Malinda Lo
Blog
Apr 22, 2010
What makes a good romance?
I‘ve never considered myself a romance reader, but lately I’ve been thinking a lot about what makes a romance work. This is because there is a romance in Huntress, and initially, it totally did not work. Over the course of several drafts I had to fix it.
I started out by reading a some YA romances (they shall remain unnamed). The problem was, they didn’t grab me at all. Many of them are about a girl who instantly falls for a sexy/moody/hot boy, and right away that leads to a couple of problems for me.
First, I found that the girl often fell for the boy on first sight — just because he was cute — and his attractiveness was described in quite a lot of detail. A lot of people like to read exactly what a character looks like, but I don’t. When a character is supposed to be attractive, I don’t want to know too much about how they look, because chances are, that look isn’t going to work for me. Everybody has their own personal tastes. But in a lot of these novels, the boy is described so exactly that little room is left for the imagination, and I think that a lot of romance is actually about the imagination: anticipation, hope, longing.
Second, the boy’s personality never seemed to live up to their physical attractiveness. I found that the boy was often so in love with the girl that most of his personality seemed to be enmeshed in the girl — in keeping her safe, in making her happy, etc. As a reader, I want the characters to have separate and distinct personalities, and I want them to do things. I also am not a big fan of boys being overprotective of their girlfriends, or of girls yearning to be sheltered by their boyfriends. Frankly, that’s a turnoff for me. I feel like romance — real and fictional — should be about thinking bigger, taking risks and doing more.
So. Where did that leave me? I started to think about and read adult novels with romance in them. I thought maybe I was just having an aversion to teenage romance because of its rose-colored glasses, fuzzy focus nature.1
While I’ve never read much romance of the bodice-ripper variety, I realized that many of the adult novels I enjoy do have romance in them, but they tend to be more in the romantic suspense category. Mary Stewart, for example, with her fantastic Nine Coaches Waiting, or any of Elizabeth Peters/Barbara Michaels’ dozens of gothic romances. Romantic suspense gives the characters something to do while falling in love with each other. This is something I really need, as a reader (I’m just predisposed to enjoy mysteries, I guess).
I also reread Tipping the Velvet by Sarah Waters, which is not strictly a romance, but it sure is brimming with love (and lustiness). Rereading that novel showed me that a successful romance is all about the build-up — a kiss is meaningless unless the reader is primed to want it. It’s all that foreplay, frankly, that drives it home.
This may be why a lot of love-at-first-sight tales don’t work for me. I need to have an emotional investment in the characters in order to identify with their desires.
Waters also is relentless in her intense description of the physicality of romance. Her characters always seem to be shaking when they get close enough to touch their love interest; their feelings become manifest in their hands, in their faces, in their voices. This is something that I have had a hard time doing in my own work, because I’m so afraid of being too melodramatic. Reading Waters actually made me feel a lot more free about layering on the emotion, because you know what? First love is totally melodramatic. It’s excruciating and overwhelming and amazing, and Waters is brilliant at describing it.
I was eighteen, and knew nothing. I thought, at that moment, that I would die of love for her. — Tipping the Velvet
Reading Persuasion by Jane Austen was also eye-opening. I was surprised by the amount of sexual tension Austen could build with her quite reserved prose. There was one scene in which Anne Elliot is being attacked by her nephews, and Captain Wentworth comes and plucks one of them off her back while not saying a single word to her. This scene followed after chapter upon chapter of build-up in which Anne was constantly thinking about Wentworth and his proximity to her. So when he was so close — and, yes, when he saved her — I actually thought, “Oh my god! He almost touched her!” (swoon)
One of the YA books I read that really did work for me was Laini Taylor’s Lips Touch. I read the first page in a bookstore and practically fell over. Her prose was so precisely designed; so elegantly suffused with emotion.
