Use Coupon Code GIFT50 to get $50 off any membership you give! Valid until end Dec
-
Café Life is the Colony's main hangout, watering hole and meeting point.
This is a place where you'll meet and make writing friends, and indulge in stratospherically-elevated wit or barometrically low humour.
Some Colonists pop in religiously every day before or after work. Others we see here less regularly, but all are equally welcome. Two important grounds rules…
- Don't give offence
- Don't take offence
We now allow political discussion, but strongly suggest it takes place in the Steam Room, which is a private sub-forum within Café Life. It’s only accessible to Full Members.
You can dismiss this notice by clicking the "x" box
Craft Chat CRAFT CHAT: Introducing A Romantic Sub Plot Into A Non-Romance Novel
- Thread starter Carol Rose
- Start date
- Status
D
Deleted member 604
Guest
Introducing or shall I say using romance as a sub-plot in a non-romantic novel.
Personally I agree like everything else, romance and its expectations change with the times and that includes in a literate sense.
As a writer I would not put an element of romance in a non-romantic novel without a consequential reason for it, not just to fill the pages.
You plant the seed, it roots, then stems and blooms into a flower so to speak, either into a rose with or without thorns.
Saying that, you can't expect your readers expectations won't grow either in that respect. Because they will.
So, you can't just chuck it in there, cross your fingers and hope for the best, it just won't work. It's not realistic, believable or readable.
Because in reality isn't romance something we have all experienced, both the joys and woes of it.
And it's such a strong emotion and its a big part of being human and it is something all readers can relate too.
That's why Romance/Romance novels will never die and thats why you should keep Romance where it belongs in a Romantic novel or use it for a significant and worthwhile reason ONLY elsewhere and in other genres.
You need to ask yourself as a writer...
What will my story/novel a non-romantic one, gain from introducing and using Romance as a sub-plot that's the real question.
And if you can't find an answer and find you have just thrown it in there purely for entertainment value, then thats the wrong answer.
Because you can't just do that, why would you?
Use such a powerful feeling for it to turn stone cold and reach a dead end without bringing something to your characters or story.
Light a spark, let it burn slowly or intensely, for it to just go out without any sort of reaction. Pointless, sub-plot or not.
That's why personally for me I don't do it, it has to be meaningful.
When it comes to Love and Romance but LUST on the other hand why not?
But again, being practical you can't use that either without some sort of consequence.
The film FATAL ATTRACTION with Glenn Close and Michael Douglas comes to mind.
Such a great film, sorry, I'm distracted by the famous bath scene at the end, sorry back on track LOL.
Because it will be the readers that will be left disappointed and cheated at the end, and we all know how much that hurts.
But each to their own, and we all know Sub-plots are minor-stories in themselves that are used to support and runs parallel with the main plot which in this respect is supposedly Non-Romantic.
But as writers, we all know at some point the story much reach a resolution and an end.
And in order to do that successfully the Main plot and Sub-plot must meet. What do we do then?
Give the readers what they expect or don't expect.
Don't get me wrong in other genres with more generous and giving borders, that Non-Romantic novels does not have.
Romance and all the positive and negative things and feelings that comes with it, is a very effective device/tool that can be used in many different ways.
As @Carol Rose has stated it can be used as a driving force for characters to do something that is completely against their character/nature, the list is endless really.
So my answer is your novel is either Romantic or Non-Romantic, it can't be both without some sort of reasoning or consequences behind it.
Kindest Regards,
Alix
Personally I agree like everything else, romance and its expectations change with the times and that includes in a literate sense.
As a writer I would not put an element of romance in a non-romantic novel without a consequential reason for it, not just to fill the pages.
You plant the seed, it roots, then stems and blooms into a flower so to speak, either into a rose with or without thorns.
Saying that, you can't expect your readers expectations won't grow either in that respect. Because they will.
So, you can't just chuck it in there, cross your fingers and hope for the best, it just won't work. It's not realistic, believable or readable.
