One of the things I’ve been doing this past month is helping get the Queeromance Ink book-link site up and running. And in the process, I stumbled across an old question. When is a book really “Romance” and when isn’t it? And while Queeromance Ink has inclusiveness and wide access as a primary goal, it still arose in some discussions of how the site would function, and in reader questions.
Defining romance came up in two ways. One was in deciding which books actually belong on a site labeled “Queer Romance?” We want readers to find all the stories they’ll love, but without being lost in unrelated books. That means deciding what type of books to include, or not, at some level, to avoid being swamped and to keep the site on focus. When will it be helpful to the readers to say “that book is outside the purview of this site?” Lack of LGBTQIAP content is an easy answer, but what about lack of enough romance content?
The other was in the discussion of custom fields, to help readers with searches. Scott’s beta testers said they wanted to be able to search for “HEA- Happy Ever After” or “HFN – Happy For Now” or “Bittersweet” or “Cliffhanger” endings. (As entered by the authors, and hidden behind a spoiler tag, for those who don’t want to know.) Which raised the question – if a book is bittersweet, is it really a romance? Does it belong on the site?
The M/M genre is where I most commonly see the questions of “what is a real romance plot” arise, although maybe because that’s where I spend my time. The same romance plot debates – like bittersweet endings – of course occur in books with other romantic pairings and across the range of main character gender identities. The examples I know and can discuss best are from M/M. I also think some of the discussions may be more notable in M/M, because I’m guessing that a higher proportion of us in M/M have also read a lot of M/F genre romance, and may have absorbed the preconceptions of that genre.
M/M has lots of wonderful books where two guys meet, go through trials or adventures, and get their Happy-Ever-After together, forever. Romance™. And then there are gay fiction classics where the main characters have no romantic aspirations at all. Not-Romance™. But a lot of books we sometimes include on “romance” lists fall somewhere between.
M/M-romance readers often come to the genre in search of something that steps away from the confines of traditional genre romance. It’s one of the strengths of the genre. I remember reading about a romance conference in which a well-known author of M/F books apparently led her readers in a chant of “Heroes never cheat!”
But… how true is that? Can we write a real romance with a cheating hero? For some people the answer will be no, whether it’s M/F or M/M or F/F. For others, Bareback by Chris Owen is a wonderful (hot) happy-ending M/M romance. The cheating in the middle is not a deal-breaker. Over 3000 ratings and a 4.0 average on Goodreads suggests that a big chunk of M/M readership considers a cheating hero acceptable in gay romance, as long as the ending works out in love and commitment. That’s one version of stepping away from a narrow, dogmatic view, that says there is only one path to true romance. and that limits it from outside the characters’ choices. Not an important one, not a universal one, but perhaps symbolic of the place some romance readers are moving away from.
What about other ways that we urgently need to break the old-fashioned genre romance mold?
We have books where the romance is not M/M but M/M/M. Sometimes that ends in a happy and solid relationship (like Julie Bozza’s A Threefold Cord.) Sometimes the power structure in the three-way relationship is not fully balanced, via BDSM (like Room at the Top by Jane Davitt) or in a poly relationship where the three men have different emotional and romantic needs (like Santa Baby by Heidi Cullinan.) We have books where one of the three guys is disembodied (like Bone Rider by J. Fally or SPECTR by Jordan L. Hawk.) In all of those, the ending is happy and there’s a romantic interconnected relationship, but it’s not traditional. Isn’t that part of the whole point, though, that we don’t force relationships to be “traditional” in any narrow sense of the word?
I recently read a wonderful book where one of the two men in the relationship needed sex in his life, and the other didn’t enjoy sex much. What worked for them was an open relationship sexually, but closed romantically. Our old “heroes never stray” genre mold taught readers to ask, is that a romance? And we can answer that definitely, any arrangement that satisfies all partners emotionally constitutes a true “romance.” It’s not about tab A in slot B, or Biblical fidelity, but about meeting emotional (and physical) needs of the people involved, about openness and consent. People of all kinds, including Ace characters, may find their needs best met by something other than the traditional closed pair of old-fashioned genre romance. Insisting that the characters we read (or the people they represent) have to hew to some narrow definition, is to invalidate real, human, romantic relationships across the wider spectrum.
