Yes, this is going to be an opinionated post. That is: it’s my opinion. You may have your opinion, and I look forward to hearing it.
However, just because you have your opinion it doesn’t make mine any less valid. In 1794 if I had said that I considered the French Monarchy was a waste of space and you were of the opposite view, who was right? Was your opinion right? Was mine?
I like the Happy Ever After. Don’t get me wrong. I do. I WANT the Happy Ever After. I longed for Jack and Ennis to have ridden off to California and set up home. I want Romeo to get the note to say she’s NOT dead. Every. Single Time. I weep BUCKETS when I don’t get what I want. Everyone deserves to be happy.
I’m not here to overturn the barricades and to change the world, chopping at the pearl-adorned necks of those ladies who say that the HEA must exist. The HEA is a Good Thing.
With me so far? Good.
What I do object to is a label on my book saying “Romance.” Because this label tells me that I WILL get a happy ever after. Whether I’m ready for one or not.
It’s a safety net.
It’s someone standing in the theatre queue and saying loudly “The Butler did it.”
It spoils me. It’s just as much a spoiler as “Harry Potter doesn’t die.”
As someone recently said to me, a book is about the journey – and I totally agree about that. I buy a book that I don’t know with a sense of huge and tingling anticipation. It’s a virgin steppe, it’s an adventure. It could hold anything. It’s a treasure chest that only needs to be opened. It’s a river that will take me on a journey I can’t imagine.
I plunge into the current. I learn the world, I meet the characters. I fall in love and I’m swept away in the UST, the angst and the conflict. I hope and pray that the characters – who are so clearly mad for each other – will get together.
BUT.
I DON’T want to know that they will. I don’t want a little label on my book which tells me – even before I’ve opened the bloody book – that all will be well and that I don’t even HAVE to worry. Why give yourself high blood pressure? Why get invested in the story? Why fret? Look! There’s a label that tells you how the book is going to end. Hurrah!
Why then should I stress at your conflict? You might as well just tell me the end before I start. Oh, but you don’t have to. That little label “Romance” already has. Not hurrah.
Romance isn’t safe. It’s a leap of faith, a leap into the dark current of love and you risk all to hope you come out unscathed. When it ends well, it’s wonderful. When you risk all and lose? That can be wonderful too.
And what stories are remembered? Which ones live in the memory? Which ones live through time?
People don’t remember Caesar and Cleopatra, despite at least two of the best playwrights ever attempting to immortalise them. Despite them having their Happy for Now. Despite being “married”, and having at least one child. Or if they do, it is only because it is the pre-cursor to the greater and hugely destructive and doomed passion of Anthony and Cleopatra. That’s what people remember.
A lot of people don’t really care about what happens to Heathcliff after Cathy dies. The book ended there, for many many readers.
So who is going to remember the HEA’s of what is now marketed as Romance? In 100 years will we be still be reading and extolling “Tender Rebel” or “Captive of her Desires”? I doubt it.
But who is going to forget Tess, Juliet, Cathy, Madam Bovary, Anna Karenina, Scarlett, Jack and Ennis? Just because their stories ended badly, just because some American publisher or Board of some Romance Writers’ Association wants to slap a “Tragedy”, “love story” or “literature” label on them – does that make their romance any less valid?
I’ve had responses to my views before. “I couldn’t read those stories they upset me” – and that’s fine. But then if you haven’t read them, then you don’t get the right to criticise or deny the fact that they are romances. Great sweeping overpowering destructive violent romances, yes. But ROMANCES, over and above everything else.
I read a book a while back – written by one of the Macaronis, actually, but I won’t say who because if you are like me, it would spoil it for you. Right up until the last few pages I had no clue what was going to happen. In fact the author had convinced me that one of the protagonists was dead and I was weeping buckets. Brava!
If the book had been labelled Romance – I’d never have had that response. I would never have allowed myself to become so involved, to have invested such a huge amount of my emotion into it, because there would have been the safety net sitting there smiling and being SAFE. “It’s Ok,” it would have said, ” of course he’s not dead. See the label?” It would have ruined a great read for me, and would have been much less of a journey, an experience.
I’d like to see the categorisation changed; wishful thinking I know: it’s never going to happen, but in an ideal world I’d like people who want to be safe with their endings to have a sub-genre of their own such as “Romance – HEA” which guarantees the happy for the reader who doesn’t dare to dare. For the reader who wants to know where they are going when they get on the boat. For those who don’t want the current to sweep them away.
