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What Is a Romance Novel?
by
Christie Craig & Faye Hughes
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- A romance novel is fiction with a HEA ending
- A romance novel has an essential love story
- A good last chapter will sell the next novel
Defining a romance novel seems easy enough. It’s a novel about two people who fall in love, right? Well, yes.
And no.
Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind might be considered a romance but, technically speaking, it’s not. The relationship between Scarlett and Rhett, while important, is not the central plot of that book. Scarlett’s life journey is the focus of the novel.
Publishing professionals generally define a romance novel as a work of fiction with a love story that is essential to the plot and a Happily Ever After (HEA) type of ending. But what does that mean, really, when it comes time for you to write your novel?
Focus on the Romance!
Regardless of the type of romance, the one element they all have in common is that the romantic relationship between your two main characters is always front and center. Think about Gone with the Wind. If that book were truly a romance, the reader would have kept turning the pages to find out if Scarlett and Rhett would end up together, rather than to see what Scarlett would do next.
In other words, your subplots must support the central love story.
Readers keep reading a mystery novel to find out who done it. They read a romance novel because of the developing romantic relationship between your two main characters. Will the hero and heroine work through their inner conflicts and find a lasting happiness? That question fuels every romance novel’s engine. Everything else—a war, a sudden illness of a child, a killer, family discord—is secondary to the main storyline.
The Payoff at the End of a Romance Novel
When they close the pages of your book, readers want their happy ending, too. Your main characters don’t have to walk off into the sunset holding hands but the reader needs to know that their investment of time and emotion in your story was worth the price they paid for your novel.
It’s the classic good-triumphing-over-evil premise. If your romance was done well, your main characters faced many obstacles on their path to a Happily Ever After and your reader expects—no, make that demands—their payoff at the end.
To put it another way, a good first chapter will sell that book . . . but a good last chapter will sell the next novel.
...from The Everything Guide to Writing a Romance Novel.
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