromise" has been reached on the subject, or, worse, where one partner has been made "happy" to give in (because love conquers all, of course), is a pretty much guaranteed wallbanger for me. It ruins the fantasy.
OTOH, I love and adore the romance Lois McMaster Bujold gave her hero Miles Vorkosigan in Komarr and A Civil Campaign, in spite of the fact that my other ex (I'm good at a lot of things, marriage not being one of them) was very much like Ekaterin's first husband. But Miles, in his inimitable way, opened doors for her instead of making her make choices. And they have a shared heritage and shared goals. So it works.
The thing is, when you introduce conflicts that can't be solved by Love Conquering All, you have to be really very careful how you tread. How you solve those conflicts can make your book meet the wall faster than just about anything else, if it grates against your reader's personal experiences.
It's different from cozy mysteries and space opera, because most people don't have personal experiences in how those are handled. Most people do have at least some personal experience with romance (and, if they're unlucky, some of those quite possibly insurmountable conflicts you list above), and you don't want to ruin the fantasy for them.
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>>I can tell you that for readers who've lived through the kinds of conflicts you're listing, they kind of ruin the escapism that romance is meant to be. <<
I think that readers are looking for different things in romances, then. The "fantasy" version seems to be the prevailing choice. There are some other variations, though, which tend to appeal to me more.
>> IME, there's no way to compromise on geography -- one person simply has to give in.<<
If both people are extremely attached to disparate locations, that tends to be true. You pick one or the other, or you split up. However, I've heard of a few couples that commute, or split their time between two places, or live apart for long periods and then get together.
>>The thing is, when you introduce conflicts that can't be solved by Love Conquering All, you have to be really very careful how you tread. How you solve those conflicts can make your book meet the wall faster than just about anything else, if it grates against your reader's personal experiences. <<
Ironically, that's the same thing that turns me off on LCA romances: they don't fit my personal experiences. Problems don't disappear with a kiss and a hand-wave, they take work to fix, so when LCA happens in fiction, it bugs me. I'm more interested in watching characters work through problems. But it helps to know how other readers' thought processes work, too.
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and I agree with you, but to me there is a factor that needs to be addressed when it comes to the romance genre. As you say, romance is a wonderful ingredient for any type of writing, but we have to careful about the message we are sending.
What I dislike mostly about romance novels is that they are greatly crafted fairy tales which are teaching women to "rely" on that whole love-conquers-all philosophy, and also, that women are in desperate need of protection.
In Sci-Fi, as you point out, or in fantasy which is your more your thing than mine, perhaps romance has a far stronger and deeper meaning, which is wonderful. But as I writer I am careful, and as a reader...I am extremely picky.
Thanks for this post, very interesting indeed!
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From: ysabetwordsmith |
Date: March 9th, 2010 09:39 pm (UTC) |
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Re: All your points are valid
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>> What I dislike mostly about romance novels is that they are greatly crafted fairy tales which are teaching women to "rely" on that whole love-conquers-all philosophy, and also, that women are in desperate need of protection. <<
Those messages bother me too; I've seen people get into disastrous situations because of them. (Including one that led to someone crawling out of my bathroom window.) It's the same problem with many traditional fairytales.
However, that's not necessarily the only way to look at this. People can read fiction without buying into the messages it sends. (Think of all the girls who read boyfic SF and grew up to write SF themselves, even if there were no strong women in those stories.) The question is whether romance readers know that "Love Conquers All" is a fantasy and are just reading it for fun, or whether they want it to work in the real world. And that can go either way, depending on the person.
A key reason I like to explore other options in romantic storylines is to diversify the messages. Okay, LCA can be a fun, hopeful message; but it's not the only one. It's empowering, and it can be fun, to tell or read a story in which lovers cleverly figure out solutions to their problems; or in which the new things they discover as a couple cause them to grow and change in ways that make it possible for them to live together. That tells you things don't have to start out perfect to end up in a happy place. It's just a different kind of romantic story, appealing to a different readership.
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Differences of social class can also be an issue. Or others' misunderstandings. The Tale of Genji, for example, has a subplot where, for various reasons, Genji falsely claims that a young woman is a recently-discovered daughter of his (her mother had been a former lover of his who, for various reasons, had fled the city for the provinces with her then-infant daughter). This results in several uncomfortable situations for the young woman:
A) Genji begins to show interest in her, and she, too, has feelings for him, but he cannot do anything because everyone thinks she's his daughter, and he cannot risk anyone catching them
B) Genji's son, thus her supposed half-brother, speaks to her informally, in a manner appropriate (for Heian nobles) for a male relative, but extremely inappropriate for an unrelated male. She cannot refuse his presence without revealing Genji's lie
C) Her ACTUAL half-brothers begin courting her. Again, she cannot reveal her relationship to them, and is forced to try to gently dissuade them away.
In another situation, Genji was unable to formally marry his great love, Lady Murasaki, because of her low status (mirroring, incidentally, the situation between his father, the Emperor, and his mother, a low-ranking noblewoman at the palace). She is restricted to being, officially, nothing more than a concubine. She later feels threatened when Genji, for political reasons, takes another wife, a high-ranking princess, although Genji has no feelings for her.
(Actually, one of the messages of the book seems to be "life sucks for women", so many of the female characters find themselves trapped in dilemmas created by the men around them)
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