On the emotional and relationship side, being inclusive and valuing all those expressions of love equally is an obvious goal of any queer romance effort. Not every reader will have an interest in every story line, and there has been discussion over what and how to tag things for people to find the books they love, but they all clearly and equally belong in the romance genre. So while these factors are sometimes debated by individual readers, that type of inclusion was never a debate on the site, but rather a goal.
The question does arise of how central any relationship needs to be in a book, with regard to the plot content, to be romance. How much emotional progress has to happen though a story? How vital must it be to the integrity of the book? That’s a different kind of “genre” question, and it runs on a continuum. Is a settled, happy, and stable established relationship still “romance” in a book with another main genre? How deep does the love between main characters have to go, toward unconditional and forever love, to tip a story into the romance category? Is it enough to have a mention of LGBTQIAP characters in some kind of relationship, or does it need to be more essential to the story? Is there value in drawing “not romance” lines at some point, for books where the relationship may be secondary? 
And what about the “Happy Ever After” constraint? What about the HFN ending? The cliffhanger? I write a lot of HFNs, because life is unpredictable and it takes time to reach a solid HEA. Is a tentative Happy For Now ending, like my first Tracefinder book, still a romance? Is it only a romance if you know it’s in a series? Many beloved M/M series, like Josh Lanyon’s Adrien English, have installments that are definitely not hand-in-hand into the sunset, but the series reaches a HEA. There are also stand-alone books that are HFN, where you hope the guys will last, but can’t ever be sure. 
Some great M/M series have early books with serious cliffhangers. I’m thinking of Kage by Maris Black, or Little Boy Lost by J.P. Barnaby. Each series ends with a solid HEA, but what about when only one book is released so far, and you’re dangling by a thread? Do you wait to classify it as a romance?
One thing I love about M/M romance and the readers of this community is the way they tend to be inclusive, not exclusive. A lot of books that are considered among the top favorites are not really romance at all. Series like Infected by Andrea Speed – a big-cat shifter detective with more than one romantic partner in his life as the series goes along, and at least one bittersweet book. Or The Lost and Founds by Edmond Manning, where each book finds Vin with a different man, loving and nurturing the man and the relationship, but with a clear end date, until Book 5’s HEA. Or the Boystown series by Marshall Thornton, which really are gay mysteries, although through in the middle of the series there is a warm and heartbreaking relationship. 
And then there are the beloved bittersweet books – One More Soldier by Marie Sexton, Protection by S.A. Reid, Junction X by Erastes. Or even something like my own Full Circle. Relationship-centered books that end up somewhere very far from a HEA. I say beloved – but of course that’s only true for a subset of M/M readers. Others really want to be able to avoid books without warmly positive endings. But enough love them to not want to leave them out in the cold.
As we were figuring out how the Queeromance Ink site would work, one pretty obvious answer was that readers of the various romance genres want to find a wide range of books, not a narrow one. By using tagging for the endings of books, to enable searches, the goal was to include a variety of books that appeal to romance readers, without hewing too closely to the genre limits.
Scott ended up with the site accepting any book where the plot includes any significant romantic relationship, and at least one main character is somewhere on the Rainbow LGBTQIAP spectrum.
This not only meant that so many of my genre-skirting favorites would be included, but that the site would also reflect one of my favorite things about M/M (and of the wider LGBTQIA romance) – the idea of inclusion, of widening boundaries, and of letting people define for themselves what makes up a workable romance.
What do you think? If you read M/M, which of your favorite books get discussed amid M/M romances, but really don’t belong there? Do you include bittersweet books on your romance shelves? Is there a reason to draw boundaries around the M/M romance genre? If so, what categories do you use for the exclusions – erotica? Gay lit? Other genres? Have you ever picked up a book a friend shelved as M/M romance and been irked that it didn’t fit your criteria? And now that we’re allowing authors to add search information about endings, tropes, heat level, character identities, protagonist ages, and more, will having those details be enough let you find the books you want to read, amid a broad “sort of romance” selection?
This has been a fun project to consult on for Scott, and has made me think in new ways about how we classify the books I love. (You can find Queeromance Ink at https://www.queeromanceink.com/ and if you’re an early author participant, the tropes are now up for adding to your posted books.)