But just give me the genre of Romance, and I’ll take the risk with the protagonists. I’ll live every moment with them, I’ll cry, I’ll fear, I’ll laugh. And I won’t know what will happen until the protagonists do.
But I’ll HOPE. I’ll hope like hell.
And THAT’S what the journey is all about.
May 26, 2008 at 10:25 am
I have to say I agree with you. I don’t need to know the end from the beginning, and find that a turn off. Why read it if I know it’s all going to be okay?
I read books to become involved in the life, the love, the joy and the heartache of the characters. If they get a HEA at the end, jolly good show! But if they don’t I ache for them, and I remember them and I think I love them all the more for it.
Romance-HEA as a genre? Could be a way to go.
May 26, 2008 at 10:35 am
I suppose I quite like the convention or tradition that a romance is going to have a happy ending, because I’m a little timid and I do like to have a good idea of what I’m getting when I buy it.
What I don’t like is that the tradition should be turned into a rule. I also want the promise or potential that every now and again I could be surprised by a book.
I wouldn’t want the unhappy ending to become de-rigeur either, mind you! That would put us back to the situation where GBLT books were allowed as long as everyone dies horribly in the end, and the chances are that a lot of people would take that route because – because of Romeo and Juliet and the other antecedents – it has a pretense to making the book ‘more serious’ or ‘a real literary work of art’ or ‘courageous’. Whereas I would find a steady diet of unhappy rather depressing.
But my ideal would be that the tradition shouldn’t become a straitjacket either way. My ‘most wonderful book in the world’ top spot is still being held by a book with an unhappy (but uplifting) ending. So the idea of ever ruling such a thing out completely seems wasteful to me. A particular quality of awe and splendor is being ruled out by it.
May 26, 2008 at 10:37 am
I must agree with Erastes. I know of no other genre where the publishers insist on pre-determined endings, even if it would not be practical–for legal, societal or personal reasons–for the two to be eternally happy.
Let me compare it to another form of genre writing, the mystery.
The criminal isn’t always caught in the end. While that does happen frequently, it’s not inevitable. Moriarty types, who return again and again to plague the detective, are common. Sometimes the sleuth is the criminal. And sometimes even if the criminal is caught, the capture may solve one problem and spawn three more.
Mysteries can be as mannered as a Miss Marple cozy or as messy and complicated and tangled as real life. You don’t KNOW what kind of ending you’ll get, or if it will be happy or wry or tragic. All you know is that there will be a crime, and there will be detection of some sort. But the ending is not pre-determined. The ending of a mystery can surprise and shock, can draw chuckles from the reader or cause floods of tears. Nothing is set in stone.
It’s great.
But with romance–the very name proclaims that the ending must be happy. Once the ending is unhappy, it’s no longer considered a romance and must be published as a tragedy or as a mainstream novel.
This would not be quite so ludicrous if not for the blurbs on the novels. “Daphne is no longer as lovely as she was, but her old flame Maximilian cannot help but fall in love once again with her brilliance, her wit and her charm. Will they be happy this time around, or will they be unhappy and alone forever?”
Given romance’s predilection for happy endings that are pasted on yay, does any reader pick up such a book and honestly believe that Daphne and Maximilian aren’t going to end up together?
The happy ending isn’t wrong. The fact that the happy ending is the only option is. There are lots of different kinds of love stories: comic, tragic, elegant, plain, mysterious, fantastic, sweet, sophisticated and just plain outlandish. Shouldn’t all these love stories have the chance to conclude as they naturally would, rather than have “And so they lived happily ever after” tacked on?
May 26, 2008 at 11:28 am
I think that the genre of Romance is very similar to ’ship fan fiction as far as readers’ expectations go. Two attractive characters, a few bumps in the road, and the great Happily Ever After. The label is a safety net, but even more it is a safety blanket, something that you *know* will make you feel good. As a reader, there are times when I do want that security!
Perhaps an even better overall category would be ‘relationship story’… that would preserve the mystery of whether the relationship sweetened or soured, was ill-fated or HEA.
(Of course, I’m terribly biased: I do love a good 3-hanky novel….)