Because in reality isn't romance something we have all experienced, both the joys and woes of it.
And it's such a strong emotion and its a big part of being human and it is something all readers can relate too.
That's why Romance/Romance novels will never die and thats why you should keep Romance where it belongs in a Romantic novel or use it for a significant and worthwhile reason ONLY elsewhere and in other genres.
You need to ask yourself as a writer...
What will my story/novel a non-romantic one, gain from introducing and using Romance as a sub-plot that's the real question.
And if you can't find an answer and find you have just thrown it in there purely for entertainment value, then thats the wrong answer.
Because you can't just do that, why would you?
Use such a powerful feeling for it to turn stone cold and reach a dead end without bringing something to your characters or story.
Light a spark, let it burn slowly or intensely, for it to just go out without any sort of reaction. Pointless, sub-plot or not.
That's why personally for me I don't do it, it has to be meaningful.
When it comes to Love and Romance but LUST on the other hand why not?
But again, being practical you can't use that either without some sort of consequence.
The film FATAL ATTRACTION with Glenn Close and Michael Douglas comes to mind.
Such a great film, sorry, I'm distracted by the famous bath scene at the end, sorry back on track LOL.
Because it will be the readers that will be left disappointed and cheated at the end, and we all know how much that hurts.
But each to their own, and we all know Sub-plots are minor-stories in themselves that are used to support and runs parallel with the main plot which in this respect is supposedly Non-Romantic.
But as writers, we all know at some point the story much reach a resolution and an end.
And in order to do that successfully the Main plot and Sub-plot must meet. What do we do then?
Give the readers what they expect or don't expect.
Don't get me wrong in other genres with more generous and giving borders, that Non-Romantic novels does not have.
Romance and all the positive and negative things and feelings that comes with it, is a very effective device/tool that can be used in many different ways.
As @Carol Rose has stated it can be used as a driving force for characters to do something that is completely against their character/nature, the list is endless really.
So my answer is your novel is either Romantic or Non-Romantic, it can't be both without some sort of reasoning or consequences behind it.
Kindest Regards,
Alix
Last edited by a moderator:
It helped me see how I can approach both sub-ps.
This is all more complex than I'd imagined. Is it too simplistic to assume that romance novels and romantic subplots have to consist of something like:
Boy meets girl - a bad impression is somehow made
Actually, though, they do fancy each other (maybe secretly), but things get in the way of true love's progression
Boy and girl come close to bliss
Something goes excruciatingly wrong
Boy and girl realise the error of their ways and overcome all obstacles to relationship
By that token, lots of books written prior to the concept of a romance genre would actually have been romances. I think of Jane Eyre as a romance as well as a searing social critique.
Plenty of stories of course feature romance and sex but aren't romances and don't have romantic subplots.
ETA, the scenario above is traditional. Obviously there's LGBT too.
Boy meets girl - a bad impression is somehow made
Actually, though, they do fancy each other (maybe secretly), but things get in the way of true love's progression
Boy and girl come close to bliss
Something goes excruciatingly wrong
Boy and girl realise the error of their ways and overcome all obstacles to relationship
By that token, lots of books written prior to the concept of a romance genre would actually have been romances. I think of Jane Eyre as a romance as well as a searing social critique.
Plenty of stories of course feature romance and sex but aren't romances and don't have romantic subplots.
ETA, the scenario above is traditional. Obviously there's LGBT too.
Carol Rose
Basic
- Thread starter
- #36
And yes, I can see there is a difference. A romantic sub plot is not the same as tossing a mini romance novel into the pages of a mystery. Or a sci-fi. Or a horror novel. Or high fantasy. My intention was to highlight the character-driven nature of romance novels, and what readers expect in those novels. But their expectations are going to be different in other genres. Perhaps that was the wrong way for me to frame this discussion? To first define a romance novel?
Oh well. It's out there now.
And it certainly has sparked some interesting (and emotional) discussion, so I'm hoping it's all good and you all will forgive me for wanting to discuss something near and dear to my heart.
But getting back to our original discussion...