Thank you for the interesting and thoughtful post, Kaje! (Also for the ‘Threefold’ shout-out. ♥) I was pondering these questions myself, as less than half of my queer fiction stories fit at all neatly into the traditional understanding of the Romance genre.
I am glad that Queeromance decided on a fairly broad definition. I often don’t feel as if I really belong anywhere, not properly, as a writer or a reader – but Queeromance makes me feel there is a place for the broad range of stories I love to both read and write. Thank you for all your work in helping make it so!
I love your books (including Threefold), and definitely want them to have a place in the broader array of the stories we shoehorn into our genre. There are reasons sometimes to narrow the definition, and I understand readers whose book choices are narrower. We’re hoping that by working to make the searches more detailed (and the next thing coming will be the ability to exclude things from a search to begin with, like “no cliffhangers”) that we can list broadly, and yet let readers find more narrowly. Trying to hook people up with a variety of books they may enjoy is one of my passions 🙂
I loved this post. It made me think about how rigid I am in my own mind (and towards my relationship) and how fluid I am in thinking about relationships in general. Why can I be more accepting of others (that have open relationships) than I am if I am the one in the relationship? Is self confidence, self worth and self esteem more important than the love I feel for another and their needs? Or am I selfish enough to want them only for myself?
Something to ponder deep into the night…
A pity life is never as simple as fiction…
I have a feeling we usually write an idealized version, especially with more complicated relationships, like menage or open. There are so many layers to our intimate relationships with other people, both emotionally and physically, and when it’s about someone else we can focus on the surface. And maybe dodge the complex details.
And in books we pretend those important relationship discussions are easy to have, and that both the words and the insight happen without huge effort. My book guys manage to have talks about vital life stuff that I’m not sure my husband and I could have in real life. At least not without half a dozen false starts, and a glass of wine. And maybe a dark room. And odds are we’d have to do it more than once, ’cause stuff doesn’t stay settled.
I hope whatever you’re pondering goes well for you.
I often pick up books labelled “Romance” and find they are not. To me, it is always a disappointment, no matter how well-written the story might be. It would be like a mystery fan picking up a mystery and finding no mystery at all, just a brief mention of a criminal case that has no bearing on the plot. Or a sci-fi fan picking up a sci-fi story to find it only had a few weak Star-Trek references.
To me, Romance means something very specific. It means the plot should be primarily romantic in nature. It means that if the romance were removed, the plot would cease to function.
Of course, there are lots of fabulous stories that center around themes of love and relationships that do not fit my narrow definition. Saying those stories do not fit into Romance is not the same as saying they are not “good” or not worth reading. It means only that they are not Romance genre stories.
I guess the question to ask is: what functions do genre labels perform? Are they really just “exclusionary” labels, intended to limit and confine? If authors use a genre label to lure in readers, do they have any responsibility to adhere to those genre expectations?
Probably these questions have a wide range of answers, depending on who one asks.
It sounds like you all are thinking a lot about what kind of stories fit into this site, and I think that is great. Readers are always the winners, when that kind of thoughtfulness takes place.
Good luck with the site. <3
Good points. Labels can be tricky, and can come with expectations.
The issue of a broad “Romance” genre maybe being used like a lure is interesting – I’ve occasionally thought something that was really pure erotica without plot ended up mislabeled in romance, and wondered if it was deliberate, for the audience size. Irritating, yes, when you expect one thing and get something different.
A lot of the books that hang around the outsides of M/M Romance are also not a comfortable fit for other genres, because they don’t feel like “gay literature” but LGBTQ relationships especially with any on page sex are still controversial in other genre books. I think in some cases it’s a bit of a safe haven effect – an audience that won’t reject them out of hand. But they won’t meet expectations for some romance readers.
The goal for Queeromance Ink is going to be to provide enough information to help people find what they’re looking for, while offering a wide home to books that might be a fit. The next search function we’re planning is an exclusionary search, where up front you can add “no cliffhangers; no bittersweet” or whatever else falls outside your genre to your search list.
