DragonOfTheAerie
Vala
Quite true. But I took it more in the sense that romantic relationships are generally sexual in nature, rather than romantic stories or subplots including or portraying sex.
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Writing Love
- Thread starter TheCrystallineEntity
- Start date
Quite true. But I took it more in the sense that romantic relationships are generally sexual in nature, rather than romantic stories or subplots including or portraying sex.
DragonOfTheAerie
Vala
Haha.
I had no idea "mentee" was a word...but that is an important kind of relationship.
C
Chessie
Guest
They are, in fact, the same thing. It's still a plot focused on a romance, whether it's at front stage or not, the plot points/journey is the same. You might be thinking love story, which is not the same thing.
- Thread starter
- #44
TheCrystallineEntity
Istar
^Complicated.
Demesnedenoir
Myth Weaver
DragonOfTheAerie
Vala
I prefer not to split hairs on definitions when that isn't the point of the discussion. Last we discussed this it quickly turned into a fight and I don't want to go down that road. But my statement applies to both, no?
Yep, buddy love/ romance follow the same plot points, whether it is buddy cop, or just buddy love like Wayne's World, or I Love You Man... they all follow the same plot points. So Lethal Weapon, Wayne's World, and Gone With the Wind are the same story, essentially.
Two people hate each other, then are forced to work together to solve a problem, then learn to love each other, then their egos can't stand the fact they actually need someone so they fight and hate each other again, but then they realize they really need each other after all and are best together. The end.
Gone With the Wind strays a bit in that Rhett leaves at the end... so that might be what Chessie describes as a love story instead..?
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C
Chessie
Guest
I'm not fighting, simply explaining that there's a difference and that's decided by genre. A love story with a happy ending is a romance, that's the proper definition, not me splitting hairs.
- Thread starter
- #49
TheCrystallineEntity
Istar
^Who decides these sections and categorizations? 
People are very strange.
People are very strange.
C
Chessie
Guest
^Who decides these sections and categorizations?
The market decides. The publishers decide. Romance as a genre has been around for ages. Love stories can be anyone and anything, right? But if you're talking about romance--being two people falling in love and living happily ever after--that's a genre or plot system. Anyone wanting to go into publishing should know the difference between genres and what various markets want. I'm simply sharing information. But ya'll can believe what you want. I don't care, it doesn't affect me any.
DragonOfTheAerie
Vala
I'm the type that doesn't know how my story will end until I've written it, so in my case, i suppose it's not helpful to think of my writing in terms of one or the other. I might decide to kill one of the parties involved without prior planning...
Yep, Chessie nailed it. Literary fiction can get away with more play in the boundaries, but typically genre fiction follows certain patterns that readers come to expect. Straying too far from the pattern may make it difficult to categorize your work, and may make readers upset when you don't pay out on the expectations you've set up from your cover and blurb. Chessie writes a lot of romance, so she is the expert on that, I write more action/adventure and have more experience with writing for readers that expect certain patterns and payouts from that genre.
- Thread starter
- #53
TheCrystallineEntity
Istar
^^I'm often the same. Or, I think I have it all planned out, and then a plot twist comes along and surprises me as much as the characters.
DragonOfTheAerie
Vala
This happened to me all the time in my WIP. All my outlines I attempted were wrecked by my MC and her crazy snap decisions.
Romance is a genre with a precise definition, I see...but in my stories, I prefer to freestyle everything. Never liked categories, labels and limits, never have. So I'm really pretty indifferent to them. Formulas too have always bamboozled me.
I don't even think about what genre my stories are, lol. I just write them. If they fit into a category, great! If they don't...hmm. I suppose I'm in trouble? Idk...heehee.
Good luck presenting them to an agent them, if that is what you hope to do
DragonOfTheAerie
Vala
Good luck presenting them to an agent them, if that is what you hope to do
I'm sure not all writers know what will happen with their stories before writing them...or what their stories will become. Or even what they are writing at all.
If the stories I like to write are deemed unacceptable by the publishing community...well, so be it...? I have no interest in conforming to formulas. They either bore me or irritate me. That said, do strict formulas define every genre, or everything written and published? Sure, I can figure out where my story belongs after its done. But making it conform while I'm writing it? I would much rather let it do its own thing. I enjoy it.
I guess it's a very good thing I don't write romance. I hate knowing what must happen in the end.
- Thread starter
- #57
TheCrystallineEntity
Istar
I'm exactly the same. I take my genres and demolish them!
All of my stories actually have happy endings [amazingly], but in my next story, the ending will possibly be bittersweet.
C
Chessie
Guest
Hmm. It feels like I may be getting insulted but I'll let it go. Quite simply because ignorance is bliss, and I don't care what you do with your stories. Knowing that my couple ends up together is just part of writing genre fiction. I don't care or expect you to understand. Like I've said before, you and I are in different places when it comes to writing. So, you do you.