The goblins want girls who dream so hard about being pretty their yearning leaves a palpable trail, a scent goblins can follow like sharks on a soft bloom of blood. The girls with hungry eyes who pray each night to wake up as someone else. Urgent, unkissed, wishful girls. — Lips Touch
It’s been so interesting to read these books and think about how to evoke those feelings in my own writing. I think that I was always taught, in English class and in writing workshops, to avoid overwriting. I’ve always had a kind of paralyzing fear about it — a fear that I would somehow slip over the edge and become a hack. So I tend to be reserved in my fiction, afraid to overstep the bounds of good taste.2
This may be partly because in my personal life, I’ve always been intensely emotional, and I’ve had to learn how to deal with those emotions in a healthy way. One of those ways is writing: I have reams of journals, poems, letters, etc., completely covered in purple prose.
So, what makes a good romance? For me, it’s the courage to spill all those blood-and-guts moments out onto the page in a way that the reader recognizes as real. It’s not about how hot some boy is. It’s about taking the yearning and desire bubbling inside, and turning it out, laying it out in the open, so that a reader can drink it all up, and understand with their gut why that character loves another.
What makes a good romance for you? Feel free to share book recommendations, but please don’t bash any living authors here, even bestselling ones.
I actually recently wrote a few blog posts about romance and how despite loving romances in books, I can’t seem to get behind a lot of the love stories in books these days. (I also said I had some trouble with female characters losing agency/personality/focus in love stories. Maybe I’m just a little soured on heterosexual romance though.)
Yet! Here are my favourite romances of all time!
1. NAAMAH’S KISS by Jacqueline Carey. High fantasy, very erotic. A companion series to her bestselling KUSHIEL books. Not just one romance in here, but the one that slayed me was between Moirin and Jehanne.
2. ANNE OF GREEN GABLES (specifically ANNE OF THE ISLAND) L.M. Montgomery. The build-up and then payoff over the course of three books is DELICIOUS.
3. THE BOOK THIEF by Marcus Zusak. Um, not an obvious choice, but I loved the relationship between Liesel and Rudy.
4. HIS DARK MATERIALS by Philip Pullman. I’m not sure if it’s Lyra and Will’s love story that moves me as much as the descriptions of falling in love by Mary Malone in THE AMBER SPYGLASS, but still, my heart aches every time I read this. Flail.
Thanks for including your links! I love ANNE OF GREEN GABLES and HIS DARK MATERIALS. I think the relationship between Lyra and Will is very well done — it made me sob at the end I found it so moving.
Re: heterosexual romances, yes, I find them a bit overwhelmingly heterosexist at times, underscoring all those traditional roles. If you need a breather, you should read THE BLUE PLACE by Nicola Griffith. That is a crime novel in which there happens to be a lesbian love story.
I am just now rewriting something I’ve been working on for some time, and when I returned to it after letting it rest I found that the romance in it did exactly what you described in the post. I feel better now that I see it and can change things around accordingly. It was kind of alarming to see how awful the male main character was, actually.
(Lesson learned: always let your writing take a good long rest before proceeding.)
Personally I really love the Jessica Darling series by Megan McCafferty. I’ve only read the first (of seven!) and it’s not fantasy, but it’s a different take on romance so far. I love anything by Maureen Johnson, too, and as for fantasy… Tender Morsels. Which sounds weird, I know, because it’s so dark, but I had high hopes for one of the characters, was majorly disappointed when it didn’t happen, until I realised that the way the author went was much better for the story itself.
I love Tipping the Velvet too, and especially the quote you picked out.
Will definitely take a look, thank you! Someone else recommended THE WILL OF THE EMPRESS by Tamora Pierce to me, in which the only love story was an incidentally lesbian one.
(I realise it’s a hard criterion to fill when I ask for great books with wonderful romance integral to the story, but to not have it be THE story.)
One of the reasons I haven’t read as much lesbian fiction as I would like is that so much of it centers around schmaltzy, codependent, emo, love-at-first-sight unrealistic romance. I find it hard to care about the characters in such stories.
I like your suggestion about having the characters doing something besides trying to fall in love or pining for someone they can’t have. I discovered a possible romance creeping into my current work-in-progress, but the plot doesn’t center around it.