May 26, 2008 at 12:02 pm
My all time favorite, never to be toppled (thus far anyway) romance and yes, I call it a romance, is Edward Scissorhands. That doesn’t have a happy ever after sunshine, lolly pops and rainbows ending, rather, it has a lemon drops ending with Edward secluded away in the old mansion on the hill carving his ice sculptures every Christmas and the girl down in the town living her life, and regaling her grandchildren with the story…I adore that story and would not want it to end any other way. I’ll never forget it, and I will never watch the film without having a good boohoo at the end. Same goes for BBM.
May 26, 2008 at 12:57 pm
I’ve always thought the label “romance” has more to do with reader expectation than publisher or RWA designations. If I pick up a book labeled romance, I know I’m guaranteed a happy ending or at least a “happy for now”.
Most genre fiction, with a few exceptions, has a happy ending of sorts–crime stories, thrillers, sci-fi–end with the bad guys caught and good guys prevail. I knew Luke and Han would win over the Empire but it didn’t make Star Wars less enjoyable. (Even after I saw it for the twentieth time. *cackle*)
Don’t get me wrong. I love a good tear jerker. Some of my fav movies are ones with tragic endings–Shadowlands, Brokeback Mountain, City of Angels are a few on my keeper shelf. And a few writers cross over to the romance best seller lists with tragic love stories. Nicholas Sparks is a big example.
I like to lose myself in the journey of the story but be assured of a comfortable ending. Real life is filled with tragedy and usually doesn’t have a happy ending. I like a little escapism in my life.
May 26, 2008 at 1:20 pm
This reads like you sat down steamed, and while I hear what you’re saying, I don’t agree with all of it.
The “Romance” genre is, as I think somebody said on the Nymphs chat, as much a label as “Tea Cosy” mystery or “Hardboiled.” And it’s based on the fact that thousands of readers will stop reading a particular author if they hit a brick wall instead of a speed bump.
This may be an age issue–though I think it’s more a matter of taste… because no, I haven’t read Tess because the synopsis sounded dismal, I never liked Cathy or Heathcliff and didn’t care what happened to them, (same for Rhett and Scarlett), and I thought Romeo and Juliet were a pair of twits. As for Ceaser and Cleo, I think her snakey exit was what caught the attention–I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard Cleopatra in conjunction with asp.
I’m usually more interested in how characters work something out than in being sure they survive the story. I read a lot of nonfiction, so for me fiction generally is an escape–and it’s also a way of exploring new ideas.
My biggest reason for wanting HEAs in gay romantic fiction (I don’t really care about the name) is that until the past, maybe, 30 years — if you had gay lovers, it was bloody well guaranteed that they would never, never have a happy ending. At least one would be dead, and any survivors would be miserable and scarred for life.
Frankly, I’ve had enough of that. I want HEAs that show readers, especially younger readers who haven’t had a lot of experience with relationships, that there is hope and there are different ways of approaching relationship issues. (Having worked with a gal who obviously learned about relationships from soap operas, I think it’s good to have characters who model helpful behavior, eg, “If you don’t know why your partner is doing X, try asking.”
Standish wasn’t labeled a ‘romance’ and in my opinion, those two men are going to make each other miserable. It’s probably the best either can do in the way of a lasting relationship, in that era–but I don’t think it fits the category of “romance.”
I do think writers should be able to write outside categories. But yeah–when I’m reading a review I do want to know if the protagonists are both alive at the end (where there’s life there’s hope) and if they are not, I’m likely to read something more hopeful.
People can only take so much pain. When a reader picks up a book for escape, s/he may need to have that assurance of knowing what’s ahead, in a general way. I don’t mean formula–I don’t like formula–but having a roadsign that says “BRIDGE OUT” is useful.
I was with a group of intelligent, widely varied folks last night, and the subject of films came up — Schindler’s List, Private Ryan, Gallipoli, Brazil, Clockwork Orange–and about half of us were “Wow, great film, but I’d never want to watch it again.” About half of us never watched most of them and never would–not out of ignorance or lack of appreciation, but simply because they’d had enough real life trauma for now, thank you, and viewing for pleasure meant seeking an endorphin boost to make RL more endurable.
That’s why people want HEA. Or to put it another way, in basic terms for writers–what’s better, having readers come back because they know that, though you may put your characters through hell, they’re smart and lucky enough to come out the other end, or to have a reader say “Wow, that’s the best book I ever read, but I’ll never read that author’s stuff again.”