It's difficult for us to look back at something written fifty years ago, one hundred years ago, two hundred years ago, or even longer and not want to label it according to the genre definitions we have today. But those authors didn't have those definitions. They didn't know what they were. So whatever they were writing - whatever their intentions at the time - they weren't writing those stories to fit what we think of today as a romance novel, a mystery novel, a high fantasy novel. Those are labels we snapped on books in more recent times. And to go back and categorize something as one label or another, decades and in some cases centuries later, is arbitrary at best. It really doesn't make that book what we label it, because at the time it was written, those labels didn't exist. Those definitions didn't exist. The same reader expectations for that genre weren't yet analyzed and defined.
Jane Austen, for example, wasn't writing historical romance. How could she have been, when she was writing about contemporary times? Her contemporary times. She wasn't writing about an era that was in her past or that occurred before she was born. She was writing about the norms and customs of the society in which she lived. To her, those stories were contemporary, not historical. So for us to go back now and label them historical makes no sense. To us they are in the past, but that's not the definition of an historical romance.
An historical romance is one which is written about a time in the past - the authors's past. For example, if I was to write a book today, in 2019, set in 1944, that would be considered an historical romance, because I'm sitting here in 2019, writing a book set in 1944. It's historical from my current perspective. What someone would decide to label it fifty years from now might be completely different.
On that same note, what someone might decide to label something I wrote in 2018 fifty years from now might be completely different. But whatever they label it, it's not historical romance today, because it was set in 2018. It was set in contemporary times from my perspective, so it's contemporary romance according to the labels we have today.
Jane was born in 1775 and died in 1817. The six novels that were published during her lifetime and the year she died were written from 1811 through 1817. Those stories were contemporary from her perspective. She didn't set them in the past. She set them in the present - her present.
Back when she lived, and actually quite a few decades (many, many decades) into the future, high born ladies in society were expected to do one thing, and one thing only. Marry well and produce heirs to carry on their husband's family name. That's pretty much it. In the early 1800s, women had no voting rights. They could not work. They could not own property. If they were born into a working family, they were still expected to marry so as not to be a burden on their family for food, clothing, and shelter. So does it not stand to reason she'd have a romantic sub plot in her stories? That's what a woman was raised to do. Find a husband and then keep his house, take care of him, and raise his children. Lather, rinse, repeat.
But her stories aren't merely accounts of what she saw going on around her in all levels of society. They were satires, which gives them their delightful humor and witty narrative. More than two hundred years later, we've romanticized them, and taken a few liberties with the movies made out of most of them. But when you read the books themselves, you see the jabs she takes at the way people behaved in her time. To us, they're historical because from our perspective they are set in our past. And they have served as sort of a backdrop against which just about every Regency romance has been written, even though technically, the Regency period ended in 1811.
But she didn't know what a Regency romance was when she wrote them. She didn't know what an historical romance was. Why not? Because the terms didn't exist. She was writing about issues and customs which, to her, were contemporary. And romance was something women were raised to dream about and wish for. That, along with playing the pianoforte, doing fine needlework, drawing, painting, and even reading if you were really rich and could afford time for such a luxury.
Same thing with Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. They were written by authors who lived during those times. JE was published in 1847 and WH was published in the same year. And they were both published under different pen names, because God forbid a WOMAN publish a book back then.
But Charlotte didn't know what a gothic romance was. The term didn't exist. She just wrote a horribly tragic story about a young girl who is cast off by her wicked stepmother, and who then rises above her circumstances to eventually become lady of a fine old family. But she and her beloved both pay a price before they get there. Is it formulaic? Sure thing. But what isn't? I mean really, when you break down stories, there are only so many plots. But we'll get to that in another Craft Chat post.
Did JE pave the way for gothic romances? Well I don't know if it was the defining book, but does it really matter if it was? Fifty years later, Daphne du Maurier also didn't know what a gothic romance was, yet that's how some have chosen to label her works. She wrote dark, moody, heavy books with romantic overtones and some paranormal thrown in there as well. And others followed. So was she the queen of what would one day be called gothic romances?
