Yesterday, the weather sucked, I had a headache, and class material was either making me cranky (Catharine MacKinnon, who I’m convinced is an alien) or soppy (not one but two stories of devoted long-term marriages in which one spouse was dying of ALS; one of them was a documentary on physician-assisted suicide in the Netherlands, so we got to watch him die, too—whee!). So I stopped by the library and perused the shelves for a good romance as a quick pick-me-up. Nora Roberts’ Inner Harbor isn’t quite what I was looking for, but it’s close enough for these purposes.
Criteria for a good romance:
- By the end of the book, the protagonists must each have a spine.
- The obstacle keeping the protagonists apart must not be obviously stupid. The following are generally acceptable:
- Personal beliefs or personality traits that follow from past experience for good reason. (For example, a crushing inferiority complex is no way to start a marriage, to borrow a phrase from Sayers. However, thinking you can never marry because your parent was Eeeevil and genetics is scary—obviously stupid. No, I’m not making this up.)
- Characters needing to mature or learn more about each other. (Opposites learning to compromise, Pride and Prejudice.)
- Codes of morals, ethics, or honor. (Best friend’s spouse/former spouse, too young, too old, on the other side of a war, etc.)
- External obstacles. (“Sam will kill me if I try anything.”)
- Family obligations or disapproval. (Remember, Romeo and Juliet are dead.)
- There should be none of this “man spends most of book treating woman horribly, realizes he was wrong, and she forgives him immediately because she loves him” stuff.
- There should be a distinct lack of poorly-thought-out fantasy or sf elements, time travel, psychic connections, reincarnations, mystic New-Agey crap, and the like.
- Closely related: Don’t write historical novels if you don’t know how to do historical research or inclue. [Not a typo. To inclue is to get clues across to readers without lumpy exposition. Jo Walton coined it.]
- Unless one of the protagonists works in the criminal justice system, murder and mayhem—particularly if the protagonists decide they must stick their noses in to investigate, not that they have any clue what they are doing—are strongly discouraged. Women pulling slasher-flick stunts are Right Out.
- The following boring plots should be avoided:
- Falling in love with someone you are using to get revenge on someone else.
- Getting pregnant and not telling the father.
- Being royalty in disguise.
- And really most deceptions, unless they are necessary for a morally permissible and serious purpose and don’t last for too long.
- Decent prose (shouldn’t have to say it, but . . . ).
(Some of these rules also apply to non-genre romance stories; I just went for a genre book yesterday because it was simpler. There are possibly more that aren’t coming to mind now. See also The Romance Heroine Rules, from Jennifer Crusie’s fan mailing list; #23 is very true, but the best by far is #19.)
Inner Harbor does have a ghost, but I can ignore that fairly easily. There’s also some deception, but it actually makes sense in context. It’s the last of a trilogy about three brothers who find themselves caring for a boy their adoptive father took in—but Seth has their father’s eyes, and there are allegations that their father’s death might have been suicide . . . Of course, the mystery gets solved, each of the brothers finds a love, and it all ends happily. I got just the last one because I have read them before, I didn’t want to invest that much time in my pick-me-up, and I like the way Seth becomes part of the family, which is concluded here. It worked pretty well—and the sun’s out now, which helps at least as much.
I love your rules! Nicely spelled out.