It may mark me as less intellectual, but I do tend to fall in that category–and I don’t really see anything wrong with the road signs being up.
May 26, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Color me ignorant (or perhaps too buried in my own work right now to look outward) but I wasn’t aware that HEA was an expectation of the Romance genre.
I have to say that I agree that it should be a sub-genre. My own preference is for bittersweet endings. That being said, I also love the HEA.
Lee Rowan has a good point, though. I can point to several books and films that were excellent, but I’d never read or watch them again because the ending was such a downer. If I’m looking for escape, which I frequently am, I’m not going to watch “Atonement” again, as outstanding as it was.
But overall, I think I like the risk of not knowing. I really don’t want to be told the ending. And as a writer, I don’t want to be told how to end my stories.
May 26, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Lee: Standish was labelled as a Romance: clearly on the back. I agree with you though, that they would have a rocky time of it. In my head they are still together, but Rafe hasn’t changed his spots and there have been many times when Ambrose regretted his decision.
I’m not saying I want sad endings, what I don’t want is knowing the ending before I start out.
Jessica: Yes – I’m afraid it is. I’m not sure where the rule came from, I was under the impression that it was the RWA who “defined Romance” a while back.
I have to agree with Tracey: the only thing wrong is that the HEA is the only option.
I know that sounds hypocritical as so far I’ve published Romance and I engineer my endings to be as realistic within the era that I can, but if I were to write a sad ending, I’d be horrified if my readers would refuse to buy my work again! Are people really that shallow? Surely it’s the writing that should be the draw, not the ending?
May 26, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Yes, I do like a HEA ending, but it is amazing what can happen if you write a book that doesn’t give you all the answers.
I recently wrote a story where the MCs hadn’t yet made a decision whether or not to become involved in a menage. To me it made perfect sense: two of the characters had been engaged in a committed relationship for many years. All three had become embroiled in a battle to prevent world wide destruction. To have them make a life altering move like this didn’t make sense to me.
There will be another story with these characters and yes, in this one they do make a decision. There are HEAs in the next one — but not for everyone at the end.
Does there have to be?
May 26, 2008 at 3:22 pm
Jeanne: I wish there didn’t but that’s pretty obvious at this point, I guess.
I have a novel which I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to sell because it’s a tragedy (and a true story) – even though in my head it’s a true Romance because it’s romantic as hell. It may fall down in the cracks.
May 26, 2008 at 3:42 pm
I’m all for the HEA, when the story warrants it.
I like the trend toward HEA in GLBT romance, for reasons stated above. I’m tired of The Dead Queer ending.
My problem is “define happy.”
Is it having a gorgeous wedding with a family you’ve just found again?
Is it passing a potentially lethal test and ending up back in the arms of the man you love, although neither of you would ever say the word, and being reassured you’re his–and always have been? (that was not considered HEA, and would have required professions of love and promises of forever)
Is it having one perfect weekend with a very ill lover and both being alive at the end, with hopes and plans for more weekends?
I’m rambling, but a happy-enough ending for one person is a downer for another.
When I pick up a Harlequin or an Ellora’s Cave or a Torquere, I’m not looking for deep engagement or twists and turns. I’m looking at story construction: how does the author create and sustain sexual tension? Does she overdo the description? How are the cliches?
If the story sweeps me up, great.
Otherwise, I’m studying my craft.
May 26, 2008 at 3:46 pm
Not at all rambly, Angelia! Thank you for your comment!
It’s awful when one stops reading as a reader and starts reading as a writer and editor isn’t it!!
May 26, 2008 at 4:26 pm
OMG, I was just *asking* yesterday! Didn’t mean for peepo to get all upset and stuffs.
For me, I don’t need a HEA, but I would like to see a together and working it out for now, with the possibility of HEA. Something that kinda gives hope for the future. Otherwise….how frickin depressing.
I dunno…it’s just not very romantic for me when two people meet, lust, argue, and go their separate ways. I can watch the news, or read TMZ.com for that. I can deal with angst and issues, but if a book is so angsty I wanna cut my wrists with the character, that is a bit of a turn off too. Again, I got plenty of real life angst. Books I read to take me *away* from that.