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DragonOfTheAerie
Vala
Nonono! I don't mean that at all
I just mean, I don't always want a happy ending, or even to know what kind of ending I'll have. I like to try new stuff with each story, and take it in whatever direction or whatever turn I feel like.
I'm sure there's a huge amount of variety within the romance genre...how else could it be so huge?
Not insulting. Really sorry if it came off that way :/
Oh man! I'm late to the conversation again!
Ok, I LOVE love. Every book I write has a strong relationship element, however, depending on the story, I explore love in different ways. I write complicated relationships, whether they're parent/ child ones or romantic.
Probably the most extreme example from one of my stories is a woman who is leaving home with her "brother" to flee an unsafe situation...and in chapter two, she jumps into bed with her guard, thinking they'll part in a few days and it'll just be a weekend fling (she leads a very solitary existence under the thumb of her grandfather). But then they're ambushed and a lot of other stuff, and her guard helps her to safety and they fall in actual love, and he finds out her brother isn't her brother, but her son, fathered by her own dad, who she killed a dozen years earlier. The story is further complicated by the fact that she once loved the boy as a baby, but in recent years has grown to despise him because she feels he's the reason she hasn't found real love. She blames him for her loneliness. Her guard levels to rescue her son from a ransomer, and while he's gone, the woman is in the care of an old family friend who's a werewolf. But while they're hiding out, he kisses her and she is shocked because he's never shown an interest in her, and he tells her that he doesn't blame her for breaking off their engagement, that he understands, but he wanted her to know he's not a monster, but a normal man underneath his shifter nature. She reveals that she didn't know they were engaged, and then discovers that her grandfather accepted the engagement and then broke it, all without telling her anything. So there's a bit of a love triangle there (okay, a fully formed one), and the woman chooses the guard over the werewolf (she's pregnant, btw), and she rejects the new guy. When the guard returns home, they marry and he adopts her first son, and then he has to leave again, but signs a birth certificate for the unborn baby...in the event he doesn't return and is killed. But when he runs into trouble on his journey, the woman organizes a company of mages to aid him, and she marches them north, leaving her newborn daughter with the family friends...while the werewolf guy adamantly refuses to let her go alone, and he accompanies her. Now, the guard knows about the love triangle, and when the woman and the werewolf arrive in the north, she's upset to find her husband with his arm around a young girl, and she quietly fades into her company of mages and is going to return home, but the guard and the werewolf guy talk, and when he learns his wife is there, he goes to find her. She says she is okay with him finding a younger, better girl, and understands that their whirlwind romance wasn't as real as they'd both hoped...but he tells her the girl is his long lost niece, and that he's been faithful. Later in the story, there is a battle and the guard is wounded mortally. The werewolf guy is there and all he'd have to do is walk away and the husband would die, but instead he heals him with magic because he loves the woman and knows she's in love with her husband. And he has a brotherly love for the husband and respects him even though he still loves the wife.
The next book is set fifteen years later, when the newborn daughter is being raised by the werewolf, the daughter of the woman he loves, and she finds out he's not her real father. He realizes his wife is the one who told the girl the truth about her parentage, and he sends his wife packing, kicking her out of the house...the mother of the two young boys the girl has always known as her brothers. And when she asks her not-dad about it, he says that they'd been living a lie too long, that he never loved her, and she never loved him. The girl is in love with a village boy that the not-dad disapproves of, and then the boy is kidnapped and she thinks he's dead. She blames her not-dad for the disappearance and a huge plot of distrust begins, where her grandparents reveal he's been in love with a woman for a long time, and he's never gotten over her. But the girl can't get over the boy who is gone.
Later in the book, a woman comes in the middle of the night and drops off a baby to the house. It's the not-dad's baby he had with some woman in a neighboring kingdom, and the woman who delivers it has a weird relationship with the not-dad, and the girl notices it. She suspects that's the woman he yearns for. Late in the book, the werewolf not-dad takes her to the kingdom where her parents are the king and queen (having won the war), and he introduces them to her, but doesn't reveal who they are just yet. The whole book, the girl has known her not-dad is in love with this woman, but now knows she's the queen, and she confronts him about it, accusing him of being dishonest and loving another man's wife. And then she learns those are her real parents, and she has to come to terms with the fact that she loves her not-dad and the real parents are strangers. And while the love triangle tension isn't a thing I made a big deal of, when the king is assassinated, the two remaining people in the love triangle decide that they won't dishonor their dead friend who is important to them both. And the girl leaves to avenge a father she never knew but loves because she's seen what a good man he is (when the woman's first son he adopted tells the girl all about the man who was a father to him when he didn't need to be).
Oh, and the girl is reunited with her kidnapped villager, but to complicate their relationship (and the rekindling of their love), he's now in the army, fighting against werewolves that kill villagers, and she desperately loves her werewolf family and can't tell him about them, but she feels she can't be in love with someone who would war against the only family she's ever known.
That is by far my most complicated love story, but it's my favorite! All kinds of love. Family, parent/ child, young love, mature love, a love triangle where the three people all have a good relationship (though one is definitely the third wheel), and sibling love.