The romance can add further dramatic tension to a separate storyline where the main character and the love interest have strongly opposing goals in an non-romance related conflict.
Sadly, I don’t have any GLBT romance to recommend =/ That’s why I’m participating in the challenge
I would recommend If You Come Softly by Jacqueline Woodson. Short book but so well done and so much is going on in those few pages. I love it
I think that taking some time away from a book is essential in revision. Everything becomes so much clearer after a break!
I’ve been interested in reading some Megan McCafferty for a while actually … I’ll have to push her up the TBR list. And I have TENDER MORSELS on audiobook, randomly, and want to listen to it soon.
Yes! I know there’s a huge lesbian romance market, but it hasn’t really drawn me. And yes, romance totally adds tension — I think a really great story always has romance, but I like something more on the side, too.
Thanks for the rec, Ari! I’ve been meaning to read some of Jacqueline Woodson — it’s kind of crazy that I haven’t yet. And any romance recs are welcome here, not only LGBT ones.
It may be hard criterion, but I’m with you. I think it’s just the difference in reading tastes. Not all readers agree with us.
_The Time Traveler’s Wife_ is a great love story, and plays with the idea of love at first sight because when they meet for the first time in Clare’s timeline, she’s only six but then she feels sort of forced to fall in love with him because she knows she eventually will anyway. And Henry doesn’t fall in love with Clare at first sight in his timeline, but she’s already in love with him and…..this must sound really confusing if you haven’t read the book. Have you?
Sharon Shinn is one of my favorite Sci-fi fantasy authors, and while I read her books primarily for her wonderfully crafted worlds and always-excellently crafted plots, she almost always has superb romance simmering in the background.
Often the characters are at odds in the beginning, but as the story progresses I find myself yelling at my book “Just KISS HER already!!!”
Heh.
Wow. I think I have to read Lips Touch now; that was so gorgeously evocative.
I really agree with this post. If the buildup is done right then one look or word can leave the reader and characters breathless. I love romance with a long, slow build of tension. But I also love romance that happens as part of people’s everyday lives–especially with good communication. So many cliche romance novels or movies manufacture misunderstandings to keep their couple apart, so it’s really refreshing to me when characters speak frankly and reasonably to each other about their relationship.
I do sometimes like to read about characters who are overly co-dependent, maybe because it lends itself to those hyper-strong emotions. But it has to make sense– such characters often live highly traumatic or isolated lives. If it’s just your regular high school girl and her moody boy, I don’t buy it.
As for recs– I wish I was home so I could scan my bookshelf. I definitely second the Time Traveler’s Wife.
Sarah Rees Brennan’s The Demon’s Lexicon doesn’t deal with romantic love so much as fraternal love, but the emotional portrayal is deep and very well done (especially considering the MC isn’t good with words).
Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto is about a lot of things, but features a gorgeous, sexy romance between a translator and the terrorist girl to whom he begins teaching literacy.
Great topic! First of all, please write more lesbian romance novels, please!
Also, I want to say that love at first sight shouldn’t get a bad rap. All love starts with a spark that seems to come from nowhere – whether it’s love at first sight or friendship that suddenly sparks to something more – there’s a shift that comes out of the blue.
I loved Fingersmith by Sarah Waters so please if you haven’t read that yet, read it! It’s also suspenseful and mysterious and sensual and romantic.
I agree with many of the others already mentioned…I’ll just go ahead and add a few of my own favorites…
There Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston – I love that it begins when a young girl realizes with relish that she is like an open flower, waiting for a bee. So many love stories begin with the promise of a beautiful young girl ready for love – but Hurston writes from inside the heart of that girl, expectant, waiting to be courted. It’s not a happy ending, but it’s one of the best, most nuanced love stories ever told.
Howl’s Moving Castle – This is such a strange fable-like story – no-one is what they seem to be. Howl acts like a brooding teenage boy and is rumored to eat the hearts of young girls, but he is also a powerful wizard and under some sort of dangerous spell. Sophie is also under a spell – one that makes her appear to be an old woman. When she takes refuge with Howl, her old-lady personality makes a good match for his melodrama, but you think her love will be unrequited because, well, she’s a grandma. When the spells are broken, you realize that the grandma and the young girl are both part of who she is.