I kind of agreed with that growly thing when it said that HEA or HFN was kind of expected of the Romance genre in the same way that solving the crime by the end of the book is expected of the Mystery genre. Who would read the Sherlock series if shit wasn’t elementary and he just couldn’t figure the crimes out? Unsolved Mysteries are no fun. Neither are unromantic Romances.
I’ll give you an example. I thought Julia Talbot’s Jumping into Things was too cute for words. I was devastated (as much as a person can be by fiction) when she promptly broke up my two fave characters in the sequel, Landing With Both Feet. I deleted every ebook of hers that I owned and haven’t read her since. Well, under that pseud. Fairly sure she has more. But still, she was roundly trashed by alot of former fans, to the point that she then had to write a third book with the HEA in it.
May 26, 2008 at 4:41 pm
I think a lot of publishers will accept a “happy for now”. There doesn’t have to be a wedding or vows of forever. My first Ellora’s Cave story-a m/m vamp–ended with a very ambiguious situation for my heros. In my world, vamps are territorial and unable to live in peace near each other. So when my vamp hero was forced to turn his lover or let him die, he turned him. Now what? If they can’t stay together, how do you have a happy ending?
All my editor asked was that I give them hope for the future. Which was a simple as the newly turned vamp saying they would find a way.
I think it’s the killing of one of the main characters that throws a story completely out of the romance genre. Which is why Standish was probably classified in the genre.
I admit I haven’t read Standish. Sad to say, my time has limited me to reading for research and I don’t write historicals. That being said, the controversy has piqued my interest so I ordered Standish this morning.
May 26, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Oh Emmy – I didn’t get upset. This is something I’ve blogged about before, here and there. No-one really ever agrees with me! No worries.
The thing about mysteries, as Tracey says higher up, is that they are not always solved. Usually they are, granted, but not always. The criminal doesn’t always get caught or punished even if the crime is solved.
I’m so sorry that you did that to Julia’s work, just because one book disappointed you. I do like her m/m historicals. I’d be horrified if a reader did that because one book of mine was one they didn’t like. I’ve only ever stopped reading someone because the writing has deteriorated to a stage where it becomes unreadable, such as JKRowling or Frank Herbert. It often happens that I read something and think “hmm that’s not what I was expecting from them” but that’s about it.
Shayla: oh they will, yes.
I’m not sure what you mean here:
My overall point is from a reader’s perspective though, not from a writer. I write Romance and I’m very happy to continue to provide HEA’s but as a reader, it’s a different thing.
May 26, 2008 at 5:51 pm
I meant that publishers won’t classify Romeo and Juliet as a romance because everyone dies. Or even if only one of the h/h died.
From what little I know about Standish, I presume everyone lives although some readers didn’t think it was an HEA ending. So it would stand a publisher’s “test” as a romance. But like I said, I haven’t read it. Yet. Amazon says it should be here by the 30th. (I love Amazon Prime…)
May 26, 2008 at 6:00 pm
HEFN
I like that: happy enough for now.
I think that might become my mantra.
New classification fot some of my books: HEFN.
OTOH, it does say something that you’ve made the characters so real that you do care what happens to them after you close the book and want to know more.
There are some writers who have done that to perfection.
May 26, 2008 at 7:26 pm
My understanding of the term “Romance” in the modern genre sense is that it’s “a love story with a happy ending.” Romeo & Juliet et al. can be considered great (or not) tragic love stories by this definition, but not “Romance” in the strict genre-fiction meaning.
Whether we like this definition of the category or not, I think it’s the way readers and publishers see it.
As to preferences: in reading, I’m with the “reading for escape” crowd. I do like to know that what I’m getting into will have at least a hopeful ending, especially for GLBT stories. Even if the story is set in a time when it was dangerous to be queer, I love that a good writer of fiction can use his or her imagination to find a way around that, at least partly.
But when it comes to writing, as a writer, I hate that my work has to get a damn label on it. Not just because it spoils the story, but because it leads to a whole set of expectations about the writing style, the kind of story, the characters, and on and on.
As Erastes says:
God, yes! But the other side of this is that readers and reviewers like labels. Many readers want to read a “romance” precisely because of the happy ending. Other readers won’t touch a “romance”–hell, they won’t even walk near that section of the store in case they get HEA cooties–no matter how good the writing style.
