Hands up if you’ve heard a variation on this theme:

Romance is all very well but I prefer books with a plot.

Sorry, I just don’t write that much sex. I prefer to concentrate on character development.

(As Moira Rogers put it in response to that last: SON, YOU ARE WRITING SEX WRONG.)

I don’t know how we got to this point, where a love story is not a plot and sex is dissociated from character development. Yes, we’ve all read plenty of crap romance where boy/girl meets boy/girl/tentacle monster, everyone gets on fine, sex happens, HEA. But since when does a genre have to be typed by the least crafted examples? If I say I like action thrillers, I expect people to assume I mean good action thrillers, excellent examples of the genre that anyone might enjoy. Yet romance novels are pretty much assumed by people who don’t read them to be the book equivalent of Sharknado 2.

Sure, some people write plotless books, and pointless sex that doesn’t advance the reader’s understanding or the characters’ relationship.

~~METAPHOR KLAXON~~

Them: I don’t like squid, it’s rubbery.

Me: Squid is only rubbery when it’s badly cooked. It needs to be cooked for a few seconds or a few hours.

Them: I had it once and it was rubbery.

Me: Yes, because it was badly cooked. Try some properly cooked squid.

Them: No, it’ll be rubbery. I know this because I had it once.

Me: Millions of people all over the world enjoy squid regularly. Do you think they all like chewing on inner tubes? Doesn’t that suggest you had a bad experience rather than that all squid is bad? Perhaps you may not be fully informed on the subject?

Them: I had squid once and it was rubbery.

Me: /gives up, eats all the squid/

~~METAPHOR ENDS~~

The funny thing about the dismissal of romance as plotless is that ‘romance’ once meant fiction. The term came from a word meaning ‘to write in the language people speak’ (ie not the Latin of the educated elite but the language accessible to everyone ). Because the stories people tell each other are usually exciting and interesting, the word shifted its meaning to cover any narrative of adventure, excitement: a good story that people enjoyed. And a lot of those stories, the ones people told each other, were love stories. By the 17^th century ‘romance’ had extended its meaning to cover both love stories and the act of making up stories in general. To call your book ‘A Romance’ just meant ‘an adventure, a fictional story’. The meaning of romance didn’t contract to ‘love affair’ until the 20^th century.

I think it’s a damn sad reflection on our times that we have taken love stories and pulled them out of the general mass of stories and said, ‘These things are separate, or different, or bad.’

Name me a great piece of writing that doesn’t acknowledge love as a, perhaps the, key motivator of human existence. It’s not so easy, is it? Falling in love is a motivation. So is falling out of love. So is being in love with someone who doesn’t reciprocate, or needing to find your way back together, or learning what you’ll do for love, good or ill. Much of Shakespeare is love stories, and some of them even have happy endings.

Yet we have decided that a love story with a happy ending has to be called a romance and shoved aside into its own little ghetto of crapness. Here’s Nicholas Sparks, who writes stories about love affairs that he himself describes as “’will he love me?’ ‘Do I love him?’ ‘Is this the right decision?’” on why he isn’t a romance novelist. (Try not to throw stuff.)

I haven’t written a single book that could even be accepted as a romance novel. I mean, there’s a completely different voice. They’ve got very specific structures; they’ve got very specific character dilemmas; they end completely differently; and they’ve got certain character arcs that are required in their characters — I do none of those things.

This is basically the (surprisingly widespread) belief that Harlequin hands out a list of approved plots to which all romance writers must adhere. Whatever. Nicholas Sparks doesn’t want to be a romance novelist because he doesn’t want to be typed into a much-despised genre. So he’s redefined romance as ‘something that I don’t write’ via the medium of patronising nonsense.

Well, you know what, I am bored of having my work and my reading defined by misogyny, ignorance, and ego.

I write romance. That means that I tell stories. Made-up stories of people motivated by love and hate and desire and need and fear and danger, and all those thrilling emotions that get the heart pounding. Stories about people trying to achieve some of the most basic drivers of human existence: to be safe, to be happy, to be loved and needed and valued. Stories about people overcoming challenges, big and small, in themselves or between one another or with the outside world. Stories about people.

That’s what romance is, that’s what I write, what we write and read, and if you can see anything in there that excludes plotting or character development, do let me know.

_______________

KJ Charles is a romance author with a high body count. Her next book is The Secret Casebook of Simon Feximal (coming from Samhain on 16 June), which offers Victorian occult, political intrigue, untold stories, secret lives, deadly cults, unjust law, the Wild Hunt, two oddly matched men falling in love, and a certain amount of grumpiness at breakfast. ‘Prefer a plot’ indeed. Bah.