A Room with A View – E.M. Forster writes about class division in a way that makes you understand why women went stark raving mad in the nineteenth century. The first impulsive moments of contact between the lovers are almost accidental and at first the young man seems crazy to be so passionately in love so quickly. But gradually the accident begins to seem like fate or good luck because you realize that her only chance at happiness is to embrace his insane loyalty to their love.
The Horse-Dealer’s Daughter and You Touched Me by D.H. Lawrence – Nothing could be more intensely romantic than these short stories. In each one a chance encounter leads to an intimacy that can’t be denied. In each story the intimacy ends up being a welcome relief from a cold world. But they are surprising, sudden accidents: in the Horse-Dealer’s Daughter a veterinarian taking a short-cut becomes the savior of a young woman who mistakes this act for love – but he finds he doesn’t want to disabuse her of that notion. In You Touched Me a case of mistaken identity leads to a single caress that breaks through a proper young woman’s shell. The characters almost literally trip and fall into love or, to be precise, into an awareness of desire that opens the door onto what looks like love. We leave the short stories too soon to know what will happen, but Lawrence lets us hope it will be good.
When it comes out in May, pick up Illyria by Elizabeth Hand. It’s a love story about a love that is secret and forbidden, but also magical, passionate and deep.
The Rapture of Canaan – Sheri Reynolds – About a young woman discovering her own desires in a strict fundamentalist Christian sect. A stay-up-all-night read.
Haven’t read it, but your description intrigues me. I had no idea that’s what it was about! I play with that kind of thing in my next novel actually.
I agree that codependent love can be very interesting to read about, and it’s definitely often a reality. LOL.
Wow, thanks for all those recommendations! I have read Fingersmith, and really loved it. I read Howl’s Moving Castle when I was a kid and can’t remember ANY of that plot. I only remember enjoying it. I’ll have to pick it up again sometime.
Tender Morsels is a really heavy read. You feel like you’ve been wrung inside out at the end of it, but in a good way. Still, I highly recommend it, it was probably the most challenging (as English is not my first language books that are hard reads or just has a lot of info in few pages are kind of challenging to me), sad, yet hopeful book I read last year.
I really agree with you re: Sarah Waters’ incredible ability to create suspense and longing for something as simple as a kiss. I find that all of her novels to date have this embedded in them. I think it’s part of the reason I love reading her work so much. I actually think her best example of this is in Fingersmith.
I will say that I think you did an excellent job of doing just that (in a more YA way obviously, haha) in Ash. I thought the relationship between Ash and the Huntress was perfectly built up.
“The Book Thief” isn’t really a romance, but it’s a fantastic book. How about any of John Green’s stuff? Again, not strictly romance, but there’s usually at least one love story in the book. “Looking For Alaska” is one of my favorite books of all-time.
I read Tender Morsels, and I would highly recommend reading it as opposed to listening to it. Kaia is right- english IS my first language, and I love to read, but this was a very difficult read because you won’t have a clue what is going on… then *SLAP*, holy cow… THAT’S what that meant! I think it was written intentionally. I found myself going back to re-read lots of points since the plot wouldn’t evolve until two chapters later. One of the best books I have ever read. It was beautiful, ugly, loving, depressing, uplifting and hating… every emotion is pulled in this book.
This may sound a bit silly… but I would recommend Karen M. Moning’s Fever Series. Starting with Dark Fever. I never found myself reading romance, however, I was intrigued because I LOVE science fiction and Fae. And she has both. The relationship between the main character, Mac, and a gentleman you love to hate and hate to love is very intriquing. I don’t want to give out details. But this is NOT, wow, he is hot… I want him… This is more like, he is hot, but dangerous and I do NOT want him at ALL. It’s like a tug of war. Are they? Aren’t they? There are HUGE barriors, emotionally and physically, interrupting them. I would highly recommend it.
Another book I would recommend is “The Knife of Never Letting Go”.