The genre definitions are relevant today, but only for marketing purposes. That's their reason for existing. Where does it fit on the bookshelf? What demographic is going to buy this book? Two hundred years ago, publishers didn't face the same circumstances to deal with when they marketed a book that publishers face today. So comparing the labels isn't relevant. I'm not even sure they had labels back then, at least not to the extent we do today. And lately, as we've seen in Pop-Ups, people are simply making up genres if they can't find one that exists into which their book fits.
The definition of a romance novel I use is the one the RWA (Romance Writers of America) uses. It's the same one they've used pretty much since they were founded in 1980. They exist to uplift and support the genre and its writers and readers. As far as I know, it's the only professional writing organization of its kind that allows unpublished writers in that genre and others to join.
But I digress...
Again...
I think it's important when discussing any genre and its readers' expectations that we take into account the history of that genre, including books we've now gone back and labeled as belonging to that genre. Why? Because they all do have a history of sorts, even if the authors writing them at the time didn't have those labels or definitions in their world. It's important because it gives us accurate perspective from the standpoint of the authors writing those books. It gives us perspective from the standpoint of how they lived, what they did in their day-to-day lives, and how their expectations differed, or were similar to our own.
After all, none of us writes in a vacuum. They didn't either. And if they were women, they had shit to deal with that the women of today can hardly imagine having to put up with. I have the luxury of sitting down when I feel like it (around my work schedule, of course) and writing for as long as I want to. Fifty years ago, a woman my age wouldn't have had that luxury. One hundred years ago, a woman any age wouldn't have had that luxury.
They say perception is everything, and I would take that one step further. Perspective is also everything. So by all means let's bring works written years, decades, and even centuries ago into a discussion to illustrate a point. But bear in mind when they were written, and what that author's existence was like compared to our own, when we do bring them in. Because those things do matter.
Oh well. It's out there now.
And it certainly has sparked some interesting (and emotional) discussion, so I'm hoping it's all good and you all will forgive me for wanting to discuss something near and dear to my heart. But getting back to our original discussion...
It's difficult for us to look back at something written fifty years ago, one hundred years ago, two hundred years ago, or even longer and not want to label it according to the genre definitions we have today. But those authors didn't have those definitions. They didn't know what they were. So whatever they were writing - whatever their intentions at the time - they weren't writing those stories to fit what we think of today as a romance novel, a mystery novel, a high fantasy novel. Those are labels we snapped on books in more recent times. And to go back and categorize something as one label or another, decades and in some cases centuries later, is arbitrary at best. It really doesn't make that book what we label it, because at the time it was written, those labels didn't exist. Those definitions didn't exist. The same reader expectations for that genre weren't yet analyzed and defined.
Jane Austen, for example, wasn't writing historical romance. How could she have been, when she was writing about contemporary times? Her contemporary times. She wasn't writing about an era that was in her past or that occurred before she was born. She was writing about the norms and customs of the society in which she lived. To her, those stories were contemporary, not historical. So for us to go back now and label them historical makes no sense. To us they are in the past, but that's not the definition of an historical romance.
An historical romance is one which is written about a time in the past - the authors's past. For example, if I was to write a book today, in 2019, set in 1944, that would be considered an historical romance, because I'm sitting here in 2019, writing a book set in 1944. It's historical from my current perspective. What someone would decide to label it fifty years from now might be completely different.
On that same note, what someone might decide to label something I wrote in 2018 fifty years from now might be completely different. But whatever they label it, it's not historical romance today, because it was set in 2018. It was set in contemporary times from my perspective, so it's contemporary romance according to the labels we have today.
Jane was born in 1775 and died in 1817. The six novels that were published during her lifetime and the year she died were written from 1811 through 1817. Those stories were contemporary from her perspective. She didn't set them in the past. She set them in the present - her present.