Thanks so much for the great article, Kaje, and for the amazing help with the site. 🙂 xoxo
Below is the definition from Romance Writers of America (RWA) web site. Based upon the below, I’m inclined to believe there is much margin for creativity.
http://www.rwa.org/p/cm/ld/fid=578
Two basic elements comprise every romance novel: a central love story and an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending.
A Central Love Story: The main plot centers around individuals falling in love and struggling to make the relationship work. A writer can include as many subplots as he/she wants as long as the love story is the main focus of the novel.
An Emotionally Satisfying and Optimistic Ending: In a romance, the lovers who risk and struggle for each other and their relationship are rewarded with emotional justice and unconditional love.
Romance novels may have any tone or style, be set in any place or time, and have varying levels of sensuality—ranging from sweet to extremely hot. These settings and distinctions of plot create specific subgenres within romance fiction. Click here to better understand the subgenres within romance.
Romance Novel Formats
There are two formats for romance fiction:
Series or “category” romances: books issued under a common imprint/series name that are usually numbered sequentially and released at regular intervals, usually monthly, with the same number of releases each time. These books are most commonly published by Harlequin/Silhouette.
Single-title romances: longer romances released individually and not as part of a numbered series. Single-title romances may be released in hard cover, trade paperback, or mass-market paperback sizes.
***
From the Click here:
http://www.rwa.org/p/cm/ld/fid=579
Romance Subgenres
All romances have a central love story and an emotionally satisfying ending. Beyond that, however, romance novels may have any tone or style, be set in any place or time, and have varying levels of sensuality—ranging from sweet to extremely hot. Romance fiction may be classified into various subgenres depending on setting and plot elements. These subgenres include:
Contemporary Romance: Romance novels that are set from 1950 to the present that focus primarily on the romantic relationship
Erotic Romance: Romance novels in which strong, often explicit, sexual interaction is an inherent part of the love story, character growth and relationship development and could not be removed without damaging the storyline. These novels may contain elements of other romance subgenres (such as paranormal, historical, etc.).
Historical Romance: Romance novels that are set prior to 1950.
Paranormal Romance: Romance novels in which fantasy worlds or paranormal or science fiction elements are an integral part of the plot.
Romance with Religious or Spiritual Elements: Romance novels in which religious or spiritual beliefs are an inherent part of the love story, character growth and relationship development and could not be removed without damaging the storyline. These novels may be set in the context of any religious or spiritual belief system of any culture.
Romantic Suspense: Romance novels in which suspense, mystery, or thriller elements constitute an integral part of the plot.
Young Adult Romance: Romance novels in which young adult life is an integral part of the plot.
“And then we move further afield. I recently read a wonderful book where one of the two men in the relationship needed sex in his life, and the other didn’t enjoy sex much. What worked for them was an open relationship sexually, but closed romantically. Is that a romance?”
Thank you so fucking much for asking if my marriage is a real romance. Go to hell.
Since the question is about which written stories are the ones that romance readers would want to be able to find by searching a website, I think maybe we’re better off if we find that our real-life relationships don’t fit the criteria! I love your books Megan, but I hope your marriage isn’t like them. Much too exciting for real life!
I’m not entirely clear on what you’re trying to say.
That nobody would ever want to read about a relationship like mine? That’s patently untrue, LT3 has sales numbers on books with this premise to disprove that.
That I shouldn’t take this post personally? I’m sorry, but that’s not possible. This entire post questioned the integrity of my very marriage. It literally asks if my romance counts as a real romance. I have the right to be upset about that. It never should have been a question.
Oh, neither of those really. I mean that when we’re talking about what books we want to read we’re not talking about what lives are legitimate to live.
“One of the things I’ve been doing this past month is helping get the Queeromance Ink book-link site up and running. And in the process, we stumbled across an old question. When is a book really “Romance” and when isn’t it?”
That really isn’t a hard question. The definition of a genre romance has long been stated, and the RWA site lays it out rather nicely:
A Central Love Story: The main plot centers around individuals falling in love and struggling to make the relationship work. A writer can include as many subplots as he/she wants as long as the love story is the main focus of the novel.
An Emotionally Satisfying and Optimistic Ending: In a romance, the lovers who risk and struggle for each other and their relationship are rewarded with emotional justice and unconditional love.