Thanks for writing this, Erastes, because it made me rethink my own aversion to labels. We’re all stuck with them now as writers, and all we can do is try to expand the boundaries. It’s a straitjacket, but maybe, just maybe, we can work at the laces and give the genre some wiggle room. (Sorry for the mixed metaphors.)
May 26, 2008 at 8:21 pm
It just reminds me of fanfcition and the occasional wave of argument and grief and anger when someone – ‘cruelly, viciously, obviously deliberately’ – forgets to post a character-death warning. God forbid it should be a suspense or thriller story. Or they get their pairing wrong.
That’s a comminuty where people *want* to know what happens, else they don’t even start to read.
We all have times we want to know what to expect, at least in broad terms. And I *have* thrown a book across the room a couple of times in disgust at the ending.
(now *there’s* a topic I might use sometime for discussion… *g*)
But I agree with everyone, reading is an adventure, and anyone who’s ever read a thriller where one of the good guys gets shot in the last chapter (THANKS A BUNCH Jeffrey Deaver) knows it can – and should – go all ways.
I wondered what you thought about the comment yesterday which said an author could use ‘love story’ as the genre rather than ‘Romance’? So that ‘Romance’ could keep its comfortable expectation armchair, and any other romantic (with a small r) story could promise both relationship and suspense without distressing the readership.
(don’t think that was the poster who brought the discussion to rather an abrupt halt, sorry if I mis-remembered and it was).
I just hate too many titles anyway. I’m already confused when my m/m books have m/f in them, let alone scifi or fantasy elements, or my ripper novel has both bodices and breeches in disarray….
Like someone else said, we just need to keep stretching the hems until the size fits far more body shapes than it does now…
May 27, 2008 at 12:24 am
I agree with you. And I don’t.
I read one category romance when I was a teenager and haven’t read another since. I don’t like formula stories. However, I’m also the type to check the ending in a bookstore, before I buy, to be sure that the protags I intend to fall in love with survive to the end of the story.
I appreciate that an ending must suit a story, must make sense in the context of it, and that grim endings can be powerful and convey a certain message that couldn’t be as beautifully conveyed with a happy ending.
I don’t ask for fairytale endings (though I like them well enough). But I can’t follow a character through two or three hundred pages of struggle only to watch him die at the conclusion. It feels so pointless. Oh sure, it may have a point in the story–but if I can’t close the book with the feeling that this character will go on to some measure of happiness and a better life because of his experiences, then I just feel heartsick and gloomed for ages after.
I think I appreciated the dark angst better when I was young and innocent. After enough of the miseries of real life, these days I’m drawn to the comfort-food of HEA. And it doesn’t have to even be happily-ever-after. Hopefully-ever-after works for me, too.
I still stay away from fiction that allows for nothing else except the HEA. I think it’s lame to have required templates for fiction, like some publishers do. I guess I should be grateful I’m not one of those people who’ve gotten to a point where they need their fiction that rigidly defined.
But I also read reviews closely to get a sense of whether my heart will be ripped to shreds at the story’s end, and if I think it will, I don’t buy the book. My heart’s been beat up enough in real life, thanks. Maybe in twenty years I’ll feel differently. I won’t be a chickenshit about jumping into completely unknown waters. Sometimes I do feel bad that I have less courage these days. But at this particular time in my life, I need the happy at the end. It’s all part and parcel of the things that keep me personally uplifted when I need it the most.
That said, I wouldn’t cross an author off my list forever if I disliked one book. While I do find some authors tend to re-write (consciously or not) the same story over and over (including bestseller authors), I am always willing to give an author a second chance to win me over.
May 27, 2008 at 3:47 am
Weird, but I never looked at the back of Standish to see what it was supposed to be–I just read it. I just figured Ambrose stayed with Rafe because in many ways it was his best option (unless Fleury went out and struck it rich somehow in the Wild West, then came back and they ran away together…)
The author I had in mind, by the way, was Harlan Ellison. Fascinating person, one hell of a public speaker, unquestionably a brilliant writer, but I stopped reading him after his 3rd or 4th “Life’s a Bitch and Then You Die” book… because no, I don’t read to see how adroitly a writer can perform open-heart surgery on a conscious patient. Ellison even managed to write a Star Trek episode with a painful ending, and Trek was about as upbeat as you could get. (Growing up in the age of the Atom Bomb, the notion that there would be a future worth living in was pretty revolutionary.) And as others have said here & elsewhere, most of what’s been touted to me as “Great Lit’rachure” is grim and miserable–and makes me wonder why I spent n hours of my life in someone else’s depression incubator.