Back when she lived, and actually quite a few decades (many, many decades) into the future, high born ladies in society were expected to do one thing, and one thing only. Marry well and produce heirs to carry on their husband's family name. That's pretty much it. In the early 1800s, women had no voting rights. They could not work. They could not own property. If they were born into a working family, they were still expected to marry so as not to be a burden on their family for food, clothing, and shelter. So does it not stand to reason she'd have a romantic sub plot in her stories? That's what a woman was raised to do. Find a husband and then keep his house, take care of him, and raise his children. Lather, rinse, repeat.
But her stories aren't merely accounts of what she saw going on around her in all levels of society. They were satires, which gives them their delightful humor and witty narrative. More than two hundred years later, we've romanticized them, and taken a few liberties with the movies made out of most of them. But when you read the books themselves, you see the jabs she takes at the way people behaved in her time. To us, they're historical because from our perspective they are set in our past. And they have served as sort of a backdrop against which just about every Regency romance has been written, even though technically, the Regency period ended in 1811.
But she didn't know what a Regency romance was when she wrote them. She didn't know what an historical romance was. Why not? Because the terms didn't exist. She was writing about issues and customs which, to her, were contemporary. And romance was something women were raised to dream about and wish for. That, along with playing the pianoforte, doing fine needlework, drawing, painting, and even reading if you were really rich and could afford time for such a luxury.
Same thing with Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights. They were written by authors who lived during those times. JE was published in 1847 and WH was published in the same year. And they were both published under different pen names, because God forbid a WOMAN publish a book back then.
But Charlotte didn't know what a gothic romance was. The term didn't exist. She just wrote a horribly tragic story about a young girl who is cast off by her wicked stepmother, and who then rises above her circumstances to eventually become lady of a fine old family. But she and her beloved both pay a price before they get there. Is it formulaic? Sure thing. But what isn't? I mean really, when you break down stories, there are only so many plots. But we'll get to that in another Craft Chat post.
Did JE pave the way for gothic romances? Well I don't know if it was the defining book, but does it really matter if it was? Fifty years later, Daphne du Maurier also didn't know what a gothic romance was, yet that's how some have chosen to label her works. She wrote dark, moody, heavy books with romantic overtones and some paranormal thrown in there as well. And others followed. So was she the queen of what would one day be called gothic romances?
The genre definitions are relevant today, but only for marketing purposes. That's their reason for existing. Where does it fit on the bookshelf? What demographic is going to buy this book? Two hundred years ago, publishers didn't face the same circumstances to deal with when they marketed a book that publishers face today. So comparing the labels isn't relevant. I'm not even sure they had labels back then, at least not to the extent we do today. And lately, as we've seen in Pop-Ups, people are simply making up genres if they can't find one that exists into which their book fits.
The definition of a romance novel I use is the one the RWA (Romance Writers of America) uses. It's the same one they've used pretty much since they were founded in 1980. They exist to uplift and support the genre and its writers and readers. As far as I know, it's the only professional writing organization of its kind that allows unpublished writers in that genre and others to join.
But I digress...
Again...
I think it's important when discussing any genre and its readers' expectations that we take into account the history of that genre, including books we've now gone back and labeled as belonging to that genre. Why? Because they all do have a history of sorts, even if the authors writing them at the time didn't have those labels or definitions in their world. It's important because it gives us accurate perspective from the standpoint of the authors writing those books. It gives us perspective from the standpoint of how they lived, what they did in their day-to-day lives, and how their expectations differed, or were similar to our own.
After all, none of us writes in a vacuum. They didn't either. And if they were women, they had shit to deal with that the women of today can hardly imagine having to put up with. I have the luxury of sitting down when I feel like it (around my work schedule, of course) and writing for as long as I want to. Fifty years ago, a woman my age wouldn't have had that luxury. One hundred years ago, a woman any age wouldn't have had that luxury.
They say perception is everything, and I would take that one step further. Perspective is also everything. So by all means let's bring works written years, decades, and even centuries ago into a discussion to illustrate a point. But bear in mind when they were written, and what that author's existence was like compared to our own, when we do bring them in. Because those things do matter.
