Writing Romance: What’s the Matter With a Love Story?

Everyone knows that romance novels are for women. And so are stories that focus on who’s hopping into whose bed and which couples will end up together.

Everyone also knows that those kinds of stories are inferior. Why would anyone who’s not a woman want to watch (ugh!) The Notebook or read (yuck!) the Twilight novels. So much YA is for girls because it’s about luuuuuurv.

I mean, they’re obviously not as worthwhile as stories about who punches the strongest and who blows the most things up, right?

I’m still struggling with that sex scene I was thinking of including in my story a while back. And although writing those kinds of scenes can be embarrassing or nerve-wracking because of the sexy stuff, that’s not why. I think I’ve finally managed to be cool with the idea of writing characters in such a vulnerable and raw situation, and I’m at peace with my understanding of what that might say about me as a person or what messages that might give any readers. So why am I wavering?

When I thought about it, I realized it was because so many of the popular opinions I hear and read devalue sex and romance in fiction.

The dichotomy seems pretty clear: stories about romantic relationships are pedestrian and don’t have interesting things to say about the world. Only stories about Themes and Ethics and Social Commentary are Literature. TV shows jump the shark when characters hop into bed with each other. We don’t have to pay attention to popular YA books because they’re all love triangles.

If you read The Hunger Games and dismiss it as Battle Royale with a love triangle for teen girls, you’re missing the point of the book and also kind of sexist.

It’s true that sometimes I roll my eyes when characters on TV start to kiss or the protagonist in the novel I’m reading starts to describe the dreamy hunk/gorgeous babe who is obviously gonna be their boo by the end of the volume. Sometimes, romance takes me out of the part of the story that actually interests me — the pursuit of Voldemort’s Horcruxes, the ethical struggles of being a lawyer, the race to stop Khan — for what feels like tacked-on titillation whose only purpose is to elicit fandom’s squees.

But other times, a relationship between two (or more) characters that happens to involve sex or love has a ton of interesting things to say about those characters and the human experience in general.

For instance, on The Good Wife, Diane and Kurt’s relationship is fascinating not just because they’re a cute couple (d’awwww), but also because each brings out interesting new facets of the other when they have to face practical complications to their lives and jobs. How do you confide in someone whose politics are exactly opposite yours? No matter how much you love them? What happens when you’re on opposite sides of the courtroom?

In The Hunger Games, although Gale and Peeta are both presented as would-be suitors for Katniss, the point of the books isn’t “Team Peeta vs. Team Gale.” That’s not even the point of that subplot. Romantically, The Hunger Games is about Katniss: how can a teenage girl navigate romantic attention when so many different people want so many different things from her? What do you do if romantic attachments are your only way to survive? What if you don’t know what you want?

The way Katniss reacts to her situation with Gale and Peeta tells us more interesting things about Katniss and how she copes with her life than the same story without the subplot could.

Both plots are love stories. They’re not somehow “better” because they minimize the romantic aspects; they don’t.

So why am I scared that hooking up my two characters might ruin not their established personalities but the quality of their story?

Why do I have it in my head that writing about friendship is Deep and Mature and writing about friends who also make out sometimes is hack work?

Why do I listen to my own voices that say letting characters hook up is silly and overdone, like the kids on the playground who spend all recess telling others how dumb and babyish it is to still play with action figures/dolls/Pokémon?

Look, emotions are difficult, and intense emotions are the most difficult of all. And criticisms of Western pop-culture as over-sexualized in all the wrong ways (i.e. the ways that judge people for not having the “right” amount of sex and romance in the “right” way at the “right” times and insist that there’s something wrong or suppressed about anyone who doesn’t follow these models) are valid. I agree that there’s a sad tendency in a lot of mainstream media to portray romantic love as the only and strongest kind of love there is. And so many of the most awful scenes I’ve read have been romances.

That doesn’t mean that every romantic/sex scene is terrible and only for lowest-common-denominator emotional thrills.

That shouldn’t mean that of all the stuff I mention in my current WiP — murder, lying, manipulation, bigotry, grief, guilt — the one I should be most ashamed of is a scene of two consenting adults with feelings for each other. It shouldn’t mean that of all the blatantly whoo-hoo-this-is-why-fiction-is-more-fun-than-real-life stuff, kissing is the action that somehow lowers the tone of the story in a that way ridiculous set-ups, scenery-chewing  fight scenes, and over-the-top angst don’t.

But it still does.

Oh, I’m going to write it anyway, because I think it might belong. And I’ll listen to feedback to see if other people support that hypothesis.

But the only way I can see right now to shut up that do you really want to be one of those writers? voice right now is to stuff its pie-hole with words and paragraphs and scenes. And maybe once I’m through that and the revision, it’ll see what I wound up with and be quiet for good.