Romance novels may have any tone or style, be set in any place or time, and have varying levels of sensuality—ranging from sweet to extremely hot. These settings and distinctions of plot create specific subgenres within romance fiction.
“This came up in two ways. One was in deciding which books actually belong on a site labeled “Queer Romance?” We want readers to find the stories they’ll love, without being lost in unrelated books. That means gate-keeping.”
Not really, no. Gate-keeping is a negative term, usually with hypocrisy implied (like the way so many gay and lesbian people say that bisexual, asexuals, and trans people don’t belong in the queer community).
What you’re doing is curating, which all sites are permitted to do.
When will it be necessary to say “that book is outside the purview of this site?”
I would say when the book does not contain queer people, and/or violates the above definition.
“The other was in the discussion of custom fields, to help readers with searches. Scott’s beta testers said they wanted to be able to search for “HEA- Happy Ever After” or “HFN – Happy For Now” or “Bittersweet” or “Cliffhanger” endings. (Hidden behind a spoiler tag, for those who don’t want to know.) Which raised the question – if a book is bittersweet, is it really a romance? Does it belong on the site?”
Technically speaking, no, bittersweet books do not belong on the site. It’s queer romance ink, and bittersweet and sad endings fall under the definition of love stories, not romance. That being said, I think there’s room for allowance because it is supposed to be an indexing site and there is a significant overlap between those who enjoy romance and love stories, and many authors do write both so it makes more sense to go ahead and include those books. Since everything is being so thoroughly tagged, it shouldn’t do any harm.
As to cheating, that boils down to personal preference. I don’t like it, some love, others don’t care. But disallowing cheating would be like disallowing misunderstanding fics, which doesn’t make any sense. So I think this question is a moot point.
“We have books where the romance is not M/M but M/M/M. Sometimes that ends in a happy and solid relationship (like Julie Bozza’s A Threefold Cord.) Sometimes the power structure in the three-way relationship is not fully balanced, via BDSM (like Room at the Top by Jane Davitt) or in a poly relationship where the three men have different emotional and romantic needs (like Santa Baby by Heidi Cullinan.) We have books where one of the three guys is disembodied (like Bone Rider by J. Fally or SPECTR by Jordan L. Hawk.) In all of those, the ending is happy and settled into a romantic relationship, but it’s not traditional.”
Okay, this strongly implies that people who do actively live these relationships maybe don’t count. That this even has to be asked smacks of treating polyamory like a trop rather than a real, actual way people live in love. That you have to ask ‘does this belong’ is frankly upsetting. It shouldn’t be a question. Love is love, it doesn’t matter if it’s MM, MFM, MMM, FFM, vanilla, BDSM, etc.
“And then we move further afield. I recently read a wonderful book where one of the two men in the relationship needed sex in his life, and the other didn’t enjoy sex much. What worked for them was an open relationship sexually, but closed romantically. Is that a romance?”
YES. Yes it is. I am asexual. My wife is bisexual. If she ever wanted to seek sex somewhere else, she can. That is our arrangement. Tht doesn’t make our marriage not a romance. Again, you are treating things like poly, BDSM, asexuality, etc. as TROPES rather than REAL THINGS PEOPLE ARE AND DO.
Are they romance? Shouldn’t even be a question, and it’s tipping into acephobia, etc that you even have to ask.
I seriously am so upset right now. I’m not a fucking trope. Including me in queer romance shouldn’t be something anyone hesitates or dithering over. Thank you so much for reminding me that the queer community doesn’t think I belong, and my feelings for my wife aren’t considered real because I’m not fucking her.
I apologize for asking hypothetically what should have been obviously wrong, and then not answering it. And especially if it seemed to question or encourage questioning of your personal life and relationship, or those of anyone else’s romance. I was echoing questions/objections that have been put forward by “romance” readers, and obviously needed to be much clearer in turning around to explicitly refute them.
As you say – I should have made it more obvious is that any relationship in which the participating members are mutually satisfied and have that emotional connection is a romance, as equal as any other romance. I love that we are finally seeing books with open relationships included in the more mainstream array of available stories. Part of the goal is to have openness and inclusivity for all kinds of families and relationships. That we should not define “romance” narrowly on any dimension. I apologize if my wording made it look like I thought any other option was appropriate.