But surely genres and genre beats aren't arbitrarily imposed. They are organic. They come from somewhere timeless. A good romance/horror/thriller etc writer should be able to instinctively hit those beats without ever needing to be told what those beats are.
Really interesting discussion.
Tim James
Basic
On Her Majesty's Secret Service has Bond fall in love with (heart and soul) and then marry Theresa/Tracey, with (SPOILER ALERT: Plot give away) unfortunately tragic consequences. However Ian Fleming was not a great romance writer and it is rather a misogynistic view of a relationship.
Carol Rose
Basic
- Thread starter
- #39
@Susan, what do you feel qualifies as a romantic sub plot, then? A mini romance novel inside a novel of a different genre? Because the whole point of this thread is that an author does not have to write their romance-inside-the-non-romance-novel the same as they would if that story was a romance novel, by genre definition. It can be anything they want it to be, even James Bond and his promiscuous behavior. Because he did love those women, even if that love was often short-lived.
Because he did love those women, even if that love was often short-lived.@Susan, what do you feel qualifies as a romantic sub plot, then? A mini romance novel inside a novel of a different genre? Because the whole point of this thread is that an author does not have to write their romance-inside-the-non-romance-novel the same as they would if that story was a romance novel, by genre definition. It can be anything they want it to be, even James Bond and his promiscuous behavior.
It's my feeling that a romantic subplot is indeed a condensed version of the romance novel steps, inside a novel of a different genre. Anything else is just sex or else a relationship-related subplot, but not a romance subplot (I'm tempted to use capital and small 'Rs' here). A romance subplot or romance novel is, I've always thought, the steps I mentioned previously:
Boy meets girl - a bad impression is somehow made
Actually, though, they do fancy each other (maybe secretly), but things get in the way of true love's progression
Boy and girl come close to bliss
Something goes excruciatingly wrong
Boy and girl realise the error of their ways and overcome all obstacles to relationship
I'd be interested if someone could give an example of a novel featuring a romantic subplot that doesn't feature traditional romance beats. I'd like to see what steps the example takes (obviously there will be no one-size-fits-all structure). Just curious.
Carol Rose
Basic
Carol Rose
Basic
- Thread starter
- #43
That sounds like fun to write!
Oooh, sounds intriguing.
C
CageSage
Guest
From a personal (writerly) viewpoint, I find romance to be the most difficult element of a story. Why? Because it's not easy to understand how people work - we can see it, imagine how it would be, but those two people are the ones feeling it, and that's why it's so hard to get across. to get the reader to feel it as the characters experience it is ... well, magic.
I find it easier to do fear and horror, but a romantic sub-plot adds so much more of a personal need and drive to any story ...
But, of course, that's just an opinion ...
I find it easier to do fear and horror, but a romantic sub-plot adds so much more of a personal need and drive to any story ...
But, of course, that's just an opinion ...
C
CageSage
Guest
Looking at the emotion behind the labels for genres (romance, horror, thriller) is the way to recognise the beats - a romance will have the high emotional beats associated with the romantic elements of the story; a horror will have the high emotional beats of being scared silly, etc. It's not the beats that are imposed arbitarily, but the emotions, and that's why we feel them, as a visceral element to the story - and in the right places for the build-up to the climax (what a word - what does that say in terms of emotional context?).
That's the way I see it, and that's the way I write it - the genre label is about the emotion the reader will expect from the story ...
Carol Rose
Basic
- Thread starter
- #47
- Status
Café Life Tag Cloud
agent
author
authors
book
books
cafe
calls for submissions
competition
conferences
contests
creative writing
editing
fantasy
fear
fiction
genre
greetings
huddle
inspiration
life
literature
litopia
motivation
new
new member
novel
novels
november
philosophy
poetry
publishing
reading
romance
science fiction
self-publishing
short stories
short story
stories
story
submissions
time
vanity
winners
words
world
writer
writers
writing
writing contests
zodiac