There are so many different reasons people read and/or write that I think categories may do a small amount of harm, in one particular way — having a label like “Romance,” with the ultra-predictable formula that was developed for the genre, may turn off readers who don’t realize that it’s not all formula anymore (especially with GLBT books) or who consider themselves
Literary Readers who don’t want to go slumming. But in a way, those readers are just as blind as the folks who don’t have much imagination and want the formula boy-meets-girl, dumb complication ensues, boy-and-girl-get-back-together formula.
On the other hand, people who want a particular type of book will stick to their genre, whatever it may be, while those who want to be surprised are free to shop around.
As folks have said on the Smart Bitches blog, nobody really knows what ‘great literature’ is being written right now. Dickens was a serial-writing hack, Jane Austen was just writing to make a living, William Shakespeare was stealing plots from Plutarch and throwing in rude jokes for the folks in the cheap seats. All we can do is write the best stories we can and hope people are still reading ‘em in a hundred years. The genre pigeonholes won’t matter then.
May 28, 2008 at 9:50 pm
Wow! This really hits home for me. When I first started writing, and was naive (unaware of the HEA romance must-have), I wrote a story where the protags married at the half-way point and then proceeded to be torn apart by circumstances. My CP’s said, “There’s more? But it’s over. They married. They have their HEA.”
It floored me that they couldn’t concieve of a continuation of a story between two married people. And when the end came and the hero lay unconscious, and the heroine unable to wake him, they shook their heads and told me that I couldn’t write this. It wasn’t a romance.
I stuttered, still ignorant of the law, “It’s meant to continue…like Star Wars.. There’s another book.” More blank stares.
Since then, I’ve realized that rules could be bent, if you were writing in certain genres of romance, say, fantasy or sci-fi, suspense or mystery. That a HFN could exist, as long as there was hope for the HEA.
Do I want to read a great love story where everyone ends up dead, or destroyed, or miserable? Not really. I want the HEA, and I’m willing, if the story and characters are good enough, to wait for it. Maybe a couple of books, but by then, dang it, I want some happiness!
May 29, 2008 at 9:06 am
Thanks Lynn! And yes, I can see that your story made sense to you and yet the Romance types would have been up in arms! Just think – would GWTWind have even been LOOKED at by a publisher these days?
“It’s too bloody long”
“It’s politically incorrect, I think the blacks should be treated better.”
“That ending? No-one will read it, no-one will want more.”
I want happiness too, but I don’t want it to be a Rule. Life just ain’t like that – and there are still real love stories, real romances that don’t – can’t – end happily, but I wouldn’t miss the love story, for all that.
May 30, 2008 at 2:10 am
Here, here! I am 100 percent in agreement. I don’t want to know ahead of time how a story is going to end. I’ve read so many comments from readers who ask, “Is there a HEA? No? I’ll pass on reading that, then.” And then I know of at least one site that REQUIRES an HEA for you to submit your book for review!
For my book, “The Filly” several reviewers spoiled whether or not there was an HEA, which I’d have preferred if they hadn’t, but oh, well…
May 30, 2008 at 8:19 am
Thanks Mark, I’m beginning to think that we are in the minority, because I simply don’t understand people who want to know the ending before they set out!
May 30, 2008 at 7:12 pm
I do like a HEA ending, but I also like leaving a hint that maybe things may not stay that way. Maybe after the door closes in the book, the villain who didn’t quite die finds the lovers and…who knows what?
Or the thought that maybe the love between the h/h is not quite that sturdy and may not last that far past the last page?
or the hero/heroine hasn’t quite made up his or her mind about the direction the relationship might go.
What we really should concentrate on is making our readers want to know more!
January 21, 2009 at 8:16 pm
[...] – “no, I have an opinion, and I had the right to express it” so I’ve posted my thoughts on the HEA and why I think it needs to be a SUB genre of “Romance” over at The … I KNOW that just about everyone disagrees with me, so please pop over and have some lively (and [...]
February 7, 2009 at 4:21 am
Happy. Ever. After.
Yes, it happens in Romance.
But sometimes…it doesn’t.
Who will they remember?
February 7, 2009 at 10:05 am
I agree, Don. The ones that stay with me are the non-happy.