I will try to reword to make that much clearer.
I think LGBTQ(etc) romance has less rigid definitions of romance because we don’t have hundreds of years of being told what our expectations should be the way het couples do. But that doesn’t keep some readers from insisting on their own favorite formula. I *prefer* HEA or HFN but I’ve also lived long enough to know that sometimes a happy ending means getting out of a bad relationship – maybe with a better partner in sight, maybe not. Is that romance? Well… how many unsuccessful romances does anyone go through before finally finding something that works? “After all, my erstwhile dear/my no longer cherished/Need we say it was not love/just because it perished?” (Millay)
As long as there’s reasonable labeling so those who don’t want to read outside their favorite scenario can avoid stories they don’t like, I think broadening the definition is a good thing. I’m monogamous as hell (and fortunately so is my wife) but one of the things reading does is broaden one’s views without necessarily living out the experiences.
Good points. I do hope broader acceptance of same-sex marriage in society may expand to openness for a wider range of relationships across the board.
Private preferences for reading are something we all have to some degree. Tagging and search options that work for those are a prime goal for the book listing site. Even there, it can be a bit of a balance, between what some people want to know about a book, and others don’t want to have spoilered. But using some hidden tags may let Scott walk that balance.
‘Tokyo Babylon’ is a manga series many a yaoi, shounen ai, and boys’ love reader consider a classic, but technically it’s none of those things. A beautiful boy with strong spiritual powers is wooed by an older man, falls in love with him, only to realize he’s a dark practitioner whom marked him as prey as a child. It’s an ongoing question fans have wrestled with. Did Seishirou truly love Subaru? Or was he only stalking him? The danger, the mystery, the uncertainty, and Subaru’s broken heart have resonated with many fans. There is no happy ending as often there isn’t in several of CLAMP’s series. Readers have speculated, imagined, and given them a thousand happy endings, or put them together in ways they never ended up in the canon. The romance is there, but it’s never quite a romance. It remains a classic, though.
That sounds like a cool series. I know “romance” readers for whom that kind of story is exactly up their alley. And while it sounds like it’s not classic romance, it is precisely the kind of thing we’d hate to exclude or have readers not find by keeping the definition too narrow. Hopefully a “no happy ending” type of tag would keep those who like their stories HEA from feeling let down or misled. Fun to hear about another place where that discussion plays out.
I absolutely love* how this post supposedly about *all* queer romance only gives lip service to anything other than cis, white, able bodied mm romance. Good job.
* I do not love it, it is in fact the Worst.
I apologize for narrow examples – (and I hope no one ever says a book is less “real romance” for having POC or non-cis-male characters!) The books I talked about are the ones I have read, and know well, as an M/M romance fan, and were chosen to discuss a continuum of the romantic plot content aspect. “The Lost and Founds” do include a couple of POC main characters, and have a character with a disability in the next book, but most of the books I mention do feature cis white men. The photos are what I found on stock sites to illustrate those books. It’s of course possible that one or more of the guys in the pictures is trans, but I’m not going to pretend that’s at all likely. Stock sites are not havens of any kind of diversity in images. Just finding a threesome was hard, but I make sure I buy all the images I post.
I don’t know if adding other images would help, or be counted as worthless lip service, but I will definitely do so, although just guys since that’s the context. We really need more diverse books on all dimensions, and I must make more effort at representing that within M/M… the dimension of F/F and POC main characters, and of gender identity and able bodied or not, seemed tangential to the topic I thought I was addressing of “what fits under genre romance from a plot standpoint?” I’m sorry I’m not familiar enough with F/F to know of books to fit in the discussion.
I’ll also try to make it clear that the focus of discussion on M/M is due to my area of reading – and that absolutely, it’s not different on a romance continuum with two women, or three women, or trans characters, in these stories. The stuff about open relationships not being romance came up mainly in M/M discussions – I suppose they also do come up in F/F, although I’d hoped F/F readers were less tied to the old M/F traditions. The other issues I touched on, of HFNs and bittersweet endings and cliffhangers all apply, in the same way across all LGBTQIAP romances. I’m sorry if I didn’t make the focus clear, or do enough to keep the examples broader.