I think love is one of the most universal things to write about. Love and fear. I write about both...A LOT!
Ok, I LOVE love. Every book I write has a strong relationship element, however, depending on the story, I explore love in different ways. I write complicated relationships, whether they're parent/ child ones or romantic.
Probably the most extreme example from one of my stories is a woman who is leaving home with her "brother" to flee an unsafe situation...and in chapter two, she jumps into bed with her guard, thinking they'll part in a few days and it'll just be a weekend fling (she leads a very solitary existence under the thumb of her grandfather). But then they're ambushed and a lot of other stuff, and her guard helps her to safety and they fall in actual love, and he finds out her brother isn't her brother, but her son, fathered by her own dad, who she killed a dozen years earlier. The story is further complicated by the fact that she once loved the boy as a baby, but in recent years has grown to despise him because she feels he's the reason she hasn't found real love. She blames him for her loneliness. Her guard levels to rescue her son from a ransomer, and while he's gone, the woman is in the care of an old family friend who's a werewolf. But while they're hiding out, he kisses her and she is shocked because he's never shown an interest in her, and he tells her that he doesn't blame her for breaking off their engagement, that he understands, but he wanted her to know he's not a monster, but a normal man underneath his shifter nature. She reveals that she didn't know they were engaged, and then discovers that her grandfather accepted the engagement and then broke it, all without telling her anything. So there's a bit of a love triangle there (okay, a fully formed one), and the woman chooses the guard over the werewolf (she's pregnant, btw), and she rejects the new guy. When the guard returns home, they marry and he adopts her first son, and then he has to leave again, but signs a birth certificate for the unborn baby...in the event he doesn't return and is killed. But when he runs into trouble on his journey, the woman organizes a company of mages to aid him, and she marches them north, leaving her newborn daughter with the family friends...while the werewolf guy adamantly refuses to let her go alone, and he accompanies her. Now, the guard knows about the love triangle, and when the woman and the werewolf arrive in the north, she's upset to find her husband with his arm around a young girl, and she quietly fades into her company of mages and is going to return home, but the guard and the werewolf guy talk, and when he learns his wife is there, he goes to find her. She says she is okay with him finding a younger, better girl, and understands that their whirlwind romance wasn't as real as they'd both hoped...but he tells her the girl is his long lost niece, and that he's been faithful. Later in the story, there is a battle and the guard is wounded mortally. The werewolf guy is there and all he'd have to do is walk away and the husband would die, but instead he heals him with magic because he loves the woman and knows she's in love with her husband. And he has a brotherly love for the husband and respects him even though he still loves the wife.
The next book is set fifteen years later, when the newborn daughter is being raised by the werewolf, the daughter of the woman he loves, and she finds out he's not her real father. He realizes his wife is the one who told the girl the truth about her parentage, and he sends his wife packing, kicking her out of the house...the mother of the two young boys the girl has always known as her brothers. And when she asks her not-dad about it, he says that they'd been living a lie too long, that he never loved her, and she never loved him. The girl is in love with a village boy that the not-dad disapproves of, and then the boy is kidnapped and she thinks he's dead. She blames her not-dad for the disappearance and a huge plot of distrust begins, where her grandparents reveal he's been in love with a woman for a long time, and he's never gotten over her. But the girl can't get over the boy who is gone.
Later in the book, a woman comes in the middle of the night and drops off a baby to the house. It's the not-dad's baby he had with some woman in a neighboring kingdom, and the woman who delivers it has a weird relationship with the not-dad, and the girl notices it. She suspects that's the woman he yearns for. Late in the book, the werewolf not-dad takes her to the kingdom where her parents are the king and queen (having won the war), and he introduces them to her, but doesn't reveal who they are just yet. The whole book, the girl has known her not-dad is in love with this woman, but now knows she's the queen, and she confronts him about it, accusing him of being dishonest and loving another man's wife. And then she learns those are her real parents, and she has to come to terms with the fact that she loves her not-dad and the real parents are strangers. And while the love triangle tension isn't a thing I made a big deal of, when the king is assassinated, the two remaining people in the love triangle decide that they won't dishonor their dead friend who is important to them both. And the girl leaves to avenge a father she never knew but loves because she's seen what a good man he is (when the woman's first son he adopted tells the girl all about the man who was a father to him when he didn't need to be).
Oh, and the girl is reunited with her kidnapped villager, but to complicate their relationship (and the rekindling of their love), he's now in the army, fighting against werewolves that kill villagers, and she desperately loves her werewolf family and can't tell him about them, but she feels she can't be in love with someone who would war against the only family she's ever known.
That is by far my most complicated love story, but it's my favorite! All kinds of love. Family, parent/ child, young love, mature love, a love triangle where the three people all have a good relationship (though one is definitely the third wheel), and sibling love.
I think love is one of the most universal things to write about. Love and fear. I write about both...A LOT!
