thoughtfulI 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.
March 8 2010, 23:35:32 UTC 11 years ago
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.
Thoughts
March 9 2010, 21:32:30 UTC 11 years ago
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.
Re: Thoughts
March 9 2010, 23:06:46 UTC 11 years ago
Having done that for a year myself, and having friends who've done that, it's a temporary solution at best. You can't live forty or fifty years that way and stay married, I don't think.
I think the point for most romance readers is that they don't want to read about conflict that fits their personal experiences [g]. Especially if those circumstances are not amenable to LCA. That's sort of the whole point of the romance trope. There's nothing wrong with people working through their conflicts and I think almost all romances are about people doing just that (I don't think any good romance is dealt with via deux ex machina handwave, frankly -- maybe bad ones are, but I try to avoid those), but the problem comes when the conflict is not something that is conquerable by LCA, and where does that leave the happy ending? Either the book doesn't have one (IOW, is not a romance according to the conventions of the genre), or the ending is forced in a way that the reader knows won't work in real life, which is not really acceptable, either.
Fantasy or no fantasy, you can't string the reader's suspension of disbelief up until it's dead. A conflict that the reader knows can't realistically end in a happily ever after is going to make a lousy romance, pretty much by definition.
Re: Thoughts
March 9 2010, 23:20:04 UTC 11 years ago
Having done that for a year myself, and having friends who've done that, it's a temporary solution at best. You can't live forty or fifty years that way and stay married, I don't think.<<
My partner and I did that for several years before we managed to consolidate households. It sucked. But I've noticed that a couple who can survive a long-distance relationship can survive darn near anything else; that one is a real acid-test. *ponder* I think the longest I've heard of was in the vicinity of 10 years at the time, between two people with firmly anchored professions.
>> I think the point for most romance readers is that they don't want to read about conflict that fits their personal experiences.<<
That's kind of what got me thinking about this stuff. I'm not like most romance readers; I like different things and want to explore different ways of handling romance in fiction. It's useful to know the usual approach, but I don't need to write that stuff -- that market already has thousands of books to satisfy its desires. I'm interested in tapping the "romance is interesting, but romance fiction isn't" folks.
>>Fantasy or no fantasy, you can't string the reader's suspension of disbelief up until it's dead. A conflict that the reader knows can't realistically end in a happily ever after is going to make a lousy romance, pretty much by definition.<<
Somewhere I read that the romance genre has lifted its blanket requirement for Happily Ever After endings, so that now there are some stories where the lovers just can't find a way to be together. Hrm, that reminds me of another good example: On Fire's Wings had a terrific romance that turned out to be between half-siblings, and when they consummated their relationship, the heroine's magic activated and turned her lover to ash. It was very tragic and very well handled. *snrt* Talk about your irreconcilable differences!
*ponder* I think it would be more challenging to write an effective romance that didn't have a happy ending.
Re: Thoughts
March 9 2010, 23:59:31 UTC 11 years ago
Speaking as a former librarian (again [wry g]) and someone from within the romance community (see the Romance Writers of America's definition here), a book with an unhappy ending is not, by generally accepted genre definitions, a romance.
You will find that most romance readers absolutely hate writers who do that to them, and will studiously avoid them and warn others against them, too.
OTOH, there's nothing to stop you from writing commercial fiction with an unhappily ending romantic plot, if that's what floats your boat. Some authors (mostly male, for some reason) do so quite successfully. But you'll get a lot of backlash from the romance community if you or your publisher try to call it a romance.
Re: Thoughts
March 10 2010, 01:46:23 UTC 11 years ago
A romance is a story in which the relationship between two or more characters is the focus. It's a love story. The "happily ever after" thing has been expected within the romance genre, and then people in that industry started to break away from that, and fight over it. And there didn't used to be actual sex in there either, and that's changing too. I think it's been going on for 5-10 years, maybe more. *shrug* Not really my genre, so I don't have a dog in that fight. I'm interested primarily in romance as a subplot in other types of story, or in romances that take place in other genres with more flexible parameters.
>>You will find that most romance readers absolutely hate writers who do that to them, and will studiously avoid them and warn others against them, too.<<
Not the niche audience I'm aiming for. Those people have their stuff already. It's useful to know what they like and why, because that helps explain why I don't like their stuff. We're after different things.
>>But you'll get a lot of backlash from the romance community if you or your publisher try to call it a romance.<<
Pretty much every story I've ever seen that focuses on characters falling in love has been described as a romance by somebody. Like, say, Romeo and Juliet with its famously tragic ending. I'm not very inclined to call what I write romance, because I'm not very fond of the romance genre. And people will go round and round about whether a given book is "really" romance or "really" SF (or fill in the blank with another genre), based on what's in it, often with people in each genre trying to punt it into the other. Silly. Market genres can get a lot stuffier than story types, if the publishers try to exert enough control to make everything the same. The main idea is to pinpoint what the story is all about.
March 9 2010, 23:37:20 UTC 11 years ago
When we married, we agreed that if I hated the Northeast, we'd move. I do hate it. And we've been living here almost 30 years now. I am still resentful of the time when my husband got a job offer in the Pacific Northwest- and refused to even consider it, despite his initial promises. This was not a great time in our marriage.
I really think that love should have conquered all then- and the fact that it didn't is not a good thing.